How do you convince a skeptic?

Quote from THHuxleynew

COP is relevant in LENR experiments where (as is often the case) there is fairly standard calorimetry, with errors not properly quantified but supposed no more than "typical 10% or so".

I do not think this is "often the case." As far as I know, this is never the case. Which experiments do you have in mind? In what paper did you read "typical 10% or so"?

If errors are not properly quantified than the COP would not make any difference. Whether it was 110% or infinity (meaning no input power), the results would be questionable, or meaningless.

Quote from JedRothwell

I do not think this is "often the case." As far as I know, this is never the case. Which experiments do you have in mind? In what paper did you read "typical 10% or so"?

If errors are not properly quantified than the COP would not make any difference. Whether it was 110% or infinity (meaning no input power), the results would be questionable, or meaningless.

I thought that might be what you'd say. This is a pragmatic question. Since complete error analysis for control or calibration based results is never possible without assumptions (give me a counterexample and I'll tell you the assumptions) there is always a badly defined issue of what quantitative bound have the total assumptive errors. By definition. Choose a value different from 10% if you like - obviously it is very variable.

Quote from THHuxleynew

there is always a badly defined issue of what quantitative bound have the total assumptive errors.

Always? In every paper? Are you saying that Fleischmann, Miles, McKubre, Storms or Mizuno have not dealt with these issues, or they do not understand them?

I suggest you look at 3 or 4 of the major papers and show where they have made incorrect assumptions and badly defined issues relating to signal to noise. You often claim you have found mistakes, but when I ask you for specific instances in specific papers, you do not answer. I do not think you have actually found any errors.

Along the same lines, you claim you have discovered reasons why the boil off experiments might be wrong, but when I asked you what specific reasons you have in mind, you pointed to a nonsensical list compiled by someone else, and then you claimed that the pressure from steam is pushing macroscopic drops of pure water out of the cell, which is preposterous. You do not get points for claiming you have discovered an error and then -- when asked what that error is -- for pointing to impossible events that would be readily observable if real, and which are never seen. That's not science.

If you are saying there are some obscure, poorly written papers in cold fusion with mistakes in them, you are right. However, in the mainstream, peer-reviewed papers there are no significant errors. Except in Morrison's paper, which has mistakes in the other direction. It passed peer-review easily even though it is full of errors, because the editors and reviewers shared Morrison's bias against cold fusion.

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

Quote from JedRothwell

Always? In every paper? Are you saying that Fleischmann, Miles, McKubre, Storms or Mizuno have not dealt with these issues, or they do not understand them?

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

Not at all, McKubre and many others do understand these issues, and do not provide precise quantitative error bounds for all errors. An error bound can be correct (if conservative) without being precise. But most LENR claims are much less carefully instrumented and checked than McKubre's.

Mizuno has a record of missing entirely significant errors.

Quote from Shane D.

Are transmutations, and radiation as prone to interpretation error as XH? In Ruby's new interview with a prominent Russian scientist (Irina Savvatimova), she had this to say:

"However, all the effects of transmutation with an increase in the content of individual elements up to 100 times or more, with a change in the isotopic composition, could not convince critics that such changes were a reality.

Only an experiment with radioactive material could convince these people, so it was another happy occasion when John Dash invited me to Portland State University to conduct research with uranium.

As a result of this work, we were able to show the presence of alpha, beta and gammas. The alpha activity of Uranium increased after irradiation with hydrogen and deuterium ions about 2-4 times, and beta and gamma emission increased from 10 to 60%."

And if you think she was seeing contamination instead, or is an amateur:

"I had experience with a glow discharge for more than 10 years before the CF, work has already been done on studying changes in structure and properties, so for me the study of transmutation was just a more in-depth comprehensive study of the process. The study of the elemental and isotopic composition showed the appearance of elements – that were absent before the experiments – in the sample material and the structural parts of the discharge chamber."

This lady scientist knows what she is doing, and what she is seeing. She is not alone either, as there have been many reports like this from around the world. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems much harder to outright dismiss nuclear signatures as anomalies. Especially so from scientists qualified, and experienced in the study, and equipment.

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Shane - yes, these changes in radioactivity and in isotopic composition are very hard to evaluate. That is because the errors are not straightforward:

Radiation:

contamination (must be considered on a detailed case by case basis). Not straightforward because unexpected causes are always possible

GCR (ok easily dealt with, but not always considered)

detector temperature sensitivity (not always considered, though any experimental scientist familiar with the detectors would do this)

atmospheric contamination

Isotopic composition:

contamination

misinterpretation of lines

BTW I've probably missed quite a few issues.

You'd need a good write-up considering all such issues before you took such claims seriously, hence anecdotal comments don't get us very far.

However, in this case (activity of Uranium changing) I'd suggest another possibility. Natural Uranium has a complex set of decay products including Radon. These can be disturbed (physically) causing for example change due to Radon egress, and Radon progeny. Radon is tricky stuff because it creates air-bourne progeny with varying half-lives.

