Team Google wants your opinion: "What is the highest priority experiment the LENR community wants to see conducted?"

    avatar-default.svg JedRothwell wrote: Here is another copy of that paper:

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


    That's not 'another' copy, it is the same one.

    avatar-default.svg JedRothwell wrote: The authors do not think you addressed them adequately, and neither do I. Let the reader decide.


    Of course not. Why would they. They successfully suppressed my response. However, for those who want to see it, they can read my whitepaper, which can be found as ref. #14 here: https://mathscholar.org/2019/0…-a-skeptical-perspective/

    THIS is why the SPAWAR results are so pivotal in being TG's most important experiment(s). If the results clearly support Kirk Shanahan's analysis of CF being a conglomeration of errors, then we can move on and stop wasting our time on CF. If, however, TG's results replicate and support all the SPAWAR data as published then the holy grail of CF should be pursued to market commercial devices. Simple as that, no grey areas.

    THHuxleynew

    Quote

    However Mizuno has a proven record in these experiments of conflating calculated and measured values in his spreadsheets.

    Perhaps so but it is hard to believe that errors (mistakes) due to this effect would not be more ragged and random in nature and Mizuno's data, if I understood correctly, is consistent over many tests.

    JedRothwell

    Quote

    More to the point, if you do not believe his account of the water bucket, you have no reason to believe his present reports.

    I am allergic to the word "believe." I do not put a high level of credibility on the bucket story. On the current story, I have many doubts. The reason I champion rapid testing is because the claim is relatively easy to test, corroborating results would be clear cut, and the consequences of a positive replication would be absolutely immense. I have no interest in the bucket controversy. The story and the arguments on both sides are convoluted, contrived and have been, for a long time, irrelevant.


    Quote

    If you do not believe the water bucket method, you should not criticize Shanahan for rejecting the present experiments. You should not tell him: "these can not be the result of a calibration shift sort of error."

    I remember kirkshanahan resisting the idea of specifying power and power ratio levels, a priori, at which his armamentarium of potential calibration shift related errors would no longer apply in a given experiment. I just wanted to confirm that there is no way such effects could apply to Mizuno's claimed results. That's all. Sometimes I do tend to reductio ad absurdum. I was toying with Shanahan to point out that there are in fact obvious regimes for which his CCS consideration doesn't apply. It should be possible to calculate at least approximately after getting experimental results whether such a shift can be a factor.


    Yes, the bucket story is an enigma. Now that you mention it, all it does is make me have greater doubts about Mizuno's current claims.


    kirkshanahan


    Quote

    SOT. I recommend you wait for replication on the recent Mizuno stuff. I am. My personal opinion, based on minimal study, is that Para should get a much bigger fan

    Agree. With both. As I noted before, size matters! But, speaking of fans, I am a big fan of yours and also of Para's. And I sort of like Jed too when he's not being such a crank.

    One reason independent replication is needed before anything unusual is believed is that, most of the time, unusual results are due to mistakes. They often look obvious in retrospect, but we are all human and teams are not immune room making them single researchers are much more likely to make them.


    Of course most people getting an apparent over unity reaction of this sort would double-check everything. LENR researchers who are sure they already have a working LENR effect will naturally not do this in the same way. There is no sign of such checking in the Mizuno paper - and sign of lack of care (the badly labelled spreadsheet columns). Of course how much everything was double checked only Mizuno would know.


    Anyway, double checked or not, individuals can easily make mistakes. Skeptics would say that the large collection of LENR claims in the literature divide nearly all between mistakes and faulty error analysis (such as Shanahan suggests one example of). Many LENR experiments do not have a complete error analysis in any case. Believers would reckon the large amount of heterogeneous data is unlikely to be so explicable reckoning in each case the chances of invalidation are small, and independent.


    Skeptics, again, would question both of those assumptions (thinking there are various mechanisms for systematic errors, and a high chance of error in published results). They would note the fact that it seems no LENR experiment can be devised that has a high probability of giving positive results, and that occasional positives can be mistakes.


    THH

    Don’t forget that it is possible to replicate the mistakes of others and end up with the same results, wrong as they may be. The use of 7 to 14 um band IR thermometry on an oxyhydrogen torch flame comes to mind.

    @SOT The Mizuno stuff is not F&P-type electrolysis, so my CCS/ATER or CCS/ATEC does not apply. On the other hand, it is a calibrated method. In fact, the base equation is the same as used by Storms in his flow calorimeter which I critiqued in my 2002 paper. So if anything changes between calibration and experimental runs, you could get a CCS. The mechanism will be different.


