QuoteI agree. If there is any more of that bad behaviour, botties will be smacked.
I realize you can moderate your forum any way you like but being patronizing and condescending tends to make you look bad.
Replication of LENR experiments
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Obviously you can conduct your site any way you like. But it makes no sense to exclude links to Shanahan's work because you think he is a crackpot.
WHAT are you talking about?? I have never excluded any links at LENR-CANR for any paper. All of the links are generated automatically by a program, which uses an EndNote database.
The only place I have not promoted Shahahan's work is here, and in other discussion groups. He is complaining because I do not respect his work here, in this web site, or at Vortex.
Granted, I did not include his papers on the front page at LENR-CANR.org, but only a few authors are listed there. It is too crowded already.
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You and Kirk have a disagreement over the science here. Saying it is not ethical for someone to hold a contrary view to yours (even if you are correct) is not good science. Science flourishes by having disparate views argued. . . .
Accusing those with different views of being unethical is not warranted,
Yes. That's what I am trying to say. And that is what he accuses me. Plus, the way his message was laid out, he accused me of lying when I said I uploaded his papers. That's offensive! Anyone can see it is not true. His papers are right there in the index.
You have cited other published papers - but note that the latest paper you cite does not answer Kirk's most recent contribution, nor have you given it serious consideration.
How do you know I have not given it serious consideration? I have not discussed it here, but that does not mean I have not considered it. I am not obligated to discuss everything I consider, or to respond to every discussion.
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Contrary to what most believers think, most skeptics would be delighted to see good evidence for LENR.
Skeptics such as you are blind to good evidence. You look but do not see. You say you cannot understand McKubre's papers. Those papers are well written and relatively easy to understand. You claim you have some experience in calorimetry. If those papers described calorimetry in some other context, for some other application, you would have no difficulty understanding them.
I believe you are telling the truth when you say you do not understand them, but this a mental block on your end. It is caused by your inability to admit you are wrong, and you have been wrong for many years.
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Uhhun. Do you also recommend that they listen to McKubre when evaluating Papp's or Rohner's claims?
I have never evaluated Papp's or Rohner's claims. I know nothing about them. So I cannot make any recommendations there. I suppose if someone asked me I would mention the McKubre video. The one posted here was short and he did not say much beyond what I said, which is that on the face of it, the claim is impossible. Do you disagree with that?
Have you looked at the data McKubre referred to? I haven't, so I cannot say a thing about it.
You seem allergic to remaining undecided. You seem anxious to judge things you have not studied, and to jump to a conclusion as soon as you can. Are you afraid of being wrong? Are you afraid of admitting you don't know, or of holding an opinion that the mainstream disagrees with or thinks is absurd?
It never bothers me to say, "I don't know. I haven't looked. It seems unlikely but I can't be sure." If I never look at Papp I will never say I am sure his claims are true or false. Anyone can see they look false. Anyone can see they appear to violate fundamental laws of physics, but so did x-rays, lasers and cold fusion when they were first discovered. So that isn't 100% sure proof the claims are wrong. It is evidence against them, but maybe not definitive. Anyone can see the guy seemed crazy, but crazy people are sometimes right.
If I were betting, I'd give very high odds the claims are wrong. But I don't know for sure, I probably never will know, and -- more to the point -- I couldn't care less that I don't know, or that you think I should know.
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that I believe
In science, 'belief' don't kount...just like spelling (most of the time...).
When exploring a scientific issue, the etiquette is to at least mention any viable opposing views. Opposing views are never made nonviable by flawed logic. An author/speaker may not believe a particular point of view is correct or relevant, but until a defensible reason to reject it is produced, the etiquette is to at least mention it, so observers or newcomers to the debate can read and judge for themselves. Omission of viable alternatives in a method for suppression of said alternatives.
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I think Shanahan is being disgraceful accusing me of "dishonesty" and being "unethical" for disagreeing with him, and for expressing my opinions.
