How do you convince a skeptic?

Quote from JedRothwell

Perhaps you are forgetting that the fact that cold fusion is difficult to replicate has no scientific significance. It is not relevant to whether the effect is real or not. There is no rule that something difficult to replicate might not be real. Many other experiments are much harder to replicate, with lower s/n ratios, but everyone believes them. The top quark is an example. If scientists would evaluate cold fusion strictly on the merits of the experiments -- s/n ratios, replications and so on -- while ignoring irrelevant issues such as the fact that it is difficult to replicate, they would all believe it is real.

Did I say something that prompted this comment? I am not forgetting the fact that difficulty in replication is not relevant to whether the effect is real or not. I agree with that statement. What it has to do with anything

I actually said is beyond me.

Pretty much your entire comment deals with the unfair treatment of CF researchers and the topic in general. I am not arguing otherwise. I also have never played any role in it. So why are you arguing with me about it? The real question - at least the one that interests me - is what should/can be done about it? People like me who are here for the most part to rubberneck at the Rossi trainwreck have no role whatsoever to play in the fate of cold fusion.

Quote from JedRothwell

Oh, okay. This is the Mary Yugo technique. Whatever power level has been achieved is too low by definition. If they reported 500 W, you would demand 1000 W.

Your definition makes no scientific sense. Laboratory calorimetry works best between 1 and 20 W. 500 W is actually more difficult to measure, and the results are less accurate. You would reduce the signal to noise ratio. The first scientist to measure ~1 W was Lavoisier, in 1780 when he measured guinea pig metabolism and showed that the ratio of body heat to carbon dioxide is the same as it is with fire. Any scientist in the last 240 years could have measured such power levels with absolute confidence. But you say we cannot trust measurements made by many of the world's top experts in calorimetry.

More to the point, neither you nor anyone else has ever published a reason to doubt any of the major studies. So your "reasons" for doubting these results are invisible and cannot be debated or falsified. In fact, you have no reasons. You just don't believe it. That's emotion, not science.

Exactly. And as I said, it is not a point that anyone else can debate or falsify.

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This is quite frustrating. My comment was not about what would convince me, yet some here seem to have morphed the discussion to that.

My comment was that the characteristics of the Rossi Lugano (in particular) and Ferrara (less so) tests (if believed) were quite exceptional, and I have not seen posted here anything equivalent. This is nothing to do with "what would convince me". It is however relevant to how people at that time evaluated Rossi. He claimed stand-out LENR results and that was why many people at that time were hopeful that he had indeed made some breakthrough - or possivly stumbled on a commercialisation of a Focardi breakthrough.

It is also true, as others have said here, Alan, Jed, etc do not need to be concerned with what internet posters do or do not believe.

After 16 pages of this I'm still guessing the only way to suggest a long running LENR gamma reaction is to claim one and take the punishment .

Quote from [email protected]

I think the theoretical physicists are hungry for some new breakthrough to crunch on

Many are quite happy with the

the Standard Model of junk food

Quote from Director

First, develop a high powered LENR system utilizing the know how that's already floating around the community.

There is no such "know how." If there were, we would have developed the machine already. You are telling us we should bell the cat.

Quote from Director

I'll tell you how to convince all skeptics - or force them to admit the reality of LENR.

First, develop a high powered LENR system utilizing the know how that's already floating around the community.

Secondly, test the heck out of it - again and again. Once you know it's repeatable and that you can trigger the reactions pretty much at will, then start changing individual parameters to learn what's important and what's not. Importantly, perform experiments testing the SAME materials, components, and fuels from DIFFERENT sources (the more commonly available the better) to make sure they will still allow for the same POWERFUL effect to be reproduced.

Thirdly, start working on how to make your system simpler, cheaper, and faster to build.

Fourthly, design an experiment that will show the massive excess heat in an obvious way. A few things to do: use multiple control reactors, use various instruments to measure temperature, flow rate, or power consumption. Think about how skeptics will attack every little detail and make it impossible for them to criticize your measurements. For example, if they think that your thermocouples are wrong use analog thermometers as well in addition to other techniques to measure temperature. When it comes to flow rate, don't simply use a flow meter in the circuit but utilize a basin with a known quantity of water for the input and measure the output in another basin. From the start, assume they are going to claim that you've screwed everything up.

Fifth, prepare absolutely detailed plans with every last bit of your knowledge that could help replicators to be distributed when your demonstration takes place. Make sure you list every possible parameter and make clear warnings about the areas in which varying from the plan could result in failure. Treat potential replicators like brain dead idiots and explain everything step by step.

The problem is that almost no one wants to do the above.

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Who would you tell?

Making calls to the "proper" you will hear nothing but crickets, Or go by P&F push and shove.

Forums and video really don't get you anywhere.

The only way I can think of to get resources needed to test and release information would be to set up the media with some sort of FAKE event to draw them in and force them to report on a on going scenario by feed them all the details.

How to convince skeptics

Develop a lab rate experiment (LRE), possible to replicate by anyone with normal skill, where the results are clearly not explicable by non-LENR physics.

The lab-rate experiment can include small "special sauce" black box units, as long as these are easily testable for non-LENR physics by people using their own eqpt and test methodology

Ask one or more reputable labs in reputable Unis to test these units as follows:

1. get one or more academic in said lab interested, willing to explore your case

2. get demonstrable results from said academic with the LRE that academic agrees are extraordinary and cannot be explained by non-LENR physics

3. based on the extraordinariness of the LRE results get more academics in said lab to check experiment for validity, get them to agree results are extraordinary

4. get group of academics in lab to co-publish a well-written (some of them will be able to write well enough, and together they can close obvious loopholes in procedure) purely experimental paper summarising the results and claiming an anomaly - without mentioning LENR

Alan will no doubt be familiar with process, or something like it.

it is most likely to fail at step 2. or 3.

