This is addressed in the paper.
This is also addressed in the paper.
The D2 artifact issue is not addressed. it is stated as fact that this is not a problem without evidence or rationale. For example, evidence would be a spectrum with two distinct peaks for D2 and 4He. Or an analysis of the expected difference, and comparison with the measured resolution.
Otherwise this is just a hopeful assumption.
The point is that assumptions like this are not proper when the result of making them is something extraordinary. In fact they are not proper anyway, but with a less unexpected result an unproven case can be more easily accepted as likely. And papers must if they are to be useful point out the assumptions, and detail reasons for making them.
Anyone who has read the literature will know that the tritium is about a million times too small to explain the heat. No one has ever suggested that the tritium can explain the heat. THH's statement is either grossly ignorant, or it is trolling.
I do not troll, nor am i grossly ignorant.
You here are criticising me with a straw man argument. I never said this paper claimed that. rather, when i look at all of the LENR eviudence, I look for coherence, or lack of coherence. I am stating that the tritium results are muhc too low to explain excess heat - which matters because if they were comparable then these two apparently different (unless we have LENR) observations would be coherent.
Because LENR theories do not exist in any usefully predictive from yet - my main reason for not liking them - the converse argument can never be proven.
Thus Li much too low to explain the excess heat does not disprove LENR. Nor do I say it does. However anyone understanding my argument would see that the lack of correspondence here makes the Li evidence less strong (for LENR). But it does make the Li evidence more questionable as support for LENR (see arguments below reiterated but I am not sure they are much remarked here - so worth repeating).
In contrast with historic He4 evidence where it has been suggested that this does correspond to excess heat and if that could be shown it would be positive evidence. i have critiqued here the attempt to do this from historic evidence. But it is interesting. If a genuine correspondence could be found it would be important. I was hoping the experiment Abd hinted at (U of Austin??) would run to completion and find suhc evidence. I have not heard what happened about that - maybe it never ran.
Science is not about taking sides, like politics. it is about honestly and carefully analysing evidence, drawing conclusions with reasons, accepting that we can all make mitsakes, that different people can draw different conclusions.
Only on this site do I find some people criticising those who disagree with them personally. it is a poor show. I realise this site is not entirely about science, and is advocacy, etc. But inasfar as i post here it is because I am interested in science and working out what these many anomalies actually mean.
I do not criticise anyone else (except Rossi and his ilk) in the way that Jed repeatedly criticises me. It is not proper.
Jed, you feel strongly which i understand. But by playing to a popular audience that takes sides, rather than looking at evidence and facts, you do yourself no favour.
My arguments here that I think have people riled up are actually meta-arguments. To do with how the collection of LENR-possible anomalies hang together or don't - and how we can judge that. I judge that different from Jed, and give reasons for my difference.
All scientific interpretation is subject to prior belief. For example, if I had no prior belief that gravity exists, and that the earth is large enough to accelerate objects, i would find the mysterious 1g acceleration of objects near the earth surface quite extraordinary and look carefully at all the data claiming that. Of course there is so much data that even with no rationale the "1g acceleration anomaly" would easily and clearly be accepted - after which more 1g observations would no longer be anomalous. But the 1g anomaly makes very clear predictions which can be measured. It is therefore a better hypothesis even without underlying theory than current LENR hypotheses.
Jed is convinced that his (and others - but not the majority of scientists) analysis of the historic LENR anomalies makes LENR pretty inescapable. Given that conclusion, he interprets current experimental anomalies with LENR as a possible solution. Also, he interprets historical evidence in the light of that conclusion. I do not draw the same conclusions and therefore am much less likely to see anomalies as evidence for LENR. Those who do not understand this paragraph - I think sometimes that Jed is one of them - but perhaps he just forgets it - will see this as either Jed or I being necessarily liars, stupid, or ignorant. I do understand this paragraph and therefore I can tolerate Jed having wildly different views from me about what is most likely in specific experiments.
As I have said many time here - because LENR does not make precise predictions - in fact does not make any predictions - a very wide variety of anomalous results can be interpreted as LENR. People here see this - with Jed I think - as additional evidence. I do not.
In fact I see the weakness of LENR as a predictive hypothesis as a major demerit in evaluating it as a reason for all these anomalies - as opposed to a wide variety of interpretation and experimental errors.
This message is not negative.
For example, better understanding of putative LENR mechanisms can lead to stronger predictions of results, which can then be measured and either disprove (that particular stronger version) of LENR, or make it much more likely. If LENR exists such understanding will in the end be developed. It is why I like the post-Google efforts that are trying to to this. They succeed, or they fail. Either way we end up with more information about the world. Note that LENR as advocated on this site is such a non-predictive hypothesis that no experimental results can disprove it or even cast muhc doubt on it.
I'd hope others here, with me, would see the importance of tightening LENR hypotheses, narrowing the set of anomalies explained but explaining some of them more precisely, in a way that allowed disproof, or much stronger positive evidence. I think actually there are quite a few who see this, it is just that they have not yet been able to do this. Nevertheless because unlike me they have a positive judgement on all that collected historic evidence they remain strong supporters of LENR. That is fair enough - but such supporters if scientists will be lamenting the lack of predictivity and working their hardest to change it.
I suspect that the old LENR crowd, many of them, have got past this simply because they have tried and failed for too long to find useful predictivity and therefore given up.
If LENR is real it needs people not to give up on that. The best motivation not to give up on it is a skeptical mindset - which is why I wish it was more common in the LENR community. You do see it in some of the post-google work.