The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.

Quote from THHuxleynew

So I object to Jed's godlike assumptions that (a) he understands why other people believe things and (b) when a lot of competent people have looked at something, and they reach different views, that a small percentage who are strongly on one side of this thing are necessarily correct.

I never said anything remotely like that. You made that up. I never said the small percentage on one side are necessarily correct. In the case of cold fusion, the opposite is true. The vast majority of scientists think cold fusion is true, and they have good reasons.

Note that I mean the vast majority of scientists who know something about the research, and who have published papers. No competent scientists have looked at cold fusion, found a problem with the experiments, and published this problem. You claim there are such people, but you cannot point to any examples. You yourself do not know of any reason to doubt any major result.

There are, of course, papers pointing to theoretical reasons to doubt cold fusion. It is an experimental claim, so they don't count.

I do not mean the vast majority of scientists in the world. I have not taken a poll, so I do not know what most scientists think. Several hundred thousand visit LENR-CANR.org and I can tell they are generally supportive. The ones in the plasma fusion program despise cold fusion, but they have never given any technical reason. Others in the mass media say cold fusion is not real, but they know nothing about it. Everything they say about it is factually wrong, or nonsense. You should ignore anything they say. You, for example, are always wrong, for example when you say that recombination cannot be measured by measuring the water level. You have never stated a single reason to doubt any experiment, although you have tried mightily to do so. Since you have been trying for years without a hint of success, I think that proves you have no case.

Quote from THHuxleynew

It is what team google hoped they would be able to find.

I have the impression the Google team and Nature magazine were hoping to kill cold fusion once and for all. Certainly Nature wanted to. You can tell from the their editorial that accompanied the paper.

If the Google people were not trying to drive the last nail into the coffin, I suppose they would have done many things they neglected to do, and they would not have repeated a futile and failed experiment so many times. I suppose they would have asked people who succeeded how to do the experiment. But who knows? I cannot read minds. I cannot even tell what they did in any detail, because the paper was uninformative.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I don't understand - on the one hand everyone says results are clear, and some (e.g. Ed) say they are replicable.

You don't understand?! Really? It couldn't be simpler. Yes, the results are clear. 100% clear and undeniable heat beyond the limits of chemistry. Yes, the results are replicable. They have been replicated hundreds of times, so that is indisputable.

Unfortunately, they are difficult to replicate. You have to be an expert, and you often fail. Not 99% of the time, as you claimed above (pulling the number out thin air). But they do often fail. The people at Google failed 100% of the time in hundreds of experiments. I have never heard of anyone else doing that.

Needless to say, the failure rate and the difficulty of replication have absolutely no bearing on whether the effect is real or not. You would never claim that rockets do not exist because they often explode. You only apply that batty standard to cold fusion as an excuse to dismiss the results.

Furthermore, even when the failure rate is high, that does not preclude producing many positive results. You just run lots of tests. To clone a mammal, you run about a thousand tests and one works. To look for tritium, Bockris and others ran a 10 by 10 array of cells. 100 tests at a time. Around 60% worked, but even if it has been 10%, there would be plenty of positive results. The same method was used to manufacture transistors in the early 1950s. They would make large batches. Most failed, but some devices passed the tests and were sold. They cost a lot more than vacuum tubes because the failure rate was high. You might have said "transistors don't exist because they are so hard to reproduce!" but no one else would say that. Because it is insane. It is what you say about cold fusion, as I mentioned. You would realize it is insane if you gave it a moment's thought.

It is a lot harder to run 100 calorimetry tests at one time, for technical reasons.

I first heard about the cold fusion effect after having acquired a PhD in radiochemistry, which is a study of chemical and nuclear behavior, and after studying a large number of materials in many different ways for 34 years. In other words, I was a seasoned researcher. I knew the difference between error and real behavior. When we at LANL learned about what Fleischmann and Pons had discovered, we, as the ideal scientists THH admires, set out to replicate their claim. I and several other people were successful in making tritium. We knew we had made tritium because the world's experts in tritium detection were in my group. The results were published after extensive peer review. Later I measured heat production, which was successful and published after extensive peer review. This work was done under the high standards required at LANL, yet the results are ignored to this day. I then worked for another 32 years doing measurements and writing reviews of what other people found.

Now after all this effort by hundreds of professional researchers, THH has the nerve to say that cold fusion has not been proven. Having ignorance is a possible excuse. But after having been educated here, a rejection of the reality of LENR is not only insulting, but it borders on the pathological. Therefore, such a discussion with THH is useless, has no value, and is a waste of time. Therefore, I'm no longer interested in commenting and will move on to more productive work.

I now believe I can explain how LENR works and can now make it work with reliability. Getting anyone to agree will be the challenge. The general rejection of LENR by ordinary scientists is no longer the problem. The problem now is getting people who accept LENR but who have a favorite explanation to change their minds. The problem is the same as before, but now the unwellness to accept new ideas is in the field itself. Rather ironic would you say?

