What should we do next ? - A relevant question from Matt Trevithick

Does this paper by Google accomplish ANYTHING useful? Okay, so they developed new calorimeters. Cool. But was it actually useful or helpful to publish this work in the context of LENR research? Go ahead and publish a paper about your calorimetry, tell us about the good science you did, that's all great. But nobody needs another CalTech / MIT / Harwell. This does nothing to help science or the world, AT ALL. This is another PR attack on the LENR field. Google has the resources to leapfrog everyone in this field, so it benefits them to come out with a smear campaign to ensure independent LENR groups will continue to struggle.

EDIT:

Isn't this obvious? David Nygren does this community have stockholm syndrome? Why are we welcoming people who are working to hold us back?

I'm fully agree with you, already have done the same analysis since a while..

However why didn't you asked directly Carl Page at his ICCF ?

This deal was the consequence of his choices, no ?

In parallel, why he supports Brillouin ? Why he is close to Darden who failed too ?

You should investigate in this way, i suggest rather..

Quote from Rob

Does this paper by Google accomplish ANYTHING useful? Okay, so they developed new calorimeters. Cool. But was it actually useful or helpful to publish this work in the context of LENR research? Go ahead and publish a paper about your calorimetry, tell us about the good science you did, that's all great.

Quote from JedRothwell

Did he say that? That's silly. He is right that you can publish in Nature, but only if you meet four conditions:

1. You have to be with a very large, wealthy, influential place like Google.
2. You have to get a negative result, or a result you can describe as negative, even if it is actually positive. This is how MIT and CalTech managed to publish.
3. You have let the editors at Nature change you paper to remove nearly all useful information and make the result seem even worse than it was.
4. You have to agree that Nature will publish an accompanying editorial trashing your research and implying that others in your field are criminals and lunatics.

I have only met Trevethick a few times. I think McKubre and others have a favorable opinion of him. I do not know why, or what he might have done to deserve that, but as I said I know practically nothing about him, so he may have a done many good things. Perhaps the Nature publication is mainly the fault of Nature editors. I wouldn't know.

When he says the community "cannot or will not teach," I think he is partially right. Many researchers have held back results. Others have not made an effort to publish good papers. Some are incapable of writing good papers. No one knows that more than I do, since I have copy edited 297 papers, and there are about 100 more that should have been copy-edited, but the authors refused to let anyone help. Also, people cannot help much because they do not know much. There are many more unanswered questions in cold fusion than there are well-established facts.

JedRothwell Is there any incentive for these people to work harder at collaboration? Are they receiving any funding, or is everyone working from their own personal funds? Is there any payoff for writing a good paper? Or would it make more sense to work in isolation and aim for commercialization? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the community seems to be stuck in a catch-22. There's no rewards for sharing their work, it simply takes away from time they could be spending on their own research, and the only real payoff will come from commercial success. And we have these critics who are blasting the community for this situation, but the critics themselves created this situation! Am I wrong?

Quote from Cydonia

I'm fully agree with you, already have done the same analysis since a while..

However why didn't you asked directly Carl Page at his ICCF ?

This deal was the consequence of his choices, no ?

In parallel, why he supports Brillouin ? Why he is close to Darden who failed too ?

You should investigate in this way, i suggest rather..

I didn't know any of this at ICCF-24. I didn't see Matt's ICCF-23 presentation until the last month or so. I'm a newcomer to the LENR scene, I'm working on this project on the side (I have a day job), and most of my time right now is dedicated to processing all the events of 1989 into a clear documentary with strong citations and an appropriately broad perspective – meaning, I'm not limiting my explanation to physics alone. That would not explain how we wound up in the paradoxical state that so many smart scientists are so incapable or unwilling to approach this subject without bias and see the evidence for what it is. To do that, we need a broader, historical and sociological perspective.

If I get the opportunity to ask Carl, that would be cool. My impression is that Carl didn't have much – if any – influence over the design of the study and how Matt was approaching this. Maybe in the future Carl could request that Google do a better job of selecting researchers who are known to be trustworthy, and who have already demonstrated an ability to run a successful LENR experiment. Obviously, the co-deposition approach would have been the clear winner of the selection process. Matt had the option to pick better approaches, so either he purposely chose not to, or he's clueless. Which is it? I want to know.

