Display MoreThey were replicated by several others. However some skeptics feel anyone who replicates must be a true believer and not a reputable 3rd party, so the skeptics keep demanding that someone else replicate it, and then someone else, and then someone else. Anyone who replicates cold fusion loses his reputation and is no longer a 3rd party. It is a Catch 22.
It is a little difficult to imagine how a "calibration error" could give the illusion that water is boiling away or that a cell remains too hot to touch for hours. Those are first principle manifestations of heat. You have a vivid imagination, but I doubt you can offer a rigorous description of this supposed error.
Without specifics you have nothing. "There may be a calibration error" is not falsifiable. You have to show specifically what calibration error may have occurred, and you have to show that the methods and data do not rule out that error. Waving your hands and saying "there might be an error" is meaningless because, as I said, that applies equally well to every experiment going back to Newton. There might be a way to hold a prism such that it shows white light is NOT actually composed other colors. That experiment has been done millions of times, but it is possible there is an error in it that has not been discovered yet. But if that is your hypothesis you have to be specific and show us how to hold the prism. Or, in the case of the Fleischmann experiment, you have to show that the heat of vaporization that was established in the 18th century by Joseph Black has been wrong all along, and you are the first to realize this. You will win a Nobel for this revelation, so do not hide your light under a bushel. Tell Us What You Know.
Note that Shanahan points to a specific error -- a moving heat source. Anyone can see this is ruled out by the data. The calibration constant does not change when the source of the heat is deliberately moved. In that respect, that aspect of his claim is falsifiable.
Well, my criteria for believing this has always been the same: if at least two or three highly reputable universities or government agencies replicate any of these effects with zero involvement by anyone associated with the LENR/CF field and with no failures, then I will believe it is real, too. When you look at how quickly IH disproved so many of the claims that people on boards like this point to as "real scientific evidence", it's clear that expert independent testing is the only way to verify this.