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

    Quote from Adrian Ashfield

    I have yet to see one person make that claim.

    Just for the record, do you believe:

    1. LENR has ever been proven to produce excess heat?

    2. Any of Rossi's E-Cats (including the QX) have ever worked?


    For myself, 1: Yes. 2: At one time, yes, then after he posted a few outright lies I followed his "in mercato veritas" approach and there's nothing in mercato. I first thought that the chances of Rossi hoodwinking the Swedish Skeptics Society in a black box test, Darden in a yearlong test with an independent test reporter, Levi and Focardi and half a dozen other notable scientists, well that was an extremely stretch. But now I just consider it an unlikely stretch.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Correct. This is a classic strawman argument. That is to say: Interested Observer is refuting an argument that no one makes.


    The only argument made regarding the Wrights in this context is that sometimes the majority of scientists are wrong, so be careful not to point to a majority to support your views. To judge the validity of an experimental claim, look at the experiment. Don't fret about who believes it or what the majority thinks. Science is not a popularity contest.


    If you cannot evaluate a claim yourself, perhaps you should assume the majority is right. That is a weak position. But after all, the majority is usually right, especially about uncontroversial claims, so you will probably be correct.

    Dang it, I should have read through the thread before posting because you said almost exactly the same thing I did.

    Quote

    Taking it from, say Jed's perspective (whom I disagree with about some of Rossi's stuff):

    Jed claims Rossi's gizmo doesn't work

    Jed points out that others claimed the Wright brothers didn't really fly

    The Wright brothers really did fly

    Jed still says Rossi's gizmo doesn't work.


    Jed says that now. For more than three years, perhaps four, Jed maintained that the experiments by the Swedes and Levi were credible and that Rossi's claims were real. He even used the word "incontrovertible" regarding some of the evidence advanced for Rossi claims and he used the phrase "on first principles" for explaining why he thought continued boiling after electrical power shut off proved that the "ottoman" sized ecats worked. Of course, it turned out to be only stored heat and the apparent excess power was, most likely, caused by deliberate misplacement of temperature sensors, a Rossi trademark move. Jed was quite insistent, arrogant and nasty about it at times. Let's keep the history straight.

    I am happy to hear that nobody actually is making the ridiculous argument that I put forth about the Wright brothers. However, I don't understand what point you all keep making about them is. Yes, many people were wrong about the Wright brothers and, if it turns out that LENR is the real deal, then many people will have been wrong about that as well. My point with regard to that is: so what?


    If I am interpreting Jed and Kev correctly, they are stating that since they and some others are completely convinced that LENR has been adequately proven to exist and since I and others have not studied the literature in great detail and have not found specific objections to each paper, we should consider it proven to exist. Now Jed says that if you can't evaluate a claim yourself, then perhaps you should assume the majority is right. Of course, the majority considers LENR not to exist. But Jed further asserts that the majority has formed this opinion out of ignorance at best and antipathy at worst. So I guess his advice is to assume that only the people he says to listen to are right.


    I guess I might as well answer Adrian's questions so he can decide whether or not to put me on his shit list. I really don't know if LENR has been proven to produce excess heat. I find many of the criticisms of the literature to be well-founded but certainly not decisive. I think the existence of LENR - to extent that there is even a well-formed definition of the phenomenon - is still an open question. I realize that this sort of skepticism is not acceptable to anyone here. If you are not a believer, you are a pathological skeptic. There are no maybes allowed for the faithful. But my position is "I don't know" and if you don't like that, tough.


    As for Rossi, I don't believe any version of the e-cat is anything more than a fraudulent piece of junk designed to sucker in LENR fans. I thought this within weeks of my first exposure to Rossi's stuff in 2011 and my convictions have only strengthened over time. My opinions about LENR have nothing to do with that conclusion. I don't think Rossi's work ever has had anything to do with LENR and each new version of his gizmo is even less plausibly related to any LENR experiment ever described.

    Quote

    Just for the record, do you believe:

    1. LENR has ever been proven to produce excess heat?


    You didn't ask me but the best I answer I have for that is -- I don't really know for sure. I doubt it but there are enough reasons that it might to do more high quality research, trying for better power out/power in ratios, higher absolute power levels, self-sustaining (no power in) demos, and the like. You know, the convincing stuff that Jed insists doesn't matter? The things that we skeptopaths wouldn't be convinced by anyway except that we would if it were done correctly by credible people.


