The perpetual “is LENR even real” argument thread.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Of course. But for example, of the scientists I know well: all write papers that read well and get published on high impact publications - some are however better scientists than others. You would only know that working in the same field.

There are only about 100 people working in the same field. Just about every one of them was listed by Fritz Will, here:

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

Will was one of them, and he knew them all, so they all reported to him. Fleischmann and Bockris also knew everyone. As Fleischmann said, electrochemistry is a small world.

As you see, they all replicated cold fusion. They are all convinced that it is real, because they saw it themselves. I have read their papers and met with many of them, and I am quite sure they are convinced.

A large fraction of the world's leading experts in calorimetry and tritium also participated in replications, and they are also convinced. In fact -- as I said -- if you go looking for a qualified expert in any relevant field who has either done an experiment or read about the experiments, you will not find one who doubts that cold fusion is real. There are no such experts, and no such papers. For the same reason you will not find any experts in astronomy who think the moon is made of green cheese.

You have many peculiar notions about cold fusion: it is not proven, or there is no first-class papers that published that prove it, the better scientists in the field have not evaluated it. You are completely wrong about these things, and also about every single technical assertion you make. People can measure recombination by measuring left-over electrolyte. That works. All of the other things you say don't work, actually do work. Everything you think about cold fusion, and everything you say, is manifestly wrong. If you would read the literature, you would know that. I suppose that is why you refuse to read the literature.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Staker's claims are higher but his experiment is intrinsically less easy to validate.

Not that hard. I have no difficulty. I do not know any experts in cold fusion who doubt his results. Ed thinks his calorimetry is too complicated and kind of old fashioned, or second-rate. Ed thinks Seebeck calorimeters are better, and I expect just about everyone agrees with him. But that does not make Staker wrong, or doubtful. It just means you have to read his papers more carefully. Plus, obviously, you have to understand that hydrogen does not leak through glass, and recombination can be measured by measuring make-up water, and 1.2 W is a lot of power on this scale, and so on. All of which you do not understand, so there is no way you can evaluate it or validate it, any more than I could conduct the New York Philharmonic.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I am not trying to say anyone is wrong. I am suggesting everyone agrees on a replicable, modern (so that precise details can more easily be replicated) experiment, and it is then replicated and written up really well.

If you would provide a suitcase full of money, or maybe 5 suitcases, and if you can arrange to have people study cold fusion without getting harassed or summarily fired, I can probably arrange for these things. Let me know as soon as you come up with, oh, $10 or $20 million and some people who don't mind having their reputations shredded by Nature, the Washington Post and Scientific American.

If you cannot do that, I suggest you look at older reports, because without the money, and without academic freedom to study cold fusion there is no way anyone can do what you ask. This is real life, not a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV drama about saintly scientists working for the good of humanity. The DoE and plasma fusion people opposed to cold fusion get billions of dollars in funding from Uncle Sam and the EU. They know that as soon as the Congress and the public realize that cold fusion is real, their funding will fall to zero. They will stop at nothing to prevent cold fusion from being researched, and they will destroy anyone who tries to do research. They have many powerful friends, and billions of dollars. Cold fusion might be developed despite the opposition, but not the way you want. Also, there are no journals that would publish what you describe. Any editor who published that would end his career, then and there. He would be gone in a week.

Nature only published Google's work by making it look bad (worse than it was) and by publishing an editorial along with it that trashed cold fusion. There is zero chance that Nature would ever publish a positive study. There is zero chance that any journal would publish what you describe, or that anyone would fund it. If Google had gotten positive results, Nature would have slammed the door on them. I have talked with the people at Nature, and the DoE. They despise cold fusion. They think it is criminal, fraud, a disgrace to science, worse than Creationism or anti-vaccination, and it must be stamped out. They also know nothing about it.

Quote from THHuxleynew

hydrogen can leak through plastic o-rings

There are no plastic o-rings in the direction the hydrogen would have to leak to affect the calorimetry. There is only glass. The only direction it can leak is up, out of the top, and the top is not connected to the larger test tubes next to it, where those o-rings are located. Look at the red arrows in the diagram.

Quote from THHuxleynew

recombination cannot be nmeasured from make-up unless evaporation is precisely known - that was not done here

Evaporation has been precisely known since 1801. The laws of physics have not changed. No one who does these experiments fails to account for evaporation.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I (provisionally) agree that all the experts in calorimetry who you know have done experiments or read about them will think LENR is real. But that is poistive selected.

There are no other experts. The "positively selected" group you refer to includes just about every professional electrochemist in the world. They are right there on Will's list. This is like saying "doctors who believe in vaccination are positively selected." Yes, because there are only few who disagree. Round up a thousand doctors and you will find only a handful opposed to vaccination. If this were 1995 and you could round up every expert in electrochemistry in the world and ask about cold fusion, they would tell you: "yes, I am sure it is real, because I replicated it." (They are mostly retired or dead now. I wouldn't know about the newer crop.)

