Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 4

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Neutrality

I took the liberty of adding the following paragraph to the opening section of the article in the interest of neutrality and fairness to the reader:

"As of this writing (2005), the existence of cold fusion reactions is the subject of intense and sometimes acrimonious disagreement. It should be noted at the outset, however, that there exists a body of serious, peer-reviewed scientific work in this area conducted by competent and well qualified researchers. If the phenomena in question truly exist, contemporary resistance to work in this area may reflect historical and institutional processes of the kind famously examined by historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn in his seminal work on scientific revolutions. All parties to the current debate are in agreement that, if cold fusion truly exists, then there is indeed a scientific revolution in the works. It is hoped that this article will contribute toward open-minded, rigorous and impartial assessment in the best spirit of scientific comity. Readers are urged to carefully examine all sides of the debate for themselves and to draw their own conclusions."

I'd interested in hearing what people think of this addition.

-- Patrick Knowles <pknowles1@mindspring.com>

Good job! it is a shame we cannot delete this biased skeptical nonsense from the beginning:
"The vast majority of professional chemists and physicists do not believe this phenomenon exists, and regard the subject to be an example of pathological science."
As far as I know, this is not in evidence. No one has taken a poll of professional chemists and physicists, so we do not know what the vast majority believe. Obviously there is a noisy group of professionals who despise the subject and consider it pathological science. Some of them post comments here. Some are highly influential, such as the editor of Scientific American. But how big this group is no one can say.
I have not taken a poll either, but based on my interactions with individual professionals, I get the impression that most of them know nothing about cold fusion and they have no opinion about it one way or the other. When they read about it they are favorably inclined toward it. Professionals worldwide download ~3,000 papers per week from LENR-CANR.org, and they have never sent me a single e-mail deriding or attacking the subject. (They have sent plenty of e-mails requesting papers or pointing out typos and OCR errors.)
I am pretty sure that most of our audience does consist of professionals for four reasons:
1. They are the only ones who contact me.
2. These papers are so boring and technical only a professional would read them.
3. Readership seems to ebb and flow with the academic calendar. During final exam weeks in the US and Europe, it falls drastically.
4. In a few cases the Log file records are programmed with friendly little messages from the institutions, telling me that the librarian at Such-and-such University has downloaded all files using a program such as WebReaper.
I was thinking of modifying those opening sentences to say that no one has taken a poll, but I decided it is not worth debating and we do not want more tit-for-tat petty arguments. I shall only try to rebut technical statements made by skeptics, not statements like this which are clearly a matter of opinion & politics with no supporting evidence. (You are not supposed to post mere opinion in Wikipedia, but that never stops the skeptics, does it?)
--JedRothwell 17:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Ratio?

>deuterium/palladium ratio of 100% (i.e., one deuterium atom for each palladium atom)


Isn't this a ratio of 50%?

Ratio in this context means no. of deuterium atoms divided by no. of palladium atoms. This ratio is definitely 1 (or 100%) in that context. Another figure would be eg. no. of deuterium atoms vs. no. of total atoms present. This would be 50% as you mentioned. richardb 12:12, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hidden Chemistry

David, Any particular reason that you reverted my addition to the Cold Fusion main page (Hidden Chemistry)? Kirk Shanahan (new Wikipedia user - KirkShanahan)

Yes - I apologize for not putting a discussion on the Talk page; I was having wikipedia problems and the system kept timing out on me.
Your posting was way, way too long. It was more appropriate for a research publication or a Web forum; this is supposed to be an overview encyclopedia article, not an in-depth analysis of all old, new and potentially relevant research findings. You can imagine what would happen if every research lab in the world that has new data relating to cold fusion were to put in three or four paragraphs about its work here - the article would be so enormous that no browser could handle it, and no human being could read it.
If you think this work is truly new, signifcant and informative enough to make the level of this article, then one or two sentences - no more, please! - and an "external link" at the bottom would be appropriate. But in a field as cutting-edge as this, new research should be approached with extreme caution: should we perhaps wait until it gets more supporting tests from others?
By the way, why not create an account, so you can sign and time stamp your entries? No personal information needs to be given out, if you prefer. - DavidWBrooks 19:33, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Ok - when I printed out the Wikipedia page on CF for my files, it was 11 pages long, and only about 3/4 of a page was my contribution, so I didn't think I had been excessive. I wanted to let Wiki's readers know that there is an actual chemical explanation of CF out there, and to give a brief overview of it. As well, I pointed to the newsgroup and literature which is many, many pages to read.
What do I need to do to my section to get it included? - Kirk Shanahan

Suggest you solicit information from the cold fusion researchers

I work as an editor and translator for a group of roughly 200 retired scientists and university professors who are working on cold fusion energy. I maintain a web page on the subject:

http://lenr-canr.org/

The article here in Wikipedia on cold fusion is generally good, but contrary to your published policy it does express some strongly partisan points of view. This is probably unavoidable. Cold fusion is a very contentious field, and most professional scientists believe the effect does not exist. Although your article is more open-minded and comprehensive than statements published by the Scientific American and some other mainstream journals, cold fusion researchers who have evaluated it tell me they feel it is biased.

Some of my colleagues have attempted to change the article, but these changes have been deleted by skeptics. I understand that you can "lock" articles, making them read-only, and you can impose a measure of informal editing or peer-review. Because cold fusion is so controversial, and there is such hostile skeptical opposition to it, and because those who support it are a small minority in the scientific community, I suggest you lock this article. Mr. Brooks tells me articles are seldom locked, and it would require of contentious debate before a decision to protect one can be made. That is fine. There is no rush. I suggest you consider the matter for as long as you feel necessary.

I am in contact with all of the major researchers in this field, including the discoverer Professor Martin Fleischmann. If you can offer reassurances that contributions written by these researchers will not be erased or defaced, I would be happy to write material and solicit material from them directly that would represent their research more accurately than the present article does. I also have a large database of 3100 papers in EndNote format, which makes it easy for me to produce a well-documented review. Here is what I propose to do:

I will write a revised version of your article, but before I upload it, I will circulate it to the researchers whose papers I cite in the footnotes, to confirm that I have accurately described their work.

I will not delete any of the skeptical comments now in your article, although I may modify them slightly for clarity and to indicate that they are, in fact, skeptical. I would be happy to circulate the draft to whoever wrote the skeptical comments to be sure their point of view is accurately represented.

This would be a lot of work. Frankly I am not inclined to do it unless a consensus emerges here that it would be a good idea, and the Wikipedia powers that be agree to . You cannot expect someone like Fleischmann to submit comments that might be trashed or erased.80 year-old retired professors do not operate by those rules -- if you want information from them you must accommodate their demands and customs.

Of course they and I welcome any corrections, editing or peer review, but I will not spend weeks on an article that may be summarily erased without warning.

Perhaps I am asking for assurances that the Wikipedia community does not wish to make, or cannot make. In that case, I will drop the subject.

Here is one example of what I think needs to be said. The article now reads:

"Energy source vs power store

While the output power is higher than the input power during the power burst, the power balance over the whole experiment does not show significant imbalances. Since the mechanism under the power burst is not known, one cannot say whether energy is really produced, or simply stored during the early stages of the experiment (loading of deuterium in the Palladium cathode) for later release during the power burst.