Have there been any critiques of the Google paper?

EDIT:
I should probably clarify something. I was only casually aware of LENR since sometime around 2008. A few years later I volunteered whatever I could offer to the team at Brillouin, and their request was that I make a theory explainer for them. This is the video I made. It could have come out better if I could have had more time, be even still, I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish for them.

Quite a few years past since that time, and I had expected that LENR would have broken through to the mainstream by now. Since that hasn't happened, I've come up with a new idea and so now I'm trying to become much more in touch with what's going on in this field, and why.

Quote from Rob

Is there any incentive for these people to work harder at collaboration? Are they receiving any funding, or is everyone working from their own personal funds? Is there any payoff for writing a good paper? Or would it make more sense to work in isolation and aim for commercialization?

To answer your last question first: There is no chance that an individual working in isolation will achieve commercialization. That is about as likely as a person working at home, with his own money, launching a rocket to the moon.

To answer the other questions:

They should work harder at collaboration if they want to succeed. Collaboration with people who have suitcases full of money is the only way forward. Scientific research is expensive.

Most are not receiving any funding as far as I know. Personal funds only. They are also not getting anywhere, because they have no money or modern instruments. It takes them a year to do what should be done in weeks.

Without good papers they will never attract funding, or gain any recognition. They will die and be forgotten. In science, you have to communicate your results. People cannot know by ESP what you have done. Nowadays the internet is flooded with millions of scientific paper, so it is difficult attract attention. But if you don't even try, you will not succeed. It is like hoping to win the lottery when you do not even buy a ticket.

It is not quite as difficult to attract attention as it might seem, because people do come to LENR-CANR.org and other sites looking for information on cold fusion. They read well written papers. They do not read poorly written papers. I can tell how many copies of papers people download, although not the ones in JCMNS issues. I can only see the entire issue being downloaded, in most cases.

Quote from JedRothwell

To answer your last question first: There is no chance that an individual working in isolation will achieve commercialization. That is about as likely as a person working at home, with his own money, launching a rocket to the moon.

To answer the other questions:

They should work harder at collaboration if they want to succeed. Collaboration with people who have suitcases full of money is the only way forward. Scientific research is expensive.

Most are not receiving any funding as far as I know. Personal funds only. They are also not getting anywhere, because they have no money or modern instruments. It takes them a year to do what should be done in weeks.

Without good papers they will never attract funding, or gain any recognition. They will die and be forgotten. In science, you have to communicate your results. People cannot know by ESP what you have done. Nowadays the internet is flooded with millions of scientific paper, so it is difficult attract attention. But if you don't even try, you will not succeed. It is like hoping to win the lottery when you do not even buy a ticket.

It is not quite as difficult to attract attention as it might seem, because people do come to LENR-CANR.org and other sites looking for information on cold fusion. They read well written papers. They do not read poorly written papers. I can tell how many copies of papers people download, although not the ones in JCMNS issues. I can only see the entire issue being downloaded, in most cases.

Display More

I partially agree, and partially disagree. When I say "work in isolation", I don't mean strict isolation. What I've observed is that scientists in this field work primarily in isolation to build demos, and use these demos to convince investors. This process doesn't require collaboration, or expending time on writing good papers. The reason scientists write good papers and develop novel discoveries and techniques is because they have a stable job at a university. Take that away and what do you have? The field is forced into an undesirable situation where it will only attract scientific risk takers. And if your only payoff comes from demonstrating your idea works, the review and revision process is a costly waste of time which risks helping your competition copy your work.

Investors don't invest in good science papers, they invest in results. They invest in demos.

All that being said, I agree with you that there are incentives to doing good science, attracting collaborators via your published work, and getting useful feedback. I'm simply outlining my views on why some portion of the community may not feel incentivized to write good papers, and I think only an empathetic perspective like this will get us out of this mess.

Matt Trevithick never had a background in LENRs. He was in a way as project manager commissioned by Carl Page probably. That's why his tech mentor has always been mcKubre, a very overrated guy, in my mind.