    Quote

    2. Any of Rossi's E-Cats (including the QX) have ever worked?


    Absolutely not. There is no vestige of a chance that Rossi's garbage assemblies do anything except to fool the lowest denominator victims and marks. I have presented the evidence for this time and again as have others. It's conclusive.

    Quote from [email protected]

    I should have read through the thread before posting because you said almost exactly the same thing I did.

    This is an important point, worth repeating. This is a particularly blatant strawman argument. Sometimes, people misunderstand an argument, distort it a little and then post a rebuttal. That would be an accidental strawman argument. In this case, no one made an argument even remotely close to this, so I suspect Interested Observer may realize this is unreasonable.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    you are here showing that you don't judge things by content, but instead by whether ...they are relevant.


    ***Well you're right about that. When someone like Shanahan continues to seagull over a thread with irrelevant stuff, I find it pretty damned useless.


    I disagree with your judgement of that for the reasons below.

    Suppose I accept your propositions here: and I think I do. Shanahan's CCS/ATER idea indeed does not cover all of the LENR papers, and by definition does not cover He, tritium, weird transmutation, high energy product claims. Why does that make it uninteresting?

    ***Because it is irrelevant. Look at the title of this thread. Does Shanahan's bullshit apply to the title? Not really. Maybe he shaves off a few replications that were close to the noise, but from what I have seen of the counterarguments to his claims, he doesn't even do that. Let's say he did. Then how many of those 153 peer reviewed replications does he shave off? Maybe 13? That makes it 140 remaining peer reviewed replications to knock out, and he doesn't do that, he doesn't support his theory very well, he doesn't take it to his own thread like the moderators have suggested.



    There is so much heterogeneous LENR literature identifying as LENR things that look anomalous:

    Positive enthalpy (half of all calorimetric anomalies)

    Positive radioactive product detection (more than half of such anomalies)

    Detection of some unexpected stable element at very low concentration (all contamination and many mislabelling anomalies)

    Is it expected that the reasons for all these different things are the same? No

    ***To hear Ed Storms say it, the answer is YES. But like you say, there's enough anomalous stuff in the LENR literature to have allowed in a few extra anomalies that won't be explained by whatever theory emerges to push LENR into the daylight.



    - the nature of anomalies is that they have varied explanations. If LENR exists, and explains some subset of these observations, it is still highly unlikely that it explains all. Some will be mundane anomalies.

    ***So if your theory explains 13 out of 153 replications then maybe you should stay on your own thread with your own 13/153 theory and explain it to all comers.


    The job of understanding LENR then is made vastly more difficult by these false positives.