Of course and as usual, this is not what I am doing but Jed prefers to slant things in his favor with the use of strawmen arguments. What I am protesting is his hypocritical application of the very things I am asking for to anti-CF comments. As I have noted, if I were to say something blatantly wrong, Jed would be all over it in seconds. But when I point out that he fails (deliberately IMO) to acknowledge the 10 authors of the 2010 JEM article used faulty strawman logic to reject the CCS/ATER hypothesis, I am called 'crackpot'. It is impossible Jed is not aware of this at this point, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the situation would be unethical and dishonest for any self-respecting reporter/blogger/advocate/whatever.
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Of course you can say you disagree. You see that I disagree with you.
No. I say you know what the story is, and promote something else.
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5/153 maybe be an interesting number to start with
It's 0/153 Alain. The 5 was only the count of papers that might have said something about the CCS/ATER alternative. They didn'y however, thus all 153 are irrelevant in assessing the CCS/ATER proposition.
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Saying it is not ethical for someone to hold a contrary view to yours (even if you are correct) is not good science.
I see you have fallen for the trap. As noted above, I do not say this. What I say is that Jed fully understands what he is doing, and chooses to take the fanatic's position and attempt to suppress an unpalatable alternative, while knowing that is not scientifically justified.
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You have cited other published papers - but note that the latest paper you cite does not answer Kirk's most recent contribution, nor have you given it serious consideration.
JedRothwell responded:
How do you know I have not given it serious consideration? I have not discussed it here, but that does not mean I have not considered it. I am not obligated to discuss everything I consider, or to respond to every discussion.
This isn't really the point. The point is that you are fully capable of recognizing strawman argumentation. Further, even if you didn't, it has been pointed out to you multiple times now. But when I cite examples that might be applied to you, you uniformly fail to acknowledge such has been done.
So the point is that you knowingly promote one view over the other, specifically the one that uses faulty logic to unethically suppress the other.
You thereby foster and promote unethical behavior, and since you realize the unethical nature of your position but promote it as logical and scientific, you are dishonest.
The sad thing is how many people are taken in by your stratagem.
And BTW, you have given my 'theories' enough consideration at least to recognize how damaging they are to the idea that LERNs exist, which is why you are acting the way you are.
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I see you have fallen for the trap. As noted above, I do not say this. What I say is that Jed fully understands what he is doing, and chooses to take the fanatic's position and attempt to suppress an unpalatable alternative, while knowing that is not scientifically justified.
Actually my quote there was in response to Jed accusing you of unethical behaviour for advocating arguments (he) considers incorrect.... What trap?
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Actually my quote there was Jed saying it... What trap?
What I quoted was the second sentence of your post. It looks like yours. Is it?
The trap is thinking that Jed knows any science. In fact all he does is parrot what his designated heroes say. He is incapable of defending his views in any technical fashion. (I tried to do that back on spf, and Jed never could answer my questions.) he also blends in his strawmen all the time to try to lead his audience into believing he knows what he is saying.
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Jed is also fond of GROSSLY misquoting and attributing motives (mind reading). A minor example:
QuoteMary Yugo will kvetch and moan that it is too ha-a-a-a-ard so it must be wrong.
Of course, I never said if it's hard it must be wrong. What I said was that papers don't have to be written that way. I have written many scientific papers and way many more technical reports and manuals. When I controlled the writing, attention was paid to readers who might not be versed in the intimate details and complexities of the technology. This was done mainly with the abstract and conclusions but also by the inclusion of clear, well labelled figures and plots, meticulously explained in the simplest possible terms. I *want* non-experts to understand the work. I admit that when I was a postdoc fellow, the lab chief did not share my views. I ended up being principal author of a paper even I couldn't fully understand. The professor was brilliant but claimed to have no patience for spoonfeeding. He did not care if people understood him. I did but had no power in that instance and a few others. I am sure those papers are rarely cited.
