Mizuno : Publication of kW/COP2 excess heat results

Alan Smith wrote "The fear that I am talking about is that expressed privately to me by some very eminent scientists who confess that they know LENR is real"

The recent paperstrongly supporting high rates of deuterium fusion in metal lattices when stimulated by a few eV electrically

is done by three experienced experimental nuclear scientists who have freed themselves from the

censure of the academic environment they have endured for decades.

May fortune favour the brave.

"Strong screening by lattice confinement and resultant fusion reaction

rates in fcc metals

F.M. Prados-Estévez ⇑, A.V. Subashiev, H.H. Nee

Target Technology Company LLC, 564 Wald, Irvine, CA 92618, USA"

Quote from Alan Smith

No Mary. The fear that I am talking about is that expressed privately to me by some very eminent scientists who confess that they know LENR is real. Nothing to do with claims, or money, just the certain knowledge that if they speak up their careers are suddenly very uncertain.

My view would be that such certainty from them is part of a belief system which includes fear of persecution and the whole thing has little substance.

But, as MY says, if they make such strong and certain claims based on uncertain evidence (as some have done in the past), it would not be great for their career so there is some logic in the fear.

Scientists are expected to have humility when dealing with new things. It helps keep everyone sane.

Quote from maryyugo

So nobody has the guts to risk proving the most important power source ever found? You really expect people to believe this?

Lots of people have had the guts to prove that cold fusion is real. That's why I have a library with thousands of papers. Unfortunately, other people do not believe the experimental results.

Quote from Alan Smith

I am not talking hearsay, but reporting facts at first hand, I don't expect you to believe anything that doesn't suit you, but I do expect people in general to do so.

Yes. As I said, Bockris and others heard from the kinds of people you describe, including some who believe LENR is real but are afraid to talk about it, and some who actually replicated.

I myself cannot identify such people often because they wouldn't tell me. People contact me and ask for things, such as a copy of a paper listed in the index but not on file. They do not say: "Oh by the way, I am a professional scientist but I am afraid to talk about cold fusion." Why would they? There must be such people based on what Bockris said and Alan Smith says. I can tell that many people interested in the research keep a low profile. I say that because people have visited LENR-CANR 4.5 million times, and as I showed in one of my papers, many of those visitors come from universities, corporations, investment banks, defense agencies and so on. There must be many people in those places quietly following developments in the field. They seldom say anything in public supporting it. Google Alerts does not often report news of endorsements from them. So I suppose they are keeping a low profile.

Quote from JedRothwell

This goes back to the beginning of the field. John Bockris and others told me about scientists approaching them in 1989 and 1990 and saying, "don't tell anyone, and please don't use my name, but I saw positive results like yours. [tritium and heat]."

That's probably because they were similarly mis-interpreting actual effects. E.g. Fleischmann-Pons excess heat == modeling error, commonly perpetuated throughout the field. Bockris transmutation with submerged carbon arcs == dust, as shown by the Bhabba replication where a dust cover cut yield by 50%, etc.

Unpublished results are non-existent to the rest of the world. So-and-so may have told you (or Alan) 'I got it to work!' but that in itself is worthless. The results must either be turned into a working device which can be sold, or published as scientific results that can then be studied and hopefully replicated.

Quote from bocijn

Both Jed and I have put the fleacomb through and..no fleas. The excess energy from the calorimetry tallies with Mizuno's calculations

But did you listen to what I said about the work? No, as usual. I repeat, the data is flaky, it shows signs of serious problems. Yes, when you chunk the data through the calcs, you get what Mizuno did, but it's all GIGO.

Quote from bocijn

Are you going to be like Shanahan who alleges ad nauseam but won't show his calculations.?

Care to explain that?

Quote from kirkshanahan

John Bockris and others told me about scientists approaching them in 1989 and 1990 and saying, "don't tell anyone, and please don't use my name, but I saw positive results like yours. [tritium and heat]."

That's probably because they were similarly mis-interpreting actual effects. E.g. Fleischmann-Pons excess heat == modeling error,

No, that is not the reason. These people did not say "don't tell anyone" because they thought they were misinterpreting actual effects. If they had thought that, they wouldn't have told Bockris anything. They asked him to keep the results secret because they were afraid of being attacked for reporting a positive results. For good reason; many people were attacked.