    ***True. The story about Feynman getting the Nobel Prize fits that issue to a T.


    When Dr. Feynman came up with his famous theory, he had to throw out a supposition that others had been relying upon but he felt its proof had come up short. ---------------------------------------------------------- Feynman’s own words. I’ll reprint some of his story here, which I found also posted online at http://www.zag.si/~jank/public/misc/joking_feynman.txt The 7 Percent Solution The problem was to find the right laws of beta decay. There appeared to be two particles, which were called a tau and a theta. They seemed to have almost exactly the same mass, but one disintegrated into two pions, and the other into three pions. Not only did they seem to have the same mass, but they also had the same lifetime, which is a funny coincidence. So everybody was concerned about this. .... At that particular time I was not really quite up to things: I was always a little behind. Everybody seemed to be smart, and I didn’t feel I was keeping up. Anyway, I was sharing a room with a guy named Martin Block, an experimenter. And one evening he said to me, “Why are you guys so insistent on this parity rule? Maybe the tau and theta are the same particle. What would be the consequences if the parity rule were wrong?” .... So I got up and said, “I’m asking this question for Martin Block: What would be the consequences if the parity rule was wrong?” Murray Gell-Mann often teased me about this, saying I didn’t have the nerve to ask the question for myself. But that’s not the reason. I thought it might very well be an important idea. .... Finally they get all this stuff into me, and they say, “The situation is so mixed up that even some of the things they’ve established for years are being questioned — such as the beta decay of the neutron is S and T. It’s so messed up. Murray says it might even be V and A.” I jump up from the stool and say, “Then I understand EVVVVVERYTHING!” They thought I was joking. But the thing that I had trouble with at the Rochester meeting — the neutron and proton disintegration: everything fit but that, and if it was V and A instead of S and T, that would fit too. Therefore I had the whole theory! That night I calculated all kinds of things with this theory. The first thing I calculated was the rate of disintegration of the muon and the neutron. They should be connected together, if this theory was right, by a certain relationship, and it was right to 9 percent. That’s pretty close, 9 percent. It should have been more perfect than that, but it was close enough. .... I was very excited, and kept on calculating, and things that fit kept on tumbling out: they fit automatically, without a strain. I had begun to forget about the 9 percent by now, because everything else was coming out right. .... The next morning when I got to work I went to Wapstra, Boehm, and Jensen, and told them, “I’ve got it all worked out. Everything fits.” Christy, who was there, too, said, “What beta-decay constant did you use?” “The one from So-and-So’s book.” “But that’s been found out to be wrong. Recent measurements have shown it’s off by 7 percent.” Then I remember the 9 percent. .... I went out and found the original article on the experiment that said the neutron-proton coupling is T, and I was shocked by something. I remembered reading that article once before (back in the days when I read every article in the Physical Review — it was small enough). And I remembered, when I saw this article again, looking at that curve and thinking, “That doesn’t prove anything!” You see, it depended on one or two points at the very edge of the range of the data, and there’s a principle that a point on the edge of the range of the data — the last point — isn’t very good, because if it was, they’d have another point further along. And I had realized that the whole idea that neutron-proton coupling is T was based on the last point, which wasn’t very good, and therefore it’s not proved. I remember noticing that! And when I became interested in beta decay, directly, I read all these reports by the “beta-decay experts,” which said it’s T. I never looked at the original data; I only read those reports, like a dope. Had I been a good physicist, when I thought of the original idea back at the Rochester Conference I would have immediately looked up “how strong do we know it’s T?” — that would have been the sensible thing to do. I would have recognized right away that I had already noticed it wasn’t satisfactorily proved. Since then I never pay any attention to anything by “experts.” I calculate everything myself. When people said the quark theory was pretty good, I got two Ph.D.s, Finn Ravndal and Mark Kislinger, to go through the whole works with me, just so I could check that the thing was really giving results that fit fairly well, and that it was a significantly good theory. I’ll never make that mistake again, reading the experts’ opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you. ----------------------------------------------------------







    In fact if LENR exists you can reasonably argue that the lack of clarity over any theory - even a stable phenomenological theory - is because all these things are being lumped together and many are not LENR. No theory can account for all the observations and the correct set is not known.

    ***Yes I agree, but Shanahan's continual focus on his explanation of a small sliver of experiments doesn't remove any of that "lumped together" stuff.


    Shanahan proposes an idea that promises to contribute to the understanding of LENR by identifying (in a testable way) a non-LENR mechanism for some anomalous excess heat observations.

    ***Then let him defend his theory on his own thread rather than seagulling on this thread. I don't think his theory explains anything, but that has no bearing on it. From what I can see, Shanahan's theory explains away less than 1% of the anomalies, and none of that shaving away contributes to the end game, i.e. none of the results he would shave off are much different than the other results.



    Anyone looking for LENR excess heat might be hit by this if they don't understand it and therefore Kirk's work is highly relevant, and valuable.

    ***I really think you attribute far more value to his theory than is warranted. It amounts to a guy who used calorimeters lecturing the top hundred electrochemists of the day on calorimetry.



    True - his work has not been followed very far: the people needed to do this are those with LENR experiments and as he has pointed out historically they have dismissed his ideas without serious consideration,

    ***I can see why.



    for reasons that those who look more closely at his work do not accept. Rather like the way LENR is viewed by mainstream science, in a microcosm.

    ***No, not really. LENR was knocked out of the big science chair because there was hundreds of $billions worth of hot-fusion at stake. Shanahan is dismissed because his theory barely explains 1% of any anomalous results and doesn't move the dial any further.


    Just as mainstream science refutations of LENR which are dismissive and do not engage with all details don't seem conclusive to those who see LENR as a plausible hypothesis, so the Marwan dismissal of Shanahan (which I have read in detail) does not seem conclusive to me,

    ***Then take it up on that very special thread set up for Shanahan to discuss his theory. It becomes irrelevant on this thread.



    nor would to many others who read the chain: Shanahan's papers -> Marwan et al -> Shanahan's white paper -> (no reply as far as I know).