However, TG's investigations have not been fully negatives, they have at least demonstrated that a "screening effect" alone was not sufficient.

However, if you think that TG has spent money sterilely, know that elsewhere in the world, sometimes this is the case too. In Europe, there is the Hermes project for example. Regarding Matt Trevithick, I remember having a good laugh when Hagelstein "bugged" him about the "Parkhomov" type replications at the last ICCF. Now so many around the world attempted the same way....

Quote from Rob

I didn't know any of this at ICCF-24. I didn't see Matt's ICCF-23 presentation until the last month or so. I'm a newcomer to the LENR scene, I'm working on this project on the side (I have a day job), and most of my time right now is dedicated to processing all the events of 1989 into a clear documentary with strong citations and an appropriately broad perspective – meaning, I'm not limiting my explanation to physics alone. That would not explain how we wound up in the paradoxical state that so many smart scientists are so incapable or unwilling to approach this subject without bias and see the evidence for what it is. To do that, we need a broader, historical and sociological perspective.

If I get the opportunity to ask Carl, that would be cool. My impression is that Carl didn't have much – if any – influence over the design of the study and how Matt was approaching this. Maybe in the future Carl could request that Google do a better job of selecting researchers who are known to be trustworthy, and who have already demonstrated an ability to run a successful LENR experiment. Obviously, the co-deposition approach would have been the clear winner of the selection process. Matt had the option to pick better approaches, so either he purposely chose not to, or he's clueless. Which is it? I want to know.

Have there been any critiques of the Google paper?

EDIT:
I should probably clarify something. I was only casually aware of LENR since sometime around 2008. A few years later I volunteered whatever I could offer to the team at Brillouin, and their request was that I make a theory explainer for them. This is the video I made. It could have come out better if I could have had more time, be even still, I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish for them.

Quite a few years past since that time, and I had expected that LENR would have broken through to the mainstream by now. Since that hasn't happened, I've come up with a new idea and so now I'm trying to become much more in touch with what's going on in this field, and why.

Display More

Rob, I think you need to realize that this thread is rather old, first than anything, and that back then we engaged with Threvithick in an attempt to help them find a reference experiment, which failed because neither we could achieve a consensus, nor “Google team” was really interested in the research that already exists.

Quote from Cydonia

Matt Trevithick never had a background in LENRs. He was in a way as project manager commissioned by Carl Page probably. That's why his tech mentor has always been mcKubre, a very overrated guy, in my mind.

However, TG's investigations have not been fully negatives, they have at least demonstrated that a "screening effect" alone was not sufficient.

However, if you think that TG has spent money sterilely, know that elsewhere in the world, sometimes this is the case too. In Europe, there is the Hermes project for example. Regarding Matt Trevithick, I remember having a good laugh when Hagelstein "bugged" him about the "Parkhomov" type replications at the last ICCF. Now so many around the world attempted the same way....

Actually, as I recall it, Matt is a student of Peter Haglestein.

Quote from Curbina

Rob, I think you need to realize that this thread is rather old, first than anything, and that back then we engaged with Threvithick in an attempt to help them find a reference experiment, which failed because neither we could achieve a consensus, nor “Google team” was really interested in the research that already exists.

Exactly, they weren't interested in the research that already exists. Any COMPETENT engineer, or scientist, would know that you should always start a line of investigation from a position of something that is KNOWN TO WORK. This is an indication of either intentional failure, or total incompetence.

I'm sorry I wasn't around earlier, I would have liked to have been present for those original conversations.

Quote from JedRothwell

Collaboration with people who have suitcases full of money is the only way forward. Scientific research is expensive.

Like Chris Sacca and LowerCarbonCapital

currently funding much R&D between hot fusion and coffee

Maybe there is room for LENR before the money runs out

but the LENR scientists need to communicate

in the right "kickass" language..

At least one of LCC...Dr Chang was high up in ARPA

Team - Lowercarbon Capital

The DNA behind the Lowercarbon DNA.

lowercarboncapital.com

TechCrunch is part of the Yahoo family of brands

"

Were you consulted by anyone in Washington?

We weren’t. Actually, I have an allergy to Washington.