Quote from JedRothwell

No, that is not the reason. These people did not say "don't tell anyone" because they thought they were misinterpreting actual effect. If they had thought that, they wouldn't have told Bockris anything. They asked him to keep the results secret because they were afraid of being attacked for reporting a positive results. For good reason; many people were attacked.

What it really means is that they didn't believe their own results enough to publish them. In the early days (1989-1992) there were lots of publications of failures and successes. The problem always was they couldn't replicate the results later (replicate in the correct sense of reproducing essentially similar results at different times in different places by different researchers). But the bottom line is still 'secret' results don't count, it's nothing by mythology.

Quote from kirkshanahan

What it really means is that they didn't believe their own results enough to publish them.

No, it does not really mean that. Not at all. It really means they were scared, for good reason. In two cases, they finally did publish their own results, years later.

You should stop speculating about these people. You do not know them, or what they did. (Whereas I do, and Bockris did.) You have no idea what they thought. All you know is one sentence from Mallove's book. Based on that you wave your hands and declare they were wrong and they knew they were wrong. That makes no sense. A person who thinks he made a mistake would not tell Bockris or publish years later.

I suggest you assume they meant what they said.

Quote from JedRothwell

No, it does not really mean that. Not at all. It really means they were scared, for good reason. In two cases, they finally did publish their own results, years later.

You should stop speculating about these people. You do not know them, or what they did. (Whereas I do, and Bockris did.) You have no idea what they thought. All you know is one sentence from Mallove's book. Based on that you wave your hands and declare they were wrong and they knew they were wrong. That makes no sense. A person who thinks he made a mistake would not tell Bockris or publish years later.

I suggest you assume they meant what they said.

And they still weren't conclusive, were they? There still is no funding available. There still are no indisputable publications. 28 years and zip is all you've got.

I think I will assume just that...zip is what the field has produced. And that when there probably is a real, albeit non-nuclear, effect.

Quote from kirkshanahan

And they still weren't conclusive, were they?

Yes, they were. You don't think so, but you are a crackpot who thinks a bucket of water will evaporate overnight at room temperature, so your views don't count. You have crackpot "theories" to explain away these studies, but no one believes you. Marwan et al. blew you out of the water, but you don't even realize that.

Quote from kirkshanahan

There still is no funding available.

That's because of politics.

Quote from kirkshanahan

There still are no indisputable publications.

There are hundreds. You don't think so but, as I said, that is because you are are a crackpot.

Quote from bocijn

Are you going to be like Shanahan who alleges ad nauseam but won't show his calculations.?

To what do you refer?

Quote from maryyugo

I think people who believed in Rossi and Defkalion claims are the crackpots rather than reasonable skeptics like Shanahan and some others.

People who still believe Rossi and Defkalion are indeed crackpots, but so are people who think that 10 L of water will evaporate overnight. So are people who have "theories" than conflict with conventional electrochemistry going back to Faraday. So are people like you, who make errors by a factor of 1,800, do not realize it, and will not admit it when others point this out. You dismiss this as "nitpicking" -- as if it were perfectly okay to claim that an airplane can fly from New York to Tokyo in 28 seconds, and no one should criticize you for an error on this scale.

There are many different kinds of crackpots in the world.

Quote from JedRothwell

There are many different kinds of crackpots in the world.

Including ones who think whoever says something first is always right. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but you're the crackpot.

Quote from JedRothwell

People who still believe Rossi and Defkalion are indeed crackpots, but so are people who think that 10 L of water will evaporate overnight. So are people who have "theories" than conflict with conventional electrochemistry going back to Faraday. So are people like you, who make errors by a factor of 1,800, do not realize it, and will not admit it when others point this out. You dismiss this as "nitpicking" -- as if it were perfectly okay to claim that an airplane can fly from New York to Tokyo in 28 seconds, and no one should criticize you for an error on this scale.

There are many different kinds of crackpots in the world.

Jed,

Don't necessarily think those people are crackpots, they're just delusional.

They want to believe in something so bad

that logic and reason have no affect on them.

@Jed: So are [crackpots like Rossi] people who have "theories" than conflict with conventional electrochemistry going back to Faraday.

