How do you convince a skeptic?

  • Hi, I'm talking with a friend who doesn't believe in LENR based on the fact that there must be gamma emissions from these reactions, and Rossi should be dead by now if his devices are unshielded.


    Anyway, I want to find some papers that can convince a skeptic. Any papers from Mizuno are welcome too.


    I just don't know what papers to organize and give to my friend for reading to convince him. Any advice appreciated.

  • After 30 years of discussions in order to convince someone you need a working demonstrator that produces excess heat independently tested by scientific community worldwide, not other CF papers never accepted by GAS.

    As long as it does not exist (this is the current state of facts) your friend is right to not believe.

  • Hi, I'm talking with a friend who doesn't believe in LENR based on the fact that there must be gamma emissions from these reactions, and Rossi should be dead by now if his devices are unshielded.


    Anyway, I want to find some papers that can convince a skeptic. Any papers from Mizuno are welcome too.


    I just don't know what papers to organize and give to my friend for reading to convince him. Any advice appreciated.


    Show the doubting Tomas this SEM of LENR fuel. The bright stuff is metal, the dark stuff is carbon. Ask him how carbon can turn into metal before his own eyes.


    de7c0393bde731b1fe9e6c31c9fe44abf78e2a0d.jpg

    • Official Post
    • Rossi is the worst example
    • First thing to confince an honest skeptic is (you did it) get reasonable discussion, understanding that without all data you have acquired not believing LENR is just rational. To understand how LENR is impossible, my advice is to read "the explanation of LENR" by Edmund Storms... You will find the skeptics have just a problem to trusts other's experiments, as you may not believe what I say on Globalization, LLNT or GMs.
    • You will also have to admit there is much bullshit in the domain, and beside BS, many shoestring experiments that are dubious, unfinished, but among all there are great results, and globally too many "unbelievable coincidences" that exclude it is only artifacts. You can also remind that if there is doubts, it should promote research, not silence it, proving that current situation to refuse to investigate, is a pathology.
    • By the way Ed in this book explains that there is no MeV gamma&alike, why it is a huge problem, but that there is a narrow corridors wher things are possible, because anyway it is proven. this is IMHO the best book for someone aware of physics and skeptical because of gammas and alike.
    • My advice is to share old article , when there was mainstream teams and millions of budgets. M4 experiment by McKubre is often cited. He4/heat papers are very good (read the review by Abd Ul Rahman Lomax in Current science). The Special section on LENR in Current Science is a good start too, if you follow the citation that inspire you. There are also tritium results that are convincing for someone educated in radiochemistry. The first book of Edmund Storms (the science of LENR), his numerous articles, his 2010 review in Naturwissenschaften, are great to start. JedRothwell sure know the best ones.
    • Another line of study is to follow the replications sequences... like F&P->Miles/McKubre&many others with PdD calorimetry... but also He4/heat replications... the gas permeation Fralick 89/Liu 2005 Biberian 2007 Nasa GRC 2008, Fralick 2012. Nedo funded study 2017+... Jed may help you.
    • Maybe the recent japanese Nedo funded, replicated, experiments may be intriguing. Beside that nothing recent is inspiring for me. (call that a depression).
    • The conferences by US Navy Spawar was great. maybe the interview of the pilars of LENR by Ruby carat on cold fusion now are probably very convincing
    • about misconducts, hate, harassment, it is a reality but it is probably counterproductive with mainstream supporters... In this domain, someone already interested but wonderwing how this could happen, may understand the key problems by reading "Excess Heat" by Charles Beaudette. You can also look for few article in infinite Energy by Mallove, some papers by Pam Boss&Miles, few articles by Jed, will explains the problems/fraud/mistake with MIT and caltech experiment. It can only be understood when you accept the data. There are debunking of Gary Taubes tritium myth.
    • Forget anything about companies, startups, inventors, and worst of all, theories... it is science

    there are many answers in quora, some by me, Jed, Abd...

