Mizuno's bucket of water

Quote from kirkshanahan

This is nothing but LENR community mantra. As far as I know, there is no one 'fighting tooth and nail' against doing LENR research.

The history of LENR is rich and well-documented. I suggest you start with: https://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/mitcfreport.pdf

Quote

Even the two DOE reviews of the subject did not say this.

Of course they did not say "tooth and nail." Yet their actions were essentially that.

And what say ye of these other realities?

"Why is there a cross section of the scientific community who apparently doesn't support the scientific method if it has even an inkling of a connection to LENR? Why do your colleagues construct a reputation trap? Why do they condescend toward an entire field of legitimate research with such a potentially high payoff for the world? Why do they welcome with open arms those who have struggled to reproduce an experiment, but shun those who have succeeded?"

Yes Alan, that response is what should make anyone here on Shanahan's side. let me quote:

The excess power measurements done at China Lake used an
isoperibolic-type calorimeter. Periodic calibrations over a five year

period showed no significant changes in the heat transfer
coefficients for the China Lake calorimeters.5 In addition, the
isoperibolic calorimeters used by Miles at the New Hydrogen
Energy Laboratory (NHE) in Japan incorporated an automated
Joule heat pulse. The calorimeter was calibrated at least once
every second day. From this, the coefficients of thermal calibration

are deduced by backwards integration fitting of the calorimeter

response to this known input thermal power pulse.
Calibrations were performed before, after and during the
production of excess thermal power. The excess power measurements

were summarized by the following six conclusions:
(1) The excess power effect was typically 5 to 10% larger than
the input power. The largest excess power effect was 30%
(2) The excess power in terms of the palladium volume was
typically 1 to 5 W/cm3
(3) Long electrolysis times ranging from 6 to 14 days were
required before the onset of the excess power for Pd rod cathodes
(4) Excess power production required a threshold current
density of 100 mA/cm2 or higher
(5) Overall, only 30% of the experiments produced excess power
(6) The success ratio in obtaining excess power varied greatly
with the source of the palladium
It would be nearly impossible to obtain these conclusions if the
excess power was due to Shanahan’s random CCSH

This rebuttal completely misses his argument and does not rebut it. It shows they have either not read, or not understood, his paper. Most frustrating to those like me who want a rational debate on these matters.

CCS is not random, and is not about "calibration drift" as they seem to think. It is about the possibility of some systematic change in conditions between calibration and active runs that changes the behaviour of the active system relative to the calibration system. Shanahan suggested ATER for this as one possibility. His point is that where the excess heat is small in comparison with the total power input any such (small) changes get magnified and can become significant.

CCS is a grand name for something that is well understood by all: your calorimetry control is only good if its conditions are the same (as far as heat measurement) as the active system. However, Shanahan adds to this the valid point that LENR style experiments with low power out vs input power are much more susceptible to these problems that normal calorimetry. That means a careful error bound analysis that asks to what extent calibration and control systems might be different must be done. Shanahan's beef is that this was not done. There has been some work in some systems (McKubre I think) to limit such errors, but not framed within an overall error analysis, and, crucially, not mentioned in this reply.

What they could have done to knock this on the head is a proper error analysis. Of course that might not have knocked it on the head in these cases. But it really makes me doubt they can reply sensibly to this when what they actually say is so irrelevant. Anyone can make a mistake, and maybe they just did not read Shanahan carefully. But there is always a chance for future correction: which IMHO should have been made here

THH

Quote from Curbina

“ It is about the possibility of some systematic change in conditions between calibration and active runs that changes the behaviour of the active system relative to the calibration system.”

This the problem. KS “ suspects the possibility of some” but only because he starts his analysis from the premise that excess heat is impossible. Has KS proven anything quantitatively? No, he just can’t accept the possibility of excess heat and proposes a “ possibility of some “ systematic error. His suggestion is irrelevant because he does not provide an experiment where he can reproduce the data glitch he claims must be the source of the illusion of excess heat. He is just in the business of denial.

I agree this is the problem, but not that Shanahan views LENR as impossible, nor that, if he did, that would be an issue. You suppose that if some possible error in an experiment is not proven, an LENR result is likely real.