    ***Best of luck to you and Shanahan on your dedicated thread.


    So another motivation for LENR advocates (if you are that) to engage fully with Shanahan's work, whether his ideas apply to any experiments are not, is that it will help to persuade skeptics that you are behaving rationally.

    ***Shanahan is not behaving rationally. He has a theory that explains 1% of the anomalous results in those 153 peer reviewed replications and he acts like it explains the entire field away. The rational thing to do is let him explain away on his own thread and let the weight of replications be felt on this thread. By continually bringing his irrelevant hypothesis onto this thread, it pollutes the rational scientific finding that LENR is a well replicated phenomena.



    A more powerful reason, as above, is that if they do apply to any experiments, they help to simplify the mess of observational anomalies seen currently to support LENR will help those looking for replicability and underlying theories - both of which are sorely needed.

    ***Again, it appears you have a highly inflated view of the value of Shanahan's hypothesis. You neglect the value it generates for skeptopaths, the value of the seagull. When kids try to eat their lunch in the school yard, the seagulls gather, swoop in, make a lot of useless noise, steal tidbits and leave behind their business. That's the value of a seagull, and Shanahan's theory has a lot of value to seagulls but the kids in the schoolyard won't eat after the seagulls have touched the food.

    Quote from maryyugo

    Jed says that now. For more than three years, perhaps four, Jed maintained that the experiments by the Swedes and Levi were credible and that Rossi's claims were real. He even used the word "incontrovertible" regarding some of the evidence advanced for Rossi claims and he used the phrase "on first principles" for explaining why he thought continued boiling after electrical power shut off proved that the "ottoman" sized ecats worked. Of course, it turned out to be only stored heat and the apparent excess power was, most likely, caused by deliberate misplacement of temperature sensors

    I do not think that is likely. I do not know what caused the apparent heat. I do not think Mary Yugo knows either. She has given no evidence of this hypothesis. "Most likely" according to what? Who saw that the temperature sensors were misplaced? How could this have caused the device to be so hot it burned someone long after it was turned off? This claim might be real for all I can tell. For that matter, Rossi's the results published here might be real for all anyone knows:


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


    As far as I know, neither Yugo nor anyone else has proposed technical reasons why these results may be wrong.

    Quote from maryyugo

    The things that we skeptopaths wouldn't be convinced by anyway except that we would if it were done correctly by credible people.

    It's good to see you count yourself among the skeptopaths. And when you throw out the top tier of electrochemists, the "who's who of electrochemistry" in one wave of your hand saying you demand results "correctly by credible people", it is another sign of your agenda. You really do think the top hundred electrochemists of their day were not credible, but that you are.

    Quote from maryyugo

    Jed says that now. For more than three years, perhaps four, Jed maintained that the experiments by the Swedes and Levi were credible and that Rossi's claims were real. He even used the word "incontrovertible" regarding some of the evidence advanced for Rossi claims and he used the phrase "on first principles" for explaining why he thought continued boiling after electrical power shut off proved that the "ottoman" sized ecats worked. Of course, it turned out to be only stored heat and the apparent excess power was, most likely, caused by deliberate misplacement of temperature sensors, a Rossi trademark move. Jed was quite insistent, arrogant and nasty about it at times. Let's keep the history straight.

    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.

    Quote from maryyugo

    Absolutely not. There is no vestige of a chance that Rossi's garbage assemblies do anything except to fool the lowest denominator victims and marks. I have presented the evidence for this time and again as have others. It's conclusive.

    I see this a lot. You characterize the evidence as conclusive. Jed calls it proof of fraud. IF it was so conclusive and so much proof of fraud then the criminal authorities would have taken that evidence entered onto the docket and locked Rossi up as a con man. But they didn't. It does not meet the easier legal standard of "preponderance of the evidence" and sits there limply on the criminal legal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt". So it is legal proof that Rossi isn't a fraud, and your evidence isn't as conclusive as you portray or otherwise the Rossi vs. Darden case would have been a slam dunk.

    Quote from interested observer

    If I am interpreting Jed and Kev correctly, they are stating that since they and some others are completely convinced that LENR has been adequately proven to exist and since I and others have not studied the literature in great detail and have not found specific objections to each paper, we should consider it proven to exist.