    • Official Post

    The 'why are there no dead graduate students' meme to justify not believing on cold fusion goes back a long way. Actually it should not be confused with hot fusion at all, which as any fule do kno produces truckloads of radiation, there is a different mechanism at work entirely. Actually we have seen several different behaviours in various fuel mixes, sometimes several different behaviours in the same fuel. We have heat with no gammas, gammas with no heat, both together, and very strong gamma bursts from fuel kept at room temperature for days. The idea that gamma output is directly related and in proportion to the heat is wrong. We have seen 20+ watts of anomalous heat in a powered-down cooling reactor and very little gamma output If only 1 watt of that heat was produced by gammas hitting the relatively flimsy walls of our reactors, we would indeed be dead, but we are not quite there yet.

  • A great article here from ATTP blog referencing an interesting essay on what is science communication?


    https://andthentheresphysics.w…of-science-communication/


    It applies here. scientific communication should be abut giving people the facts, not trying to persuade them of a given viewpoint.


    Unfortunately, when issues are complex, it is difficult to be sure what is fact and what is judgement, and when there are judgements how to weight them.


    AGW is OK in this respect, it is very widely discussed any anyone with an open mind can weight the various arguments and align with the mainstream view - which however has quite a lot of uncertainty embedded in it, because there is quite a lot of uncertainty.


    In the case of LENR Jed here I think would say there is no uncertainty that experimental evidence proves it (though maybe there are many other uncertainties like can it ever be commercial). Many others would disagree, and say that overall the experimental data on LENR is interesting but inconclusive, and that after 30+ years of inconclusivity it will probably - though not certainly - not be proven.

  • Your extraordinary claims about excess heat are now, not it might..., it may..., it will... when (better to say: if a day) you will be able to demonstrate, anywhere, under third party verification and control of independent and qualified scientists of wordwide community what you claimed during these years, let me know.

    Otherwise are only chatter.



    As said my optician is based only on verifiable scientific facts, in other words simply "Science based", not on hopes or a wishful thinking postponed every time in the future.


    Claims made based on experimental evidence are not chatter. Admittedly most of Alan's claims are implicit based on experimental evidence not released. They are still not chatter, and of interest, but not convincing to anyone open-minded.


    It is true that claims made on the basis of fully divulged experimental evidence are not necessarily very strong, it depends on the level of implicit assumptions in the experiment interpretation, and the skills of the experimenter, and whether (relevant in one case we know) they are honest. But chatter is just saying that you are not interested. Fair enough - but then you don't have to pay attention to such threads!

  • Quote

    Claims made based on experimental evidence are not chatter.


    "Experimental evidence" never confirmed as before described is evidence just for him and (at least) for who believe to him.

    Show these evidences if are available.


    Quote

    But chatter is just saying that you are not interested


    I'm interested if there is verifiable evidence recognized by GAS, not based on an old 30 years claim unable to produce a verifiable demonstrator of the (alleged) phenomena.

    Have you seen this kind of evidence?

    I follow any discussion here, but never seen.

  • Hi, I'm talking with a friend who doesn't believe in LENR based on the fact that there must be gamma emissions from these reactions, and Rossi should be dead by now if his devices are unshielded.

    As noted, Rossi is the worst example. I would say there is no evidence Rossi's claims are true, and they have nothing to do with mainstream, academic cold fusion.


    The "dead graduate student" problem was obvious to everyone the moment cold fusion was discovered. We all know that if cold fusion were plasma fusion, the researchers would be dead. Since they are not dead, plasma fusion theory does not apply to cold fusion. When widely replicated, high signal to noise ratio results conflict with theory, the theory is wrong. That is fundamental to the scientific method.


    I think the most readable introduction to cold fusion is McKubre's paper:


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


    This is what I based my video on. The video is also a good introduction:


    http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=1618


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    I do not recommend engaging with most skeptics. They tend to be closed minded, irrational, or unwilling to read papers and do their homework. If the topic comes up, I recommend the McKubre paper and say nothing more. I think it is better to talk to people who are open minded, curious and willing to make the effort to learn about the subject. There must be hundreds of thousands of them, judging by the number of visits to LENR-CANR.org.

    • Official Post

    We are a talk forum, not a formal science body, so that means we talk about whatever is presented. Follow every lead. So please keep up the "chatter", or whatever one chooses to call it.


