Merged Cold Fusion Claims

[Aepervius]

As you probably know, there's lots of studies showing evidence for LENR, the question is if you believe them or not.

Here's one ...



... and tell me what is wrong with it.

I remark that you first gave a paper, then when it was pointed out that it was not good, you shifted to another one, asking us "what's wrong with it".

Normally I do not ask this, but what are your qualification in nuclear physic, and are you not simply taking paper that you do not understand at all, given to you by a 3rd party person ?

because the pattern certainly fit the evidence.

 

[manifesto]

Ah yes, "as you probably know" what Pratchett called "wallpaper words", designed to cover over the gaping holes in an argument.

Nonsense. There's hundreds of studies showing 'evidence' of LENR. Some people claim those 'evidence' being in error or fraudulent, but still, the 'evidence' is there to argue for, or against.

I note that you have (again) failed to actually supply any of the supposedly numerous peer reviewed papers supporting the reality of cold fusion.

Look above.

Quelle surprise, yet another attempt to shift the burden of proof.
Let me remind you, you are the one claiming cold fusion is real therefore the requirement is on you to provide supporting evidence.

When you look in to the cold fusion controversy you'll be surprised to see that the bulk of the critique is done outside the peer review process.

I don't believe you.

And I don't believe you.

You didn't post any reference to the paper until someone else did, only after that did you refer to it repeatedly.

You're not allowed to post links until you've reached "15 posts". If you look closer you'll see that the Hagelstein paper is my very first link.

So, what is wrong with Hagelstein's paper. Don't be shy.

Further you don't show any evidence of understanding the claims.

Exemplify.

No. He asked you to support your claims, you attempted to deflect this with some worthless nonsense.

Dancing David did in this case ask for a link to the Hagelstein lecture. I posted it. Period.

 

[manifesto]

No. #1 post this thread.

Ok. Is there a thread dedicated to LENR science without more or less shady entrepreneurial efforts?

 

[Craig B]

Ok. Is there a thread dedicated to LENR science without more or less shady entrepreneurial efforts?

Is there such a thing as

LENR science without more or less shady entrepreneurial efforts?

ETA See even Fleischmann's wiki entry.

Fleischmann confided to Stanley Pons that he might have found what he believed to be a way to create nuclear fusion at room temperatures. From 1983 to 1989, he and Pons spent $100,000 in self-funded experiments at the University of Utah. Fleischmann wanted to publish it first in an obscure journal, and had already spoken with a team that was doing similar work in a different university for a joint publication. The details have not surfaced, but it would seem that the University of Utah wanted to establish priority over the discovery and its patents by making a public announcement before the publication. In an interview with 60 Minutes on 19 April 2009, Fleischmann said that the public announcement was the university's idea, and that he regretted doing it. This decision would later cause heavy criticism against Fleischmann and Pons, being perceived as a breach of how science is usually communicated to other scientists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fleischmann

 

[manifesto]

I remark that you first gave a paper, then when it was pointed out that it was not good, you shifted to another one, asking us "what's wrong with it".

Hi, Aepervius!

Yes, I posted a theoretical paper to support the Hagelstein lecture. After that I posted an experimental paper to support my claim that there is some compelling evidence for the existence of LENR.

1. Theory

2. Experimental/empirical findings

Normally I do not ask this, but what are your qualification in nuclear physic, ...

As stated above, I'm not a physicist. And you?

... and are you not simply taking paper that you do not understand at all, given to you by a 3rd party person ?

If you look again, and a bit closer, you'll see that I asked if someone here would comment on it. That is, someone who knows physics.

because the pattern certainly fit the evidence.

What "pattern" certainly fit what "evidence"?

 

[Aepervius]

Is there such a thing as ETA See even Fleischmann's wiki entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fleischmann

To be fair, there are LENR researcher which see it as science, not as a way to scam a la rossi. I am pretty sure they are the crushing majority. There are bad apple everywhere.
I would not hold it against LENR. What i hold against LENR is the crushing absence of solid reproducible evidence, or even the jump-to-conclusion-without-checking-alternative-explanation for which we have an example above.

 

[Aepervius]

Hi, Aepervius!

Yes, I posted a theoretical paper to support the Hagelstein lecture. After that I posted an experimental paper to support my claim that there is some compelling evidence for the existence of LENR.

1. Theory

2. Experimental/empirical findings

Again, I have seen in LENR a pattern I have seen in other "fringe" domain :
1) somebody jump up and say "hooray!" with some experimental protocol A (P/F)
2) after some "horray" it turns out nobody can reproduce A
3) then some other team try A1, A2, B protocol
4) it petters out and somebody jump directly to H protocol (Ni now)
5) Even if you are not a nuclear physicist you can see obvious pattern of bad work (drawing which are without scale, partial results only shown, problem with calorimetry etc...) and when asking real nuclear physicist more problem emerges
6) and again the round goes experimental protocol are touted then dropped and never reproduced really
7) in the mean time the domain evolved far away from 1) and the experimental protocol A are deemed not reproducible, but even then nobody question that the domain is valid
8) in the mean time some are already jump starting theory when there is no real solid experimental result

As stated above, I'm not a physicist. And you?