A "power store" discovery would yield only a new, and very expensive, kind of storage battery, not a source of abundant cheap fusion power."

I would change that to something along these lines:

Skeptics claim that while the output power is higher . . .

. . .

Cold fusion researchers point out a number of flaws in this argument:

1. There is no significant chemical fuel was present in the solution. The potential chemical energy and chemical storage of cells has been carefully inventoried [cite McKubre, Bockris] and it shown to be less than 500 joules, whereas cold fusion cells have produced between 50 and 300 million joules.

2. No chemical process can produce (or store) more than 10 eV per atom of reactant, [cite elementary chemical bond article] whereas many cold fusion reactions have produced between 1,000 and 100,000 eV per atom.

3. Many cells have produced significant excess heat after a short incubation period, so if there were energy storage, it would show up quite clearly as an energy deficit (an endothermic reaction). Small endothermic reaction such as the initial formation of palladium deuteride are readily observable with most calorimeters. For example, with some cells, about a week after the experiment begins, 10% to 30% excess heat begins and it continues for about a month continuously. If this were caused by a storage mechanism, there would have to be an energy deficit large enough to capture all of the heat during the one-week start up phase. Roughly 60% of the input energy would have to be absorbed by the palladium, presumably in the formation of an exotic deuteride. As far as anyone knows, this scenario is chemically impossible, and there is absolutely no evidence that such deuterides have been formed, but if they were, the 60% deficit would show as clearly as the 30% positive excess does.

4. Some cold fusion reactions have started up with little or no incubation time, sometimes as short as 20 minutes, and many occur without any significant input energy, especially with gas-loaded, cavitation and ion-beam loading [Stringham, Arata, Takahashi], or with finely divided (powder) metal targets.

. . . and so on.

Please let me know if you would be interested in a contribution of this nature.

Sincerely,


Jed Rothwell

JedRothwell@mindspring.com

Thank you for your comments! I hope that with your help we can improve this article, removing some of its bias (without replacing it by counter-bias, of course) and making it more informative. However, we must work within the limitations of (and take advantage of) the Wiki environment.
"Locking" or protecting a page is really a last-resort, temporary measure, designed to let edit wars cool off rather than to fix a page in a "correct" state (after all, how would new discoveries be merged?). It is generally agreed to be a very destructive act to the Wiki in general (for example, frustrated editors may make inappropriate changes to other pages - in this case, edit wars might spill over to fusion power).
As you say, distinguished scientists are not accustomed to having their work mercilessly edited and modified. However, this is not the correct place to put their original writings anyway. Wikipedia's Wikipedia:No original research policy explicitly forbids this sort of thing - after all, original research does not belong in an encyclopedia. What I would suggest is that you write up your article, as you suggest; it could be based on the Wikipedia text or not, as you prefer, and then post it in some other location. You or others could then edit this article, using (and referring to) yours as an authoritative reference. Of course, this article could be edited again by others, but it's very difficult to make a wild claim stand when it contradicts a concretely-referenced fact.
Alternatively, simply providing concrete references to papers contradicting what's in the article now (here on the Talk page, say) would probably spur users here into amending the article. For example, if you could give specific references for points 1 through 4 above (ideally in the form of web links, even if only to journals accessible only to subscribers, but many of us do have access to university libraries) I for one would be happy to try to merge them into the article.
If you feel that you are making edits well-supported by references, and they are still being ripped out, we have various dispute-resolution mechanisms, the first of which is simply to post here discussing the specific change.
In short, we cannot "lock" your edits in as the Final Word, but if you (or someone, anyway) provide concrete references, they are unlikely to be removed. If you feel a particular edit has introduced bias (or re-introduced), please discuss it here.
I hope we can take advantage of your knowledge, one way or another. This article could certainly stand to be improved! --Andrew 16:45, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)


Andrew wrote:

As you say, distinguished scientists are not accustomed to having their work mercilessly edited and modified.

Actually, they are accustomed to that. They fight like cats and dogs. Any researcher still working on cold fusion has very thick skin. That is not the problem. What bothers them about this kind of article is:

Accountability; they want to know who wrote this stuff. They do not care whether people have PhDs, but they want your return address.

Rigor. This article makes many statements which are not footnoted and not in evidence (as far as I know).

Accuracy. Many of the statements in this article are contradicted by textbook physics and chemistry. If I were to write something like this and then circulate it for comments, they would tell me: "do your homework! Don't bother me with a half-baked paper!"


"However, this is not the correct place to put their original writings anyway. Wikipedia's Wikipedia:No original research policy explicitly forbids this sort of thing - after all, original research does not belong in an encyclopedia."

I propose to summarize the present research in layman's terms.


"What I would suggest is that you write up your article, as you suggest; it could be based on the Wikipedia text or not, as you prefer, and then post it in some other location."

I have written and ghost-written many papers and posted them at LENR-CANR.org, but most are not for the layman, and they are too long and detailed for an encyclopedia entry.


Alternatively, simply providing concrete references to papers contradicting what's in the article now (here on the Talk page, say) would probably spur users here into amending the article. For example, if you could give specific references for points 1 through 4 above (ideally in the form of web links, even if only to journals accessible only to subscribers, but many of us do have access to university libraries) I for one would be happy to try to merge them into the article.

I could do that. I would be happy to make a few other suggestions.

. . . Okay, I beefed up the previous statements with a few footnotes and some clarifications. It is attached to the end of this thread (or whatever you call these things.) It does not convert well from the Word format, and I have not added the hyperlinks, but you get the picture. This is too long, but I could reduce it to a paragraph or two. doing this for the entire article would take weeks, I think, plus I would have to run it past the researchers for review, and it takes them weeks more to respond.

- Jed


(edit conflict)

Firstly Welcome to wikipedia! We always welcome well referenced material but not original research. So provided the facts that you state above have been published in a reputable, peer reviewed, scientific journal than yes please! However you have been misinformed about page locking. We don't lock pages. We never have done, and there are no plans to do so in the immediate future (although long term who knows?)Perhaps you have been confused by page protection. We sometimes protect a page from vandalism or edit warring (where two opposing factions repeatedly edit the article to their preferred point of view instead of trying to come up with a neutral point of view that they may not love but can both live with)but this is only ever a temporary measure - a few days to a couple of weeks at most. We have found that out controversial policy of allowing everyone and anyone to edit, generally produces a better, more neutral, more informative article than anything a panel of experts can produce. If you live with the very real possibility (no probability) that anything you add will be edited to kingdom come, then we welcome you with open arms. If OTOH an open environment where literally anyone can edit is not for you, then we understand. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 17:00, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Theresa Knott wrote:

"So provided the facts that you state above have been published in a reputable, peer reviewed, scientific journal than yes please!"

Yes, they are. I was going to mention that the article as written does not meet that standard. Many of the assertions and it are not documented, and some are contradicted by the literature.

Well that's excellent news, because i agree, the article needs improving.


"However you have been misinformed about page locking. We don't lock pages."

D. Brooks and Wired magazine say you do in rare cases. I believe the special nature of cold fusion -- the fact that it is so controversial and there is so much misinformation about it -- make it a good candidate for locking. Perhaps some other method can be devised. You might have two articles about cold fusion, one written by experts which cannot be changed, and the other written by your usual methods.

