A priori I can state that the existence of LENR cannot be disproven and that has utterly nothing to do with experiments. If you don't understand that, I can't help you.
How many times has the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heating Event been replicated in peer reviewed journals?
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A priori I can state that the existence of LENR cannot be disproven and that has utterly nothing to do with experiments. If you don't understand that, I can't help you.
Well it is certainly never going to be disproven if the experts never publish papers disproving it. But methinks you use the term "a priori" without knowing what it means.
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I can't speak for anti-LENR people because I rather doubt there are any, but I can state with high confidence that nobody will ever disprove the existence of LENR, as anyone with even a shred of intelligence would realize to be the case a priori.
And by similar reasoning, nobody is going to disprove my invisible unicorns either. You can show experiments to be bad and devices like Rossi's trashy kludges not to work but you can't prove that something can't exist. All you can say is that it is very improbable. Or that the proof offered for the phenomenon is unconvincing. And it doesn't help if, as in the case of Rossi, the proponent is a proven criminal with no history of success in technology or like Dardik, his history of accomplishments in his own field (he may have done valid research a long time ago in vascular surgery) is unrelated to the current claims and there is evidence that the guy is a quack and a crook.
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And by similar reasoning, nobody is going to disprove my invisible unicorns either.
Well, when a hundred top experts in electrochemistry replicate your scientific findings and NO scientists in the field generate papers disproving your invisibile unicorn theory, then I will be encouraging others to take it seriously.
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moreover when there is replicated experiments done by even competent experts, and no serious alternative explanation (beside theory), even if you are not sure rational behavior is to work more search more, not ignore or deny.
I am much more confident the skeptics are wrong, by the way they are sure of their point, which is irrational.
I am confident on Jed's position, given his arguments, but who knows? This is just a reason to search more, not less.
Never forget that point: someone facing ambiguous evidence that may be convincing, and say he is sure to be right against the experiments(normal), and ask for not searching (abnormal) is not a scientist.
And someone who see something that may be good for practical usage, and don't look/ask to confirm and harness it, is not an engineer.
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I am flabbergasted that LENR-heads are so besotted and defensive about their sacred cow that they fight back agrressively against an obvious point that MY explained. You can't prove that something doesn't exist unless it is logically impossible. That is an a priori fact Kev and I know what the term means.
But the faithful somehow see this trivial assertion as yet another attack on their religion. It isn't. It is, however, a condemnation of the idiotic assertion used to validate LENR that nobody has disproven its existence. Of course not, and nobody ever will. The most anyone could possibly do is disprove a particular experiment and even that is unlikely. They might cast great doubt on a specific result, but they can't definitely show it is false. But none of this shows that LENR is not real any more than the lack of a proof of its unreality shows that it is. But you guys are so obsessed with your precious that you can't fathom one of the simplest facts in the world: you can't prove something does not exist unless it is logically or mathematically impossible.
And Jed, nobody suggested that you should admit that you are wrong in the absence of persuasive evidence against your position. You should merely admit that you have yet to achieve god-like status and that it is still possible that you might be wrong.
I guess after all these years that I still don't get LENR people. They seem to want to be taken seriously and want to see their field properly acknowledged, developed, and rise to its full potential, whatever that might be. However, they almost all behave like intolerant religious fanatics jousting at windmills and flailing at anyone who dares to impugn any aspect of the gospel. Of course, almost every single one of you behaved exactly the same way with regard to Rossi (and some of you still do.) LENR may well not be pseudoscience, but you take all your instructions from its playbook.
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I am flabbergasted that LENR-heads are so besotted and defensive about their sacred cow that they fight back agrressively against an obvious point that MY explained. You can't prove that something doesn't exist unless it is logically impossible. That is an a priori fact Kev and I know what the term means.
But the faithful somehow see this trivial assertion as yet another attack on their religion. It isn't. It is, however, a condemnation of the idiotic assertion used to validate LENR that nobody has disproven its existence. Of course not, and nobody ever will. The most anyone could possibly do is disprove a particular experiment and even that is unlikely. They might cast great doubt on a specific result, but they can't definitely show it is false. But none of this shows that LENR is not real any more than the lack of a proof of its unreality shows that it is. But you guys are so obsessed with your precious that you can't fathom one of the simplest facts in the world: you can't prove something does not exist unless it is logically or mathematically impossible.
