If you think cold fusion is easy to replicate, or that someone claimed it is easy, or that being easy or hard has any bearing on whether it exists . . . you have no idea what you are talking about.
The LEC may be easier to replicate. Mizuno and I hoped that his experiment would be easier to replicate than the original F&P experiment. I think it was, but not as much as we hoped. However, being easy or hard has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is scientifically proven.
The LEC is something of a mystery but I fail to see what connection it has with LENR?
Mizuno's experiments, if replicable with careful documentation and methodology, would be real proof. It is a shame that this has not yet happened.
The original F&P experiment was replicated at ~180 labs (Storms book). Anyone who says that is not enough is irrational. Such people would not be satisfied with 1,000 replications, or 10,000. I'm lookin' at you, THH.
The original F&P experiment was highly uncertain - which is why those 180 labs did not continue to do CF work - they did not believe the results were best explained by novel nuclear activity.
That may be right or wrong - but it is uncertain.
The experiment described in the Simplicity paper is also highly uncertain - for the reasons Ascoli points out.
They used different cell geometries, different kinds of calorimeters and so on. Some used closed cells. However, these replications produced the same results.
The experiments all produced quantitatively different results, with the better controlled experiments producing much lower COP than the more poorly controlled ones. The fact that results were so different, and also different between different cells for the same experimenter, shows either irreproducibility or uncertainty - take your pick.
Those supporting LENR as an explanation for this as always have to assume LENR effects are inherently difficult to reproduce precisely, and sensitive to uncontrollabel (or at least not controlled) factors. While that may be true (and can never be disproved) it also makes the evidence less convincing.
I think it important to note that it was the process that was replicated, not every physical detail in every case. People add their own flourishes inevitably. But this makes the case stronger in that nobody (even THH) could reasonably claim that every one of these experiments showed the same schoolboy errors.
Well Shanahan claimed that these experiments (or at least a very large number of them) did show two errors:
(1) Incorrect calculation of experimental error in the case the COP is close to 1 due to calibration constant error. Not everyone did this (I think?) but certainly many did. That is a schoolboy error but one easy for calorimetrists to make because COP ~ 1 is not a very usual calorimetry condition.
(2) ATER - which, rather like LENR - remains uncertain. What is certain is that those experimenters did not consider the possibility of differential D/H ATER.
The mistake here is to assume that a large number of variable results all positive in a binary sense but without quantitative characterisation. In other words they agree over a binary hypothesis "more heat out than in" and nothing else - reinforce a hypothesis. They do not, because "more heat out than in will occur half the time and any experimenter showing less heat out than in will check everything till that no longer appears to be the acse. Any non-LENR experimenter will put similar effort into the more heat out than in case. However an LENR experimenter will check the obvious things and then reckon they have evidence of LENR. Taht is a recipe for very many experiments generating false positives. Note that those 180 labs with positives were not all of teh labs replicating. Some labs found nothing.
So - we have two potential systematic errors not considered (and even when raised by Shanahan they were still not in the literature addressed). We have a prediction - COP > 1, which is so vague that we expect half of experiments with difficult to find errors to satisfy it.
My stance here, which seems unpopular, is that addressed by one of the ICCF24 talks. It is a coherent and arguable stance - as that speaker pointed out. Those wanting to change skeptics minds could, as that speaker noted, try to find an experiment which is both certain and reproducible.
I actually think that is what has mostly happened. Reproducible experiments get made more certain, certain experiments get replicated in the hope they will be replicable. It is just that the results are not good. I await with great interest more info on the excess Tritium results. The experimenters know what is needed, in clear written form, to answer my 1, 2a,b,c etc (when I say mine I think 2c was down to Jed). And of course they can reference and engage with the material from the very useful much older papers on measuring Tritium, showing that they have exercised similar care and cross-checking - though since their apparent results are significantly larger they will have an easier time of it than those early researchers did.
Let me take as an example where efforts have been made but not succeeded Clean Planet. They claim a large excess heat effect which is reproducible. They have reproduced it. However in their published data which I have been given linked here they have not made the data less certain by closing possible obvious loopholes even when it would be quite easy to do that, and they have repeated experiments.
Maybe they are unusual - the "less convincing" end of modern experiments. What annoys me is that many here seem to think them the mots convincing end of the modern experimental work.