One of the reasons we started Lowercarbon was after years of basically rebuilding the democratic tech stack, I got a little burned out by a process that’s so many degrees removed from the ultimate solution.

So we built Lowercarbon to say, look, we can build climate solutions now, where it’s up to us to deliver something that consumers and businesses want to buy from us. If we have any relationship with government, it’s government as a buyer.

If free money falls out of the sky, we’ll take it, but everything we’ve done now makes sense

because the unit economics are there to go ahead and compete head to toe

with products that are predicated on petroleum.

It was actually just a bonus that the IRA got passed, but we weren’t counting on it.

Quote

there is and remains, a heated debate in the LENR community, about the degree to which anomalous effects have already been proven. But for everyone that says they are proven, please show me and others, the truly independent replications, uh, we were not able to find them. In fact, it was our experience that the LENR community either cannot teach, or will not teach, and that the failure to share the best of what is known, has impeded scientific progress.

Seems like he's placing the blame for the failure of the LENR research entirely on the LENR research community itself.

But I see about ~22-ish replications from 1989 alone, between the months of March and June. This is what I have in my notes, from Krivit's chronology in Fusion Fiasco, and from Lewenstein's Cornell Cold Fusion archive.

1. Apr 2, Csikai and Sztaricskai in Hungary confirm neutrons
2. Apr 10, Team at Texas A&M confirms excess heat
3. Apr 12, Kuzmin at University of Moscow confirms F&P effect
4. Apr 13, Washington University students confirm tritium
5. Apr 17, Walling & Simons report helium-4
6. Apr 17, Comenius University in Czechoslovakia confirm F&P effect
7. Apr 18, ENEA-Frascati confirm neutrons
8. Apr 18, University of Mexico confirm F&P effect
9. Apr 18, Stanford University confirms excess heat
10. Apr 19, University of São Paulo confirms neutrons
11. Apr 19, Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research confirm neutrons
12. Apr 20, University of Florida confirm tritium
13. Apr 20, Technical University in Dresden confirm neutrons
14. Apr 21, Institute of Space Research in São Jose dos Campos confirms helium-3
15. Apr 22, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology confirm excess heat, helium & tritium (two teams)
16. Apr 25, Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research confirm heat & neutrons
17. Apr 25, Texas A&M letter to Congress confirms excess heat
18. Apr 27, Case Western Reserve University confirms excess heat
19. Apr 27, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay confirms excess heat
20. May 3, Texas A&M confirms excess heat
21. May 23, Manne Siegbahn Institute for Physics in Sweden confirm neutrons
22. Jun 9, LANL validates Bockris / Texas A&M tritium
23. Jun 23, Storms & Talcott at LANL confirm tritium

What I conclude from all of this, is the Matt Trevithick either CANNOT READ, OR WILL NOT READ.

Well on your side, you blame MT for myself i'm rather thinking that the community wasted too many years with the chemistry way, this is another reading.

Quote from Rob

External Content www.youtube.com

Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.

Display all external content

Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

Seems like he's placing the blame for the failure of the LENR research entirely on the LENR research community itself.

But I see about ~22-ish replications from 1989 alone, between the months of March and June. This is what I have in my notes, from Krivit's chronology in Fusion Fiasco, and from Lewenstein's Cornell Cold Fusion archive.

1. Apr 2, Csikai and Sztaricskai in Hungary confirm neutrons
2. Apr 10, Team at Texas A&M confirms excess heat
3. Apr 12, Kuzmin at University of Moscow confirms F&P effect
4. Apr 13, Washington University students confirm tritium
5. Apr 17, Walling & Simons report helium-4
6. Apr 17, Comenius University in Czechoslovakia confirm F&P effect
7. Apr 18, ENEA-Frascati confirm neutrons
8. Apr 18, University of Mexico confirm F&P effect
9. Apr 18, Stanford University confirms excess heat
10. Apr 19, University of São Paulo confirms neutrons
11. Apr 19, Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research confirm neutrons
12. Apr 20, University of Florida confirm tritium
13. Apr 20, Technical University in Dresden confirm neutrons
14. Apr 21, Institute of Space Research in São Jose dos Campos confirms helium-3
15. Apr 22, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology confirm excess heat, helium & tritium (two teams)
16. Apr 25, Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research confirm heat & neutrons
17. Apr 25, Texas A&M letter to Congress confirms excess heat
18. Apr 27, Case Western Reserve University confirms excess heat
19. Apr 27, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay confirms excess heat
20. May 3, Texas A&M confirms excess heat
21. May 23, Manne Siegbahn Institute for Physics in Sweden confirm neutrons
22. Jun 9, LANL validates Bockris / Texas A&M tritium
23. Jun 23, Storms & Talcott at LANL confirm tritium