Shanahan and most mainstream scientists would reckon that since LENR is extraordinarily and has no predictive theory you go to it only after possible errors have been ruled out.

Otherwise, we would have thousands of anomalies with vague explanations, backed by unproven experimental results. Scientists know that care and reproducibility are needed before accepting results that do not self-check by showing parametric consistency with some theory. Such unself-checked anomalies are awfully easy to get from mistake and error.

So: for you Shanahan must prove CCS or the results stand.

For Shanahan (and me) you (or, in practice, the experimenter) must rule out CCS or the results cannot be taken as evidence of LENR.

You are perfectly entitled to to conclude that your lower bar is appropriate. Don't however be surprised that most scientists want a higher bar. I think the key under-appreciated thing is how consistency with some predictive theory makes it easier to accept results as real. Why? Because theories make parametric or quantitative predictions and error/mistake results are much less likely to obey the required parametric relationships. Whereas when a hypothesis, like LENR, simply says "here lie things anomalous" a broad range of mistake and error can match it. Which is why I approve of Ed storms suggestion that excess heat be plotted an an Arrhenius curve. Where this gives a definite activation energy we have strong evidence for excess heat from a reaction, and against calorimetry errors.

A clear example of this is excess heat + high energy particle experiments. Any anomaly in any of the measurements will be seen as LENR, with the exception of heat loss. Unfortunately heat loss rules out only 50% of all errors and mistakes. We see an example of that ruling out in the negative Mizuno replication here (which, however, is still billed as a success...).

THH

Quote from Curbina

“ It is about the possibility of some systematic change in conditions between calibration and active runs that changes the behaviour of the active system relative to the calibration system.”

Without a systematic change in condition you will have no experiment...

What the anti LENR trolls look for/hope to find is an anomalous (unwanted, not counted in) change in condition.

But this can be excluded e.g. for the Mizuno or P&F experiments.

Unluckily we all have to live with this childish attitude to never be ready to deal with/ confront a new situation by simply suppressing the truth.

Quote from Alan Smith

I asked Kirk repeatedly - in this place - to give me a clear description of an experiment that could prove his hypothesis, with the intention of performing it (I had more spare time then) but I never got a proper answer.

The thing is that would not help. His theory is just maths - self-proven. Whether the change in conditions needed for his error to explain CF findings is experiment-specific. If you had an electrolysis experiment showing excess heat based on control / active it would be very helpful for you to test that and I'd have a few ideas, although even then it is not simple to distinguish between CCS error and some real excess power in the cell.

However, whatevr its magnitude in one experiment says nothing about its magnitude in another. His point was that all those claiming anomalous CF excess heat from electrolysis should check this matter and bound any possible error.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Without a systematic change in condition you will have no experiment...

What the anti LENR trolls look for/hope to find is an anomalous (unwanted, not counted in) change in condition.

But this can be excluded e.g. for the Mizuno or P&F experiments.

Unluckily we all have to live with this childish attitude to never be ready to deal with/ confront a new situation by simply suppressing the truth.

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I'm afraid that is not accurate. Of course there must be a systematic change in conditions. The issue is to show, from experiment design or instrumentation, that all such change cannot affect the measurement of heat from the cell. Typically changes in conditions affect measurement of heat by altering where in the cell the heat is generated, or how much it is distributed by convection etc. A good calorimetric setup will have very small dependence of measured heat on the temperature of different parts of the cell, so such changes will not matter. However there is always an effect and it can be significant when multiplied by the over power / excess power ratio.

This error analysis is what all calorimetry needs to do to be safe. KS reckoned that some of the CF papers left out the multiplying factor when doing the analysis, some did not bother to do it at all.

Quote from Curbina

And that’s why I bring the reverse side of the coin up, when something is expected from the theory, and is never found, billions are spent to find it, and it miraculously appears. (But does it really?)

Well, I guess you are thinking about particle physics.

Higgs - strongly expected and definitely found.

Supersymmetry - strongly expected and definitely not found (they have almost given up, and will soon have covered all the plausible energy ranges).