And Jed, nobody suggested that you should admit that you are wrong in the absence of persuasive evidence against your position. You should merely admit that you have yet to achieve god-like status and that it is still possible that you might be wrong.
I guess after all these years that I still don't get LENR people. They seem to want to be taken seriously and want to see their field properly acknowledged, developed, and rise to its full potential, whatever that might be. However, they almost all behave like intolerant religious fanatics jousting at windmills and flailing at anyone who dares to impugn any aspect of the gospel. Of course, almost every single one of you behaved exactly the same way with regard to Rossi (and some of you still do.) LENR may well not be pseudoscience, but you take all your instructions from its playbook.
Leaving the intemperate and personalised language to one side, the point IO makes here is one I fully agree with. In fact I'd point out that following Popper until there is a concrete hypothesis for LENR that makes refutable predictions, LENR is not science.
Hold it everyone - I'm not saying that LENR as a real set of anomalies with a plausible solution (nuclear reactions at rates much higher than expected) cannot be thought plausible until a mechanistic theory is discovered and checked. Merely that until then LENR is not a theory (uncontentious) and as not-a theory it requires much better evidence before it is accepted as probably true. That is because without a predictive known underlying mechanism it is easy to match heterogeneous results to a hand-waving idea, and therefore such results (by Bayes) are less strong evidence for it.
This is a crucial point in epistomology that is often just not considered. It is the one that differentiates modern science from the set of vague knowledge that preceded it. And, even if you dislike Popper, Bayesian methods provide another way to understand intuitively and analytically the same concept.
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Leaving the intemperate and personalised language to one side, the point IO makes here is one I fully agree with. In fact I'd point out that following Popper until there is a concrete hypothesis for LENR that makes refutable predictions, LENR is not science.
Hold it everyone - I'm not saying that LENR as a real set of anomalies with a plausible solution (nuclear reactions at rates much higher than expected) cannot be thought plausible until a mechanistic theory is discovered and checked. Merely that until then LENR is not a theory (uncontentious) and as not-a theory it requires much better evidence before it is accepted as probably true. That is because without a predictive known underlying mechanism it is easy to match heterogeneous results to a hand-waving idea, and therefore such results (by Bayes) are less strong evidence for it.
This is a crucial point in epistomology that is often just not considered. It is the one that differentiates modern science from the set of vague knowledge that preceded it. And, even if you dislike Popper, Bayesian methods provide another way to understand intuitively and analytically the same concept.
Just apply your approach to High Temperature Superconductors, where there is also no underlying theory and tell those guys that what they're doing is not science. Just friggen' incredible.
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I am flabbergasted that LENR-heads are so besotted and defensive about their sacred cow that they fight back agrressively against an obvious point that MY explained. You can't prove that something doesn't exist unless it is logically impossible. That is an a priori fact Kev and I know what the term means.
But the faithful somehow see this trivial assertion as yet another attack on their religion. It isn't. It is, however, a condemnation of the idiotic assertion used to validate LENR that nobody has disproven its existence. Of course not, and nobody ever will. The most anyone could possibly do is disprove a particular experiment and even that is unlikely. They might cast great doubt on a specific result, but they can't definitely show it is false. But none of this shows that LENR is not real any more than the lack of a proof of its unreality shows that it is. But you guys are so obsessed with your precious that you can't fathom one of the simplest facts in the world: you can't prove something does not exist unless it is logically or mathematically impossible.
And Jed, nobody suggested that you should admit that you are wrong in the absence of persuasive evidence against your position. You should merely admit that you have yet to achieve god-like status and that it is still possible that you might be wrong.
I guess after all these years that I still don't get LENR people. They seem to want to be taken seriously and want to see their field properly acknowledged, developed, and rise to its full potential, whatever that might be. However, they almost all behave like intolerant religious fanatics jousting at windmills and flailing at anyone who dares to impugn any aspect of the gospel. Of course, almost every single one of you behaved exactly the same way with regard to Rossi (and some of you still do.) LENR may well not be pseudoscience, but you take all your instructions from its playbook.
Maybe if you just stop using such loaded language in trying to describe the positions of LENRphiles, you'd find that they're easy to understand. No other finding in science has been replicated so many times and yet is criticized for not being replicated. But you call that 'daring to impugn some religious aspect' of this field.
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Just apply your approach to High Temperature Superconductors, where there is also no underlying theory and tell those guys that what they're doing is not science. Just friggen' incredible.