Mostly QM, theoretical and practical, a bit of nuclear physic, enough to read papers, usually not enough to decide on my own without consulting with somebody else specialist.
But some problem with those paper are egregious enough as to not require deep nuclear physic knowledge to see flaws.

If you look again, and a bit closer, you'll see that I asked if someone here would comment on it. That is, someone who knows physics.

What "pattern" certainly fit what "evidence"?

And yet you seem to hold fast as if a "fan" or "believer" of LENR. Sorry if I misjudging it, but I have seen that pattern in this thread and others, where somebody come and seems to tout the domain, then cite an article when asked, then when the article is rebutted switch to another, AD NAUSEAM.

That was partly my reference to JAQing.

 

[bruto]

I was looking up the subject to find the title of a book I read long long ago (Voodoo Science was its name), and came across the title for an article in 2006: "DOES FLEISCHMANN STILL BREW TEA ON A HOT PLATE?"

 

[Dancing David]

i refer to this exchange.

And the specific evidence of cold fusion or LENR is?

Please state specifically what that evidence is, so we may discuss it, Pons and Fleishman is not replicated hundreds and thousands of times, so a theoretical discussion of how P&F may have gotten anomalous heat is not evidence of LENR.

 

[Dancing David]

Nonsense. There's hundreds of studies showing 'evidence' of LENR. Some people claim those 'evidence' being in error or fraudulent, but still, the 'evidence' is there to argue for, or against.

And which one exactly did you want to discuss, that way we can dissect the methodology, as Ben M and others have done.

Flawed methodology is flawed and means less indicative evidence.

 

[Dancing David]

As you probably know, there's lots of studies showing evidence for LENR, the question is if you believe them or not.

Here's one ...



... and tell me what is wrong with it.

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

they acknowledge some issues with the 'quantitative data' and make some assumptions as well, i will read the analysis more carefully and then also ask about replication.

In particular there is an assertion that their open cell method is 'identical' to closed cell methodology, and I disagree that they showed that to be true, there is alot of discussion that gives why it may be similar but not really identical.

 

[manifesto]

And the specific evidence of cold fusion or LENR is?

Did you or did you not ask for a link to the Hagelstein lecture? My question was if anyone here would comment on it.

And yes I know, you've also asked for experimental evidence, which I have posted above.

 

[manifesto]

I was looking up the subject to find the title of a book I read long long ago (Voodoo Science was its name), ...

Could you 1. define woodoo science and 2. explain how LENR/cold fusion research is a good example of it?

and came across the title for an article in 2006: "DOES FLEISCHMANN STILL BREW TEA ON A HOT PLATE?"

Fleishmann is dead, didn't you know?

 

[Craig B]

Could you 1. define woodoo science and 2. explain how LENR/cold fusion research is a good example of it?

There's an informative chapter in Michael Shermer, The Borderlands of Science. Some material here from his website. http://www.michaelshermer.com/searc...ence/&ref=www.google.co.uk/&ss=2794j918478j11

Fleishmann is dead, didn't you know?

I did know that.

 

[bruto]

Could you 1. define woodoo science and 2. explain how LENR/cold fusion research is a good example of it?



Fleishmann is dead, didn't you know?

I do not need to define it. I am simply reporting the title of a book on the subject. Interpretation of the contents of the book is optional.

e.t.a. I also was careful, I think, to point out that the article with the amusing title cited was dated 2006, long before Fleischmann died.

 

[Aepervius]

Fleishmann is dead, didn't you know?

You might have over read the qualifier of "2006"...

You also realize that since most of us are actually following up the news, we also knows that not only Fleischmann is dead , but so is Focardi. So what. Their scientific legacy is what we are speaking of.

 

[dlorde]

and came across the title for an article in 2006: "DOES FLEISCHMANN STILL BREW TEA ON A HOT PLATE?"

Fleishmann is dead, didn't you know?

It's OK, he died 6 years after that article was published.

 

[Cuddles]

Science doesn't have to be ridiculously expensive to be cutting edge. Sure, things like the accelerator research at CERN is expensive; it has to be. Digging a miles-long tunnel in the ground, lining it with accelerators and detectors, and employing enough technicians, engineers and scientists to make it all work is pretty damn expensive.

But an important thing to remember is that's not how it started. Particle physics research started off with people doing small tabletop experiments. Things only got bigger and more expensive as we learned more, because we'd already found out most of what we could from the small, cheap experiments. I can't think of any field of science that started out with billion-Euro international collaborations. They all started out small and eventually graduated to billion-Euro international collaborations once they'd proved there was something there to spend the money on.

That's where cold fusion falls down. It's not the lack of money, it's the lack of anything that would justify giving them that much money. As you note, there's still plenty around for small experiments, which should be plenty to prove that something is happening. But they're never going to get the big funding until they can show that it's actually likely to achieve anything.