    Information is information, no matter how it is packaged and presented. We take it all here, and do not discriminate. There is no requirement it meet any scientific standards, or any burden of proof. The reader can ignore it or not, read it while holding their nose...that is their choice, but asking it to stop, defeats the purpose of what we are about. If it does not pass the smell test, it is deleted, or shuffled harmlessly to Clearance, or Playground.


    I for one love to hear whatever it is Alan, and Russ tell us. It is a very exciting story to follow. It may in the end be another false lead like the J5 story, but we will deal with that if, or when it happens. Never know though...this may be the one.

  • Quote

    My claims are not claims but bits of information, brief communications about my (and my colleagues) lab work meant for those who are interested


    OK, regarding your work I take note you have never raised any claim about production of anomalous excess heat by CF or LENR phenomena.

  • you will be able to demonstrate, anywhere, under third party verification and control of independent and qualified scientists of wordwide community what you claimed during these years, let me know.

    No other scientific claim has been held to this standard. No other claim has gone through these steps. I do not see why you hold cold fusion to a unique and difficult standard that no other new discovery has met, and that most of them could not have met.


    When the laser and the transistor were developed, many scientists did not believe they existed. Not one scientist other than the inventors could make one. It was a year or two before these devices could be replicated. Even now, it takes a skilled person to make one. There was never any "third party verification" or "control" over the experiments. Skilled people read the literature, visited the labs, and gradually learned how to replicate. Bell Labs published a detailed book and invited large groups to learn how to make transistors in September 1951.


    https://www.pbs.org/transistor…und1/events/symposia.html


    That is what happened with cold fusion. It was eventually replicated thousands of times in over 180 laboratories. If that is not enough to convince you it is real, nothing short of commercial development will convince you. Heck, the video of the boiling cell will convince anyone with the eyes to see, for the reasons I listed earlier, such as the fact that it is not boiling with electrolysis power and when it does boil, only the cathode is hot. That is better proof than a dozen papers. It overrules all skeptical blather. The skeptics here are reduced to saying: "Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?"

  • Quote

    When the laser and the transistor were developed, many scientists did not believe they existed.


    After few years from that date transistor was a consolidated fact for all scientists (in 1956 Brattain and Shockley were honored with the Noble Prize in Physics) because it was demonstrated that it works beyond any doubt.

    CF is a story without anything in hand after 30 years, still not recognized as working by GAS, bad example.

  • After few years from that date transistor was a consolidated fact for all scientists

    But that did not happen by the mechanisms and practices you described, such as "under third party verification and control of independent and qualified scientists." It happened by the normal channels of communicating and replication. The very same thing happened to cold fusion. After a few years it was widely replicated, and the success rate was about the same as it was for many early transistors. The difference is that cold fusion was rejected because of academic politics. The laser and many other discoveries were initially attacked and rejected, but not for 30 years. Fortunately, there was no opposition to transistors.


    If we apply normal, accepted, traditional academic practices and standards, then cold fusion is real. If any other experiment were so widely replicated, no scientist on earth would doubt it is real. These standards have worked well since modern science began circa 1600. They have revolutionized the world many times over. So I do not understand why you want to throw out these standards and invent new ones for cold fusion only.


    CF is a story without anything in hand after 30 years, still not recognized as working by GAS, bad example.

    Transistor research began in around 1924. Many people did reject it, until it finally panned out in 1949. That's 25 years. In 1931, Wolfgang Pauli said: "I don’t like this solid state physics . . . though I initiated it . . . One shouldn’t work with semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether they really exist."


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


    If you are looking for good examples of rejected discoveries that were later found to be valid, there hundreds to choose from.

  • Inappropriate compare because the technology of 21 century, science diffusion, knowledge, structure, labs, number of researchers, etc are absolutely not comparable with the situation of 1924.

    25 years at beginning of century are not comparable to 30 years elapsed under giant science and technology improvements of the current time.


    Conspiracy theory of academic is not more applicable after 30 years and in front of so large scientists community and nations, anyway if you still believe in it (academic politics conspiracy or sabotage) you or any cold fusionists can built a demonstrator of EH and submit it to a certified Lab tests and verification. You will see that none will reject certified data about measured energy gain (if really exists) when stated for example by UL or equivalent.