    In F&P-type cell calorimetry, like any other kind of experiment, the errors need to be quantitatively evaluated. You yourself have talked about 'night and day differences'. That's just saying the S/N ratio is large. What the CF community routinely does is hand-wave the magnitude of the errors, always to the small side, and end up claiming high S/N when it is likely it isn't (you can't _actually_ tell because they don't publish enough information). Then they refuse to check after the potential flaw is pointed out. That's a clear sign of pseudoscience. What gives anyone confidence Mizuno is any different today? He does no error analysis in his papers. Para at least did a small parametric study (I was shocked RB and Z46 let him get away with it actually), and concluded some interesting facts. Also Jack Cole had some good comments. I encourage more of that, especially from the 'names' of the field.

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    I am allergic to the word "believe." I do not put a high level of credibility on the bucket story. On the current story, I have many doubts.


    List three of them.



    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    The reason I champion rapid testing is because the claim is relatively easy to test . . .


    In what sense? If you mean it is easy to replicate, you are wrong. It is difficult to replicate. As I said, some highly qualified people are trying to replicate. I expect it will take them months or years. I hope it will not take as long as it took Mizuno.


    If you mean it can be tested by bringing another set of instruments into the lab, that has already been done. More than once. Most recently last month. All of the parameters were checked. For that matter, Mizuno himself measures power with three meters, the inlet temperature with 5 thermometers and an RTD; the outlet with 2 RTDs and various handheld thermometers; and the air flow rate with various techniques, as noted. So I think there is no possibility of an error. I think THH is off base thinking that 3 power meters of different types (actually 5 by now) all measure the same power to within a fraction of 1% but all of them are actually measuring 300 W as 50 W, and they all get exactly the same wrong answer. That seems highly unlikely, to say the least.


    Also, one of the people he sent reactors to told us last year that it is working. I don't have many other details, but that is encouraging. The other two people I know about have not tested them, so we can't draw any conclusions.



    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    I have no interest in the bucket controversy. The story and the arguments on both sides are convoluted, contrived and have been, for a long time, irrelevant.


    Not a bit convoluted. There is no simpler or more reliable method of calorimetry. Phase change was the first method used, by Lavoisier in 1780. It is still one the best. Nothing is contrived, and it is quite relevant.



    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    Yes, the bucket story is an enigma. Now that you mention it, all it does is make me have greater doubts about Mizuno's current claims.


    Everything about cold fusion is an enigma. If you don't believe the bucket experiment, you have no reason to believe the present experiment. The two are exactly as credible. The bucket method is better, as I said. No calibration needed. The heat of vaporization of water is well established.

    Quote from Dr Richard

    I agree, experimental errors are much more likely with a single experimenter making extraordinary observations - so results from a large body of work from multiple contributors would be preferable for TG replication.


    There is something to be said for that. Based on that criterion, you would do the bulk Pd-D electrolysis experiment, paying close attention to the "How To" paper by Storms. That takes a year or two. You may not be able to run the test at all even after a couple of years, if you do not find a suitable cathode. But at least you will know why you could not do it. Whereas in 1989, most people had no idea what sort of cathode they should use, or how to pretest cathodes to find a good one. Martin Fleischmann was telling them, but they did not listen. Ed Storms later told them. I do not know how many listened. I have no idea whether the people at Google read Ed's paper. They did not list it in the references.


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


    If you just start doing that experiment without the pretesting and without measuring the parameters Ed describes, you are working blind and wasting your time. You are shooting in the dark. As Ed says, that is like trying to find a semiconductor by testing random samples of gravel from your driveway.


    Plan B would be to ask Violante if he still has any cathodes. I don't know if he does, or if he can still make them. They are tough to work with. Kind of floppy. But anyway, the reportedly meet Ed's criteria, and McKubre reported good results with them.

    JedRothwell

    Quote

    List three of them.[doubts]


    If you insist! I was trying to stay away from this.


    1) The possibility of fraud


    2) The possibility of self delusion


    3) The possibility of a large systematic and consistent error (mistake) present in both the live experiment and the calibration runs


    Now I expect you will tell me all are impossible but if you expect me to argue about that, you have the wrong person.

    And BTW, I fervently hope none is the case. I am getting tired of being highly paid by the oil companies and George Soros to be a skeptic.