You cannot find a paper showing any error in cold fusion. There are none. You cannot find an expert who has read the literature who thinks there are errors. Because there are no significant errors. Not because of any bias, or positive selection, or any other reason. Only because when a result is widely replicated at high signal to noise ratios, scientists believe it must be real.

Quote from THHuxleynew

It is in many ways an elegant experiment, but would need a much more complete write-up.

If three detailed papers are not enough for you, ten would not be enough. 100 would not be enough.

Furthermore, every issue that you claimed the papers did not address, they did -- in fact -- address. All the details you said were missing were right there. You even claimed there was no discussion of the syringe. There were several paragraphs about it! You have not come up with any reason to doubt the paper that the author did not already address. So you have no reason to demand more detail. You have not found any missing details, and you won't find any.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Make up your mind?

Give us a break. I am sure you understand what I meant. When I said there are no errors, I meant in evaluations of the field. Critiques of the field as a whole. You will not find any critique of the field written by someone such as Gerischer or Storms that concludes the effect is probably not real. Or that gives any reason to doubt the claims.

Of course there are marginal papers, and papers with mistakes. There are 4,741 papers! There are bound to many bad ones in such a large collection. If an expert such as Gerischer were to set out to find bad papers that cast doubt on cold fusion, he would find hundreds of them. I could give him a list. But that is no way to evaluate a claim. You look at the good papers. You look at studies such as SRI's. It cost millions of dollars; it employed the best instruments that can be made; it was repeated hundreds of times; it has a whole staff of world class experts; it is described in hundreds of pages of documents available at LENR-CANR.org. Or you look at BARC, or Fritz Will, or Los Alamos. Look at the best of the best, with the most documentation. Look at ten of those studies. If they are convincing, it makes no difference if there are 600 lousy papers that would not convince anyone. They don't count.

Quote from THHuxleynew

The effects claimed do not, I believe, require $10M to validate.

How the hell would you know? You have never even read the papers. You don't have a clue what the researchers do, or what the instruments cost. I have read the papers and been to the labs. I have paid for some of the equipment. What you demand would cost $10 million easily. Unless we get lucky and the LEC works. It will cost a lot more than $10 million if the researchers make mistakes and go off on a tangent, or off on a wild goose chase. I expect the recent DoE grants of $10 million will all be wasted because they are on a wild goose chase looking for plasma fusion instead of cold fusion (to simplify things).

It would cost $10 million and it would be worth $10 billion immediately, and $10 trillion a generation from now.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I agree this experiment, if more careful result collection and analysis showed 3%, would be an excellent candidate as a reference. that is quite a big if.

It shows much more than 3%, especially during the 28 hour heat burst. There is no way that could be energy storage. It exceeds the limits of storage by a factor of 142. So in the days leading up to that event, even if excess was only 3%, that would make no difference. Even if there was no excess at all, or a slight deficit from a calorimetry bias (unmeasured heat losses), the 28 hour burst is stand-alone proof of heat beyond the limits of chemistry. It is not close the margin, as 3% would be. *

As I said before, describing it as 3% is like saying I drive at 14 miles an hour when I go to Washington, because it takes me two days. Averaging the heat or my speed makes no sense. I do not drive at 14 mph on the highway. My average speed is meaningless, because most the time, I have stopped off at my sister's house along the way.

I am sure you understand that. I am sure you realize that the 3% has no relevance whatever to the claims. The much larger excess over 28 hours is stand alone proof, and whether the overall average excess was 3% or 0.0003%, makes no difference. You know how to do grade school arithmetic, so you know that as well as I do. You are parading this 3% bullshit as an excuse to dismiss the results, or as way to fool readers here who do not understand simple arithmetic.

* As 3% would be if input power were noise, which it is not. But why quibble? The 3% if nonsense anyway.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I caught this - but I am planning to spend less time here for a while - so you get a reply because I can see it is annoying being ignored (I never do this on purpose).

First - I think what is needed is a single experiment that shows a clear anomaly and is replicable. So "co-deposition work" would split into:

CR39 evidence for alphas from codep

tritium evidence from codep

etc, etc.

Each of those experiments - viewed as a reference - would have its own questions. Overall I think the clearest positive results I have seen are calorimetric. that is because for all the tritium or other transmutation evidence it is difficult to deal with all the potential confounders, few papers rule them all out:

• multiple interpretations of spectral data
• misinterpretation of background or CBR or EMI as high energy particles
• contamination from lab stuff
• contamination from input or experiment hardware materials
• concentration of input levels by electrolysis or some other way (Classic example of this is the CF bulb mercury isotope enhancement saga - provable from concentration of one specific mercury isotopes.)
• contamination from dust in air (e.g. if around granite you get radon + its many progeny especially on dust particles).

Although calorimetric data tends to be easier to validate - there are still a lot of things to be considered, and much of the data does not stand up.