    Nope. Neither of us said that. This has nothing to do with you. If you, personally, have not read the literature then of course you can have no specific objections, or general objections. You cannot critique cold fusion. You cannot defend it either. Until you read the literature you have no business forming any opinion about it.


    The point I was making is not about you, it is about scientific skeptics in general. Other than Morrison and Shanahan, they have not published any papers showing experimental errors in any of the major experiments. Therefore, they have not given any reason to doubt the experiments. They have had nearly 30 years to do this. If they have not found anything by now, I doubt they ever will. There has to a reasonable time limit. We cannot wait decades before declaring that an experiment is right, or we would still not believe something like Faraday's law or the Second Law.


    Quote from interested observer

    Now Jed says that if you can't evaluate a claim yourself, then perhaps you should assume the majority is right.

    Yes. That is a weak argument, but better than nothing. It is more a rule of thumb than a scientifically valid argument.

    Quote from interested observer

    Of course, the majority considers LENR not to exist. But Jed further asserts that the majority has formed this opinion out of ignorance at best and antipathy at worst. So I guess his advice is to assume that only the people he says to listen to are right.

    Yes, this is an example where the majority is wrong, so the above rule of thumb fails. As I said, this is a weak argument at best.


    There is no doubt the majority opinion is formed out of ignorance. You can easily verify this. Read the literature and then compare it to the majority opinions. You will see that Sci. Am., Wikipedia, the 2004 DoE panel and others are wrong and the authors know nothing about cold fusion. This is not a difficult analysis. It is not debatable. It isn't as if these people make subtle mistakes in interpretation about things that reasonable people might differ. These people do not have the slightest idea what instruments are used, what is detected, or what is claimed. They resemble Mary Yugo who has no idea what boil-off calorimetry is, or Newton's Law of Cooling, or the Second Law, or why it is anomalous when a hot body with no chemical or electric energy input remains hot instead of cooling.


    Here are two examples of what I mean. A quick look at Sci. Am. by me:


    http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?p=294


    A detailed, blow-by-blow analysis of the DoD report to Congress by Abd:


    http://coldfusioncommunity.net…clear-reactions-research/

    Quote from interested observer

    I am happy to hear that nobody actually is making the ridiculous argument that I put forth about the Wright brothers.


    I am happy to hear that nobody actually is making the ridiculous argument that I put forth about the Wright brothers.

    ***Then why did you argue against it? It is a straw argument that YOU put forth.



    However, I don't understand what point you all keep making about them is. Yes, many people were wrong about the Wright brothers and, if it turns out that LENR is the real deal, then many people will have been wrong about that as well. My point with regard to that is: so what?

    ***Then listen to the scientific evidence, that's what.


    If I am interpreting Jed and Kev correctly,

    ***No, you are not. The leopard does not change his spots, it would seem.


    they are stating that since they and some others are completely convinced that LENR has been adequately proven to exist and since I and others have not studied the literature in great detail and have not found specific objections to each paper, we should consider it proven to exist.

    ***That is pretty standard scientific protocol, right there. You have to study the literature and you have to find specific objections to each replication if you're gonna shoot down >150 peer reviewed replications.



    Now Jed says that if you can't evaluate a claim yourself, then perhaps you should assume the majority is right.

    ***Interesting claim. Are you saying that you can't evaluate a claim yourself?


    Of course, the majority considers LENR not to exist. But Jed further asserts that the majority has formed this opinion out of ignorance at best and antipathy at worst. So I guess his advice is to assume that only the people he says to listen to are right.

    *** You "guess" his advice is...? You're building up yet another straw argument here. Why not just go directly to saying that you are smarter than the top hundred electrochemists of the day and everyone should just listen to you, even though you don't read the papers and can't evaluate the claims? See how this straw argument stuff works?


    I guess I might as well answer Adrian's questions so he can decide whether or not to put me on his shit list. I really don't know if LENR has been proven to produce excess heat.

    ***You're the 2nd person to say "I dunno". If you don't know, then why don't you keep reading those replication papers? Basically you folks are proceeding from a fallacy, the argument from silence. You are saying you don't know... and you proceed as if you do know. You presume that the evidence is silent but it isn't.



