Posts by THHuxley

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I also find hypocrisy in what the skeptics say. They claim the believers are fixed on a conclusion while they themselves are not aware they also have a fixed viewpoint. They assume that only they have an open mind and can correctly evaluate the experimental information. Never-mind, they probably never used a calorimeter and have no experience in the lab.

Actually, as a skeptic myself, I assume we all have prejudices and are liable to wrong judgements. The context here is that LENR is extraordinary and makes no useful definite predictions (except the He/heat correlation).

Josh and I both have said that secure He production evidence would be a game changer. A sure sign of something nuclear. If the effect is real that will be easy to find, more heat => more He. Easy then to get conclusive well above possible contamination levels. You know this logic is unbreakable.

If there is no such He production then we will not see consistent above local air measurement He concentration. We will not see He in Pd rod above initial levels (Josh's suggestion) etc.

Skeptics here are less fixed, because one positive experiment would chnage their judgment from "almost certain no" to "wow, something here is very interesting, let us check.

Believers are not changed by any evidence (as far as I know). If He experiments don't pan out I'd bet you will find excuses for it? the thing is, it is always pretty easy to find excuses for LENR when the mechanism is unknown. That is what makes it inherently weak, and means the skeptics are right to need strong evidence.

That and the hydra issue, which is subtle but crucial. Correlated results do not necessarily mean anything more than correlated selection of systematic errors.

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Tom, why do you trust what Krivit says over what I and McKubre say? What gives Krivit plausibility?

I thought we had covered that. I don't trust what other people say. In this case maybe looking at the two versions I could be sure the data was uncontaminated, but since both are convincing that would require more than a casual investigation. Without that I trust non-one, and hence not the data.

Krivit is a good journalist, and I'm pretty sure tells the truth as he sees it. Not that that is necessarily right.

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Most recent results from the third party independent E-Cat trials showed exceptional energy densities. When including internal plus external components the volumetric energy density observed was (3.6 104 ±12%) MJ/L and the gravimetric energy density was (1.3 104 ± 10%) MJ/kg.The energy densities of gasoline are 32.4 MJ/L and 44.4 MJ/kg respectively. So the E-Cat is thousand times more volumetric energy dense and 293 times more gravimetric energy dense than gasoline.

kazm.

Indeed. It is interesting how (falsely) convincing the Lugano test results have been in many quarters, don't you think?

Eric, while what you say is true, it is unhelpful.

The more complex your model, the better fit you need for data to be significant. He/heat correlation is good to look for because it is actually a prediction from an LENR theory (about the only one) with a known slope. Make the theory more speculative and complex and you have no secure prediction.

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Tom, please read my book where all the information you need is provided.

I'm afraid I don't find summaries helpful unless I've also got the original experimental record (published paper etc). Little things not relevant to a summariser may in fact be illuminating. Of course I'm interested in summaries too.

There is one other issue here which is that while I don't know the rights or wrong's of it Krivit has raised questions over Mckubre's He data and therefore I would not accept that. Once such questions are plausibly raised it is not possible to trust the data. Of course there is much other data.

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

Every observation has a cause, in a few cases this may be psychological with blatantly false data but that is a real outlier for scientists. But, to continue with your analogy, humans are good at seeing incorrect pictures in noise.

The problem with seeking gestalt patterns is that you cannot know whether what you see is extraordinary physics, or subtle experiment selection of unrecognised systematic errors.

From the nature of these things, the latter is a priori more likely than the former (because not extraordinary).

I'd need a bit more info to evaluate that data.

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Tom, I have a few questions I hope you will answer. The answers will provide a better understanding of your approach.What is your goal in this discussion?Are you mainly interested in teaching or in learning?

Enjoyment
Both - for me an exchange of views tends to lead to that. I like decoding mysteries, and, whether psychological or scientific, LENR presents some mysteries - at least to me.

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What source of information do you accept? That is to ask, do you accept information from a person who has obtained the information or do you have to obtain the information for yourself from your own observations?

That is like asking "how long is a bit of string?". And the notion of "accepting information" is too passive. We listen to what others say and it actively informs our own view of the world which we construct in some integrative fashion. To what extent I tend to believe what people say depends on how they say it. Particularly with experimental write-ups there is a often internal evidence apparent to an amateur with good maths and science.