So for a reference experiment we need one experiment with clear results where all of these issues are ticked. Obviously, they all can be disambiguated and ruled out. But having to llook through 10s of research papers (even) for which ones do this is a lot of work. In addition I personally do not understand enough about SEM/EDS/NAA or whatever techniques for isotopic analysis to be sure what are the issues. Nor do I understand the contamination issues. there have been some early LENR papers with pretty good reviews of these issues , although I cannot be sure they are complete (they just look pretty good). You would need somone competent in the relevant subjects and able to critically appraise them. Which, based on things I do know for sure, the LENR community has not always done well.

Hence, if you suggest one of these experiments i think the best thing is to get buy-in from the LENR community that it is one of the really strong bits of evidence. Maybe then it will be possible to find somone competent to review it. I can do a limited amount of this only.

FYI the CR39 data - why I do not like it for a reference experiment meant to show LENR clearly:

• It is in principle always possible to replace CR39 immediately outside the electrolysis vessel with a GM counter - which will detect alphas with pretty good sensitivity.
• Detection of alphas from tracks is contentious
• Multiple GM counters at different distances, shielded to point in different directions, can give a lot of evidence where alphas a re coming from - and will provide realtime alpha counts - much better for insight than a total integrated count over a long period as what you get from CR39
• shielding can greatly reduce background
• Normal practice in detection of high energy particles is to do this with multiple counters in this way to reduce false positives
• Unlike film, GMs do not have chemical or heat false positives.

THH

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Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I don't mean to be difficult, but I suppose I'd reiterate something I said in my prior post, which is that if your attitude is 'it's not for me to decide, I don't know, and it's too much work to read the papers - maybe you could get somebody else to think about it', then I'm not sure you really have the right to make assertions that no reference experiment exists, nor demands that one be rendered unto you.

Above, you have identified hypothetical issues with the kinds of experiments that have been suggested, but these are hypothetical issues. This is no substitute for familiarising yourself with the underlying literature and responding to it substantively. You seem to want to excuse yourself from responding substantively to the responses to your own challenges ('ante up' etc).

You are not obligated to respond substantively. Your time is as precious as anybody else's.

But, Forsley and Mosier-Boss have done exactly what you asked for - they have presented a long period of work in a digestible form, and asserted it, in their own words, as replicable. Moreover, their (Szpak et al. and others) work was written up twice in New Scientist, once in the Economist and in other places. They even took it to the ACS. They took it to NASA, and NASA bit.

There are ways to explain each of these things away, and I'm sure you could find them. The point I am making is simply that there is an incongruence between the questions you ask and the responses you give to answers to those questions.

If, by your own admission, you are not placed to critically appraise the full corpus of results available from the codeposition experiments, then you have no standing to assert that a reference experiment doesn't exist. Please do not repeat this claim in the future, and please do not antagonise others by issuing demands or challenges as part of what sometimes feels like a rhetorical strategy to assert the flimsiness of the science.

Of course, more broadly, you're well within your rights to do that (assert the science is bad) - but please find a different way.

As one final, unrelated note, another sincere answer to your original challenge would be to take a look at Metzler et al.'s ARPA-E proposal, available here:

https://www.lenr-forum.com/attachment/23917-ssrn-id4411160-pdf/

This is another example of scientists in the field doing exactly what you've asked for.

You'll recall that Metzler et al. have previously published a theory paper, available here:

And so their program of theory and experiment is well integrated, thoughtful, and, again, exactly what you've asked for. Time will prove out whether they succeed or fail, but they have constructed their program with what some call 'strategic empathy'. It accords with how you think, and I would commend it to you.

So that's 2 groups of scientists doing what you've asked for. One advanced, one just beginning.

That's two more than none, and double your required one.

Quote from JedRothwell

It would cost $10 million and it would be worth $10 billion immediately, and $10 trillion a generation from now.

It would indeed. 10 researchers means a payroll of $2M a year, thats $6M over a 3 year program, $1M for equipment plus $1M/y for consumables, lab rental, coffee and pizza = $10M. There you go.

Quote from Storms

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?

Thanks for the recap Ed. Few in the mainstream are aware of your story, but most everyone who has become a "believer" does. And your account is not at all unusual among the old guard, and increasingly many more of the new. No one doing the lab work that I recall, started off knowing CF was real.

Yes, some may have hoped, or thought, it could be real, and then followed their confirmation bias to the results they wanted. But the vast majority started as skeptics like you, and let the data lead them to their beliefs.

On a more somber, sarcastic note; we are 63 pages into trying to convince one, just 1, mainstream, and well placed scientist. If we eventually get him on our side, we only have a few hundred thousand more to go! Each of them, in turn, will need to be taken by the hand through the same laborious, and frustrating, process as THH. Even were he (THH) to start proselytizing for LENR to his colleagues that he "sees the light", they will not believe him, as he doesn't believe you now.

He will then become the "believer", and they the skeptics. Then his story will be just like every one of you left from the old guard. And the cycle continues...until something irrefutable comes out of the lab.

Quote from Shane D.

On a more somber, sarcastic note; we are 63 pages into trying to convince one, just 1, mainstream, and well placed scientist.

THH is not a scientist. He just teaches circuit board design - low level engineering stuff...

Based on his arguing I guess he will never finish cooking a menu...