Quote from THHuxleynew

Where we disagree is that when we have a set of say 1,000 experiments (from jed's 5000 papers, say at least 1 in 5 is experimental).

Jed states that every single one of these experiments must have specific, quantifiable, falsifiable reasons why they are wrong.

Or else - just one of them not obviously wrong - the claim is proven.

Again, I said nothing remotely like that. You make stuff up and hallucinate like ChatGPT. There are 4,741 papers but I do not know how many are experimental, and I do not know how many individual tests were listed in these papers. In the Storms book, Table 2. "Selected Studies Reporting Anomalous Power Production," Ed listed 180 projects. For example, "Fujii et al. flow calorimeter, open cell, Pd coated deposited Pd . . ." etc. It does not say how many tests Fujii et al. ran in this project. Some projects I know about had 10 or more positive tests. I suppose that table covers ~1000 positive tests. That is rough estimate.

In the early literature, Britz estimated that for excess heat claims, there were 503 positive results, and 281 negative results. That is not the number of tests. It is the number of conclusion reached by the authors. That does not include tritium. I have some doubts about Britz's judgment. See:

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf

I certainly did not say "every single one of these experiments must have specific, quantifiable, falsifiable reasons why they are wrong." Many of them do have specific, quantifiable reasons why they are wrong. I know the reasons. You don't, because you have never read them.

"Or else - just one of them not obviously wrong - the claim is proven" is ridiculous. That only applies to the leading experiments, such as McKubre, F&P, Bockris, Storms and so on. Many of the other 180 studies in this table are less certain. Some, I think, are wrong, or at least weak, or doubtful. Hundreds of wrong experiments do not disprove the claim. Five or 10 quality research projects, each with many repeated positive tests, prove the claim is true. To unprove it, you have to show that all 5 or 10 of the leading studies used the wrong instruments or methods, so all the experiments in them are wrong.

No skeptic has ever found an error in these leading experiments. You cannot point to any paper by a skeptic showing errors in them.

People have found weaknesses in various papers. Ed pointed out some problems with Staker in this discussion. I think he exaggerated, but the point is, if you were to say: "we must judge whether cold fusion exists only by reading these three papers by Staker" then we could not conclude cold fusion is real. There are more solid, more carefully replicated results with many more positive tests, reported in more detail. Such as Miles. It is more difficult to find a weakness in Miles. I can find problems, because any study can be improved. I cannot show the entire result should be tossed out, because there are no serious, fatal problems. Just nitpicking around the edges. Most of the weaknesses I know about because Miles listed them in the papers.

Needless to say, you cannot find any of problems in Miles because you never bothered to read him. All of the "reasons" you come up with to doubt other papers are imaginary. No other skeptic can find a serious problem in any major study because there are no serious problems. Also, obviously, because the other skeptics have not read any papers either.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Well, a reference experiment that you document precisely and everyone agrees shows LENR would be a good start?

Miles, McKubre, F&P or Storms would be a good start, as I said. Everyone I know who understands calorimetry and has read the papers agrees they show that LENR is real.

Actually, the experts I know of concluded that cold fusion is real even before the full papers were published by McKubre and Miles. The example I often quote is:

Prof. Heinz Gerischer was a leading electrochemist and the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry. He reviewed the evidence in 1991 and concluded “there [are] now undoubtedly overwhelming indications that nuclear processes take place in metal alloys.” * For a distinguished professor this is emphatic. “Undoubtedly overwhelming” is shouting through a megaphone. Most ** qualified experts I know who have read the literature agree that the effect is real. . . .

* Gerischer, H., Memorandum on the present state of knowledge on cold fusion. 1991, Fritz Harber Institute der Max Planke: Berlin.

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJlessonsfro.pdf

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

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SIFthescience.pdf#page=480

** I said "most" but even the ones who disagreed only quibbled with some of the findings. For example, Ed sees problems with Staker. I do not know any expert who dismisses the whole field based on experiments. Obviously, I know of Huizenga and others who dismiss it because it violates their theories.

Other people do not agree these papers show that LENR is real. You and other skeptics do not agree. You have not read the papers, and everything you claim is imaginary nonsense, so your views do not count. We should only count the opinions of people who have read the literature and who have some relevant knowledge and expertise. People who spout nonsense about how it is impossible to measure recombination by monitoring makeup water, or evaporation by monitoring the temperature, know nothing about electrochemistry or cold fusion. They know nothing about junior high school level chemistry!

Quote from THHuxleynew

But you did. You challenged me to show that - and said that if I could not show that - then the collection proves LENR. Just one experiment not so contradicted - you said.