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In other words, what kind of experience do you use to evaluate reality of any kind? Must you have the personal experience, do you accept the statements of "experts", or do you accept no information no mater what its source?

as above, not quite any of those.

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Do you accept consistent patterns of behavior being more important than individual observations? That is to ask, if many people report the same behavior, do you consider this consistency more important than each individual report?

The issue is not the accuracy of the reported behaviour. It is the accuracy of the interpretation. Just as a genuine phenomena will lead to coherence of reported behaviour (and LENR data is much less coherent than would be comfortable) so systematic errors combined with experimental selection and (some) reporting selection will also lead to (some) coherence of results after interpretation. That fits the LENR situation pretty well. (I've popularised it in this thread with the hydra analogy).

So statistics is tricky. Correlation is not always causation. Consistency of reported behaviour may have a number of root causes. Details matter.

In a more general realm, I don't accept that mass reports of a phenomena validate it. In some circumstances they do. In others they don't. There are a few interesting examples of this stuff we could go into...

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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. The rejection is no different from that experienced by all new discoveries of mankind. The ignorant always reject as their first reaction. Only when the claim becomes obvious to an idiot do they change their minds. Many books and essays have been written describing this characteristic of the average mind, so I will not waste your time describing the examples. LENR is now the most recent example history will use to show that nothing has changed, even in the 21th century.

Alas I must be blinkered in that I accept neither proof by untested authority, nor proof by assertion. Either of these would mean I found your comments satisfactory.

There are two options: either there is an experiment or series of experiments on the same equipment that proves your assertion. In that case you, as an expert, can say which it is. I have not yet discovered such.

Or, you are convinced by "preponderance of evidence". That however fails because of the easily misunderstood hydra problem.

(1) undiscovered systematic error is possible
(2) Therefore selection bias is also possible (as well as more obvious reporting bias)
(3) each experiment must independently checked for possible systematic and other errors, under the assumption that such errors if they exist may be selected and therefore likely.

A hard task, but then if any experiment leads to clear evidence scaling it to get Nobel Prize evidence would be possible and obviously worthwhile.

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The few active nay-believers will increase their FUD efforts, developing conspiracy theories of increased complexity, which will satisfy the demand of FUD, as it happens since may 1989 in Baltimore conference.

How many incompetents do you need:

(1) to get a Lugano report wrong?
(2) to get an 1 year e-cat test wrong?

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Did you do the temperature adjustments to all the parts when you did your COP estimate? Including to the convection?

I made some crude approximations. But better than assuming only radiation. You'd need to look at the code for precise approximations...

Yes, the camera correctly calculated temperature assuming perfect grey body radiation (Planck curve time emissivity) impinging on the bolometer with its spectral characteristics. That has to be true given the camera spec.

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LENR is a science that has been studied by dozens of competent scientists in over 12 countries for 27 years and has resulted in over 1000 published papers of importance. The information has been reviewed by competent scientists in books and review papers. The subject has met all the requirements science normally applies and has answered many questions with greater certainty than is normally applied to conventional science.

Were I disposed to believe assertions made without evidence, then that would do me nicely. But then, were that the case, I would take the opinion of nearly all scientists as correct and not even ask questions about LENR.

However, when I ask for evidence I get a whole succession of flawed experiments. I get Abd and Alain, who are convinced by a "preponderance of evidence" not processing the fact that experimental error is like a hydra's head. You don't know how many you will get, or what they are, for a given experiment till it has been really carefully critiqued. Then, each different experiment has a new hydra, with maybe different heads.

From my own limited experience I note published papers making claims for anomalies which I know to be weak. I have not yet seen a single such claim that is strong.

Josh's argument:

We can potentially detect nuclear reactions through excess heat, radiation, transmutation.

How strange is it that in LENR experiments all three are claimed, but in each case the (reproducible) results are such that they fall within the error margins - like goldilocks not too big, not too small - for all of these three observations? And yet the sensitivity of the three separate symptoms vary by a factor of 1000000.

It is just not reasonable that this should be so, if the effect is real and nuclear.

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Skepticism and challenging arguments are useful when they help guide a discussion to the truth or to a useful answer of a question.

That is a restriction that perhaps explains your position.