  • In the case of LENR Jed here I think would say there is no uncertainty that experimental evidence proves it . . .

    I am the last person who say that! Ed Storms may be the only person who knows better than I do how much uncertainty there is in the experimental literature. There are hundreds of doubtful claims. Hundreds of papers are so poorly written, it is hard to know what is being claimed. Some appear to be completely wrong. But you never know, and it is not a good idea to reject papers out of hand.


    Many papers describe experiments that failed to produce heat or neutrons, for reasons that were unclear in 1989, but we now know why. It would be unfair to call these "bad" papers. They are not experimental evidence that cold fusion does not exist. They show only that it is difficult to replicate. Everyone in the field knows that.


    There are also a whole constellation of claims that seem to be related to cold fusion that have not been tested. No attempt to replicate them has been made. So they are in limbo. For example, Ohmori did beautiful experiments that indicated gold cathodes produce cold fusion heat. He was very careful and he repeated the test hundreds of times, which dozens of cathodes that he showed me. As far as I can tell this is a valid claim, but no one else has tried it, and very few people are capable of doing such splendid electrochemistry, so we can't tell if it right or not.


    What I say is that the top tier of papers from ~50 of the best labs are excellent. Labs such as Los Alamos, China Lake, BARC and the ENEA. I also say that no one has found and published any mistakes in any of these papers. Given the opposition to this field, if there were mistakes, I suppose someone would have found them by now. Morrison and Shanahan tied to find some, but in my opinion they failed. All other critiques boil down to the assertion that the experiments conflict with theory, so the experiments must be wrong. See Huizenga's book, for example.


    The top tier papers describe Pd-D cold fusion heat and helium, and tritium. All other claims are less well supported, or not supported at all, such as Ohmori's Au-D. Until Beiting published, I thought Ni-H and Ni-Pd cathodes were hardly supported, except by Takahashi, which is pretty good. One "pretty good" experiment is not enough. (I did not think much of the original version by Arata, for the reasons I explained in the paper by Rothwell & Storms.)


    Of course it is easy to find mistakes in the bad papers.

  • Inappropriate compare because the technology of 21 century, science diffusion, knowledge, structure, labs, number of researchers, etc are absolutely not comparable with the situation of 1924.

    25 years at beginning of century are not comparable to 30 years elapsed under giant science and technology improvements of the current time.

    That has to be one of the most ahistoric statements I have ever read! 1920 was smack in the middle of the golden age of physics. There were more fundamental discoveries in physics and technology, and more progress from 1880 to 1930 than any other time in history. Einstein alone in 1905 revolutionized whole areas of physics. If you go back and read the scientific papers from that era, you will see that the standards were as high and the research was as sophisticated then as it is now.


    For goodness sake, look at the people who attended the 1927 Solvay conference: A. Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, E. Herzen, Th. de Donder, E. Schrödinger, J.E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin, P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr, I. Langmuir, M. Planck, M. Curie, H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, Ch.-E. Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson. That's probably more talent than all of today's physicists tied together.


    The only major difference was that "computers" were people, not machines. Such as my mother. The people did prodigious amounts of computing. For example, human computers did all of the calculations needed for the first fission bombs. Machine computers were used to design the first fusion bombs a decade later. I am not sure I would call that progress.


    As Chris Tinsley pointed out, very few fundamental new technology was invented after 1950. Nearly every major technology that we consider ultra-modern, from computers to lasers, transistors and spacecraft, was invented by 1950. Except DNA, from 1952. And cold fusion, of course. The people who invented all those things were educated in the 1920s, and they worked in the traditions of academic free enquiry that were still widespread in the 1920s. Less so now. We are still coasting along with the momentum from geniuses circa 1920.

  • They were pioneers and big theorists, but you are comparing modern research structures, equipments, labs of Nuclear Science and matter knowledge to those of one century ago. Incomparable.

    Do you think that in the 21 century the study of "condensed matter" is a field of which only cold fusionists are the edge of knowledge or researchers working on?

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