Re trusting the scientists. The issue is how many scientists have such anomalous reports out of what overall sample size? If only 1% of scientists make such reports then it is plausibly just because they are less experienced and/or mistaken. And, yes, scientists like people everywhere can end up repeating mistakes.

Quote from THHuxleynew

But most LENR claims are much less carefully instrumented and checked than McKubre's.

Most? Which ones? Be specific. Which of the mainstream papers are much less careful, to the point where the results are doubtful. I will grant that few people match McKubre's level of care. But which ones are so bad you don't believe them?

Quote from THHuxleynew

Mizuno has a record of missing entirely significant errors

The problem there was that I have a record of mistranslating early drafts of papers, and mixing up equations. I put that out so that other people would catch the errors. As Robert Bryant pointed out, Mizuno, I and others corrected these errors, but that author never acknowledged the corrections. (Robert had more contact than I did, and he can give you the details.)

What I did was a crowd-sourced version of peer-review. It was effective. I have no regrets. Unlike you, when I make a mistake, I admit it frankly and I correct it. I do not go on claiming that steam from 100 W boiling can push up macroscopic drops of water, or that I have discovered errors in papers when I have not.

Unlike you, when I make a mistake, I admit it frankly and I correct it. I do not go on claiming that steam from 100 W boiling can push up macroscopic drops of water, or that I have discovered errors in papers when I have not.

The trouble with me, from your POV, is that I admit to much more uncertainty about the world (including other people's claims) than you do.

errors in other papers. Be precise, when have a made this claim? (Hint - it was, if you look carefully, not now except the Mizuno issue).

One difference between us is that your assumption is no discovered error => almost certain true. I do not make that assumption and am skeptical about many things where I've not discovered errors.

macroscopic drops. You are claiming that nothing in those systems could push recondensed liquid phase water out of the calorimetric boundary. I am just saying that it is a possibility that was not considered in F&P paper, because the measurements of salt level do not preclude it. However F&P considered this possible, presumably, because felt it worth making the salinity measurements and saying that they showed it was not happening.

Quote from THHuxleynew

macroscopic drops. You are claiming that nothing in those systems could push recondensed liquid phase water out of the calorimetric boundary. I am just saying that it is a possibility that was not considered in F&P paper, because the measurements of salt level do not preclude it.

Okay, there are at least four problems with your hypothesis:

1. Calibrations show there is no apparent excess heat except when the palladium is highly loaded and when it produces heat before and after the boil-off. Your recondensed water hypothesis cannot explain that. Why would the heat turn off just before boiling, and then turn on again after boiling? The methods of calorimetry before and after do not depend on lost water.
2. The effect would have to be large enough that the moving droplets would be visible. They are not. No one sees droplets move up.
3. This would happen as often with ordinary boiling or electrolysis as it did in this experiment. All test tubes of this shape would be subject to this error. Such test tubes are common. They are not subject to this error. If they were, people would have seen this long ago, and it would be common knowledge.
4. What would be the mechanism? What pushes the water up? You said it would be steam. I suggest you calculate what the steam pressure would be, given ~100 W of boiling and length and width of the top of the test tube. You will find the pressure is far too low to cause a measurable effect.

These problems do preclude the mechanism you propose. You have to come up with some other mechanism that is physically possible. Otherwise you might as well say that invisible unicorn farts cause water to leave the cell unboiled. Waving your hands and making impossible claims about events that no one ever observes -- and that would be readily observable, if they happened -- is not science.

Quote from rubycarat

You must be specific if you have claims of error,

THHuxleynew is rarely specific

Because when he is specific.. he is prone to error... embarrassing error

Skeptics are fond of vagueness and broadness .... eg "measurement error" "difficult interpretation"

However real scientific critique deals with specifics of measurement and specifics of interpretation

as for BrilloE... have they really identified He4? and for that matter neutrons? and at what level and by what method?

What exactly does convincing a skeptic entail? What would like a skeptic to hold to be true? For that matter, Shane, what is it that you beiieve? (By that I mean something more detailed and specific than “LENR is real”, which is sufficiently vague to include all sorts of things and exclude others.)

Quote from JedRothwell

Okay, there are at least four problems with your hypothesis:

1. Calibrations show there is no apparent excess heat except when the palladium is highly loaded and when it produces heat before and after the boil-off. Your recondensed water hypothesis cannot explain that. Why would the heat turn off just before boiling, and then turn on again after boiling? The methods of calorimetry before and after do not depend on lost water.
2. The effect would have to be large enough that the moving droplets would be visible. They are not. No one sees droplets move up.
3. This would happen as often with ordinary boiling or electrolysis as it did in this experiment. All test tubes of this shape would be subject to this error. Such test tubes are common. They are not subject to this error. If they were, people would have seen this long ago, and it would be common knowledge.
4. What would be the mechanism? What pushes the water up? You said it would be steam. I suggest you calculate what the steam pressure would be, given ~100 W of boiling and length and width of the top of the test tube. You will find the pressure is far too low to cause a measurable effect.

These problems do preclude the mechanism you propose. You have to come up with some other mechanism that is physically possible. Otherwise you might as well say that invisible unicorn farts cause water to leave the cell unboiled. Waving your hands and making impossible claims about events that no one ever observes -- and that would be readily observable, if they happened -- is not science.