One could argue that McKubre's (and others') reviews provide this sort of simplified overview. I admit I did not read most of them but those I did were not reassuring because the authors were obviously credulous and took the conclusions of the original work at face value as uncritically as one can imagine. That's not my concept of a "review." of a field.
Jed is glib and facile about claims to 100W of power sustained for days without input. That would be spectacular. That is what I am looking for. I have trouble believing this could exist in credible and yes, UNDERSTANDABLE form without engendering widespread interest and investment. But Jed can't provide a clean example of what he claims. Now, if I understood correctly, the many days includes days during which power was supplied. That is not the original claim.
Finally, as to my claims about understanding calorimetry-- I am not a student of calorimetry history and practice in general. As part of other projects, I have needed to be involved in the construction and use of calorimeters designed to measure macro amounts of heat from self-generating sources such as lab animals and oddly enough, Portland cement. I have been involved in design and use of heat flow transducers for various aerospace and industrial applications -- this is related to Seebeck effect calorimeters and uses similar technology. One of the practical things I learned from this work was that point temperature measurements such as are relied upon with isoperibolic calorimeters most often used in LENR-- those are especially unreliable for reasons Shanahan and others have pointed out. Shanahan, I know, extends the errors to other types of calorimeters as well.
Other than a brief manufacturer's course in DSC (differential scanning calorimeters) I took a long time ago and mostly forgot, that's what I know about calorimeters. Jed knows I am also not ignorant about measuring enthalpy by evaporating water because we had extensive email exchanges about it in 2011 or 2012 when were trying to get Rossi to agree to a valid test with his steam-generating ecats. I never heard of boiling cells dry. It seems weird to me.
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I never heard of boiling cells dry. It seems weird to me
The results of doing this is to come up with an excess heat signal that is a) large and b) occurring when no current is flowing, meaning you essentially have an infinite instantaneous COP. The problem is that this comes out of applying the same calibration equation used for 'normal' operations. The steady state is so radically different in a 'boiled-dry' cell that everyone should know you can't do that. But not the CFers...it shows excess heat...it must be real...and is certainly must be nuclear!
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What I quoted was the second sentence of your post. It looks like yours. Is it?
The trap is thinking that Jed knows any science. In fact all he does is parrot what his designated heroes say. He is incapable of defending his views in any technical fashion. (I tried to do that back on spf, and Jed never could answer my questions.) he also blends in his strawmen all the time to try to lead his audience into believing he knows what he is saying.
You and Kirk have a disagreement over the science here. Saying it is not ethical for someone to hold a contrary view to yours (even if you are correct) is not good science. Science flourishes by having disparate views argued. Your view, and that of Kirk, can properly be argued. Kirk has supported his views with various published papers and a more recent unpublished but available white paper. You have cited other published papers - but note that the latest paper you cite does not answer Kirk's most recent contribution, nor have you given it serious consideration.
I stand by that, and don't think I'm misrepresenting anything.
I agree that Jed does not defend his views technically. He refers you to other papers which bear some relationship to the matter, but his points (which he claims are supported) are generally broad brush, lacking detail. You then have to read them and decide whether they show his point or not.
That is however not the point. It is wrong to label this (not convincing) argument from Jed as unethical. It is equally wrong to dismiss the papers Jed references (I know you don't do this because you have commented on them). I find Jed's certainty - when he does not have a detailed enough analysis to have any genuine surity - annoying. But it is honestly given and not harmful to the dialog. Where he accuses others (e.g. you) of being unethical it is indeed harmful, and unwarranted. But I don't think on reflection he'd want to do that.
