Posts by joshua cude

Storms wrote:

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Let me try to summarize the skeptical arguments made previously:

I'll try to phrase them in less biased language.

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1. The claimed excess energy results from a calibration error or from a normal chemical reaction.

The claimed observations of excess heat are much more plausibly attributed to errors or artifacts (chemical effects) than to completely unprecedented radiationless (or nearly so) inconceivable nuclear reactions .

This is particularly the case because the claimed excess power levels in the refereed literature have become more modest and far more scarce over time, as the experiments improve. While claims of multi-watt excesses exist, they are not reproducible. There is no experiment adequately described so that anyone skilled in the art can produce a multi-watt excess even on statistical basis.

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2. The detected helium results from an air leaking into the system,

The claimed observations of helium are much more plausibly attributed to the trace levels of helium in the atmosphere by diffusion, leaks or outgassing from materials involved in the experiment, than to unprecedented radiationless inconceivable nuclear reactions.

This is particularly the case given that the measurements are typically near the detection limit or the noise level or the ambient level. And while experiments have been reported at power levels that would produce unmistakeable levels of helium, no such reports of unmistakeable helium have been reported. In the Arata experiment, where 5 W was claimed for 80 days, the observed helium was orders of magnitude too low, and *still* near the detection limit.

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3. The detected tritium results from contamination by tritium in the local environment,

The claimed observations of tritium are much more plausibly attributed to contamination or experimental error than to completely unprecedented inconceivable nuclear reactions.

This is particularly the case given that the sensitivity for tritium is a million times better than for excess power, and yet the levels are still equivocal, and that the the levels, which started out seemingly substantial in preliminary experiments, all decreased to near detection limits as better experimental methods were used, until 1998, when Claytor wrote "due to the subtle and weak nature of the signals observed, we have taken many precautions and checks to prevent contamination and to confirm the tritium is not due to an artifact". So, a measure of nuclear reactions some million times more sensitive than heat, is *still* "subtle and weak".

And given that McKubre wrote in 1998 "we may nevertheless state with some confidence that tritium is not a routinely produced product of the electrochemical loading of deuterium into palladium".

And given that no specific questions about tritium in cold fusion experiments have been resolved, that LANL did not get any prestigious publications out the considerable work on the subject, and that they essentially scrubbed their web site of any of the claims.

Even though the tritium questions remain unresolved, little, if any, new work on it has been reported for 15 years or so.

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4. The transmutation products result from contamination by normal impurities,

The claimed transmutation products are much more plausibly attributed to contamination or experimental errors than by a dozen different unprecedented radiationless inconceivable nuclear reactions.

This is particularly the case given that the starting and ending points for all claimed transmutations are common stable isotopes, and necessary radioactive intermediates are never observed. Even though the people claiming the results suggest the application of ameliorating nuclear waste, they never actually observe a change in the level of radioactivity, whether to increase or decrease it.

And given that the levels of the transmutation products are always marginal, and while the claims date back decades, no increase in the level has been observed, nor progress in waste amelioration, nor progress of any kind.

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5. The detected radiation results from poor measurements,

The claimed observations of radiation are much more plausibly attributed to poor measurements or contamination from laboratory calibrants and the like, than unprecedented inconceivable nuclear reactions.

This is particularly the case for gamma radiation for which sensitivity and specificity is at ridiculous levels, so that for a couple of thousand investment, anyone can identify the signature for potassium-40 from salt substitute (KCl) that you can buy at your grocery store. Anyone who claims to see gamma rays and can't tell you more than that should immediately hand back their PhD and start driving a truck for a living. The gamma ray reported by Piantelli near 660 keV was almost certainly from Cs-137, a standard calibrant in all physics labs with a single peak at 661.7 keV.

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6. Observations that cannot be explained using these conclusions must result from fraud or incompetence.

Pretty well all academic claims are plausibly attributable to artifacts, errors, and confirmation bias. Observations made by people or companies looking for investment are another story, and are much more plausibly attributable to deception than to unprecedented and inconceivable nuclear reactions.

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Therefore, the LENR claim is not correct.

Therefore, the claim of unspecified nuclear reactions in cold fusion experiments are not supported by the evidence, and given the extremely low likelihood that they could happen, based on a century of rock solid nuclear science, are almost certainly *not* happening.

Storms wrote:

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Let me try to summarize the skeptical arguments made previously:

1. The claimed excess energy results from a calibration error or from a normal chemical reaction.

2. The detected helium results from an air leaking into the system,

3. The detected tritium results from contamination by tritium in the local environment,

4. The transmutation products result from contamination by normal impurities,

5. The detected radiation results from poor measurements,

6. Observations that cannot be explained using these conclusions must result from fraud or incompetence.

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This wide variety of observations is intended to make artifacts and errors seem implausible as explanations, but in fact it makes nuclear explanations far more implausible. The observations can't be explained by a single nuclear reaction, but requires dozens of unprecedented and inconceivable nuclear reactions, and unprecedented mechanisms to convert nuclear energy to heat. The different experiments have sensitivities and specificities that range by factors of millions or even billions, and it's completely implausible that the corresponding intensities of nuclear manifestations would similarly vary, keeping all the observations near the detection or noise limit. On the other hand, that is exactly what one would expect if the observations are the result of artifacts and confirmation bias.

Storms wrote:

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I would like to explore the human condition instead of LENR.

Non-specific discussions of speculation vs skepticism like this are frequently raised by advocates of new claimed phenomena that are not accepted by the mainstream. And for someone sympathetic to a particular claim or phenomenon like cold fusion, it sounds reasonable and forward looking.