    THH, you talk as if this were 1995 when the LENR claim was just being explored. Now 30 years later, the situation has changed. Now hundreds of examples of excess energy and nuclear products have been reported, with the many examples of the amount of helium correlating almost exactly with the amount of energy. Yes, the effect is difficult to cause, but not impossible. I have caused it many times. I suggest you read

    Storms, E. K. The status of cold fusion (2010). Naturwissenschaften 2010, 97, 861 and Storms, E. The Present Status of Cold Fusion and its Expected Influence on Science and Technology Innovative Energy Policies 2015, 4 (1). The issue is no longer whether LENR is caused by mistakes. The question is, "What is the cause of this very real and important source of clean energy"? As long as the claim is subjected to the kind of evaluation you are making, it will never be accepted and properly explored. We need to find out why it is so difficult to cause, not use that difficulty to question the competence of the people who report the effect. Mizuno is not a novice. He has worked in this field for many years. Yes, he can make mistakes, but not at the level that would invalidate his claim for making excess energy. What he caused to happen in the material needs to be duplicated. Whether replicating his exact treatment is the best approach is a matter of opinion. Rather than focusing on whether LENR is real, we need to concentrate on learning how it works.


    Seven of twenty, as for the need to understand LENR before it can be replicated, I suggest this phenomenon is different than any other. First of all, it can be considered impossible based on common experience and conventional nuclear theory. That is one reason it is so commonly rejected. This situation makes any effort to understand the process very difficult and opens the door to crazy ideas. Second, the process requires a very special condition in a chemical structure to function. At the present time, the nature of this condition and how it can be created is not commonly understood. Therefore, the important variables controlling the process are unknown hence cannot be controlled. For example, I believe gaps of a critical dimension are required while another popular theory claims that the fcc structure must first convert to a different crystal structure. Consequently, depending which theory is correct, entirely different treatments would have to be applied during an effort to replicate. Unless a researcher has applied the correct condition, either by accident or on purpose, the replication would fail. The difficult in causing LENR shows just how critical this required condition must be. Most natural phenomenon will function over a range of conditions, allowing them to be caused with relative ease. Not so with LENR. This phenomenon obviously has a very narrow range of conditions allowing it to function. That fact needs to be acknowledged.

    Storms

    Quote

    Seven of twenty, as for the need to understand LENR before it can be replicated, I suggest this phenomenon is different than any other. First of all, it can be considered impossible based on common experience and conventional nuclear theory. That is one reason it is so commonly rejected. This situation makes any effort to understand the process very difficult and opens the door to crazy ideas. Second, the process requires a very special condition in a chemical structure to function. At the present time, the nature of this condition and how it can be created is not commonly understood. Therefore, the important variables controlling the process are unknown hence cannot be controlled. For example, I believe gaps of a critical dimension are required while another popular theory claims that the fcc structure must first convert to a different crystal structure. Consequently, depending which theory is correct, entirely different treatments would have to be applied during an effort to replicate. Unless a researcher has applied the correct condition, either by accident or on purpose, the replication would fail. The difficult in causing LENR shows just how critical this required condition must be. Most natural phenomenon will function over a range of conditions, allowing them to be caused with relative ease. Not so with LENR. This phenomenon obviously has a very narrow range of conditions allowing it to function. That fact needs to be acknowledged.


    Thanks for those details. A relative of mine teaches astrophysics and specializes in metal formation in stars. I am not a physicist though I often work with physicists and engineers. My relative and I had a long discussion about LENR and the Coulomb Barrier at the time when Rossi was being skeptically discussed (around 2013). My relative had strong doubts about Rossi's claims in particular and he was skeptical that cold fusion had been achieved at all based on his experience and background but without studying cold fusion itself or making more than back-of-envelope type calculations.


    It certainly makes sense that if LENR occurs, it does so within very specialized conditions. But fusion at other than star level mass, temperature and pressure (or bombs) is not unknown. As you know, there is muon-catalyzed fusion which is real without a doubt. And the Farnsworth Fusor, while it is not cold fusion, proves that fusion can be achieved with an essentially desktop device. So I appreciate what you wrote and thank you for it. One of my points has been that one can be skeptical of Rossi and other claims for cold fusion without assuming that it is impossible.


    Dr. Mizuno's protocol, nonetheless, seems ironclad, barring one of the three problems I alluded to above or maybe some that other people can add. His data certainly look as clean as could be because of the high power level and power ratio and the consistent Joule heat-based calibrations. I guess we will learn fairly soon if it is straightforward to duplicate or if some of the considerations you mentioned above or my concerns are going to shoot down the experiments. I understand your point about how theory can direct experiments but in this case the experiment has already been done and has been well documented. While knowledge of theory might add to the chance of success, I can't agree if you're saying such knowledge is essential for it. The reports from Jed and Mizuno and their offers to help further and even to supply tested reactors, in my view, amount to a cookbook. And you don't have to be a chemist to make a redoubtable souffle.


    I'd like to think that the level of evidence now is much higher than then as you say.


    My difficulty is that when challenged as in this thread to find an experiment that if replicated independently is likely to give positive results the top options here don't look great? Perhaps people here are being too pessimistic.