The "rare cases" are pages like the main page (because if it gets vandalised our visitors may get a very strange impression of wikipedia "did you know: that paul is gaaaaaayyyyy!!! Ha I am an uber1337 haxor!" doesn't go down too well. As far as I am aware none of our articles are permanently locked.


"We have found that out controversial policy of allowing everyone and anyone to edit, generally produces a better, more neutral, more informative article than anything a panel of experts can produce."

The article about cold fusion is better than most, but it is highly opinionated from my point of view, and it has many technical errors and facts not in evidence. I think a panel of experts could do a better job, but they will not do it unless you let them work the way they are accustomed to.

I understand where you are comimg from. Many academics do not take to the Wikipedia way of editing at all. But some do, and we always want more. But we do not give special treatment to anyone I'm afraid. I'll explain why below.


"If you live with the very real possibility (no probability) that anything you add will be edited to kingdom come, then we welcome you with open arms."

No, I cannot ask the researchers to contribute on that basis, and I myself am not willing to spend a month on that kind of project. If you would like a more technically accurate article on cold fusion you will have to adjust the rules somewhat, and make this section more like a conventional journal or encyclopedia. I do not know how flexible your methods are, and I am certainly not here to tell you how to run this web site. If you are allowed to improvise new rules for a peculiar situation I recommend you do so.

- Jed


No we wont do that, for the following reason. When Jimbo started Wikipedia he started another encylopedia at the same time. It was called Nupedia. Nupedia was much more traditional, your article would be reviewed by a panal of experts who would pass it (or fail it) based on thier opinion of it's accuracy tone etc. Nupedia in principle sounded great. But in practise it was a dismal failure. Meanwhile Wikipedia has grown from nothing into a pretty darn good encylopedia in the space of 3 years. It's not perfect, many of our aticles need a lot more work to be up to the best possible standard, but we are getting there, and we are better than many other encylopedias already. We are not going to change our working practices that have served us so well so far. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 20:39, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Theresa Knott wrote:

"No we wont do that, for the following reason. When Jimbo started Wikipedia he started another encylopedia at the same time."

I suggest that the situation with cold fusion calls for a unique approach. Your procedures and rules may work well in most cases, but flexibility is called for in this case. I see no reason why you should dogmatically stick to one and only one approach, without regard to unique circumstances, history, or social factors.

"It's not perfect, many of our articles need a lot more work to be up to the best possible standard, but we are getting there, and we are better than many other encyclopedias already."

Most articles may be good, but this one is not. I agree it is better than other encyclopedias -- I said so in the introduction -- but I have pointed out some major flaws that could be fixed.

I think I have stated my case pretty clearly, so I will not trouble you by reiterating it. If you are not enthusiastic about this idea, I will drop it, and get back to editing this stack of papers from Italy and China that appeared in my in-box the other day.

- Jed


We welcome your participation; if you feel like contributing directly, that would be welcome, but if you'd rather just feed us raw data on the talk page, that's certainly helpful too (well, within reason!). But I'm afraid your idea of moving the page to a more administered version is not going to happen. If you'd like details on how the protection process works, see [[1]] and [[2]]. In spite of having many really contentious articles (Male circumcision is the site of a current battle) Wikipedia really only permanently protects pages that serve a technical purpose. There are less than about 100 articles currently temporarily protected, of Wikipedia's 490000, and none are permanently protected. This has resulted in articles on such difficult topics as Abortion, Holocaust denial, and Homosexuality. For better or for worse, the unifying principle of Wikipedia is universal editability.
That said, we are very interested in fixing the flaws in this article. I'm sure you understand, given your position, that there are nutcases and True Believers on both sides of the issue, so finding a nicely balanced presentation will be difficult. Fortunately, there is published literature to serve as our Higher Authority.
If you would still like to write a layman's presentation, but aren't comfortable with the way Wikipedia will treat it, I have several suggestions:
  • You could just give up on writing a layman's schedule (I'm afraid that's probably starting to look tempting).
  • You could write an off-site one. The Wikipedia article could link to it, and incorporate some of the facts.
  • You could write an off-site one and license it under the GFDL (or a Creative Commons Attirbution ShareAlike license. Then we could just bulk copy the text into the Wikipedia article and include a link to your article. Then your text would be highly visible; people would edit it (although with references we could keep the skeptics under control) but your original would still be available as a reference no matter what happens here.
  • You could contribute minor (or major) fixes to this article directly; you have no more and no less authority than any other wikipedian, but your references bear more weight than a skeptic's unsupported claims.
  • You could just make suggestions here on the talk page; as long as people have time to merge them in, in they'll go, references and all.
Anyway, enough talk; I'm going to shut up and edit now. --Andrew 23:27, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)


Andrew writes:

We welcome your participation; if you feel like contributing directly, that would be welcome, but if you'd rather just feed us raw data on the talk page, that's certainly helpful too (well, within reason!). But I'm afraid your idea of moving the page to a more administered version is not going to happen.

Okey-dokey. Just thought I'd ask. I do not think you will get any researchers to cooperate in this contentious field without some sort of administered version. All the cold fusion researchers I know are fuddy-duddies. As Fleischmann says, "we are painfully conventional people." Anyway, what you have now is like a polished version of a Usenet discussion group posting. It is fine, and it has merit. Good job! But it would not pass muster at a journal or a professional encyclopedia.

you have no more and no less authority than any other wikipedian, but your references bear more weight than a skeptic's unsupported claims.

That's good! It is good to hear that published experimental evidence overrules unsupported claims. I may have no more authority, but Fleischmann sure as heck does. FRS, one of the world's top 10 electrochemists, etc. etc. So do Bockris, Miles, Miley, Storms and the others. If you want serious input from such people you will have to reconsider this policy. With a normal field of science you would not.

- Jed

The list of suggestions from Andrew is excellent. Like him, however, I'm afraid I have to join with the other editors whose attitude is that we'd very much like to have your help in improving the article, but that producing a "fixed" version isn't currently an option. Yes, it's a contentious subject, but others are even more so. The ruckus over the George W. Bush article during the campaign got so fierce that the New York Times did a story about it. (You can read the first several words for free here.) To clarify a point that may seem inconsistent in other editors' comments: Articles are sometimes protected for a short period of time, but never permanently. Certain pages are locked (permanently protected). Every article is a page but not every page is an article.
There is discussion going on here about "Wikipedia 1.0", a fixed version that would include some sort of article validation process. Frankly, though, it's going to take a while for us to get there, if we ever do.
In the meantime, there is a problem with the practicalities of how we can get the benefit of your knowledge to improve the article. One thing to remember is that, under our policy of the neutral point of view (NPOV), it's not the function of this article to adjudicate the competing evidence and reach conclusions about disputed issues. Instead, we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute. It seems to me that, in general, your comments are consistent with this principle. Just bear in mind that the article is going to retain its presentation of skeptical arguments, even those that you think are balderdash. Our format would be along the lines of "Skeptics suggest that the evidence cited for cold fusion may reflect only chemical energy storage. [elaboration] Cold fusion proponents respond that this possibility is ruled out for a number of reasons. [elaboration]" And then, if necessary, "The skeptics' rejoinder is that testing for post-reaction chemical ash has been inadequate, so its reported absence is not reliable." (I have no idea whether they claim that; I just made it up as an example.)
What you might do is to spend the month to prepare your critique, based on a specific version of the Wikipedia article, and post that on the LENR-CANR website. If you link to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion], someone following that link will reach whatever is then the most recent version. Instead you would pick an earlier version, which wouldn't change; for example, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=10899113] will always link to the revision as of 07:23 (UTC), 4 Mar 2005. You could write with reference to that version and add your paper to the LENR-CANR site, as an example of rebutting some fallacies about cold fusion. The Wikipedia article includes a link to your site. There is at Wikipedia enough general commitment to the NPOV principle that I can't imagine anyone trying to remove the external link to a serious and detailed site like yours, so your original comments and corrections would be available even if their specific incorporation into the article got edited by someone else down the road. I realize that's not optimal from your perspective, but given the constraints of our structure it's probably the best we can do, at least until the 1.0 project gets somewhere. JamesMLane 01:21, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)


JamesMLane writes:

The ruckus over the George W. Bush article during the campaign got so fierce that the New York Times did a story about it.