But since the discussion is not specific, it also applies to things like homeopathy, bigfoot, perpetual motion, dowsing, explosive detectors, and vaccine causing autism and many many more.

So, unless one is supportive of all research identified by the mainstream as pseudoscience or fringe science, it is necessary to distinguish the field one is advocating from things like homeopathy and perpetual motion and so on. And for this, the general discussion has no value. One has to be specific, and to argue the merits of the field itself. And that is what is happening in this long-winded discussion.

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An observer of human nature will notice two extreme types of human minds. We can identify the explorer mind in a person who looks for new ideas, explores the unknown, and enjoys finding what others miss. The other kind of mind we will call the contrarian. This mind tries to challenge every new idea, attempts to explore the opposite of every statement, and is never satisfied with any idea another person suggests.

To begin with, this observer (me) does not notice these two extremes. *All* scientists look for new ideas, explore the unknown, and enjoy finding what other people miss. That is what science is all about. That's why awards in science, selected by scientists, are given to scientists who discover or explain the most novel phenomena that have the greatest influence of subsequent thought or on our practical existence.

And, I submit, *all* scientists challenge new ideas and attempt to explore the opposite of every statement. Feynman recommended exactly that, and he was one of the more productive and innovative minds of the 20th century, and also one of the most contrarian when it came to extraordinary claims, especially claims of free energy.

The thing that distinguishes the minds that pursue extraordinary claims that are unsupported by good evidence is not openness to new ideas, but a lack of appropriate skepticism, that is critical to progress in science.

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The first kind leads the human condition in new directions while the second kind slows progress,

Again, I think all scientists fit both extremes, but if you separate the minds into those who advocate cold fusion and those who are skeptical of it, then this statement is manifestly wrong. Cold fusion researchers have not led the human condition in new directions, whereas many of the explicit skeptics of old fusion (Gell-Mann, who called it baloney, Weinberg, Glashow, Lederman, Seaborg, Schmidt, Riess) have won Nobel prizes for leading science in new directions, some since P&F claims of cold fusion.

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Ask yourself what would the present time look like if Fleischmann and Pons had been immediately acknowledged as great discovers

They were. They were on the cover of every major journal in the world. You should read your own account of how the world welcomed their claims with enthusiasm, and all the scientists that went to the lab to get in on the revolution.

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and the energy they promised were now being used to reduce CO2 emissions and eliminate the threat of nuclear fission power.

But that same question could be asked about Papp and his engine. What if Feynman hadn't worked to debunk Papp and the energy he promised were now being used to reduce CO2 emissions?

Obviously if either Papp or cold fusion were real, then we would be better off with them. But the view of most scientists was that the evidence did not support the claims, and given how unlikely it is, most judged that resources were better placed into other pursuits. Before you can convince skeptics that they have prevented that fantasy from happening, you have to convince them that the *specific* claims have merit.

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Ask yourself what benefit the contrarian mind has given to mankind over the last 27 years.

Pretty much all the scientific progress in the physical sciences in the past 27 years has been made by scientists who are skeptical of cold fusion, what you call contrarians. That is to say, anyone not skeptical would surely have pursued it, given its importance and the honor and glory associated with it.

And to the extent that the vocal contrarians prevented scientists from wasting 27 years pursuing wild geese, they have contributed to progress. Imagine if good scientists like Pons and Fleischmann and Hagelstein and McKubre and you had not wasted 30 years on this topic. Maybe you would have discovered a new solar panel or some other contribution to mankind.

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Even if the contrarians are right and the LENR energy were determined not to be real after a sincere and effective examination was made, would the situation now be any the worse as result of this wasted effort?

There is no way to know how many more careers might have been wasted on cold fusion were it not for the contrarians.

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(me:)

In 1858 Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor reported to the French Academy evidence of something weird happening with uranium salts when photographic film was exposed to them. His report makes it was clear he understood that there was an anomaly:

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The discovery of radioactivity is commonly credited to Becquerel in 1896, 38 years later.

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I'm not clear what your point is. Atomic spectra were observed in the early 19th century, and empirically described by Rydberg in 1888, but given the first physical foundation (even if still somewhat ad hoc at the time) by Bohr in 1913, a century after their discovery.

It took 50 years to explain superconductivity.

There are many other examples.

The point of the QM revolution is that these theories were born of *robust* experimental observations, not a large collection of vague indications that something nuclear is happening. And when revolutionary ideas were introduced to explain them, progress was break-neck. The vagueness of the phenomena in cold fusion, and the *absence* of progress is more consistent with the new ideas being wrong.

The effect of exposing film with uranium is not vague, and your description is definitive, and was no doubt reproducible. Similarly, spectral lines, blackbody radiation, and superconductivity were well defined, robust phenomena.

The phenomena associated with cold fusion are anything but. And experimental improvements usually lead to smaller effects, and sometimes they disappear altogether. It's a common phenomenon associated with claims like N-rays, polywater, and many sciences that have persisted for much longer, like homeopathy, astrology, telekinesis, dowsing, and so on.

Storms wrote:

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The background helium in the atmosphere is not an issue because the systems are tight. Great efforts are made to make sure no atmospheric He enters.

Sometimes great efforts are not enough. Which is why Miles had to shut down the experiment to correct leaks *after* great efforts had been made. Leaks happen.

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If air leaks in, its presence is noted by measuring the Ar content of the gas.

There's a reason helium is used for leak testing vacuums. It's covalent size is more than 3 times smaller than that of argon, so argon is not a good control.