    I find many of the criticisms of the literature to be well-founded but certainly not decisive.

    ***How can you find that? You just said that you don't know. Rational people would consider 153 peer reviewed replications to be decisive.


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

    ***You just said that you don't know. Now you're saying that those 153 peer reviewed replications generates an open question? You don't seem to understand how replication, peer review, and science works. Who the hell are you to say that the "who's who of electrochemistry" got it wrong when you don't even read the papers, you proceed from logical fallacies, you don't know how science works?



    I realize that this sort of skepticism is not acceptable to anyone here. If you are not a believer, you are a pathological skeptic.

    ***False dichotomy, yet another logical fallacy.


    There are no maybes allowed for the faithful. But my position is "I don't know" and if you don't like that, tough.

    ***If your position is "I don't know" then how is it you proceed from that position as if you do know? You are openly using a logical fallacy, the argument from silence.

    Quote from [email protected]

    IF it was so conclusive and so much proof of fraud then the criminal authorities would have taken that evidence entered onto the docket and locked Rossi up as a con man.

    Not necessarily. As I pointed out several times, for 3 reasons:


    1. Maybe they will, but they have not gotten around to it yet. The newspapers often report on cases of fraud that are prosecuted years after the crime is committed.


    2. In Florida alone, there are thousands of fraud cases, many of them for more money than this. Perhaps the police do not have the manpower to pursue this. I wouldn't know, but billions of dollars have been stolen and thousands of criminals have not been caught.


    3. I am just speculating, but I suppose the government's first priority would be to go after people who defraud the government itself. And people who work in the government. Medicare fraud alone comes to billions of dollars. One case in Miami was for a billion dollars, stolen by a government worker!


    http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article164232522.html

    Quote from [email protected]

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

    ***You just said that you don't know. Now you're saying that those 153 peer reviewed replications generates an open question?

    Yes. As I said, a person who has not read the literature and who says he does not know cannot judge this kind of issue. He cannot say it is an "open question" whether there is "a well-formed definition." He has no basis for any opinion about this, positive or negative. He has no business asserting that cold fusion does exist.


    Except, as I said, on the basis of a rule of thumb such as "the majority is often right." That rule fails in this case, but it often works. It is better than nothing.


    Just about everything that I think I know is based on this kind of weak evidence. I read in the newspaper that scientists say X, Y or Z about cancer, or some other subject about which I know next to nothing. "Experts at the WHO say processed meat is carcinogenic." I assume the reporter got the story straight, and those scientists are right, so I guess maybe processed meat is carcinogenic. How would I know? Who am I to judge?


    I could read a few articles in journals and maybe form an idea of how likely it is that eating moderate amounts of processed meat will increase the chances of getting cancer. I might have some doubts about the seriousness or the statistical significance of the findings. (I have no idea whether I actually would in this case -- but I have seen what I suspect is iffy epidemiology in other medical research.) However, I would never go one on one with a WHO expert and challenge his conclusions! I wouldn't think of doing that. It would be extreme hubris.


    I am not an expert in cold fusion. But I have read the literature. I have conducted experiments, been to labs, spent a week with Martin Fleischmann, and copy-edited hundreds of boring papers and four books. So I know at least as much as a well-educated chemistry department secretary would know. Now along comes Interested Observer and he, she, or it says:


    1. I have not read the literature.

    2. I admit frankly I do not know about this subject. (Good on you!)

    3. Despite this, I declare categorically it is an "open question" whether there is "a well-formed definition."


    I can give you a well-formed definition in my sleep! Seriously, if you woke me at 3 am and asked me to define cold fusion technically, I could give a 20-minute impromptu lecture describing the technical definition as put forth by Fleischmann, Storms and others, and where they agree and differ.


    This person, entity, cerebration or insect horde from Alpha Centauri, or whatever Interested Observer is -- this thing about whom we know nothing, who appears to have no qualifications or knowledge -- is here disputing this question with me, and by extension with Fleischmann and others. That's who I got my info from. The entity gives us no technical reasons to back up any of his assertions. He gives no reason why we should take him seriously. This is not how you conduct a technical discussion, and it sure as hell is not how you win one.