That must have been a laugh and a half!

And then, if necessary, "The skeptics' rejoinder is that testing for post-reaction chemical ash has been inadequate, so its reported absence is not reliable." (I have no idea whether they claim that; I just made it up as an example.)

Join the crowd! The skeptics always make things up, and that is exactly what they would claim. The thing is, in some cases we are talking about the ash from something like 40 kg of wood. You would have to burn the entire experimental apparatus plus the table it is sitting on plus the pile of books on the table to get this much energy. That would make a lot of ash! You couldn't miss it. It would not fit in the cell, which is the size of a small cup (200 ml). The only thing in the cell is water, which does not burn, and two pieces of metal the size of paper clips.

What you might do is to spend the month to prepare your critique, based on a specific version of the Wikipedia article, and post that on the LENR-CANR website.

I think I will let it ride for now.

- Jed

Suggested changes by Jed

Whoa! These are not suggested changes! This is only a quick, rough and ready stab at what is needed. I batted it out in less than an hour. I would need to do much more work before making real suggestions. I was just trying to illustrate the kind of thing that I think this article needs: footnotes, many more references to actual experimental results, rigor (way more rigor than I just demonstrated!), quantitative information and so on. The whole thing has to be triple-checked and reviewed by experts, too.


[This looks way better in the original Windows format, but Windows does a terrible job of converting to HTML, so I will paste it as is. Yikes! What a mess when you paste it . . .]

Rebuttal to statements published in wikipedia.org

Jed Rothwell March 9, 2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion says, in part:

“Energy source vs power store

While the output power is higher than the input power during the power burst, the power balance over the whole experiment does not show significant imbalances. Since the mechanism under the power burst is not known, one cannot say whether energy is really produced, or simply stored during the early stages of the experiment (loading of deuterium in the Palladium cathode) for later release during the power burst. A ‘power store’ discovery would yield only a new, and very expensive, kind of storage battery, not a source of abundant cheap fusion power.”

Cold fusion cannot be caused by chemical energy storage. This possibility is ruled out for a number of reasons, mainly:

1. There is no significant chemical fuel present in the solution in a cold fusion cell. The potential chemical energy and chemical storage of cells has been carefully inventoried [1-5] and it has been shown to be less than 500 joules for a typical cathode, [6] whereas many cold fusion cells have produced hundreds of thousands of joules, [2,7,8] and some have produced 50 to 600 million joules. [9-11]

2. The products of a chemical reaction (chemical ash) are never found in a cold fusion cell after an experiment. Such products would have to be present in macroscopic quantities to explain the heat, in most cases. In some cases, the volume of chemical ash would exceed the entire volume of the cell many times over.

3. No chemical process can produce (or store) more than 12 eV per atom of reactant. (The highest energy density is in covalent electron bonds in substances such as diamond, 7 eV/atom, http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/matv/pdf/ssp_3y.pdf) whereas many cold fusion reactions have produced between 200 and 100,000 eV per atom. [12] To put it another way, gasoline contains more energy per unit of mass than nearly any other chemical. (Only a few forms of rocket fuel are better.) Gasoline stores ~45 megajoules per kilogram. Cold fusion cathodes typically weight 1 g or less, but some of them have produced much more than 1 kg of gasoline, and a few have produced as much as 13 kg of gasoline.

4. Many cells have produced significant excess heat after a reasonably short incubation period (10 to 20 days), so if there were energy storage, it would show up quite clearly as an energy deficit (an endothermic reaction). Small endothermic reactions such as the initial formation of palladium deuteride are readily observable with most calorimeters. [13] For example, consider a reaction in which the reaction begins after about a week of incubation, and then 10% to 30% excess heat is produced for a month continuously. If this were caused by a storage mechanism, there would have to be an energy deficit large enough to capture all of the heat during the first week. Roughly 60% of the input energy would have to be absorbed by the palladium, presumably in the formation of an exotic deuteride. This is chemically impossible, and there is no evidence that such deuterides have been formed, but if they were, the 60% deficit would show as clearly as the 30% positive excess does.

5. Some cold fusion reactions have started up with little or no incubation time, sometimes as short as 20 minutes, and many occur without any significant input energy, especially with gas-loaded, cavitation [14] and ion-beam loading, [15] or with finely divided (powder) metal targets.

Reference 4 discusses many of these issues in more detail, in section II.1.2. Quote:

“Energy can be stored either as it would be in a battery or it can form an unstable compound that later decomposes. In both cases, the storage process would be obvious as a negative power being recorded by the calorimeter. Of course, the magnitude of such negative power might be too small to be considered important, but would represent significant energy if it occurred over a long time. Consequently, samples that take a long time to turn on suffer from this possible error. However, many samples produce power and integrated energy at such high levels that this issue no longer applies and some cells turn on immediately. . . .

If energy were in fact stored as in a battery or even as in a capacitor, stored energy cannot be released unless the power supply is disconnected and the cell shorted. In practice, this is never done. If energy were stored by generating an unstable compound, this compound could be identified and detected in the electrolyte, on the electrodes, or somewhere else in the cell. No such compound has ever been found nor would the chemistry available in a LiOD + D2O electrolyte allow formation of such a compound. One reviewer suggested that the deuterium stored in the cathode, upon release and while reacting with oxygen, might provide the observed energy. Three well established facts eliminate this reaction as a source of energy. First, the cathode does not deload significantly while current is flowing through the cell. Even when current stops, deloading is very slow and does not produce detected energy. Deloading is very easy to observe in most modern cells. . . .”


1. McKubre, M.C.H., et al., Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the D/Pd and H/Pd Systems. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1994. 368: p. 55. PDF

This article describes a series of experiments that appear to produce excess power from deuterium setups but not from hydrogen setups. I can find no detailed inventory of the chemical energy budget in the cell, nor any discussion of the "power storage" suggestion; they do not observe negative surplus energy at any point. --Andrew 02:27, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
The inventory is Ref. 2, p. 3A-14 through 3A-16. I reproduced it, in part, here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreviewofmc.pdf
- Jed

2. McKubre, M.C.H., et al., Development of Advanced Concepts for Nuclear Processes in Deuterated Metals. 1994.

3. Kainthla, R.C., et al., Eight chemical explanations of the Fleischmann-Pons effect. J. Hydrogen Energy, 1989. 14(11): p. 771.