That is mostly not true, there is a very good and intuitive underlying theory for HTS based on Cooper pairs (or other mechanisms) coupling electrons into bosonic objects.
I think what you misunderstand is that the details of this remain unclear. Exactly what gets coupled so that an ensemble can have bosonic properties and therefore superconduct is still in some cases active research - it looks as though there are multiple candidates.
The underlying theory (coupling of fermions into bosonic objects) makes quantitative experimental predictions (about how properties change with temperature) which are validated by many many different experiments, and requires nothing not already known, and is predicted from QM that itself is validated in many other ways.
Where you are correct is that no-one is entirely clear what are all the different coupling mechanisms active in different materials, or how best to optimise them. That space remains open but understanding has been growing monotonically. Still there will be new materials exhibiting unexpected behaviour since the type of solid-state interactions that do this coupling are incredibly complex and variable. And no-one says that HTS is fully understood - therefore you will note that all the papers claiming specific detailed mechanisms - until very well validated - are treated with much skepticism.
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Drawing parallels between HTS and LENR is a dangerous thing to do. Since 1987, any remotely qualified laboratory in the world could whip up a batch of YBCO and demonstrate superconductivity for you with no more than a day's notice. They could hand you some samples and you can go off and measure whatever you'd like however you want to do it and prove to yourself that it works. No ifs, ands, or buts. Tell me whose lab to go to for a similar experience with LENR even after 28 years.
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Pt-D and Pt-H cathodes do not produce heat.
Pt-D definitely does. It is what Storms used in his experiments that IO reanalyzed. 780mW apparent excess heat sign al. Not the biggest but definitely not insignificant.
Several cold fusion systems have no platinum in them
You speak of the Rossi-type? Be specific. Most of the early work was in F&P electrochemical cells, and I can't recall a system that didn't use a Pt anode. Further, the electrolytes always dissolve a little of that Pt and some of that deposits on the Pd.
such as Arata's
DS-cathode type? That used Pt counter electrode. Arte you speaking of something else?
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???
Quick fact check. LENR-CANR.ORG database still only lists 3 of my journal articles, and does not list my whitepaper. And you've been told where the papers are, with journal references and web links to manuscripts. Liar, liar, pants on fire...
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nobody will ever disprove the existence of LENR
A priori I can state that the existence of LENR cannot be disproven
And by similar reasoning, nobody is going to disprove my invisible unicorns either
You can't prove that something doesn't exist unless it is logically impossible.
All correct. Which is why science doesn't seek to 'disprove the existence of...'. Science seeks to demonstrate such -and-such an effect through reproducible (i.e. controllable) experiments that can be replicated by those skilled in the art, and many times by just regular old scientists. CF doesn't meet that mark.
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I am much more confident the skeptics are wrong, by the way they are sure of their point, which is irrational.
Let's be clear on this. The history of the field breaks the 'skeptics' into a couple of different groups. First there is the group consisting of people who chimed in in the earliest days, say 1989-1992. Their objections were many, but mainly based on two complaints. First what was suggested was radical, and had never been seen anywhere. That is a definite cause for caution. But Fleishmann had done this once already with his discovery (in the mid 70's) of what came to be known as Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering. Unfortunately, his published explanation of what caused the effect was way off base. It wasn't until the early 80's that people worked out was actually happening. And in that process Fleischmann was mostly forgotten in that sub-field. Second, there were a batch of people who tried to replicate, failed, and tried to get info from F&P to correct what they apparently did wrong. F&P had violated scientific etiquette by claiming a great discovery in a press conference without publishing or patenting first. As it turned out they were grossly premature. But they started playing the IP game at that point, which just incensed a portion of the replicators. Then, based on these two things, and the ERAB report, and the opinions of those like Maddox and others, the field was relegated in the general scientific community to the 'bad science' category. After that almost everybody lost interest in the field and just accepted the 'bad science' moniker. The undercurrent was also that if there really was something there, it would eventually be proven by replicatable controllable experiments.
So now we begin to see the second group of skeptics, now much fewer in number. Morrison is perhaps the prime example of this, with his constant request for a cup of cold-fusion-heat brewed tea. Add to that Steven Jones (which Jed conveniently forgets), who had a literature debate with Miles in the mid 90's. That's when I started to get interested. Personally, I found the arguments of Jones, et al, and Morrison not very convincing. So I started looking into it for my own (safety) reasons. And it wasn't until 2000 that I officially voiced any issues.