So that is a good example of experiment leading theory. Had supersymmetry (strongly expected theoretically to exist) been found we would be in a very different place now. Although Higgs has been found we still don't understand why Higgs, or indeed why that specific symmetry group of fundamental particles. This shows the strength (all those particles and properties obeying simple laws and together explaining data) and the weakness (it is a bit mysterious why those specific SU(3) X SU(2) X U(1) symmertry groups are the ones we see. Also it is mysterious why the Higgs mass is what it is. Also dark energy / matter is mysterious.

I'd wish people here has more interest in the extraordinary progress made in physics with SM, as well as interest in the ways that it obviously is not enough and we need more. The big surprise for theory is that as yet we have no real hints as to what that more might be from high energy particle experiments.

Treating this as a duplicitous game played by the particle physicists is grossly unfair - and wrong.

THH

Quote from Curbina

We engineers have a large battery of jokes about how mathematicians become self absorbed and believers of the capacity of maths of transforming the reality, and not the other way around.

Yes, but all competent engineers know that mastery of maths is an essential tool without which you are just a technician. And Shanahan's points are the maths relevant to CF electrolysis calorimetry, which no joke can gainsay.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Typically changes in conditions affect measurement of heat by altering where in the cell the heat is generated, or how much it is distributed by convection etc.

Everybody once builds his first calorimeter... But usually we here discuss about people that built more than 1000 of them and did know how to do it.

And please don't forget: It's all about signal/noise ratio. To get 1mW out of 1kW you must be highly skilled, to get 3kW from 50W you can ask your dog...

Thus if you would be sincere and could argue without religious messages, then you would state (in Mizunos case): OK I see 2. 4kW are certain but the rest must be more detailed.

Quote from Shane D.

Note he says: "The problem can evidence anytime a calibration curve is used, which includes practically every known analytical chemistry method". In other words, he believes his theory could be a systemic problem throughout all of chemistry (not just CF related) using a calibration curve.

With such sweeping concerns, most people in his shoes would feel obligated to alert the appropriate electrochemical organizations, colleagues, universities, government labs, and whomever else would listen. As he admitted on the forum long ago though, he did none of this. Why not? As a result, no one outside of LENR seems to have ever heard about this. Not even THH, who was unaware of it until he joined this forum.

If verified, this would force a major reassessment of experimental results going back 250 years, up to the present. The mainstream chemistry community would have taken an interest back then (had they known about it), and quickly vetted the idea. Instead KS chose to "restricting myself to the CF arena". So 20 years after this theory was conceptualized, it seems the only people who are aware of it are in the LENR community? That does not make sense to me.

Shanahan's idea is just common sense and standard practice. You have to bound errors. Together with something unusual and special to LENR work - the errors bounds are more critical, with small errors being magnified, when the signal to noise ratio is low. personally i would not give it a new name - but - hey - that is how you get things talked about.

No reassessment is needed because everyone knows this and most (but not all) do proper error bounds. Obviously there will be people outside LENR who do not do error bounds but LENR is specially susceptible to this because some of the key positive papers have not done error bounds, and this is more likely to affect LENR where signal to noise ratio is low and that large constant in power will generate conditions dependent output. Also something about LENR research tends to mitigate against full error analyses and bounding (look at the resistance to doing this with Mizuno's paper).

It is a real annoyance to me that the CF community have not addressed Shanahan's issue, but instead as in the paper AS quoted above tried to sidestep it. It weakens their case insasfar as it depends on CF experiments.

BTW - there is one other contribution Shanahan has made, the idea that something special about these metal lattices could be causing ATER, which would be a mechanism for condition change between control and active LENTR experiments. The effects of ATER can be bounded (though this is not done in the classic LENR papers). Interestingly, this is just as unexpected and elusive as LENR, if easier to understand without new theory. Jed believes it cannot happen, as do the authors above, because it has never been observed by electrochemists. The irony here should be evident to all.

So, while there are criticisms of Shanahan's work, and also there are various ways in which for specific experiments it can be shown non-applicable, your objection is not IMHO a good one.