Skepticism is also useful when it helps to disprove erroneous solutions to questions, even though there is not any obvious "truth" to find because no pattern in the data. those looking for "truth" might see that is wholly negative, but in reality it is positive. If there is some real pattern to the data then it won't be seen until inflated and erroneous preconceptions are abandoned. If there is really no pattern then of course that is it.

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Sadly, in science your 'worst' critic is you best friend, but the cold fusion community reviles their critics.

Why I liked Kirk's post above.

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The subject has met all the requirements science normally applies

I disagree. If by subject you mean "experimental investigation of certain anomalies in D/Pd systems" then yes, it meets those requirements although the work showing anomalies is weak and could do with a lot of tightening (if that is the anomalies are real).

If by subject you mean anything to do with "nuclear" then there is no such science, because there is no (scientific) nuclear hypothesis that makes predictions which have been subsequently found correct. That means no potential new scientific theory is on the cards.

A long time ago - when we believed Gods controlled nature - the noting of an anomaly made good science. Now, there are many anomalies - it is when we find the mechanisms for them - assuming this is something new, that we get new science.

There are some second order effects included (with gross approximations where not clear - it is only small correction so gross approx better than nothing)

(1) the ridges increase the emissivity by an amount determined by the view factor
(2) the power out is not all radiant, there is a convection contribution, also a small amount at lower temperature than the reactor body.
(3) the short wavelength end of the passband has lower IR bolometer spectral response than the long wavelength end (if I remember right) this skews the response slightly.

I guess my fault for assuming what Abd says is vaguely accurate. Apologies Josh.

Abd: that is another issue - you accuse Josh of using the term "shill" about you when (it seems) he did not. You really should apologise for this misrepresentation, or else find some evidence to back up your claim.

The thing about strong advocacy is that unless you can manage it keeping strictly to the high and narrow path of truth your message will be less effective. I'd recommend that you use rhetoric with more care.

Also I note that Josh has given me my list:

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This is not accurate. Miles is one, but he had to change his detection limit by an order of magnitude to make it fit. McKubre is another (including the Case work), but he started out saying the "it has not been possible to address directly the issue of heat-commensurable nuclear product generation", and McKubre's claims never rose to the standard of peer review. Who else? Two is not multiple, even if you accept those two.Of the other (mainly unpublished) groups Storms, two groups (Chien and Botta) did not measure heat, and so could not have observed a correlation; two groups (Aoki and Takahashi) report results that suggest an anti-correlation; another group (Luch) has continued experiments until recently, but stopped reporting helium; two groups (Arata and DeNinno) do not claim a quantitative correlation, but in one case (Arata) the helium levels seem orders of magnitude too low to account for the heat, although extracting information from his papers is difficult, and in the other (DeNinno) the helium level is an order of magnitude too high.

and

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1) One of the few refereed papers on helium after Miles (Gozzi) admits the helium levels are not definitive.
2) Aoki and Takahashi report results that suggest an anti-correlation of heat and helium
3) Luch has continued experiments until recently, but stopped reporting helium
4) Arata's helium levels seem orders of magnitude too low
5) DeNinno's helium levels are 10 times too high
6) And even McKubre admits at first that "it has not been possible to address directly the issue of heat-commensurable nuclear product generation" The only quantitative confirmation of Miles did not rise to the standard of peer review.

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Abd will no doubt be able to say which of these sets of results he considers most convincing, and correct Josh's summary.

Best wishes, Tom

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Instead of Mary Yugo you got joshua cude.Out of the ashes into the (old) fire.

If the new shiny censorship policy bins Josh then I'm out of here too! (Though Josh used shill once, this has definition not just "paid" but "accomplice of confidence trickster" and therefore I think is verbotem). He should apologise for this.

Arguably it should bin Abd, who has been at least as insulting as MY, and not apologised, indeed he has repeated the insults (calling Josh a "fundamenally dishonest" liar) and has no possible factual backing for them. Remember, being mistaken or having erroneous judgement is not the same as being a liar.

But I did not want MY banned, so equally I don't want Abd banned.

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So, while 10 times ambient helium would be convincing (with suitable controls), so would the acceptance of the claims by the mainstream.

You need to add that this must also be at levels well beyond possible outgassing from experimental materials, not easily controllable, but one that can no doubt be addressed. I don't think it would be a problem with reasonably long experiments.

I glossed this over above with the word "consistent"