In any case, there was a background of helium from the atmosphere in Miles' measurements. In the metal flask measurements, he measured a background of about 5 ppb in the cells, and found 8 ppb signal (3 above noise), all compared to atmospheric background a thousand times higher at 5 ppm.

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The skeptics seem to think only they realize the effect of an air leak and only they would make sure the systems were tight. The measurements are being made by professional scientists in modern labs, not by high kids in their garage.

I don't think the world is gonna accept claims of cold fusion from scientists just because they're professional and in modern labs. No one is infallible.

Claims of polywater were made by professional scientists in modern labs, and published in Science and Nature. And even though they probably thought of impurities and did their best to exclude them, in the end, they were wrong. The observations were later attributed to impurities.

Moreover, two of the main figures in the helium research -- Miles and McKubre -- admit helium background is a potential problem:

Miles: "The production of helium-4 in these experiments is a very difficult concept to prove since there is always the possibility of atmospheric helium contamination. More studies reporting helium-4 production will likely be required before our helium results become convincing to most scientists."

McKubre: "we cannot rule out the possibility that He-4 was sourced ... or that the measured helium represents a hold-over from helium previously dissolved in D2O or PTFE.... Definitive statements will be difficult to make about 4He production in this or future experiments unless or until it is measured at several times the ambient background level."

Storms wrote:

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This is like when painting a picture, no single dab of paint has any meaning until the collection of dabs suddenly can be recognized as the intended object. No painting would be understandable if each dab were viewed individually, which is what you and others try to do with LENR.

This seems a particularly inapt metaphor for what happens in science. I'm at a loss to think of a revolutionary new idea -- particularly one in bench-top physical science -- that resulted from pattern recognition after a large number of imperfect, erratic, erroneous experimental results.

Quantum mechanics was discovered and gradually built up based on individual, robust experiments, from Planck's successful formula to describe the highly robust blackbody spectrum, to Einstein's explanation for the photoelectric effect, to Bohr's explanation for the spectral lines, to Compton's scattering, and deBroglie's waves and electron diffraction. All individual blobs of paint, all with clear reproducible and robust results. And these, and many others -- the most revolutionary concepts in physics in centuries -- were discovered or developed in about the time that absolutely nothing has been learned in cold fusion.

Even in the case of Darwin, who did not have the luxury of controlled experimentation, the epiphany came from the focused study of individual traits within species.

The idea that there are many imperfect vague indications of something nuclear happening is not at all convincing. And more indications that do not improve in quality makes the likelihood of such a phenomenon less to my thinking. Because it seems inconceivable that so many very different kinds of investigation, with sensitivities that vary by factors of a million or even a billion, *never* result in an unequivocal result.

It's like the tens of thousands of sightings of bigfoot or the hundreds of thousands of claims of alien visitations. Advocates will argue that they can't all be wrong, but skeptics remain skeptical because it's far less likely that no one can get the camera focused, even if just by chance.

Storms wrote:

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Simply rejecting every observation as error is not only wasteful but makes reaching the goal impossible.

If every observation *is* in error, and the goal *is* impossible, then rejecting them saves wasted time and resources that can be devoted to other pursuits that *are* feasible.

The skeptical goal is not to trash everything new. It is to point out the flaws in extraordinary claims to avoid wild goose chases. If observations can be plausibly explained by ordinary causes (artifacts, errors in calibration), then it is unreasonable to invoke extraordinary phenomena to explain them. And if one believes the extraordinary phenomenon is real, then it is incumbent on them to design an experiment that excludes ordinary explanations. This has not been done in cold fusion.

Feynman says "There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made."

Storms wrote:

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Here is a set of references related to the subject of helium....

A lot of papers, to be sure, but here's one simplification:

Gozzi appears in the list 7 times, but the most recent, and most comprehensive, and seemingly the most careful paper is in 1998. And in the abstract of that paper he writes:

"The energy balance between heat excess and 4He in the gas phase has been found to be reasonably satisfied even if the low levels of 4He do not give the necessary confidence to state definitely that we are dealing with the fusion of deuterons to give 4He."

Given the extraordinary nature of the claim, results that are not definitive are really not persuasive.

Gozzi did not denounce the field as a result of this, but tellingly, he seems to have abandoned the field after this paper. At least, I have not seen another report of newer experimental work on cold fusion from his group.

Any scientist confident that such an important effect was real, and that he was close to proving it, would not rest until he *got* definitive evidence. Particularly, since if it were real, definitive evidence should be rather easy to get.

oystla wrote:

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Note the helium graph of figure 2. He increase inside cell, and stable content in air outside.

There is a dashed line presumably indicating the putative level of atmospheric helium. There is no indication that the level in the laboratory was measured, or how or that the mass spectrometer was calibrated for quantitative helium measurement.

It's common in physics buildings for the helium levels to exceed normal by a factor of two because of helium cryogenics, helium glove boxes, and even helium liquefiers. Miles, e.g., reported that the helium level in his laboratory was twice the normal level.

Eric Walker wrote:

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(me:)

Do you have a full reference for this paper or a link to a PDF?

McKubre, M.C.H., et al. The Emergence of a Coherent Explanation for Anomalies Observed in D/Pd and H/Pd System: Evidence for 4He and 3He Production. in 8th International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2000. Lerici (La Spezia), Italy: Italian Physical Society, Bologna, Italy.

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I suspect it was a high-level summary of previous results, e.g., SRI TR-107843-V1.