Did you or did you not ask for a link to the Hagelstein lecture?

No he did not:

but when you look at that lecture, what specific research papers are you interested in discussing?

He asked for the specific research papers that the lecture referenced. You have still not provided them, despite having quoted this request several times.

Hi, Paul.

You just described the scientific process.

Umm... I don't get the impression that you have a good grasp on the process you're referring to. Maybe I've misunderstood?

Why is that?

Because you post things like this:

When you look in to the cold fusion controversy you'll be surprised to see that the bulk of the critique is done outside the peer review process.

No-one who understood anything about the scientific process would be surprised by this. When you look at any science, the vast majority of the critique occurs outside the peer review process. Peer review is a very limited initial sanity check. It's an attempt to determine if a piece of research could possibly be worth the time and effort to read at all - is it obviously horribly flawed or fake? The real criticism only starts after that, when other scientist try to replicate, build on it, or tear it apart. You don't need to be a scientist to understand how the scientific process works, but things like the above, and your links to Youtube instead of the papers you claim exist, suggest you are seriously lacking in that understanding.

It's enough with just ONE of this experiments being correct, to completely change everything.

Indeed. Just one correct experiment would completely change everything. Everything has not changed. QED.

 

[ben m]

Nonsense. There's hundreds of studies showing 'evidence' of LENR. Some people claim those 'evidence' being in error or fraudulent, but still, the 'evidence' is there to argue for, or against.

There are also hundreds of papers claiming to show evidence for perpetual motion. There are hundreds of papers claiming conclusive proof that the World Trade Center fell due to something other than plane-crash-fire-damage. There are hundreds and hundreds of blurry Bigfoot photos. Does that add up to better evidence for perpetual motion, WTC conspiracies, and/or Bigfoot? No, it adds up to lots of people making similar mistakes.

When you look in to the cold fusion controversy you'll be surprised to see that the bulk of the critique is done outside the peer review process.

The bulk of the public critique. You don't actually know what has happened when cold-fusion papers have been sent to journals, do you?

So, what is wrong with Hagelstein's paper. Don't be shy.

Um, his theory consists of an entirely-invented list of oscillator equations, whose sole physics content is "I found a system where a single fast oscillator can couple efficiently to lots of slow ones". If you guess (entirely without evidence) that an excited nucleus behaves like the posited "fast" oscillator, and that phonons behave like the "lots of slow" oscillators, then you get (according to Hagelstein) a model that fails to really match any cold-fusion experiment. However, as far as I can tell the model also predicts that cold-fusion-capable metals are totally opaque to nuclear radiation, which is experimentally false, so the model is wrong.

Also, it's not a model of cold fusion (i.e. why/how it occurs), it's just a model of hiding the hard radiation (i.e., supposing cold fusion happens, why don't gamma rays come out?).

How's that?

ETA: of course this is the *first* paper you thought of. You are of course welcome to say "OK, maybe not THAT one, how about THIS one?" and link to something else. And if Paper #2 turns out to be crap you can do it again. Which is how all cold-fusion defenses work out. Cold-fusion fans adhere to the belief that somewhere out there there's a single, awesome, irrefutable cold-fusion paper, but no one can actually identify it, like the legendary index volume of the Library of Babel.

 

[Crawdaddy]

Here is a specific non-extraordinary claim which, as far as I can tell, is 100% consistent with the evidence.

a) There was lanthanum contamination during the Cs deposition process.
b) Some LaD compound survived the dissolution process and made LaD+ in the ICP.

I don't see where I had to invent new laws of chemistry to make that claim.

Here is another specific non-extraordinary claim which, as far as I can tell, is 100% consistent with the evidence.

a) The authors are inexperienced with ICP-MS and didn't process the samples, or run the machine, or calibrate the output, professionally. The numbers reported in the paper do not correspond closely to any physical 141-a/z ion concentration.

The conditions of palladium digestion are highly oxidizing, there would be almost no metal hydride in the digested solution. Also unless deuterated acid were used the vast majority of any infinitesimal hydride that might be present would be simple hydrogen not deuterium. This explanation of the observed signal is ruled out by the physics of the digestion process.

None of the science based arguments you are making are reasonable.

The only explanations other than transmutation that explain the result are gross experimental error or fraud. If you would like to believe that a well funded industrial lab would go out of their way to make a false claim or are incapable of using and ICP-MS, rather than entertain the thought that Mitsubishi and Toyota have actually observed these transmutations, you are welcome to do so, but your methodological arguments are without merit.

Furthermore, the data available in the Mitsubishi papers, referenced in the Toyota article, report similar observations by in-situ XRF, XPS, and SIMS. The total body of work on this experimental presents a convincing data set.

It is impossible to to refute a claim of human error/fraud based on the available data. Making that argument just because you don't believe the data is unscientific. The correct approach is to advocate funding for further study and reserve judgement.

To paraphrase Keynes:
"When my information changes, I alter my opinions.... What do you do, sir?"