    JedRothwell


    Many issues were raised about the paper by Levi et. al. It was a while back and I don't recall them all. The hot cat was never the "right experiment" -- the three phase power input, the use of a fourth power computation to derive the output and the presence of Rossi at various points in the work. all undermine the credibility of ALL hot cat experiments. IIRC, the issues raised by others include poor characterization and testing of the input power supply and power input measurement method, unnecessarily complicated by Rossi with the use of three phase power. The output power measurement method also depends on estimates of emissivity. Finally, the supposed calibration was not performed with the same power input as the actual experiment:

    "The electrical power to the dummy was handled by the same control box, but without the ON/OFF cycle of the resistor coils. Thus, the power applied to the dummy was continuous."


    IIRC, this experiment was discussed extensively by Thomas Clarke and others and thoroughly poopooed. I don't remember everything about the critiques but there were many of various kinds and IIRC, Rossi was not entirely absent from the experiment.


    Finally, if this showed a working hot cat, by now Rossi and Levi would have improved it and overcome the objections to the earlier experiment, something they never do.


    Quote

    I do not think that is likely. I do not know what caused the apparent heat. I do not think Mary Yugo knows either. She has given no evidence of this hypothesis. "Most likely" according to what? Who saw that the temperature sensors were misplaced? How could this have caused the device to be so hot it burned someone long after it was turned off? This claim might be real for all I can tell. For that matter, Rossi's the results published here might be real for all anyone knows


    So you still believe Rossi's crappola even now? Wow. Metal stores heat, in case you didn't know. So do other substances. Rossi did not allow full inspection of the interior of the massive ottoman ecat. At least one misplaced thermocouple at the end of the heat exchanger was documented photographically. I suspect you did not follow that experiment as well as your remarks about it suggest.

    Gosh Kev, pretty much everything you say to me is in the form of a straw man argument. I make the statement that I can't really form a conclusion about LENR and you insist that I have formed one. You keep yakking about the holy numbers of 100 top electrochemists and 153 replications. Among other things, how exactly do you define a replication? My understanding of an experimental replication is to use the same setup and same methodology to achieve the same results. Disparate experiments that all show various amounts of "excess heat" under a variety of conditions do not constitute replications.


    But all of this is beside the point. I have not concluded that LENR isn't real despite your insistence that I have. But apparently I am not even entitled to have my doubts. I am evidently not qualified to have doubts. But I am not arguing with your 100 electrochemist heroes. Maybe they are right. But why do I have to sign off on this at all? I am not fighting against LENR or standing in the way of it. I have nothing to do with it one way or another. I hope it is real because anyone with a lick of sense would want it to be real. And I don't happen to believe that a bunch of plasma physicists rule the world and are preventing powerful corporations and governments around the world from developing the technology. The lack of any progress is the problem.


    Perhaps you can somehow comprehend that "I don't know" means "I don't know" and not "No". The quality papers that Jed recommends look to me like very small effects that could well be some sort of artifact. But I am not arguing that they are artifacts. I am saying that I am not convinced. You are saying that I have no right to not be convinced. Once again, it doesn't matter what I think. I am not trying to dissuade anybody about LENR. Those of you who are convinced that it is proven ought to stop arguing about it and try to figure out how to help the field make progress. If there has been any progress, it must be a secret. I can assure you that stiffling maryyugo will not make a bit of difference. But if you prefer to spend your time prattling about skeptopaths, that is your perogative.

    Quote from maryyugo

    Many issues were raised about the paper by Levi et. al.

    They were raised, and then answered by the authors. The authors were communicating back then. They revised the paper. I do not know why they stopped communicating later on.

    Quote from maryyugo

    t was a while back and I don't recall them all. The hot cat was never the "right experiment" -- the three phase power input, the use of a fourth power computation to derive the output and the presence of Rossi at various points in the work.

    The 4th power computation is not an issue because they confirmed the temperature with a thermocouple.


    (Why they did not do that in the next experiment is a mystery to me.)

    Quote from maryyugo

    all undermine the credibility of ALL hot cat experiments.

    I do not see how a mistake in one experiment, which was not made in a second experiment, can magically undermine the credibility of the second experiment. Would that be quantum mechanical spooky action at a distance?

    Quote from maryyugo

    So you still believe Rossi's crappola even now? Wow. Metal stores heat, in case you didn't know.

    Ah, but it does not violate Newton's law or the second law of thermodynamics. Also, the specific heat of metal is about 10 times smaller than water, so it doesn't store much.

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