No, I don't think so. The EPRI report does not cover the gas-loading experiment (Case replication), which is the experiment Storms extract data from. And in the EPRI report, McKubre says "it has *not been possible* to address directly the issue of heat-commensurable nuclear product generation"

As I said earlier, Storms gives 2 other references for the same helium work, also in 2000. One is from the same proceedings on finite element modeling, but I couldn't find a copy, and the other is in Trans Am Nucl Soc 83:367, also not accessible to me. The latter is also a proceedings of some sort, I think.

In any case, in the submission to the DOE in 2004, they give an appendix to support the helium correlation work, and it is essentially the same as the ICCF8 (2000) proceedings.

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In that case I doubt much can be inferred from it about McKubre's ability to prepare a technical report.

It's clear McKubre has the ability to prepare a technical report -- there are many examples. The poor quality of this one reflects on the quality of the evidence.

Abd wrote:

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Miles believed he was confirming Preparata's prediction. So this is already a "LENR prediction" that was subsequently found to be true.

Where by "found to be true", you mean in the judgement of a few people.

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I agree, it is real and highly interesting evidence for LENR, and Huizenga thought so in the second edition of his book, 1993.

It is obvious that unequivocal observation of helium produced in cold fusion experiments at any level would be highly interesting.

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However, Huizenga expected that Miles would not be confirmed "because no gammas." Miles was confirmed.

Not in the judgement of the DOE panel or the rest of mainstream science. If it were, Science and Nature would fight for the privilege to publish it, but as it is, the "confirmations" were not published in *any* refereed journal.

And it's not surprising if the ICCF 2000 paper that McKubre wrote is the best he can do. It is woefully inadequate as a scientific report, or as evidence for anything, let alone a revolutionary phenomenon.

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Joshua will then quibble about what "confirmed" means. Must be confirmed in an experimental report published under peer review, not by expert reports under similar conditions as peer-review provides.

It is you that gives peer review such exalted status when you talk about skeptics not publishing under peer review.

But the authors are just as aware as you and I and Tom and Huizenga about the importance of measurements like this, and would therefore be anxious to get the results into good journals so they can get the credit that would be their due. So, the fact that the results weren't published suggests that either they were rejected, or McKubre did not feel sufficiently confident in them to submit them for publication. That seems likely, given the caution he expressed about them in the EPRI report, and the poor quality of the conference report.

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In these discussions, Joshua points to the 2004 U.S. DoE report, which was not a peer-reviewed review of the field.

It was a peer-review of the field. You reject it because the peer-review was not peer-reviewed.

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That report is, on the face, a review of the Hagelstein et al review paper, but in a peer-reviewed review of a paper, there is back-and-forth that takes place, which was missing.

An ordinary peer review involves 2 or 3 referees. This involved 18, half of whom had a month to read the supporting literature, and a day or oral presentations and discussions. That is far more attention than any article for a journal receives.

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Miles was confirmed, and with increased precision, and these results have never been demonstrated to be artifact.

Wrong. There is a claim by McKubre based on selective analysis of a poorly reported experiment, that he did not even publish. Only those already convinced would ever consider that a confirmation.

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At this point, there came to exist a preponderance of the evidence for the reality of the effect. That's basic. That does not mean that it has been proven, but it does mean that the shoe is on the other foot. From the time of confirmation on. Let's say by 2005. Ten years ago.

Of course, you're free to stomp your feet and insist you will now believe cold fusion is real because of the preponderance of evidence until someone proves it's not.

But for most of those who disagree that there is a preponderance of evidence for the effect, they are perfectly happy to allow you to continue to believe it's real. If that status quo -- which has existed for close to 30 years (not just 10) -- satisfies you, then everyone's happy. But if you want to see some actual scientific progress in the field -- to the point that it might actually be exploited -- then better evidence is needed.

Not more argument. Better evidence.

And in this 10 year period you talk about, the evidence has not improved if you go by the refereed literature, which you insist is the measure of the field. The 2 or 3 claims of excess heat in the past decade (Arata-type experiments) have been shown to be consistent with chemical effects by Dmitriyeva et al. (in the literature). Measurements of helium in this period are completely absent, leaving mainly CR-39 neutron measurements, theory, and reviews (more argument). More reviews than experimental reports is a good sign of a moribund field.

Storms wrote:

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The next best is the tritium /neutron measurements. These measurements provide a path to eventual understanding. This path has become clear.

There has been zero increased clarity on either of those topics. The early tritium claims (with which you were involved) were far higher than the later ones. But the last reported from LANL that I have seen was from you colleague Claytor, and he wrote "due to the subtle and weak nature of the signals observed, we have taken many precautions and checks to prevent contamination and to confirm the tritium is not due to an artifact". So, a measure of nuclear reactions some million times more sensitive than heat, is *still* "subtle and weak".

McKubre was even more negative in 1998, when he wrote "we may nevertheless state with some confidence that tritium is not a routinely produced product of the electrochemical loading of deuterium into palladium"

And there has been little activity on the tritium front since. Claytor is making some noises about it again, but nothing detailed has been published yet.

And in 27 years, nothing specific has been resolved about tritium -- how to increase it, what mechanism is plausible in the context (particularly that would not produce neutrons at a similar level), and so on.

As for neutrons, P&F original claim was retracted. Jones early claims were already at level far below those expected based on the claimed heat, and in careful studies at Kamiokande and Gran Sasso, were eventually retracted as well. What's left is the SPAWAR one-neutron-per-hour claims, that have been challenged in the literature, and failed the Galileo test, and shut down by SPAWAR itself. The recent Italian paper on CR-39 and neutrons (Faccini et al., Eur Phys J. C 74 (2014) 1) really casts all the CR-39 claims in a doubtful light.

bobeson wrote:

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The mere fact of the APS letting this talk proceed, with such a bold statement of non-ridicule for cold fusion published right in the abstract, in itself is a major milestone for the history of LENR. Unto itself, it may not have great singular significance, but it is one more tangible indicator that the tide has turned.

