Measurement Error and LENR: Why scaling up small Cold Fusion claims never works

I for one wish there was a forum for actual helpful critical discussions of LENR results. The supporters here are extremely defensive and evasive whenever they are asked for anything specific. There is much talk of replications, but if one asks precisely what is meant by a replication, all one gets are meaningless statistics of hundreds of replications and the world’s best electrochemists. Was the same experiment repeated? Were the results derived in the same way? Are they actually comparable or simply both “positive”. If you ask for an example of one convincing experiment and one successful replication of it, you are told that providing such information is “spoon feeding”. Most assuredly, LENR believers have no obligation to provide information to anybody. But given their response to critical questioning, they have no reason to be surprised when skeptics remain skeptical.

Of course, the kneejerk reaction to such comments is always: you are ignorant, you haven’t read 200 papers about LENR, and anybody who believes in it is far smarter than you are. I’ll say one thing for this kind of communal circling of the wagons - it safely keeps the LENR community as an insular cult.

I don’t expect any response to this other than personal attacks in one form or another. That is another hallmark of “the community.”

I find conclusions drawn at such a general level to be unhelpful. Far more interesting is consideration of the details of individual experiments and series of experiments. An example of an interesting series of experiments are the CR-39 co-deposition experiments at SPAWAR, reporting that when CR-39, a plastic that makes a good solid state neutron detector, is present in a certain kind of palladium deuteride electrolytic system, what resembles proton knock-on tracks and alpha tracks are recorded and revealed when etched with a reagent. This was not a single experiment but a series of experiments.

Fleischmann and Pons reported helium as a byproduct in palladium-deuteride systems, and a heat-helium correlation was subsequently reported by Miles as well as McKubre and Apicella et al. (and others, I recall). Are they incorrect? We won't really have a sense of whether this is true unless we look at the details with the assistance of people with expertise in calorimetry and the measurement of helium. I don't think that's a cop out or a circling of wagons. That's humility in the face of the years of training that are required to be able to carry out such experiments.

Are all of the reports of transmutations incorrect? There are many of them. We on this forum won't even have more than a vague opinion unless we explore the details with the help of people with expertise in that kind of measurement.

Surely there are many informal writeups and conference reports that are duds reporting false positives. Are they all duds? From the perspective of a layperson, that is a difficult position to reach without the weighing in of relevant expertise across different fields, showing that a conclusion of collective incompetence on the part of cold fusion workers is not simply an excuse for not diving into the details. There is a profound epistemological problem that awaits anyone attempting to draw generalizations about these experiments.

Seems it may be a good time to take everything posted this last few weeks and build a disposable show and tell and see whats what.

This theoretical model is built like a model aircraft kit but the wood is sacricial for the body containment area. -mixing hematite with clay- is a good fail safe body After looking up the details, but few know much within the clay working, they dont know anything of what you will see on the internet.

lots more reading....

Merry Christmas

Alan, my comment described the form of response to substantive questions posed by skeptics. I described the content of the questions and the content of the responses obtained and how they evade actually providing answers. How is that an attack on believers? Yes, it is a criticism but I think it is far from ad hominem. I guess what you prefer is for skpetics to say “thank you for refusing to answer serious questions.” Alright. Thank you and merry christmas.

Alan, I was describing posts made at various times by myself or by others asking for specific examples of LENR successes and replications. Personally, I gave up trying to do this quite a while ago for the reasons mentioned in the above post. I was not referring to any of my recent posts, none of which fell into this category. Without a doubt, many exchanges here do fall into the category of one group attacking another. But that was not the subject of my earlier comment and the fact that such exchanges take place does not justify treating all questions and comments as attacks or responding to legitimate questions with attacks.

Quote from interested observer

Alan, I was describing posts made at various times by myself or by others asking for specific examples of LENR successes and replications.

To make things more concrete, two and possibly three examples of potential LENR successes and replications were mentioned above: the CR-39 experiments at SPAWAR; the heat-helium correlation experiments by Miles, McKubre and others; and the many reports of transmutations. There are yet other reports that could be considered successes or successful replications as well, on the same topics and others, including the production of tritium and, of course, excess heat. I suggest getting a copy of Ed Storms's "Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction" for a summary. Storms's book is a bit polemical, but it still provides a good overview with references to specific experiments.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18828003 (one in the series of CR-39 experiments)

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesMcorrelatio.pdf (one in the series on heat-helium correlation)

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/bk-2008-0998.ch012 (one of numerous reports of transmutations)

https://www.amazon.com/Science…mprehensive/dp/9812706208 (Ed Storms's review of the field)

Are there genuine replications, in the sense of the exact same experiment being carried out in an independent lab and seeing the same result? Unfortunately I cannot recall any exact replications in this sense; but there are partial replications. Are the reported successes and successful (partial) replications free from flaws that would undermine their conclusions? That is something that must be considered on a case by case basis, and almost always there are areas where an experiment can be improved upon, leaving the question an open one (for me, at any rate).

Quote from maryyugo

Eric WalkerI am sure you know that the CR-39 track experiments have been criticized as have F&P's claims and transmutation experiments-- ALL of them and those critiques were accompanied by experiments in some cases and good theory and calculations in others. And no, I am not going to rehash them now.

Of course they've been criticized and critiqued. There have been long threads on this site and elsewhere on all of the series of experiments I mentioned. Someone such as IO who has followed the field from a distance for six years will already know this.

I also said:

Quote from Eric Walker

Are the reported successes and successful (partial) replications free from flaws that would undermine their conclusions? That is something that must be considered on a case by case basis, and almost always there are areas where an experiment can be improved upon, leaving the question an open one (for me, at any rate).

That alludes to the critiques you mention and leaves ample room for some of them being correct. My feeling is that all of the experiments I mentioned are ones that need to be followed up on and that few if any stand on their own. (Others will skillfully argue that there are experiments that stand on their own.) A critique does not by itself negate the conclusions of an experiment. Someone taking interest in the field will need to start somewhere. I provided such a starting point. They are also invited to review any relevant critiques you or others can link to.

Quote from maryyugo

But mainly, someone needs to get after the high power claimers and get them to produce!

I find the experiments that are approached with good science to be the most interesting ones. Most of the high-power claims I am aware of come from shady entrepreneurs. Mizuno's claims are interesting. I know little about Miley's. The low power claims backed by normal scientific technique are quite interesting to me.

Quote from Alan Smith

This latest paper from Mizuno, translated (I believe) by Jed Rothwell is worth another look. XS heat of the order of hundreds of watts.

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

Observation of Excess Heat by Activated Metal and Deuterium Gas
Tadahiko Mizuno∗
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As a result, energy far exceeding input was continuously obtained. In the best results obtained thus far, the output thermal energy is double the input electrical energy, amounting to several hundred watts. The generated thermal energy follows an exponential temperature function. When the reactor temperature is 300◦C, the generated energy is 1 kW. An increase of the
temperature is expected to greatly increase the output energy...........

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Maybe I am a bit slow today, but where is the 1kW output part of the report?

Quote from lenrisnotreal

I'll finish my review of this document for more errors when I have more time.

Kindly communicate those to Mizuno and Rothwell as well, the article linked is a "preprint". Correction of errors, whether clerical, typographical or technical is surely welcomed by all.

Quote from lenrisnotreal

Also, there might be an error in figure 24 of this document. According to the text, this figure should show an input power of 100W. Figure 24 appears to show an input power of 50W. If this is indeed an error, this entire paper, and all prior research by this organization, is , in my opinion only, possibly invalid due to errors in record keeping, measurements, and presentation. I'll finish my review of this document for more errors when I have more time.

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