You are falling into the same mistake, above, of speculating on Jed's motives, and labelling him dishonest because deliberately distorting the truth. I very ,much doubt that. We all distort the truth - though scientific training helps one to do this a bit less - and few people do this deliberately. Jed does not have much scientific training, you can tell this from the way he argues here, and therefore you'd expect more distortion from him. My judgement is that he is thoroughly honest. Ironically Jed's simple views will invariable seem more honest and genuine than those of you, or I, where we are trained to take a more nuanced view of issues, not over-generalise, and be aware of alternate possibilities so that any careful statement we make will be qualified. Forums such as this are not friendly to careful analysis: just as in politics any politician who tries to present a complex justification will fail. BTW that is why the argument against Brexit in the UK was so hard to articulate (though even given that what was said about it made a bad job of representing the real arguments). Some ideas, like nationalism, have a simple and powerful emotional appeal, lending themselves to sound bites. Economic interdependence and needed trading links inevitably reduce soveriegnty, and this in the long run is a good for all because it glues countries together reducing the possibility of war.
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The results of doing this is to come up with an excess heat signal that is a) large and b) occurring when no current is flowing, meaning you essentially have an infinite instantaneous COP. The problem is that this comes out of applying the same calibration equation used for 'normal' operations. The steady state is so radically different in a 'boiled-dry' cell that everyone should know you can't do that. But not the CFers...it shows excess heat...it must be real...and is certainly must be nuclear!
Right. This is a more nuanced case of the it blew up so it must be LENR argument. Explosions are pretty usual in systems with reactive chemicals, particularly hydrogen and oxygen in stochiometric ratios! Or, heater elements can easily explode when local heating alters impedance so increasing power input.
Working out whether any such explosion actually represents significant excess energy is inevitably difficult because it is transient and the instrumentation to catch the transients accurately is not available.
Such experimental misadventures should not be used as evidence of anything. Cells boiling are problematic in any case - boiling dry completely unhelpful.
Those seriously claiming FPHE has a nuclear mechanism need more than this. McKubre's M12/M13/M14 data, when taken in context, look very unconvincing to me for reasons too long to justify here, and that in any case I'm not sure about: it is complex. But analysis of that type of high quality data is what you need to show a real anomaly, not cells boiling dry or explosions. The superficial case against LENR is that from experiments like McKubre's high precision calorimetry the apparent signal is so low as a fraction of power input, and has all the hallmarks of a calorimetry artifact. And the strongest argument is that of the 5 experiments he quotes D gives positives and H negatives - but as evidence that needs further analysis to determine its strength and in any case a coincidental physical effect that only existed for D not H is possible and surely a simpler candidate than LENR if the data allows this.
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No. I say you know what the story is, and promote something else.
You are wrong. I do not agree with your version of the story. I do not secretly agree with you. I sincerely believe that what I say is correct.
No doubt you believe your version.
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I think what makes me dubious about the strongly-held opinions of so many LENR supporters is that those people also seem to think Papp, Blacklight, Keshe and god-knows-how-many other free energy claimants are for real. There have been literally hundreds and hundreds of claimants of something-for-nothing energy gadgets over time and it is extremely safe to conclude that none of them have anything of value. But that is not even the point that needs to be accepted. I don't see most LENR-heads admitting that any of them are wrong. That tells me a lot about their scientific sophistication and their gullibility. Clearly this generalization does not apply to all LENR believers. Many have even come to reject Rossi. But I've seen all to many readily accept even the most ridiculous free energy claims without even an iota of supporting evidence. Having that crowd as part of "the community" does the cause no good whatsoever. Stupidity in the name of optimism is still stupidity.
If, to judge LENR likely, you need to have your skepticism so reduced that you credit these obvious long-standing flakes with possibly heralding some exciting new physics then I agree it is problematic.
But there will always be the believers who think all these claims likley true, and they will also think LENR true. They will have a strong presence on internet forums (though maybe ECW does us all a service by providing a home for many of them).
Then, suppose you are properly convinced that FPHE is real and must correspond to some unknown effect. It would not be stupid to think that other excess heat claims like BLP maybe have some reality in the same underlying effect.