That this is given such weight now just indicates it's become more scarce than usual.

According to http://www.physicscentral.com/…ostid=8415251676933188137, from a few years ago, "there are usually some cold fusion papers at our physics conferences, but that's because the APS allows any of its member to contribute talks, without peer review. It's all in the spirit of the open exchange of ideas in science. That's why there are also talks about zero point energy generators, perpetual motion machines, and a host of other fringe science topics, to put it gently....The thing is, the physical society doesn't endorse any of these topics..."

And an article in Infinite Energy reports an entire session on cold fusion in 2009, when Park was still active:

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Important results associated with [lexicon]Low Energy Nuclear Reactions[/lexicon] (LENR) were presented at two key scientific society meetings in March. The American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting “Session B16: Cold Fusion” was held on March 16, 2009 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The “Symposium on New Energy Technology” was held from March 22-24 as part of the 237th American Chemical Society (ACS) Meeting & Exposition in Salt Lake City, Utah.

[...] However, from my personal perspective, what happened in both the APS and ACS meetings was historic. But my perspective about this probably reflects my personal bias: I have been organizing the APS sessions for more than a decade, as a result of a long-standing tradition that began when the APS’ cold fusion naysayer Robert Park suggested to me that I should take the necessary steps to raise the tenor of debate (and lack of debate) about cold fusion in an open forum at the March Meeting of the APS. This year’s session included eight contributed papers which were presented over a relatively short (90 minute) period of time (the length of each paper was required to be less than 12 minutes)....

The following papers were on the agenda: “Electrodynamic Component of Pd Electrical Conductivity,” Mitchell Swartz; “Study of the Palladium Hydrogen-Deuterium System,” Jan Marwan; “Investigation of the Cold Fusion Phenomenon in the Surface Region of Hydrogen Non-occlusive Metal Catalysts; W, Pt, and Au,” Hideo Kozima and Tadahiko Mizuno; “Sonofusion: Squeezed Deuteron Clusters, with Small Size, High Energy Density but No High Energy Particles,” Roger Stringham; “Time-Dependent Changes in Morphology and Composition of Solid Particles Collected from Heavy Water Electrolyte After Electrolysis with a Palladium Cathode,” John Dash and Q. Wang; “Study of Methods to Increase Cluster/Dislocation Loop Densities in Electrodes,” Xiaoling Yang and George Miley; “Metal Catalyzed Fusion: Nuclear Active Environment vs. Process,” Scott Chubb; “Potential Role of Energy Band Theory in Finite Solids and in Resonant Phenomena Involving Metal-Induced Fusion and the Fleischmann-Pons Effect,” Talbot Chubb; “Wave Nature of the Deuterium Flux Permeating Palladium Thin Film,” Xing Z. Li, Bin Liu and Qing Wei; “Isomorphic Properties of Atoms, Molecules, Water, DNA, Crystals, Earth, Solar System and Galaxies,” F.A. Gareev, G.F. Gareeva and I.E. Zhidkova.

The ACS held sessions on LENR for several consecutive years around then, and I think the APS had several as well. So, don't expect too much from one paper now.

Storms wrote:

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In order to understand any phenomenon, we have to start by making plausible assumptions. These are then used to guide future work. No progress is made if every observation is questioned and rejected because it is not perfect.

Imperfect interpretations of observations and assumptions must compete as to plausibility. Based on a century of copious, robust, consistent, and reproducible evidence, the possibility of phenomena collectively described as cold fusion are extremely *implausible*, and when observations used to claim such phenomena are very plausibly explainable by artifacts, errors, and confirmation bias, then future work should be guided as far away from further pursuit as possible.

You can't just keep chasing something because it is desirable. When 27 years of effort are unable to improve the evidence for something so ridiculously implausible, which again is plausibly caused by artifact, then it becomes time to cut losses.

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The He/energy result is the best quantitative value we have in the LENR field.

And that's the sad part of it. Because, when your citations are actually examined, it becomes clear that the helium research is a dog's breakfast. And that's the best there is.

There are claims of excess powers more than a watt, or even 10 watts, and these are said to be reliable. Why not look for helium in those experiments? A watt of excess power for one month would produce unequivocal levels of helium in the electrode or the gas. Arata claimed to measure 5 W for 2000 hours (83 days), corresponding to 36 MJ, but the helium he observed (as near as I could deduce) was a million times too low to account for the heat.

It's not that all the observations made in this business can be easily explained by artifact, although Shanahan makes a valiant effort. For me, it's about "What if?" questions. If the claims that are made had merit, it would be easy to make nuclear phenomena stand out. If a tiny foil produces 25 watts in the Energetics experiment, then use one 10 times bigger. If Celani's wires produce 10 W, use 10 wires, some insulation, and it self-sustains. If 60 mW produces 8 ppb helium in one hour, then 1 W for a month will exceed ambient contributions by a factor of 10.

That's the sort of scaling that made Lavoisier and Curie famous, by allowing them to identify the source of combustion or radiation. And if anything, nuclear reactions in the context of cold fusion experiments should be far more manifest. But nothing ever scales in cold fusion. When the experiments are improved, the effect gets weaker. It's been more than 10 years since the last helium correlation experiments were done, or at least reported. If that's the best experiment going, and the existing results haven't been published (without challenge), why has no one tried to improve them?