I'm sorry but this argument does not stand in context. You cannot properly argue that LENR (which goes against conventional nuclear physics) is somehow more plausible than some Shanahan-like hypothesis (which goes against conventional electrochemistry) just on that basis.

You'd need a complex and probably subjective judgement about how much the new idea broke the old rules, and whether than was implausible because such breakage would already have been noticed, etc, etc.

Shanahan has been giving these arguments for why the specific circumstances of LENR electrolysis might never have been noticed in conventional electrochemistry, specifically:

• D2O electrolysis
• Nucear active environment
• Anode and Cathode gasses allowed to mix in cell (something that for obvious reasons would not normally be done).

I've no idea whether these are good reasons. But, you must balance them against a similar argument for why the weird things that allow LENR reactions have never been noticed by physicists in many relevant areas (astrophysics, nuclear physics sold-state theory, etc).

Bottom line: I don't think this argument works without a lot of detailed additional support. In any case, I don't think theorists with unconventional hypotheses are anything like Rossi or Defkalion.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I'm sorry but this argument does not stand in context. You cannot properly argue that LENR (which goes against conventional nuclear physics) is somehow more plausible than some Shanahan-like hypothesis (which goes against conventional electrochemistry) just on that basis.

Oh yes I can! Cold fusion is an apparent violation of nuclear physics. (Some experts disagree with that, but most say it is.) However, we know that cold fusion is real, because it has been widely replicated at high signal to noise ratios. Therefore, if it is actually a violation of nuclear theory, nuclear theory is wrong. When experiments conflict with theory -- any theory -- the experiments win; the theory loses.

In Shanahan's case, there are no experiments backing up his theory. There is no evidence for it. What we have instead is evidence for excess heat, which he has twisted into a pretzel to fit it his crackpot theory. No one else agrees with his analysis. There are many experiments showing it is wrong.

If Shanahan could point to real evidence for his theory, then he would actually overthrow Faraday's law.

Any and all theories must give way to replicated experiments. That is the essence of the scientific method. Faraday's theories, nuclear theories, even Newton's laws . . . when experiments show they are wrong or incomplete or need adjustment, they must fall.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Shanahan has been giving these arguments for why the specific circumstances of LENR electrolysis might never have been noticed in conventional electrochemistry, specifically:

D2O electrolysis
Nucear active environment
Anode and Cathode gasses allowed to mix in cell (something that for obvious reasons would not normally be done).

I've no idea whether these are good reasons.

It is obvious he is wrong. These are not "good reasons;" they are nonsense. For example, a cursory examination of data from either cold fusion experiments or conventional electrochemisty show that moving the heat source within the cell does not measurably affect the calorimetry. You need only glance at the schematics of most calorimeters to see why this is the case. For example, with flow calorimetry, the inlet and outlet where heat is measured is anywhere from 1 cm to several centimeters away from the cell. How could a shift in the heat source affect that? Actual calibrations done by moving the heat source show no measurable change in the calibration constant.

Oh yes I can! Cold fusion is an apparent violation of nuclear physics. (Some experts disagree with that, but most say it is.) However, we know that cold fusion is real, because it has been widely replicated at high signal to noise ratios. Therefore, if it is actually a violation of nuclear theory, nuclear theory is wrong. When experiments conflict with theory -- any theory -- the experiments win; the theory loses.

In Shanahan's case, there are no experiments backing up his theory. There is no evidence for it. What we have instead is evidence for excess heat, which he has twisted into a pretzel to fit it his crackpot theory. No one else agrees with his analysis. There are many experiments showing it is wrong.

Since Shanahan's theory and LENR are both hypotheses that explain a number of LENR results, I don't see how you can separate them in this manner.

The one distinction is that Shanahan (alone) advocates his theory, whereas there are quite a number of LENR advocates who advocate (different, for the most part) LENR theories.

So I agree LENR wins by numbers. But then, the conventional "LENR is most likely not real" position wins even more by numbers, so I don't see this as a good argument.

Not that I'd back any hypothesis advocated by a single person (or many people). it would need to be substantive and well-argued. Shahahan's idea meets those two tests.

These tests do not determine whether it is correct, but screen out obvious no-starters. For example they would rule out from initial consideration Intelligent Design (not substantive) and "pink Unicorns probably inhabit my garden because I am certain that red squirrels inhabit it, but, like unicorns, have never seen them" (not well argued).