So, the early group were not basing their objections on much solid fact, just the general idea that the claims made seemed a little far-fetched. That isn't a particularly strong argument. The Jones-Miles debate and the Morrison comments were more solid, but not definitive. Then I pop up with the CCS/ATER effect/mechanism, which is pretty solid. No new physics, a little new chemistry. but in a relatively unexplored field (solid-liquid-gas interface).
The CFer response mirrors this. With the first crop, easily voiced similar 'theory' based objections sufficed (by that I mean they pointed out that the objections didn't apply to 'new' phenomena). With the second crop, there was some literature debate involved, and my opinion is that it was pretty much a draw, no one won out. But with my objections, they didn't find it so easy to dismiss my points, and instead of acknowledging this and responding by testing my theories in their apparati, they concocted a strawman argument and found a friendly journal to publish it in. The use of fallacies to dismiss my objections actually supports the validity of my work, as anyone who debates ideas realizes.
So Alain, trying to lump all of us into one box is inappropriate and incorrect.
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Further, the electrolytes always dissolve a little of that Pt and some of that deposits on the Pd.
There is also "anodic stripping," where the current is reversed for a period of time, which will presumably result in a little electroplating of platinum onto the cathode. And, I vaguely recall, "cycling" of some sort that is sometimes reported during the setup. (I might have misunderstood what was being done here.)
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Their objections were many, but mainly based on two complaints. First what was suggested was radical, and had never been seen anywhere. That is a definite cause for caution.
Then I pop up with the CCS/ATER effect/mechanism, which is pretty solid. No new physics, a little [never been seen anywhere] chemistry.
You lump yourself in the same box IMO, by seeming to display little 'cause for caution'. Why not refer to ATER as the hypothesis that it is? The word 'mechanism' is generally reserved for a tangible, understood process.
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There is also "anodic stripping," where the current is reversed for a period of time, which will presumably result in a little electroplating of platinum onto the cathode. And, I vaguely recall, "cycling" of some sort that is sometimes reported during the setup. (I might have misunderstood what was being done here.)
Yes, that (stripping) is what I noticed seemed to reset the drop-off in activity that Ed Storms' obtained in his Pt-D experiments. The dissolution/deposition of Pt on Pd is just base chemistry (most electrolytes are slightly basic) but can be countered by electrochemistry. This is one of the difficulties in working out the details of the non-nuclear mechanism I suggest exists for ATER. Very tricky business, as evidence by all the varied results people get with additives. I always wondered if there was enough info out there from that arena to go a little further in my mechanistic speculations, but I never had the energy to pursue that. Cycling complicates things even more.
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You lump yourself in the same box IMO, by seeming to display little 'cause for caution'. Why not refer to ATER as the hypothesis that it is? The word 'mechanism' is generally reserved for a tangible, understood process.
Proves either a) you don't read, or b) your reading comprehension is near 0.
I have said many, many times that at-the-electrode-recombination (ATER) is a proposed mechanism to alter the heat distribution in the cell. That in turn leads to a CCS because of the specifics of the cell design. The fact you'd get a CCS if a heterogeneous heat distribution is altered is just math.
I also point out that no CFer ever challenged the math of my reanalysis, or the math of a CCS. They only claim ATER can't happen, for a variety of misconstrued reasons. OK, so maybe they're right . What then invalidates the idea of the CCS, which I showed to be a 1%RSD effect in Storms' work? It certainly explains the observation of apparent excess heat...
P.S. What do you mean by 'cause for caution'?
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@AA: fine. Everyone except cult members is pathological. LENR is not controversial at all. It must be nice to be part of the tiny slice of humanity that has seen the light.
You repeat your snide analysis. How do you explain the great majority who did not believe the Wright Bros could fly, or continental drift, or that stomach ulcers were caused by H. pylori, for so many years? Were they all stupid until they later got a dose of IQ enhancer? Can't you see this often happens following a new discovery that is contrary to conventional wisdom?
Fleischmann and Pons have been replicated well enough to remove all reasonable doubt. Rossi hasn't yet as there have not been enough good replications by independent labs.
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Fleischmann and Pons have been replicated well enough to remove all reasonable doubt
...that there is an F&P Effect, but as to what it is...that's still an open question.