What I conclude from all of this, is the Matt Trevithick either CANNOT READ, OR WILL NOT READ.

Display More

Rob I think most of us here have overcome already that sentiment. Most of us here are aware Cold Fusion was given an improper treatment. That’s history, is well documented, and everyone interested and involved seriously and without a hidden agenda will agree with this.

On the other side, General non specialist perceptions and public perceptions are hard to change.

Trevithick and team google did as many others before did when presented evidence, they entered skeptic and fulfilled their own prophesy.

I would like to direct your attention to people with a complete different attitude. Dr. Luciano Ondir Freire, Nuclear Engineering researcher from Brasil, presented a poster at ICCF 23 and he took an active participation in many of the Q&A sessions after the presentations. I have engaged him on ResearchGate, and I congratulated him for his interest in this field, and he point blank told me he wanted to devote the rest of his career to this field. He has already published some papers, one in particular in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, that IMHO can be considered as a rebuttal to the Nature 2019 from Team Google, and that several months ago was one of the most read articles on that Journal (we mentioned it in one of our newsletters). This is the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/…cle/pii/S1572665721008973

Quote from Curbina

Rob I think most of us here have overcome already that sentiment. Most of us here are aware Cold Fusion was given an improper treatment. That’s history, is well documented, and everyone interested and involved seriously and without a hidden agenda will agree with this.

On the other side, General non specialist perceptions and public perceptions are hard to change.

Trevithick and team google did as many others before did when presented evidence, they entered skeptic and fulfilled their own prophesy.

I would like to direct your attention to people with a complete different attitude. Dr. Luciano Ondir Freire, Nuclear Engineering researcher from Brasil, presented a poster at ICCF 23 and he took an active participation in many of the Q&A sessions after the presentations. I have engaged him on ResearchGate, and I congratulated him for his interest in this field, and he point blank told me he wanted to devote the rest of his career to this field. He has already published some papers, one in particular in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, that IMHO can be considered as a rebuttal to the Nature 2019 from Team Google, and that several months ago was one of the most read articles on that Journal (we mentioned it in one of our newsletters). This is the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/…cle/pii/S1572665721008973

Display More

Ah yes! I've been skimming this paper for the last several weeks. I was planning on using this heavily in my video.

Quote from Rob

Any COMPETENT engineer, or scientist, would know that you should always start a line of investigation from a position of something that is KNOWN TO WORK.

That's true. The problem is that the Pd-D electrochemical method is known to work, but it is very difficult to replicate and the success rate is low. Sort of low. That depends on how you measure it. If you measure starting with ~100 samples of Pd, the success rate is usually 0% to 5%. See the Storms "How To" paper. If you start with the 5 samples that passed the tests, the success rate is probably 100%. The problem is that it takes a year or two to test 100 samples. It could be automated, in which case it would take a month or two I guess, depending the automatic machines.

Quote from Rob

What I've observed is that scientists in this field work primarily in isolation to build demos, and use these demos to convince investors.

I am sorry to say that most of the ones I know refuse to do demos. They should do them, but they don't. I wouldn't know if a demo would convince an investor, but it wouldn't hurt.

Quote from Rob

Investors don't invest in good science papers, they invest in results. They invest in demos.

It has to start with a good paper. An investor is not going to go see a demo without first learning what the researcher has done. The only way to learn is to read a paper. The paper also tells you the researcher is competent and not crazy. The LEC papers tell you that Gordon and Whitehouse are competent. Rossi's "papers" (his web page) tell you that he is crazy. Or a scoundrel. Or both.