It is of course important that these academics have no previous strong views about or experience with LENR.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Develop a lab rate experiment (LRE), possible to replicate by anyone with normal skill, where the results are clearly not explicable by non-LENR physics.

How to stop the cat from catching mice: tie a bell on the cat. AGAIN let me point out that if we could what you suggest, we would do it. No one needs to tell researchers this is a good idea. The problem is, no one knows how to do it. To learn how to do it, we must do a lot more research. To do research, we need money, lab space, and help from others. We have none of this.

What is the point of making suggestions that we do impossible things? As long as we are making impossible suggestions, let me offer an elegant and foolproof one. Let's make a time machine, go 100 years into the future, find out if cold fusion works, and if it does, bring back the secret.

Already choked the cat~ Funny..It was called Cat's paw's

Quote from THHuxleynew

This is quite frustrating. My comment was not about what would convince me, yet some here seem to have morphed the discussion to that.

Okay, so your comment is about what would convince others. You are saying we must demonstrate that which we cannot demonstrate. The goal must remain just beyond the possible, like trying to reach the end of a rainbow. If researchers demonstrate 5 W, 10 W are demanded. If they demonstrate 20 to 100 W, the demand rises to 1 kW. (The ever-in-motion goalposts, or "Mary Yugo" standard.) Also, we must ignore conventional experimental criteria such as signal to noise ratios and control experiments, and we must concentrate on the "COP," pretending it has scientific significance and pretending it is not sometimes infinite.

Quote from THHuxleynew

My comment was that the characteristics of the Rossi Lugano (in particular) and Ferrara (less so) tests (if believed) were quite exceptional, and I have not seen posted here anything equivalent.

They were somewhat exceptional, at much higher power than other cold fusion experiments. Also, the Lugano was the wrong incandescent color for the claimed power level, so I assume it must have been wrong.

Quote from THHuxleynew

This is nothing to do with "what would convince me".

Nothing will convince you. You have rejected McKubre, Miles, Storms and hundreds of other mainstream replications, even though you cannot give any reasons for rejecting them, and you cannot point to any papers describing errors in their work. Your judgment of this field is grounded in emotion, not rationality, and not science.

How to stop the cat from catching mice: tie a bell on the cat. AGAIN let me point out that if we could what you suggest, we would do it. No one needs to tell researchers this is a good idea. The problem is, no one knows how to do it. To learn how to do it, we must do a lot more research. To do research, we need money, lab space, and help from others. We have none of this.

What is the point of making suggestions that we do impossible things? As long as we are making impossible suggestions, let me offer an elegant and foolproof one. Let's make a time machine, go 100 years into the future, find out if cold fusion works, and if it does, bring back the secret.

Well: Alan (for example) has here claimed, I believe, that he has a replicable experiment that generates gammas when it should not. That would, if so, be an LRE.

If the historic experiments, as you have many times claimed, are replicable, many of them would be decent LREs.

If nothing is replicable, then the LENR hypothesis remains badly supported by experimental evidence. Since it is not well supported by a theory either, it would not convince anyone.

You perhaps will claim that although individual experiments are not LREs, because they do not always work due to uncontrolled unknowns, the FPHE is replicated (by different experiments).

I understand that but a LRE could be posed in a stochastic form: prepare this and with 20% probability an anomaly will be observed. That is good enough for an LRE, because the experiment repeated (with different materials perhaps) 20X gives a high probability of success.

If the experiments generate anomalies less consistently than this the issue is that the unknown unknowns could as well be experimental issues as physics issues. I know you don't agree, and think that these experiments are safe enough. Which is perhaps where we have differing standards. I would not trust any hypothesis only supported by things that sometimes happened where the controlling factor could neither be bounded by some probability of operation nor related to some observable.

That actually gives me one other thing I'd accept. An LRE that had a known decent bounding probability of working, given some observable and normal physics condition on the prepared experimental material. (Has to be normal physics otherwise we get "it works if it works"). Such a normal physics condition could be examined and no doubt optimised.

So: that is what I believe a skeptic would accept, and I also believe that without it most physicists would on reflection view any hypothesis as unproven for or against but more likely to be experimental error(s) than new physics. While they would admit that this is not necessarily correct, they would say it is the best call.

When the initial non-LRE anomalies are new, and no-one has tried to replicate, there would be much more interest, and attempts at replication. That also is what most would consider fair because it takes time to find an LRE from an initial serendipitous single observation. LENR is not at that stage because of many many attempts at replication.

It is open to some (e.g. you and many here) to argue that the balance between increased replicability and effort spent to make replicable, for LENR, shows that there is some new physics effect. For me it is the other way round because there have been so many apparent positives that on further study prove negative, or unreproducible even in a stochastic fashion (which is the same). High quality experiments show results less convincing than low quality ones: demonstrating that many of these results are indeed experimental error. And so on.

That overall situation is what makes me highly pessimistic about LENR, though still interested since there remain unexplained anomalies and those, if replicable now, are always worth attention. That is why I look at the well reported experimental results with great interest but also a skeptical frame of mind.

Still at the Parabolic reflector inlays.