1. that does not contradict the hypothesis. This explains high boil-off large excess heat - and that is not observed except in boil-off! That condition could be related in complex ways to electrode chemistry and hence loading.

2. Show me a paper saying this? ( - just thought I'd Jed you).

3. Not necessarily. There would appear to be some special effects related to high electrode loading. The issue is whether these are physical and chemical, or nuclear. I'm saying these results do not rule out physical/chemical.

4. I do not know the details of this mechanism, nor do I make any assumption (as you seem to) about drop size. I see no problem in liquid phase water being pushed upward by small vapour pressure: consider clouds? How can you prove these things do not happen?

Quote from RobertBryant

THHuxleynew is rarely specific

Because when he is specific.. he is prone to error... embarrassing error

Skeptics are fond of vagueness and broadness .... eg "measurement error" "difficult interpretation"

However real scientific critique deals with specifics of measurement and specifics of interpretation

as for BrilloE... have they really identified He4? and for that matter neutrons? and at what level and by what method?

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I am specific when I know what errors mechanisms exist (specifically). Rossi's demos are unusual in often providing that. Other high SNR LENR claims show tantalising hints of being error, by existing in complex systems with known and difficult to quantify error sources (e.g. Brillouin Q pulses). The results do not scale as you'd expect: e.g. continuous Ni-H excess power becomes much higher relative to heating power when reactor has thermal resistance to ambient reduced, or an oven is used. If such scaling sanity checks passed, LENR results would immediately be taken much more seriously.

The case where errors mechanisms can be quantified and proven from write-ups is rare. For obvious reasons. Where I depart from many here is that I see most of the world as neither disproven (e.g. specific error mechanism known) nor proven (some one-off non-replicable independently results indicate highly novel physics).

Robert: if you consider errors to be embarrassing then perhaps you don't like physics? They are natural, and inescapable. Writing up a decent paper takes a very long time (for me anyway). I post here very quickly. I expect errors. And I doubt others here put more time in, so I expect errors from them too. An interest in errors is necessary. Detecting interesting errors is all about validating or not validating patterns, a noble cause. If you have tried to do this much you will be aware of the dangers of apophenia that we are all prone to have. LENR is fascinating as either exciting new physics or a wonderful case of apophenia (the two are not mutually exclusive of course).

You are free to judge my posts here as specific or not as you like. I have not been that interested in stuff here for a while, having commented in detail on nearly all these things previously (and have fun finding that, I give up!) so they are less specific now than has sometimes been true, but still by site standards I think I do OK.

Quote from Shane D.

Well, showing them plenty of high quality experiments, done over a 30 year period by well qualified scientists across the globe, should at least spark some curiosity. It did me.

Me too, Shane. But while I stay curious the totality of evidence does not seem to me that likely to indicate nuclear reactions. That might be the case for most skeptics.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Robert: if you consider errors to be embarrassing then perhaps you don't like physics?

"the dangers of apophenia"

Nothing specific in your whole post unfortunately.

Actually for you being specific is much more dangerous than apophenia.

"Embarrassing" is when THHuxleynew reads an arxiv paper by Durr et al,2015 and asserts SPECIFICALLY there is 6 figure precision in it

when there is only two figure precision stated in it

and then fails to admit his error

so much for the precision of QED/QCD ... perhaps one needs scepticism..rather than blind faith.. about the precision of current quantum physics

Quote from THHuxleynew

1. that does not contradict the hypothesis. This explains high boil-off large excess heat - and that is not observed except in boil-off! That condition could be related in complex ways to electrode chemistry and hence loading.

The overall heat release is thousands of times more than any chemical reaction with this mass of reactants can produce. The heat from the boil off far exceeds the limits of chemistry. You are ignoring basic scientific facts and you are ignoring the most important and definitive aspect of this experiment.

Quote from THHuxleynew

2. Show me a paper saying this? [droplets macroscopic] ( - just thought I'd Jed you).

There is no paper. You are the only person who has offered this hypothesis and you have not written a paper. The drops have to be macroscopic because they would be 2/3rds of the water in ten minutes. If they were not visible in the cell, they would be when the water falls to the lab bench around the cell.

Quote from THHuxleynew

3. Not necessarily. There would appear to be some special effects related to high electrode loading.

By what POSSIBLE mechanism could the cathode in the electrolyte affect pure water in the cell headspace??? You can't be serious. This is handwaving.

Quote from THHuxleynew

4. I do not know the details of this mechanism, nor do I make any assumption (as you seem to) about drop size.

Of course you don't know the details! You made it up with no basis whatever. You cannot think of a single detail that would support this nonsense. There can be no details about an impossible mechanism that no one has observed, and that if it were real, would have been seen countless times. The drop size is self evident.

You believe 10 impossible things without a hint of evidence, instead of one thing: that the heat of vaporization shows how much energy is produced, and water boils in this cell the same way it does in any other cell of this geometry. In a normal conversation, you wouldn't think of disputing that any more than you would dispute Newton's laws.