Storms wrote:

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Attached is a histogram of the helium /energy measurements. The collection of 16 values clusters around a value that is about 40% of the value expected to result from D+D=He fusion. Because the ratio of two independent measurements is plotted, the ratio can fall anywhere between 0 and infinity if error were the main cause of the value. Instead, the value shows a tight cluster that can be fit by a Gaussian error function. In all other field of science, this is called a very tight and meaningful correlation.

It certainly looks impressive, and if the results were credible and comprehensive, they would be revolutionary. But simply presenting a graph does not give any indication of the credibility or comprehensiveness of the data. You've been cagey about the origin of these particular results, but there are only 16 values, and even your 2010 review used 25 values to get a ratio, so I assume this is a subset of those. If so, they consist of Miles results which were at the low ppb level and challenged in the literature, and McKubre's and Bush and Lagowski's results, which did not even rise to the modest level of peer review.

At first blush, results like these seem indisputable, but on further consideration, it becomes clear that it is a combination of a suitable ambient level of helium, confirmation bias, and shameless cherry-picking. To elaborate:

1) suitable ambient level

There are many claimed products of nuclear reactions in cold fusion experiments (neutrons, tritium, various transmutation products, He-3, gamma rays) and with a little discrimination, they would probably all give a similarly shaped distributions with the peak in the neighborhood (or just above) the detection limit, especially when plotted on a log scale. But none of them are commensurate with claimed heat, because the detection limit is usually orders of magnitude below that expected based on the heat.

In the case of helium, however, because of the 5 ppm level in the atmosphere, with the appropriate excess power level or duration, the detection limit (or just above) *does* correspond to the excess heat. Depending on the method, this appropriate power level is a fraction of a watt for measurements on the scale of hours, very typical of electrolysis experiments. Much higher power levels have been claimed, but few reports of helium measurements are connected to such claims, and none are used in Storms' 2010 review for the calculation of the ratio, or presumably for the chart shown here (more on this in part 3).

Under these circumstances, data points between zero and the detection limit cannot be measured. Measurements of zero helium would be off-scale on a log plot, in spite of the erroneous label at the origin (it should be 0.01, not 0). So, results in the noise are either considered at the noise level, or more often ignored. For example, in McKubre's 2000 proceedings, the electrolysis measurements (meant to replicate Miles) show 3 points with helium at the noise level, and 3 points with the same power but with helium 2 or 3 times above the noise. McKubre only uses the non-zero points for his calculation of the ratio.

And if the measurements are result of artifact, they will not stray very far above the detection or noise limit, and so, you have a distribution right where you want it.

2) Confirmation bias

When helium does appear significantly above the expected value, the experimenters rightfully suspect a leak and work to correct it. In fact, Miles writes that in the first 12 days of their 1990/91 experiment, the electrolysis was shut down several times to correct leaks. But when the value fits their expectation, they are not motivated to look for leaks. So, too low, and it's below the detection limit and ignored. Too high, and the leak is fixed. Just right, and it's tabulated.

In McKubre's gas-loading experiment (2000) cited by Storms, McKubre uses the results from only one out of 16 cells to calculate the heat-helium ratio. He shows helium levels for 6 of the 16 cells, and of those 3 show no helium, but there is no mention of the heat. (More on the McKubre results below.)

3) Cherry picking

This is similar to part 2, but applies to a meta-analysis of different studies, as Storms has done in the 2010 review:

Storms refers to several helium measurements, but selects only a subset to calculate the helium to heat ratio. So, for example, DeNinno claims helium an order of magnitude above the expected value, but it's not used because they think the calorimetry was wrong.

Arata claimed considerably higher heat, and for a longer duration, but still only measured helium near the detection limit, in this case putting it orders of magnitude below the expected value. This is not considered reliable enough to use.

Takahashi's results showed many cells with heat but no helium and many with helium but no heat. The corresponding ratios of zero and infinity are ignored for the calculation.

The claimed values provided by Bush and Lagowski were not to Storms' liking, "so the values in Table 3 are based on detailed information communicated to Storms by Bush in 1998 (Storms 1998)." None of this information is communicated to the reader to give confidence to this re-analysis.

Thirteen of the 25 values used in the 2010 review come from McKubre's gas-loading experiment, reported sketchily in a conference proceeding in 2000. These are the data that Abd is so enamored of, but using the data from one cell out of 16, and treating the observations as 13 independent measurements is grossly misleading for the following reasons:

(i) What is observed (or claimed) is a steady increase of the helium over a period of 20 days, and a constant excess power of less than 100 mW. Both of these could be caused by artifact -- helium infusion (a leak) to produce the steady increase in helium, and an error in interpreting isolated temperatures to give a small excess power. The result of these two phenomena are that both the total energy and the helium increase together, even if they're caused by two completely independent errors. So the claimed correlation here is meaningless. But more importantly, it's really only one result. The graph (Fig. 3) actually only shows 10 data points, so it's not clear where the 13 came from, but it could have been measured 100 times. That wouldn't make the results more significant, but would have made for a much sharper histogram, which is to say that once the observation of a steady increase is established, the number of measurements is arbitrary.

(ii) In Fig 2, it is shown that the helium measurements for that cell actually continue for another 15 days, and the concentration peaks and then decreases, even while the total energy presumably continues to increase. Why were these additional points not used?

(iii) The fact that the level saturates suggests helium infusion. The level (as measured) does exceed the putative background value by something less than a factor of 2, but the problem is *measurement* of the background value is not reported, nor is any calibration of the concentration measurement presented. So, it's possible the levels are off a little, or that the background is elevated. Miles reported earlier that the helium background in their lab was twice the normal background, which is not surprising given the usual presence of helium cryogenics and helium glove-boxes in physics labs.