    Quantity of evidence is no substitute for quality of evidence, because for the various reasons suggested a certain false positive rate is expected.

    @Jed Rothwell - No, I was advocating the co-deposition experiments rather than bulk Pd cathodes, which gets round the cathode materials (Trace elements etc) and D-loading issues - TG's replication of Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Forsley, Miles, Hagelstein etc body of work as reviewed in:

    https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MarwanJanewlookat.pdf
    If they come up negative as Kirk Shanahan's analysis predicts then that will be the end of CF - whilst a negative replication of Mizuno's claims would still leave room for doubt either way.
    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    1) The possibility of fraud


    2) The possibility of self delusion


    3) The possibility of a large systematic and consistent error (mistake) present in both the live experiment and the calibration runs


    1. I don't see any motive for this. How would fraud play out? It isn't like he could make any money from fraud, the way Rossi did. All these people are trying to replicate. If it is fraud, they will fail, and he will be forgotten. Imagine if Rossi had published a detailed description, sent out prepared material, and no one had replicated him. How would he have credibility? How would he collect millions? His method depended on no one learning anything and no attempts to replicate.


    If it is fraud, he now has other people in on the game. One who claims to have replicated, and two who visited the lab and said they confirmed the measurements with their own instruments. (That is, input power, inlet and outlet temperature, and air flow rate.) So, it is a growing conspiracy, which makes it hard to maintain. As they say in the Mafia, three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.


    If you can come up with a plausible scenario in which he might benefit from fraud, your hypothesis would be stronger. It was clear how Rossi did that. No one is offering Mizuno millions of dollars. Not at present, anyway, and I doubt anyone will unless he is independently replicated.


    2. Seems ruled out by the independent confirmations. You can't fool six power meters, several thermocouples, and three anemometers. They do not self-delude. That's the beauty of instruments. They can be wrong, so it is always a good idea to check one against another, or several others. That's what he and his visitors did.


    3. What possibility? Of what systematic error? Cold fusion is enigma, but air flow calorimetry is used worldwide thousands of times a day. It is well understood. The methods and equations are in countless textbooks and web sites. Things like the traverse tests are right out of the textbooks and HVAC instrument demonstration videos. Everyone who has looked that experiment has used on-line references and tools such as this, to check the numbers:


    https://www.engineeringtoolbox…ting-equations-d_747.html


    https://www.engineering.com/calculators/airflow.htm


    Just saying "there may be an error" is not a falsifiable assertion. It applies equally well to every experiment in history, going back to Newton's prism. You have to say what error there might be, or your claim cannot be tested or refuted.


    THH says that several power meters of different types might measure power going into a resistance heater wrong, seeing 300 W as 50 W. They all get the same answer, and all are wrong, to the exact same extent. Okay, we can debate that. It seems implausible. I do not think anyone who knows about digital power meters would agree. But anyway, it can be debated and discussed with reference to what is known about power meters. Whereas your assertion that there might be an unnamed error somewhere cannot be debated.

    Quote from kirkshanahan

    While you're at it, don't forget to look at:


    K. L. Shanahan

    "Comments on ‘Thermal Behavior of Polarized Pd/D Electrodes Prepared by Co-Deposition’",

    Thermochim. Acta, Vol. 428, pp. 207-212 (2005).


    Hi Kirk,

    thanks for the tip. Your paper confirms that the 2004 article from Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles, and Fleischmann is an important milestone in the development of the CF affair.


    I think that the "positive feedback" played a central role in this story, therefore I agree in particular with this phrase of yours: "As well, both the ‘proof’ of a positive feedback relationship and that of a heat-after-death condition are singular examples. Replication is required to prove the observed events are not random coincidences. Replication would also demonstrate control of the effect, which is missing to date."


    The Google initiative is a unique opportunity, probably the last one, to replicate the F&P experiments, in particular the "1992 boil-off experiment", and deeply investigate the mechanism of the "positive feedback". Undoubtedly, their experts are able to replicate this phenomenon on a regular basis and they will be able to solve the CF cold case once and for all.

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    Dr. Mizuno's protocol, nonetheless, seems ironclad,

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    And you don't have to be a chemist to make a redoubtable souffle.

    For the Mizuno souffle

    You need a 316ss reactor with Pd burnished Ni mesh pretreated to remove impurities and induce microcracks

    plus a whiff of deuterium gas and a calorimetry system which won't quench the cooking

    plus few other minutiae such as a mass spec (available from HomeMart?)


    .. an iron skillet won't do. and not just any one can do


    Runaway rhetoric is fine for LF and an ordinary soufflé.

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