I said you have to find errors in the leading experiments. Say, the top 10. The most credible, well documented and often repeated ones. I did not say you have to find errors in any -- or all -- experiments, including the obscure ones. Any fool can do that. Even you could, if you bothered to read them.

You could start by showing serious problems in McKubre and Miles. Knock those two down and you would weaken the field.

Quote from THHuxleynew

So please make your mind up - are you saying that, or not?

I made it clear what I said. It is obvious what I mean. You have run what I said through a meat grinder and converted it to nonsense.

THH, the issue is psychological, not scientific. I worked with Google and the effort funded by Gates, I know how people think. I have discussed the issues with many leaders in the field. Many people now believe that LENR is real. A conference on the subject is being held in Poland. The DOE is funding studies to the tune of 10M$. NASA is working to understand the mechanism and hoping to make it useful. That LENR is real is now accepted well enough. What is not accepted is an accurate and useful description and a useful understanding of how to cause the effect. Getting people to agree on this understanding is the problem. You are fighting the wrong battle. The skeptics have lost the war. Now, the people in the field itself have taken on the role of skeptic. People can now produce the effect. They do not know how to understand what they're seeing. They cannot even agree on the meaning of the basic behaviors.

Quote from THHuxleynew

THH: when we have a set of say 1,000 experiments (from Jed's 5000 papers, say at least 1 in 5 is experimental).

Jed: Again, I said nothing remotely like that. You make stuff up and hallucinate like ChatGPT. There are 4,741 papers but I do not know how many are experimental, and I do not know how many individual tests were listed in these papers. In the Storms book,

Your estimate of the number of tests may be in the ballpark. I wasn't quibbling about that. I was just checking the numbers. You are hallucinating ChatGPT style in your conclusions, which I listed below that. Where you claim I said:

". . . every single one of these experiments must have specific, quantifiable, falsifiable reasons why they are wrong. . . . Or else - just one of them not obviously wrong - the claim is proven"

I do say that without any specific, quantifiable, falsifiable reasons you have no case. But I do not say you have to find errors in every paper or cold fusion must be real. Anyone knows there are many lousy papers. I sure know that, having copy edited 300 of them. You can find errors easily. Many papers cannot be judged decisively true or false. They are weak. I like Staker more than Ed does, but you could never claim that cold fusion is real based on his work alone. Whereas you could challenge the whole field if you disproved McKubre. You might not disprove all of cold fusion, but you would clobber it. Clobber Storms, Miles, and F&P and I think every expert would agree the entire field might be wrong.

The experts I speak of could clobber those studies way better than you or I could. They have not found any serious problems in the major studies in 30 years.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Well - if you read carefully all my posts on this thread I am asking for an experiment that could, with normal lab equipment + a small grant (the peanuts sort it is easy to find without justification - say no more than 10K) and free lab equipment, space, technician help - reasonably be replicated.

There is no such such thing, as far as I know. The LEC might be candidate. It has been independently replicated in several labs, but I still do not know whether it can "reasonably be replicated."

Are you suggesting that without this experiment, we cannot believe cold fusion is real?

Okay, so give us a reference experiment that anyone can do to build a tokamak plasma fusion reactor, an MRI machine, a Boeing 747 airplane, or a Mars robot explorer. Or one of Musk's rockets. Show us a way that with normal lab equipment and a small grant, any of these things can be replicated.

You probably would say that's ridiculous. No one can replicate a plasma fusion reactor or a Mars robot working on shoestring with ordinary lab equipment. You would be right! No one can do that. However, that does not prove these things do not exist. The difficult of replicating an experiment has no bearing on whether it is real or not. Whether it can be done in an ordinary lab, or whether it takes decades with thousands of experts, like the ITER plasma fusion reactor, that has no relevance to whether it is real, and to whether it a valid scientific claim. So I do not understand why you are asking for this simple experiment. What is the point? I agree it would be nice to have such an experiment, but it has nothing to do with the topic of this thread, which is your assertion that cold fusion does not exist.

Cold fusion happens to be difficult. It is still at the stage when little is known. Measured in the number of experiments and funding, more money is spent on plasma fusion every day before breakfast than has been spent on cold fusion for the last 30 years. It has barely begun.

Quote from THHuxleynew

And, practically, given funding, not one that requires $1M to set up.

Why $1 million? Where did you get that number? Can you build a Mars explorer or a tokamak for that amount? If you cannot, why should cold fusion be that cheap? All the labs I have been to have had more than $1 million in equipment, and it was never enough. They all want better SEMs and mass spectrometers. Mizuno's lab has a bunch of stuff from the 1960s through 1985, and stuff donated from other labs. If you replaced it all I expect it would cost hundreds of thousands, if not a million.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Because I cannot see why the modern much cheaper experiments should not be equally or more suitable.