(iv) The estimate of excess power was not made using any kind of reliable *calorimetry*, but by the measurement of isolated temperatures, and by methods that are not described in any detail. This kind of determination of excess power was shown to be seriously flawed in CERN's replication of the Piantelli work, where CERN attributed the apparent excess power to changes in the thermal properties of the nickel caused by hydrogen absorption. And they were claiming tens of watts. Here, only about 90 mW is claimed, so that result has little credibility. Furthermore, determinations of excess power were not reported for any of the other cells, and in particular the cells that showed no helium.

(v) A general comment. Only one of the 3 references Storms gives for this work is easily accessible (ICCF8, 2000), but that document is woefully inadequate as a scientific report. Much is left out, and many questions are unanswered. If that's the best McKubre can do, or if he doesn't have good answers to those questions, it's not surprising that the work was never published in a proper journal, and for the same reason, it is completely unjustified to use the data from a single dubious cell to comprise more than half of the data points contributing to Storms helium ratio in the 2010 review.

Eric Walker wrote:

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It is true that many in the field assume that (1) there is only a single first-order heat producing process in the FPHE and that (2) that process produces helium. But I don't see the need to assume (1) -- there could be more than one heat producing process. So observing significant heat in the absence of helium is also interesting, provided the report of heat is convincing. (Recall the Pd-Ce/D runs reported by Miles in 1996 and the Pd:Ce:Sm HH-series runs reported by McKubre in the 1998 SRI report, which in both cases saw significant heat but no helium.)

Well, the discussion was about *testing* the idea that helium is correlated to heat. I don't make any assumptions about heat or helium production, but if that's what you're testing, it's most effectively tested with appreciable power levels. And the fact that all the helium correlation experiments involve low level heat seems too coincidental, and suggests artifacts may be responsible.

Of course, experiments that produce heat and no helium are interesting, and would contradict the thesis. It doesn't affect the point I was making that higher heat levels are more informative.

Eric Walker wrote:

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(me:)

I disagree. I would be interested in knowing if helium is ever observed in a cell for which no significant heat was seen, and how much helium, if only to be complete.

Well, there would be nothing stopping such investigation. I was just pointing out that it would not be necessary. And if the first dozen cells that produced no heat showed no helium in the electrode, perhaps that would be enough.

But the real point of looking in the electrodes is that you can do it no matter what. In the case of the gas, you have to decide ahead of time that you are going to look for helium. So if you have a cell that produces really high heat, but you didn't arrange to collect the gas, you can still look for helium in the Pd.

So, for example, in the many Energetics experiments that claimed powers well above a watt, those electrodes could have been sent for helium analysis. And so on.

Storms wrote:

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Too often, the discussion about LENR does not use facts. We are regaled by a never-ending collection of opinions based on ignorance and then the ignorant complain when they are called ignorant.

Well, and this opinion seems to fit right in with the pattern you are claiming. To my reading, it is more the advocates who regale us with opinions, justified by having been in the same room with a great man. I do my best to base my arguments on facts and logical reasoning. When I invoke authoritative opinions, they are those of credentialed experts.

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I know the difference between ignorance and fact because I have read all the papers about LENR. My library contains over 5000 papers. I have assembled this information into two books in which the important information is evaluated and the sources are cited.

And yet, about half of the references you cite in support of Miles' claims in your 2010 review do not in fact support his claims. And the remainder are at best marginal.

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I have made thousands of measurements using the tools available to modern science. I know how a calorimeter works and its errors because I have build and used the method for 25 years. I know how a mass spectrometer works and how it is used to measure helium because I built and used a mass spectrometer for 20 years. In addition, I have published over 200 papers on a variety of subjects in peer-reviewed journals and reviewed many more. I know how science works and I know how LENR works because I have produced the LENR effect numerous times and have seen it behave as it is described.

Here you are using your credentials instead of facts to support your opinion. It's not convincing to those who have seen the evidence (the facts) and understand that it is far more plausibly consistent with artifact than with a revolutionary nuclear reaction that (like the ether of the 19th century) contrives to prevent discovery of its nature.

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LENR is rejected by conventional science for political reasons. It conflicts with the self-interest of the energy industry, with the hot fusion program, and with conventional teaching in physics.

These were all true at the time of the announcement, but in spite of that, by your own account, cold fusion was greeted around the world with an uncommonly enthusiastic welcome. As you said (emphasis, mine):

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Excitement was building as more people heard about the “discovery” and wanted to get in on the action. If real, such an important discovery hardly ever happens during a scientist’s career,...

During most of April, large and animated meetings were held every week as people tried to understand what Fleischmann and Pons had done and how the claimed effects might be duplicated. ...

By April 19, multiple programs were underway at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL), ... [10 other national labs] ...

In addition, 56 people, involving 8 teams, were working on the problem at LANL. Of course, non-government laboratories as well as groups in other countries were also working hard. […copious details of labs around the world getting busy…] As this list of laboratories demonstrates, interest was widespread and spontaneous, with studies started in at least 50 major laboratories worldwide involving at least 600 scientists. In addition, many articles in the press and on TV spread interest to the general public. All of the major news magazines featured Fleischmann and Pons on their front covers....

At one point, the director of LANL, Dr. Siegfried Hecker, confided to me that he had not seen so much enthusiasm at the Laboratory since World War II. “Physicists are actually talking to chemists,” he observed with amazement. This attitude was being duplicated all over the world. To be sustained, this huge bubble of enthusiasm needed some very significant confirming results,...