4. Storms, E., A Response to the Review of Cold Fusion by the DoE. 2005, Lattice Energy, LLC.

5. Pons, S. and M. Fleischmann, Calorimetric measurements of the palladium/deuterium system: fact and fiction. Fusion Technol., 1990. 17: p. 669.

6. Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Reply to the critique by Morrison entitled 'Comments on claims of excess enthalpy by Fleischmann and Pons using simple cells made to boil. Phys. Lett. A, 1994. 187: p. 276. PDF

Response to a criticism of one of their articles. At the end there is some discussion of the energy budget of "stage 5", in which (I think) the current is shut off and the cells remain hot; they estimate this remaining hot required 1.1 MJ and the energy available from combustion of D contained in the 1 cm3 electrode is only about 8.7 kJ. --Andrew 02:27, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
This cathode is much smaller than 1 cm3. It is 0.04 cm3, so the maximum release is ~650 J. Quote from paper: "We observe that at a heat flow of 144.5W (corresponding to the rate of excess enthalpy generation in the experiment discussed in our paper [2] the total combustion of all the D in the cathode would be completed in ~ 4.5s, not the 600s of the duration of this stage." That is based on 100% loading, which is unrealistic, so I estimated ~500 J instead. By the way, I get ~15 kJ from 1 cm3 of Pd loaded at 100%, which weighs 12 grams. 12 g = .11 mole Pd, holding 0.11 mole H, which converts to 0.055 mole of water, and the heat of formation of water 286 kJ/mol.
Actually, in real life, when the hydrogen from a cathode degasses in the last phase of this experiment, it does not produce any heat in the cell, because there is no free oxygen in the headspace. It recombines outside the cell.
- Jed

7. Schreiber, M., et al. Recent Experimental Results on the Thermal Behavior of Electrochemical Cells in the Hydrogen-Palladium and Deuterium-Palladium Systems. in 8th World Hydrogen Energy Conf. 1990. Honolulu, HI: Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, 2540 Dole St., Holmes Hall 246, Honolulu, HI 96822.

8. Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via complications to simplicity. Phys. Lett. A, 1993. 176: p. 118. PDF

6 is a response to criticisms of this paper. It describes a relatively simple system and computes (I think) the total enthalpy input of one cycle (after days of operation) as 22500 J, and the enthalpy output as 102500 J. They compute a very large value (3700W/cm3) for the power per unit cathode volume. --Andrew 02:27, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

9. Mizuno, T., Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion. 1998, Concord, NH: Infinite Energy Press.

10. Campari, E.G., et al. Overview Of H-Ni Systems: Old Experiments And New Setup. in 5th Asti Workshop on Anomalies in Hydrogen / Deuterium loaded Metals. 2004. Asti, Italy.

11. Roulette, T., J. Roulette, and S. Pons. Results of ICARUS 9 Experiments Run at IMRA Europe. in Sixth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Progress in New Hydrogen Energy. 1996. Lake Toya, Hokkaido, Japan: New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

12. Hagelstein, P.L., Summary of ICCF3 in Nagoya, Feb. 16, 1993. 1993.

13. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Excess heat in a double structure deuterated cathode. Kaku Yygo Kenkyu, 1993. 69((8)): p. 963 (in Japanese).

14. Stringham, R. Cavitation and Fusion. in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2003. Cambridge, MA: LENR-CANR.org.

15. Kamada, K., et al. Anomalous Heat Evolution of Deuteron Implanted Al upon Electron Bombardment IV. in 8th International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2000. Lerici (La Spezia), Italy: Italian Physical Society, Bologna, Italy.


That's twice now that you've made comments like "chemical storage of cells has been carefully inventoried [1-5] and it has been shown to be less than 500 joules for a typical cathode, 6 whereas many cold fusion cells have produced hundreds of thousands of joules, [2,7,8] and some have produced 50 to 600 million joules. [9-11]"
However, 500 joules falls right into that range. Or is that 50 joules just a case of sloppy writing of the type that would eventually get fixed in Wikipedia? Gene Nygaard 23:13, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)


I mean 50 million to 600 million. No conventional calorimeter could detect a heat flux of only 50 joules. (The micro-calorimeters used by Li et al. could, however.)

That is supposed to be: "typical cathode [6]" (ref 6, Fleischmann). This transfer by cut & paste from Word does not work very well, and neither does voice input.

Actually, 500 J is for the cathode hydride formation with a closed cell. The worst-case estimate for an open cell would be higher. See, for example, Miles et. al:

"We can estimate from Figure 18 that the Pd-Ce cathode produced 1.1 megajoules (MJ) of excess heat over a 110-day period. No chemical process can account for more than about 20 kJ in our system (Reference 4)."

- Miles, M. and K.B. Johnson, Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Systems, Final Report. 1996, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, NAWCWPNS TP 8302, http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesManomalousea.pdf

Ref 4 is: M. H. Miles, K. H. Park, and D. E. Stilwell. “Electrochemical Calorimetric Evidence for Cold Fusion in the Palladium-Deuterium System,” J. Electron Chem., Vol. 296 (1990), pp. 241-54.

I do not see how it could reach 20 kJ, but I will review Ref. 4 again. Obviously, in order to revise the article, I would have to do quite a bit more checking and cross-checking. That is why it would take a month. When I bat out comments like that in an hour, dictating to the computer from memory, there are bound to be mistakes. That is a good example of how NOT to write a scientific article!

- Jed

Made a few changes to "Energy source vs power store"

Okay, I took a crack at editing the Cold Fusion entry in your encyclopedia. I modified the section titled, "Energy source vs power store" which seemed the most inaccurate. I am not familiar with your method of adding footnotes and so on, and I do not see footnotes in the other sections of this article, so I crammed them into this section. If that is not where they are supposed to go, please move them. For that matter, if I have gone into too much detail please feel free to delete the whole kit and caboodle. It is no big deal.

I also changed the first sentence in the section below that, “Other kinds of fusion,” adding a detail that might seem like nitpicking. I noted that the Fleischmann-Pons effect has been seen with other methods of producing hydrides, not just electrochemistry. This is important because it confirms that the effect is not an artifact of the electrochemical technique. However I did not explain that, because it seemed to be beyond the scope of that section, so perhaps it should be deleted. Perhaps the average reader will not see this.

There is a reference at the end to a paper that I tried to modify but could not for some reason. It is:

"Electrochemically Induced Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium (http://newenergytimes.com/library/1989fph/1989fph.htm)": the original paper from 1989

I was going to add that a conventionally formatted version of this paper is available here:

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

There are a couple dozen other places in the article that cry out for revision, clarification, and footnotes. With all due respect, this article is a peculiar combination of urban myth and actual science. But the Scientific American prints only urban myths about this subject so you are ahead of the game. Anyway, I do not have the time to do more, and as I said I cannot circulate a draft to the cold fusion researchers for peer-review if anyone else is free to come in and screw it up later.