Quote from Rob

Any COMPETENT engineer, or scientist, would know that you should always start a line of investigation from a position of something that is KNOWN TO WORK.

I said that the Pd-D method is known to work. If I were coming into the field today, I would say the LEC is promising. I would start with that, because it seems much easier. It is not as certainly KNOWN TO WORK as much as Pd-D, but it is getting close. Another 5 or 10 quality replications will make it certain, in my opinion. But that is my opinion -- not a quantitative fact. What constitutes "enough replications" or "high enough s/n ratio to be sure" is a value judgement. Up to some point. After you exceed 10 or 20 clearcut, quality replications it becomes irrational to doubt a result.

Quote from Curbina

Trevithick and team google did as many others before did when presented evidence, they entered skeptic and fulfilled their own prophesy.

I hesitate to criticize Trevithick et al. McKubre and others think highly of them. I do not know what they did. The Nature paper did not reveal much. Based on the paper, they did not do a good job, but perhaps the paper was rewritten by the editors at Nature to make it look that way. I don't know enough about Nature and their editorial policies to judge.

I agree with Peter Hagelstein that they did the Parkhomov experiment more times than they should have.

Quote from Curbina

Rob I think most of us here have overcome already that sentiment. Most of us here are aware Cold Fusion was given an improper treatment. That’s history, is well documented, and everyone interested and involved seriously and without a hidden agenda will agree with this.

On the other side, General non specialist perceptions and public perceptions are hard to change.

Trevithick and team google did as many others before did when presented evidence, they entered skeptic and fulfilled their own prophesy.

I would like to direct your attention to people with a complete different attitude. Dr. Luciano Ondir Freire, Nuclear Engineering researcher from Brasil, presented a poster at ICCF 23 and he took an active participation in many of the Q&A sessions after the presentations. I have engaged him on ResearchGate, and I congratulated him for his interest in this field, and he point blank told me he wanted to devote the rest of his career to this field. He has already published some papers, one in particular in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, that IMHO can be considered as a rebuttal to the Nature 2019 from Team Google, and that several months ago was one of the most read articles on that Journal (we mentioned it in one of our newsletters). This is the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/…cle/pii/S1572665721008973

Display More

I read with pleasure the article by Freire Luciano Ondir “Critical Survey on Cold Fusion: Aneutronic Chain Reactions or Collective Effects? ". The phenomenon which interests us is in truth at the same time an aneutronic chain reaction and a Collective Effect.

And like many collective effects, it is observable, but very difficult to theorize.

This is very good, because I am not a theoretician.

To take an example, do you believe that the engineers of NASA space probes calculate their trajectory in advance, taking into account the influence of the Earth, the Sun, the planets they will cross, to arrive near the asteroid they are aiming for, in the dark of space?

It may be possible, but it remains to invent the multidimensional mathematics capable of carrying out such a calculation. (Solving the 3-Body problem) No, actually, the guys at NASA are doing it like the amateurs on that hit space program whose name I forgot tonight – oh yes, it comes to mind: “Kerbal Space Program” – They calculate the closest massive body effect, and then they aim for stars with solar sensors and do trajectory correction.

Well, LENRs are the same: there is no way to calculate the interactions in a diafluid phase in advance. You just have to experiment by trial and errors.

Quote from JedRothwell

That's true. The problem is that the Pd-D electrochemical method is known to work, but it is very difficult to replicate and the success rate is low. Sort of low. That depends on how you measure it. If you measure starting with ~100 samples of Pd, the success rate is usually 0% to 5%. See the Storms "How To" paper. If you start with the 5 samples that passed the tests, the success rate is probably 100%. The problem is that it takes a year or two to test 100 samples. It could be automated, in which case it would take a month or two I guess, depending the automatic machines.

(1) Staker claims 100% excess heat following his method. So either his calorimetry is flaky, or that is a counterexample to what you say.

(2) Well the LENR field could do these tests, provide "good" electrodes to those pesky people who run high quality excess heat from electrolysis replications but would otherwise blacken the field by YANRing. and this could be a source of superpower Pd for the replicable electrolysis GOAT Jed is going to provide three candidates for.