Does ultrasonic transmutation prove LENR?

Quote from Zephir_AWT

There were also observations of transmutation of mercury from long used fluorescent lamps, after all the seminal Nagayoka experiments were also about similar mercury arc system. BTW tiny droplets of mercury formed after sonification are rigid due to surface tension pressure which would explain the appearance of mercury after sonification. People should experiment and replicate more and less speculate.

The mercury in the fluorescent lamp isotope change was balanced by the equal but opposite change to mercury deposited elsewhere in the lamps, resulting in a net zero change, as reported in the original article.

I know nothing about the sonification so I have no comment on that.

Quote from Curbina

It's interesting you say that as one of the elements Cardone et al found in their sonicated mercury sample was Br and also it is the one that could be said to be the more abundant in the resulting mixture of elements.

Source: J. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sci. 27 (2018) 1–8

There is no "before and after" data, not sure how such a paper would pass peer review. Despite being a potentially exciting topic, I lost interest and consider this poor quality science. Its papers like this that gives LENR a bad name. Just because we are doing science out on the fringe doesn't mean any of us should lower our standards. If anything we should be held to a higher standard.

Quote from Daniel_G

There is no "before and after" data, not sure how such a paper would pass peer review. Despite being a potentially exciting topic, I lost interest and consider this poor quality science. Its papers like this that gives LENR a bad name. Just because we are doing science out on the fringe doesn't mean any of us should lower our standards. If anything we should be held to a higher standard.

Daniel_G , I just posted one table, read the full paper and you will see the before and after comparison are indeed presented.

Edit to add: Here is the before, from the 2015 paper. They published three papers that need to be taken as a whole (2015, 2017 and 2018), you can find the 2015 and the 2018 in this thread, the 2017 has not been yet made publicly available (unless you use sci-hub), but I got it from Cardone through Bassani upon request. I can share it with you privately if you want.

Yeah I saw they hand waved that they didn't find anything in the pre-data but if I were the referee I wouldn't allow such hand waving. I would show the blank results. As I said, higher standard. Trust me I am not only a LENR believer, we are in the thick of the development of it ourselves and want nothing more than more credible data to be published. We have to take the researcher's word for the ND data, but I would show my work rather than just hand wave. Just my two lira's worth.

Quote from Daniel_G

Yeah I saw they hand waved that they didn't find anything in the pre-data but if I were the referee I wouldn't allow such hand waving. I would show the blank results. As I said, higher standard. Trust me I am not only a LENR believer, we are in the thick of the development of it ourselves and want nothing more than more credible data to be published. We have to take the researcher's word for the ND data, but I would show my work rather than just hand wave. Just my two lira's worth.

The table 1 is not hand waving, it says clearly what they found in the Mercury before treatment. Table 2 says clearly what elements were present in the experimental apparatuses. They say clearly they excluded any of the elements present in the Mercury itself as contaminants prior to treatment,

or present in the experimental setup that May have contaminated the Mercury during treatment. Perhaps you can say they could have shown their data in a more easy to glance way, but what I see is not hand waving at all.

I know what they said, but they don't show the data. That is the definition of hand waving. Sorry I respectfully disagree with you on this issue but no sweat. Just my personal take on it. Exciting stuff. Should be investigated further.

If it was me, I would show the spectra not say, I looked at and didn't find anything. Higher standard and stuff.

I can tell you I am working on publishing some work in a major high impact journal and the referees would not bother to return my emails if I followed this level of writing. Real science is hard. Really hard. Rewards come to those willing to put in the hard work and doing things right.

Quote from Daniel_G

I know what they said, but they don't show the data. That is the definition of hand waving. Sorry I respectfully disagree with you on this issue but no sweat. Just my personal take on it. Exciting stuff. Should be investigated further.

If it was me, I would show the spectra not say, I looked at and didn't find anything. Higher standard and stuff.

I really don’t understand why you say they don’t show the data. They do. From a chemical analysis point of view the presence or absence of an element in a sample is pretty straight forward to asses (minimum detection thresholds for any specific technique considered). Presenting spectroscopic data itself would not add any further meaningful information.

Quote from Daniel_G

Real science is hard. Really hard

No surprises there. I know.