Then you have never seen a cold fusion experiment, and you know nothing about them. Which is obvious. Modern experiments tend to be more expensive, because of these wonderous gadgets like the latest SEMs that can show 3 dimensional element distribution at a microscopic level. Gadgets like that might be a terrific help, but no one I know can afford them.

Quote from THHuxleynew

if they are not - you must say what is it that McKubre got right they get wrong.

McKubre got about a zillion details right that these others researchers don't even know about! They do not know what it is that they do not know. He knows more about electrochemistry than all of the failed 1989 research project people tied together. Read his papers and compare them to the failed papers and you will see.

Thank you, Dr. Storms, for your reply. I think THHuxley is offering good advice, though I could understand why you might be too fed up with everything to want to devote the necessary time.

I will offer a shorter and less technical perspective.

I know that I will never understand the various LENR theoretical explanations without a few additional years of math and technical education that I'm unlikely to obtain. So the theories, while interesting, are things where I have to say, "OK, if you say so." But then a contradictory theory appears and I'm forced to the same response.

But the excess energy is a straightforward result which is attributable to (1) a real effect not currently understood by the mainstream; (2) experimental error; or (3) fraud, which I include not because I doubt everyone here, but because I do doubt various people who have used LENR to obtain significant sums of investment.

So I confess I have no idea of how much skill is involved in eliminating potential error from calorimetry. I assume you are convinced your results are repeatable by a skilled experimentalist. The result of following the "mainstream is awful" group here is, I suppose, you get more free time, with the satisfaction of being a respected martyr in the community. The result of ignoring them, and seeking out people with the skills to replicate and perhaps tack down your results, could be more substantial. Unless I misunderstand, the skills needed are technical, and no understanding of theory is required. And THHuxley's comments on needing to convince people of what "must be" obvious are, I believe, well stated.

Quote from JedRothwell

I have the impression the Google team and Nature magazine were hoping to kill cold fusion once and for all. Certainly Nature wanted to. You can tell from the their editorial that accompanied the paper.

If the Google people were not trying to drive the last nail into the coffin, I suppose they would have done many things they neglected to do, and they would not have repeated a futile and failed experiment so many times. I suppose they would have asked people who succeeded how to do the experiment. But who knows? I cannot read minds. I cannot even tell what they did in any detail, because the paper was uninformative.

There's absolutely no way malice was involved with regards to Google. Trevithick is a believer, Koningstein attends the ICCFs, Schenkel (I believe) received funding from the ARPA-E program and Berlinguette appears to be still conducting research, too. They were very clearly sincere.

Quote from THHuxleynew

But, what I cannot understnd, is why the LENR community cannot get together and take juts one experiment - one of those early ones, or a modern one, which is known to be replicable, document it, and the stochastic nature of its results (e.g. something like your histogram of cathodes). Leave it out there as a reference experiment that can be replicated and prove LENR.

Quote

Well - if you read carefully all my posts on this thread I am asking for an experiment that could, with normal lab equipment + a small grant (the peanuts sort it is easy to find without justification - say no more than 10K) and free lab equipment, space, technician help - reasonably be replicated.

You sort of imply this exists - but have not yet anted up.

Jed - one reference experiment - not a selection of things. And, practically, given funding, not one that requires $1M to set up. Because I cannot see why the modern much cheaper experiments should not be equally or more suitable. if they are not - you must say what is it that McKubre got right they get wrong. Maybe you agree with me?

Several people have referred you to the codeposition work, and suggested reading material. (here) and (here)

Your response was "CR-39 is inconclusive and I don't like it because I don't know how to judge the CR-39 results." Then you suggested things that have already, at least in part, been done - as if to imply that they had not been done, and that this was a black mark against the work. (here)

I replied by stating that there was more to the codep work than CR-39. (here)

You ignored me.

Forgive me, but it's hard not to be frustrated when you say things like the above quotes.

How can you say things with such certitude when you freely admit that you do not know how to judge the results that have been brought to your attention?

Do you understand how arrogant and officious you sound?

Perhaps a reasonable reference experiment already exists?

Perhaps you dismissed it out of hand without adequate consideration.

Here, again, are some links...

1. A thorough review of the codeposition work through to 2019 written by Forsley and Mosier-Boss.

(PDF) A Synopsis of Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter

PDF | We have sought to identify, characterize, elucidate and apply condensed matter nuclear reactions using the US patented co-deposition protocol,... | Find,…

www.researchgate.net

2. A NASA replication of the codeposition work.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20210010199

3. A shorter version of the above paper, as published in a peer reviewed journal.

Electrolytic co-deposition neutron production measured by bubble detectors

Co-deposition electrochemical cells are a simple means to examine novel nuclear reactions. In this study, palladium and deuterium atoms were co-deposi…

www.sciencedirect.com

Exactly what you're asking for.