- Jed (jedrothwell@mindspring.com)

I've added the link to the PDF version of the original paper. As for your question about citations, "The current MediaWiki software does not support footnotes well." (So says Wikipedia:Cite sources.) We sometimes use APA style (see Wikipedia:Cite sources#An example citation style) and sometimes use embedded hyperlinks (see Wikipedia:Cite sources#Embedded HTML links for citations). JamesMLane 01:05, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Having gotten into the "External links" section, I edited some of the other links to try to give the reader a better idea what to expect. I removed this link:
The link didn't work for me, and there's no other reference in the article to either Naudin or Mizuno. JamesMLane 01:34, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I will adjust the footnotes to the APA style in a couple of weeks. I am busy with another project just now. I wonder if EndNote handles APA? EndNote, by the way, is a marvelous program. I will find Naudin's present web page. LENR-CANR has many papers by Mizuno, and Ohmori & Mizuno.
Perhaps the site was down temporarily, or perhaps my browser was having an off day, but I now have no trouble reaching http://jlnlabs.imars.com/cfr/index.htm (the link I had deleted). Now that I can see it, the description that I disliked before seems even less appropriate. That description introduces two new names; it uses the strange phrase "project fully based on"; and it suggests that the site is about one specific "project" (experiment?) instead of being, to my nonscientist eye, another collection of links and photos. A better listing might be:
I'm not sure the site should be included at all, though. We don't try to list every website that refers to a particular subject. Does this one add anything? It seems to be just a pro-CF grabbag, including this result from "Morgan H. and Marissa C." -- quite possibly a high-school science project. I'd guess that many of the papers that Naudin links to are also on LENR-CANR. JamesMLane 17:05, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

JLN Site

James, I don't know that JL Naudin is the orignator of anything novel in this field. Certainly he has a sexy Web site and has created a following among amateur scientists and experimenters, but I don't know that he has published any paper, or make any presentations at any major CF conferences. I too question this placement. -Steve Krivit

There exists a rule that vanity sites should not be included. This may be in a grey area (or may be fully in the exclude category) The original editor who added that link included the note:
I regarded this as way too verbose, but restricted my editing to trimming the overlong comment rather than deletion. I'm definately a skeptic on the cold fusion topic but didn't want to be too... agressively dismissive. It does seem that there's some consensus here that this particular citation is unneeded/inappropriate, and as the article is overlong already it should be removed. --Noren 19:58, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It's already out. I removed it back when I thought it was a dead link. I raised the question here when I discovered that I was mistaken on that point, but no one has restored the link, so I think you're right about the consensus. On the other hand, even if it's a vanity site, if it turns out to have some important information that's not available elsewhere, it might merit a link (perhaps a link to that specific page within the site). JamesMLane 00:30, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PENDING TASKS / TO DO LIST

Nobody appears to have responded to my "to whom it may concern" note in the TO DO LIST. I propose that, unless there are objections, items 1, 2 and 4 be deleted. -SteveK


The "To Do List" here has been there for some time and hasn't really been a focus of activity; I've had reservations about it for some time as well. It may have been put there by few people to draw extra attention to their concerns, but I don't think it represents any sort of consensus. I'd support its removal in toto; in addition to 1,2,4 as you mention- 3 is not such a bad idea but too vague to be really useful, and 5 is well intentioned but (in my opinion) would comprise too much detail for the introduction, and is already being addressed in later sections.
Editing others' text in the talk page is often frowned upon (the idea is to allow free expression), but as that list is presented as a semi-official-looking manner and wasn't signed I think it's reasonable to remove it in this case.--Noren 21:34, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Update on Terminology

Please refer to papers/abstracts in recent conferences: http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR05/SessionIndex2/?SessionEventID=28515 and

http://www.newenergytimes.com/iccf11/ICCF11Abstracts.pdf -SteveK

Help Requested: Breakeven

Regarding the following existing sentence:

"There are a number of established processes by which this can occur, although currently none of these can produce more energy than is required to contain the reaction."

I am confused. Does this refer to cold fusion or TN fusion? To my knowledge, JET obtained 0.6 Q at its peak, and outside of theoretical calculations if experiements had been done with DT rather than DD, there are no actual plasma fusion experiments which have attained Q > 1.

OTOH, There are many cold fusion researchers (Storms, Swartz, Cravens, Stringham,Takahashi, De Ninno, Arata, El Boher, etc, etc) who claim to observe excess energy.

I'd like to clarify the sentence. Can anyone offer some insight as to the intention of this existing sentence?

-Stevek

I suspect that the author of that sentence did not regard cold fusion as an 'established process', and intended to use 'established processes' as a blanket term for more widely accepted forms of fusion (muon-catalyzed, antimatter initialized, cluster impact, etc.) I don't see what else the 'established' qualifier could have been intended to mean. --Noren 15:40, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"this" must refer to a "nuclear fusion reaction that may occur well below the temperature required for thermonuclear reactions". That can be muon-catalyzed fusion but not JET. Any sentence that is that hard to understand and doesn't say anything essential should be thrown out. Art Carlson 16:43, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

Pseudo

The introduction paints cold fusion as protoscience, not pseudoscience. Hyacinth 23:08, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

While I agree we should be wary of painting cold fusion as a protoscience, I think the introduction doesn't exactly do that.
There has been some effort to be evenhanded between the skeptical and credulous extremes. The first two parts of the intro are neutral definitions of terms, the second two are qualified by 'controversially suggested' and 'claims' the last paragraph can be summarized by 'if it actaully worked, it'd be great', which is true enough. --Noren 09:43, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Protoscience

Hyacinth has, in this person's view, appropriately identified the field of cold fusion. Krivit requests that if Noren can support the assertions of "Pathological science and Pseudoscience" that Noren provide such justification.


For justification on why cold fusion follows the scientific process, it is reccomended to first start here: http://www2.nau.edu/~gaud/bio372/class/behavior/sciproc.htm and note that empirical observations supersede incumbent theory, and are not required for an early science.


A series of experiments that repeated the findings of excesss heat and helium production are listed here: http://newenergytimes.com/Reports/Heat&NuclearProductCorrelation.htm


A listing of peer reviewed journals which have published cold fusion papers is here: http://newenergytimes.com/Reports/PublishedPapers.htm


The irony of cold fusion is that the laboratories which supposedly disproved cold fusion - didn't. They were false negatives. Full documentation for this claim is here: http://newenergytimes.com/Reports/HistoricalAnalysisSummaryCharts.htm


A condensed version of this analysis in a slide presentation, given at the APS meeting in March 2005 is here: http://newenergytimes.com/Conf/APS2005/2005KrivitS-APS.pdf


A collection of good papers that show the observations, hypothesis, experiments and results (a.k.a. Scientific Process) are here: http://newenergytimes.com/Reports/Review20ColdFusionPapers.htm


Several hundred other cold fusion papers are here:http://www.lenr-canr.org


Keep something in mind about Bob Park, the pathological science cheerleader of the U.S.. Park -is not- an expert in cold fusion BY HIS OWN ADMISSION (see link below) and cannot seriously be taken as an authority. In the past, cold fusion was a favorite target of his satire and acrimony. If you track his statements publicly over the last few years, you will see that he is keeping his options open and slowly changing his attitude toward this field. Nature magazine, 02 December 2004, "Park says that although the quality of research has improved, no one should buy into cold fusion just yet." Bob has not known much about cold fusion in the last decade: http://newenergytimes.com/critics/park.htm but he is starting to pay attention, according to a fellow APS member, and Navy scientist who happens to be friends with him, and also is a leading cold fusion researcher. Park cannot be cited as an authority.