Quote from Curbina

I really don’t understand why you say they don’t show the data. They do. From a chemical analysis point of view the presence or absence of an element in a sample is pretty straight forward to asses (minimum detection thresholds for any specific technique considered). Presenting spectroscopic data itself would not add any further meaningful information.

Without quantitative data and given only "minimum threshold" yes/no results you expect, due to normal variability that there will be elements, not detected initially and detected after. We have very little information here.

In addition, because this type of data is easy to misinterpret, as Daniel_G points out, any referee would rightly need a lot of detail and a description of rationale so that others could check whether they agrees with the author's conclusions.

THH

I 100% support Daniel_G in his comments here. And I agree with him that it is important the LENR field should be aware of quality standards and keep to them wherever possible, and wherever it is important that results are taken seriously. Why should LENR be different from any other branch of science in this respect?

Let’s say that I agree with you that they could have done a better presentation of their data. I still don’t see any way in which these results can be dismissed just because they could have been presented in a better way. The phenomena is striking on itself.

Quote from Curbina

Let’s say that I agree with you that they could have done a better presentation of their data. I still don’t see any way in which these results can be dismissed just because they could have been presented in a better way. The phenomena is striking on itself.

Yes, it is interesting. But why spend so much time defending data that logic and statistics suggest in too close to noise when others have presented data for non-thermonuclear fusion that is without this ambiguity?

Quote from THHuxleynew

I 100% support Daniel_G in his comments here. And I agree with him that it is important the LENR field should be aware of quality standards and keep to them wherever possible, and wherever it is important that results are taken seriously. Why should LENR be different from any other branch of science in this respect?

Thank-you for being supportive. If you want to do more, you could acknowledge or at least ask questions about quality work. In the absence of peer review, we need people who point to the good stuff.

I never said the data should be dismissed. I merely pointed out the consistent low hurdle that LENR supporters hold their science to. If we want to be taken seriously we should strive for data that is beyond reproach not that is “good enough”. I’m not saying as a skeptic. I’m saying as a scientist who strives continuously to be better.

Quote from Curbina

Let’s say that I agree with you that they could have done a better presentation of their data. I still don’t see any way in which these results can be dismissed just because they could have been presented in a better way. The phenomena is striking on itself.

The matter I raised is not about presentation. It was:

(1) any yes/no comparison as they have given will give expected positives, without any elemental change

(2) they need to provide detail so that the data can be put into context and evaluated.

Without that extra data it can't be evaluated. It is not dismissing it - just saying - this is incomplete and therefore does not yet prove anything.

Because of (1) and (2) together those data are compatible with no elemental change in the sample.

THH

Quote from Drgenek

Yes, it is interesting. But why spend so much time defending data that logic and statistics suggest in too close to noise when others have presented data for non-thermonuclear fusion that is without this ambiguity?

Thank-you for being supportive. If you want to do more, you could acknowledge or at least ask questions about quality work. In the absence of peer review, we need people who point to the good stuff.

Sure. I think ICCF24, which we have been looking at, was not so much meant as a venue for high quality papers. It is also difficult to access papers as distinct from videos.

Some of the old papers are high quality (e.g. those Tritium papers Jed posted).

Lonchampt F&P replication is medium quality.

F&P simplicity paper is medium-low quality if taken as a presentation of new experimental results - higher quality if taken as a treatise on electrolysis.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Because of (1) and (2) together those data are compatible with no elemental change in the sample.

So, I can find all those elements in any sample of mercury and in those concentrations by mere chance. Good to know. Thanks!

Rob , I would say that an appropiately controlled ULTR experiment is proof of LENR, with the caveat that we really don't know what LENR is, because it doesn't follow many, or even any, of the existing classic theories. More than LENR, it's proof that we really don't know as much as we think we know.

Quote from Daniel_G

I never said the data should be dismissed. I merely pointed out the consistent low hurdle that LENR supporters hold their science to. If we want to be taken seriously we should strive for data that is beyond reproach not that is “good enough”. I’m not saying as a skeptic. I’m saying as a scientist who strives continuously to be better.

I must have missed something. Did you present this kind of data yourself? I was very sorry that Mizuno-san never made it to Assisi in the end., though it is a long hard journey from Japan.