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And in a paper for Infinite Energy, you wrote "many of us were lured into believing that the Pons-Fleischmann effect would solve the world's energy problems and make us all rich."

Of course this enthusiasm makes sense, because cold fusion would have only benefits for society and for the government, so the only influence politics had on the field was strongly in its favor. Without this influence -- if cold fusion did not have the potential benefits of revolutionizing energy -- the subject would never have made it out of Utah.

This claim of political suppression is just an excuse for the failure of the field to make any progress.

What happened between the initial enthusiasm and the subsequent skepticism was not that everyone suddenly remembered that it conflicts with the energy industry, with hot fusion, and with text books, but that the evidence was made available for scrutiny, and it simply did not stand up.

And anyway, the energy industry did not reject or suppress fission or hot fusion research, and although these have not lived up to their promise, that was not known in the early days.

The hot fusion program is an *expense*, so it would be in the interest of the DOE, which controls the purse strings, to replace it with cold fusion. And most scientists would benefit as well if less money was sunk into hot fusion, leaving more for everyone else. Many of most effective critics of cold fusion were not working on hot fusion research.

And conventional teaching in physics was violated by HTSC and dark matter and dark energy, but all these things were not suppressed, but rewarded with Nobel prizes.

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The rejection is no different from that experienced by all new discoveries of mankind. The ignorant always reject as their first reaction.

I think you're not in command of the facts. The first reaction was clearly *not* rejection according to your own very detailed account. It was an enthusiastic welcome, and widespread activity. One of the most effective skeptics of cold fusion (Morrison) wrote a gushingly enthusiastic report on the claims before he had a chance to review the evidence.

And while rejection happens sometimes with new ideas, it's not always the case. HTSC was accepted immediately, and awarded a Nobel prize the following year. And the most revolutionary new ideas in physics, relativity and quantum mechanics, were accepted (in broad strokes) as fast as the ideas could be developed (even while there were quarrels about the details, and in particular the philosophy). In the amount of time since the P&F announcement, physics went from being entirely classical to having formalisms for special and general relativity and quantum mechanics. In light of that, and of the initial enthusiasm for cold fusion, to blame the current rejection on novelty is to argue the moon is made of cheese.

Abd wrote:

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...[the new TT proposal is] to design the experiment specifically to capture all the helium. I do expect that reverse electrolysis will be used to release all the helium,

If you analyze the gas, and do not exceed ambient levels by a substantial factor (as McKubre said), you will be vulnerable to criticism. It should be much easier to exceed background with the Pd, and far simpler all around.

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So the general conclusion from Morrey, apparently, was the helium was not confirmed. And Pons and Fleischmann probably wanted it that way. It sucks.

Right. That was a fiasco, but it didn't have to be. And the exercise showed it could give definitive results if reasonable heat levels (as have been claimed) are achieved.

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[...] "Confirmation bias" is the favorite refrain of cold fusion pseudoskeptics, it can always be claimed, and there is no way to prove that it hasn't happened,

But finding helium levels in the Pd far above a control exposed to atmosphere would make it far more difficult to claim confirmation bias.

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Again, misleading. It is not "easy" to produce so much excess heat, with most protocols.

It's funny how advocates argue high excess powers (tens of watts) and high reliability to give the field credibility. But to explain the low levels of helium, it is suddenly *not* easy to produce even 1 W reliably.

If levels can't be reached that give helium levels that unequivocally exclude background, the experiment will not be taken seriously, as McKubre has said.

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Most work, where helium was being measured, only produced enough heat to create measurable helium below ambient. Miles work did not involve high heat.

Right. That's the point. It seems to coincidental that whenever helium is investigated, the power levels are low. There are plenty of claims of higher excess heat. So look for helium in the electrodes from those experiments.

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The SRI Case work did raise helium levels above ambient.

Only marginally, and in a physics lab where helium levels from cryogenics are typically higher than usual.

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Apicella et al is probably reproducible and they may try it again as part of the Texas Tech/ENEA collaboration.

Apicella was called preliminary by the authors. The account of it in conference proceedings is 250 words, and does not provide enough information to gain any sense of confidence. That it was more than a decade ago, and no followup was reported justifies skepticism.

Abd wrote:

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This, then, requires that months of experiment are reduced to a single measurement, of the Pd when it is removed. This is radically unsatisfactory.

I disagree. There is no reason a dozen cells can't be run in parallel for different times to produce a correlation. And a single measurement of intense helium is preferable to a series of measurements in the noise. An intense helium signal that exceeds any possible contribution from ambient helium is precisely what both Miles and McKubre said was needed.

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To get clean results of correlation, the Miles approach is excellent, even brilliant.

Except that it was challenged and failed to convince the DOE panel. So, that is not excellent or brilliant.

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All the gas can be captured in these experiments, it's now known how to do that.

But it doesn't have to be. Enough helium is automatically captured in the Pd. That is far easier and less prone to contamination.

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Miles used that.

Yes, I know, but I meant it's much easier to take advantage of off-line facilities if no special measures are needed to contain the helium and to protect it from atmospheric contamination.

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For correlation analysis, the protocol should be determined in advance.

The protocol would be that cells that produced heat would be used for helium analysis. It would not be necessary to collect gas from every cell.

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Closed cell experiments, like M4, can also be used, but this will largely generate a single data point, for months of cell operation.

But it would be a *credible* data point. And there are plenty of examples of running dozens of cells in parallel. Two dozen believable data points after a month would be a huge improvement over what Miles presented.