- Steven Krivit


Certainly. From the Wikipedia page on Pseudoscience: "A pseudoscience is any body of knowledge purported to be scientific or supported by science but which is judged by the mainstream scientific community to fail to comply with the scientific method."
The judgement of the mainstream scientific community is best represented by the 2004 DOE peer review. Excerpts:
"Two-thirds of the reviewers commenting on Charge Element 1 did not feel the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced. Many reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented."
"The preponderance of the reviewers’ evaluations indicated that Charge Element 2, the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions, is not conclusively demonstrated by the evidence presented. One reviewer believed that the occurrence was demonstrated, and several reviewers did not address the question."
The majority of the peer reviewers representing the mainstream scientific community did not find the body of "cold fusion" work to be plausable, and gave specific objections to the methods used.
as to Pathological science, the six criteria are, if we are to use that Wikipedia page:
   * The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
   * The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
   * There are claims of great accuracy.
   * Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
   * Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses.
   * The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.
"Cold fusion" meets each of these criterion, though the fall to oblivion seems to be particularly slow in its case.
Giving "cold fusion" a label of Protoscience is very generous, considering the length of time and amount of funding which has gone into it without the production of sufficient evidence for a peer review to find indicates that the effect even exists.
A shorter answer is that, if it actually worked, cold fusion plants would be selling electricity on the open market. --Noren 09:30, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Noren wrote: "'Cold fusion" meets each of these [pathological science] criterion . . ."

That is incorrect. Cold fusion does not meet any of these criteria.

1. "The maximum effect that is observed is not of barely detectable intensity . . ." Heat has been measured at sigma 90, and it has occasionally melted and vaporized metal and ceramic cathodes. In 1990 tritium was measured at 60 times background, and in some subsequent experiments it was several million times background, and beyond the upper detection limit of the instruments.

2. "The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability." This is completely wrong.

3. "There are claims of great accuracy." There are not. Cold fusion researchers use ordinary, off-the-shelf equipment and claim only ordinary levels of accuracy. In some cases, such as at Mitsubishi, extremely expensive and accurate equipment has been made, but the levels of heat, gamma rays and transmutations these researchers observe could easily be detected with ordinary instruments.

4. "Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested." Theories have not been proposed. Cold fusion is based on experimental evidence, not theory.

5. "Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses." Criticisms of the experiments have only been published in one peer-reviewed paper, and it was answered by the authors in detail.

6. "The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion." This ratio is impossible to measure, but in any case, it would reflect political power or the ability to influence public opinion, not the scientific validity of the claims.

I think Noren should base his statements on a close reading of the actual experimental literature, instead of repeating empty and incorrect critiques that have circulated since 1989.

- Jed Rothwell

Is "Pathological" and "Pseudo" NPOV?

It is my opinion that Noren has not presented convincing data to demonstrate that the field of cold fusion, as a whole, lacks scientific merit. There are are also several points to Noren's argument that are invalid. Because of this, it is my opinion that the representation of the topic of cold fusion, and sub-topic of "science" by Wikipedia, as presented by Noren, does not reflect well on Wikipedia. But let me put my opinions aside for the moment and focus on where I agree with Noren.


I agree that an influential political body, the United States Department of Energy, has concluded that the claims of cold fusion are still unproved after 16 years. I agree that a panel of experts in science have largely concluded that many of the claims of cold fusion are unconvincing.


I also agree that it would reflect poorly on Wikipedia if it were to be unscrupulous in what it represents. I respect what I presume is Noren's unstated care and concern in this regard with the choice to use the denigrating label of "pseudoscience" and "pathological science."


Without going further into the granularity of the Krivit and Noren arguments, I see that there is a larger disagreement, and decision at hand. I would appreciate some feedback from the Wiki community before proceeding futher.


And that is this:

Does the core value of the Wiki community place a greater value on popular, accepted opinion, or does it place a greater value on original data and specific expertise?


Does the core value of the Wiki community place a greater value on taking the position that a new field, which may or may not be scientific, is guilty until proven innocent, or is it of greater value to maintain a neutral point of view?

-Steven Krivit

I'm not sure I understand your questions exactly, but I believe you are touching on an important and difficult issue. I have my own (often strong) opinions about what is pseudoscience and what is pathological science, but I'm not sure that can be objectively determined. You notice the problem when you try to make a foolproof list of criteria to differentiate them from real science. (In the case of cold fusion, I think it is bad science, but I'm not sure if it is really "fake" or "sick" science.) Although these categories can be interesting and useful, does the implied value judgement make them inherently POV? Do they really have a place in Wikipedia at all? Art Carlson 19:57, 2005 Apr 14 (UTC)

Art Carlson writes: "I agree that an influential political body, the United States Department of Energy, has concluded that the claims of cold fusion are still unproved after 16 years." No, it did not reach any clear conclusion one way or the other. It said it would support more cold fusion research, but a few months later it reneged. The technical judgment was a split decision. The DoE called together 18 experts and gave them several papers on cold fusion. One expert said that cold fusion is definitely real, 6 had mixed opinions, and 11 said it probably is not real. You can read all of their opinions in full, and see most of papers they reviewed here: http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm. Decide for yourself. Write your own technical review.--JedRothwell 22:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Are "Pathological" and "Pseudo" and "Proto" NPOV?

The first paragraph above is an example of an attempt to shift the burden of proof in an unreasonable fashion. The burden of proof is on those who make an extraordinary claim which is said to be scientific, not on the rest of the community to have "presented convincing data to demonstrate that the field of cold fusion, as a whole, lacks scientific merit." If I were to make a claim that I am an alien from the planet Zarquon it would not be reasonable to expect Steven Krivit to present convincing data that I am not; rather, it would be my responsibility to prove my own extraordinary claim.

As to the presentation of original data, Wikipedia has a specific Wikipedia:No original research policy; for the most part I don't think it's being violated here, but it is something to keep in mind. This may not be what you intended by the phrase, I thought it should be reiterated.

You're correct that I think that we should be scrupulous in minimizing the amount of bias presented in articles. Wikipedia often presents opposing views on the same subject in the same article, either one of which might be seen as biased if the counterarguments were not presented at the same time. The above focuses on my edit, neglecting that the "Protoscience" category had just been added, while in the same edit the "Pseudoscience" label was removed. I find the "Protoscience" label questionable for reasons which may be similar to the reasons you object to the "Pseudoscience" category. Leaving the categories list with only the (incorrectly biased in my opinion) Protoscience category would give the incorrect impression to the reader that this topic is considered a protoscience by the community. The presence of both labels in the category listing gives the reader a more balanced picture. This is why I left Steven Krivit's addition of the Protoscience category when I restored the Pseudoscience label (that he had deleted) and added the Pathological label.

If we're going by a "it must be clearly proven to be included" standard, none of the three categories meets that criterion; if we go by a "a reasonable, if not compelling, argument can be made that it belongs in this category" standard, all three should be included.

That's a good way to phrase the question. With the former it is difficult to find consensus, so the latter is probably more practicable and is probably the way it has been implemented in practice. But then a note to that effect should be included in each of the categories. Art Carlson 19:34, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)
I found a Wikipedia statement on this point in Wikipedia:Categorization#When to use categories, though I'm not sure to what extent it is Official Policy, or even reasonable:
Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category.
And also in Wikipedia:Categorization#Creating subcategories:
Whatever categories you add, make sure they do not implicitly violate the neutral point of view policy. If the nature of something is in dispute (like whether or not it's fictional or scientific or whatever), you may want to avoid labelling it or mark the categorization as disputed.

Art Carlson 14:42, 2005 May 3 (UTC)

I would also be satisfied if none of those three categories were included, but if we were to leave only the Protoscience category it would not be NPOV. It's already muddled enough (see Hyacinth's comment.)

(I am also tempted to challenge the Nuclear Fusion category on the basis that none occurs, but I'm attempting to find a middle ground.) --Noren 14:46, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is Science NPOV?

Categories are such an annoying necessity.


I stand corrected regarding the responsibility for shouldering the burden of proof. Yes, I agree that it is on those who make and support the claims. I thought I had already referenced the proof but I can see from others’ perspectives that it is not necessarily so.


After careful consideration, it is clear to me that neither “Science” or “Pathological /Pseudo-Science” are as definable and objective as we would all like them to be.


For example, the core terminology that we are using in this discussion is likely to be subjective from one person to another. I challenge anyone to provide objective definitions for these terms with regard to “extraordinary claims.”


Reputable Peer-Review Journal

Mainstream Scientist

Reputable Scientist

Reproducible

Highly Reproducible

Experimental Replication

Nuclear Evidence

Evidence of Fusion

Independent researchers


Additionally, I challenge anyone to answer the following, also with regard to “extraordinary claims”:


How many published papers are required to satisfy a scientific requirement?

How many replications are required to satisfy a scientific requirement?

How large of a signal to noise ratio is required to satisfy a scientific requirement?

How large of an effect is required to satisfy a scientific requirement?

How commercially viable must an effect be to satisfy a scientific requirement?

How many control samples are required to satisfy a scientific requirement?

What would be a suitable control for a cold fusion experiment and why?

Is an accepted theory required to satisfy a scientific requirement?

Is a theory which does not contradict accepted theories required to satisfy a scientific requirement?

Is an experiment which does not contradict accepted theories required to satisfy a scientific requirement?

If an experiment cannot be replicated without specialized tools, facilities and expertise does this indicate a failure to satisfy the scientific requirement?

If a claimant stands to gain financially from the acceptance of a claim, does this indicate a failure to satisfy the scientific requirement?

If an effect is not well-understood after 16 years of research, does this negate its scientific validity?

If an effect is not commercially viable after 16 years of research, does this negate its scientific validity?


And just for fun, with regard to the posted comment, ““if it actually worked, cold fusion plants would be selling electricity on the open market.” Where can I buy some hot fusion electricity?


-Steve Krivit

  • Once Wikipedia starts allowing original research, we can start debating this! Until then, troll elsewhere. --brian0918™ 02:22, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cluster Impact Fusion

I noticed that there existed no Cluster Impact Fusion page, though as is accepted wikipedia practice the existing Cold Fusion page linked to it, so I did a bit of searching on it with the intent of making a stub or page on it. Unfortunately, the link in that paragraph labeled as "Recent research" was a paper published in January 1992. A bit more searching revealed that other researchers had found substantial problems in the experimental setup of that experiment and had concluded that the effects reported were due to these problems rather than to fusion. The comment as it stand didn't include the original BNL authors of that paper's erratum showing that the fusion rate dropped by a factor of 100 when a magnetic field was applied to deflect charged deuterium contaminants. The fusion observed thus appears not to be a result of the impact of neutral heavy water clusters.

I did find one post-1995 cluster impact fusion paper I found (in an admittedly brief search) was in this abstract, though I've only seen that abstract. This does make me think that there may be something happening with the impact of charged heavy water clusters, but the lack of other mentions leaves me still skeptical. The old description that was in the Cold Fusion page was was fatally flawed in my opinion, and the existence of the phenomenon appears controversial. If there's more source material I've missed on the topic a new entry on the topic might be appropriate. --Noren 06:48, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Cold Fusion is...

Fellow Wikis, the current descriptor for cold fusion is entirely inadequate.

It states, "Cold fusion is a name for any nuclear fusion reaction that occurs well below the temperature required for thermonuclear reactions (which occur at millions of degrees Celsius)."

This description is vague and vacuous. Considering the variety of viewpoints on this subject, this condition is understandable. I would like to help make an improvement.

In a few weeks I will post a new proposed definition. I will endeavor to be sensitive to my own biases and respect a neutral point of view. I will also ask that for anyone who should disagree with my edits, that you be sure that your knowledge of this field is current, and that your sources are primary, and not secondary sources for experts in the cold fusion field. For clarification, primary sources would be researchers actively engaged in the research. Secondary sources would be reporters and experts in hot fusion.

Also, while not required here on Wikipedia, I think that if you sign your real name to your posts, rather than a hidden screen name, others may take your comments more seriously and the level of integrity and responsibility of Wiki as a whole will rise.


Steven Krivit 06 25 2005

Yes, Brian's comments are pretty out of line in relation to what you wrote above. Previous comments of yours may have partially justified Brian's but I haven't looked. But I would also say, much better than signing your name in text (which anyone can replicate or imitate), would be to create a user account in your real name and sign your comments in talk pages with that. That way, your edits are all collected under one user and the account has a password allowing you to prevent others from impersonating you and keeping you from repudiating comments that appear to be made by you. It also allows leaving comments for you and having a coherent conversation without so much off topic material on a page such as this. Your user page would also allow discussing who you are and what background you have. Other than that, since we don't know you from Adam, your real name is just as anonymous as my username. Anyone can type "Steven Krivit". I for one, choose not to reveal my real name for a variety of reasons. If ever need be, I could substantiate my real identity. Lacking that, the edits under my user name have provided a substantial backing of trust from those that are familiar with my editing. That is quite sufficient for Wikipedia's needs. I would also request that you format your comments in a more compact manner to keep the talk pages easier to read. Thank you - Taxman Talk June 28, 2005 15:44 (UTC)
  • Once Wikipedia starts allowing original research, we can start allowing your edits! Until then, troll elsewhere. --brian0918™ 02:24, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Dear Brian,

Your message was not clear. It appears to be sarcastic and rude. Was your point regarding copyright issues? If so, I had no intention of claiming any, and full intention of letting the whims and fancies of fellow Wikis do with it what they wished.

Thank you,

Steve Krivit


  • Wikipedia isn't for discussing fundamental questions, coming up with our own opinions, and then writing them into articles. This is obviously what you are seeking, given your list of questions about science above. --brian0918™ 28 June 2005 17:39 (UTC)


Dear Brian,

Indeed, I understand now. I had mistakenly thought that Wikipedia might be on the cutting edge of information delivery considering its ability to evolve dynamically, and in near-real-time. But I have now read the page regarding original information and see clearly that Wiki, if it remains true to its roots, must stand back from that edge, and only accept information that is clearly certain, much like the Encyclopeadia Brittanica.


Cold fusion is a rapidly evolving, highly controversial topic and will continue to be for many years. It is unlikely that Wikipedia will ever be current with the facts on the subject until the subject of cold fusion itself, settles down.


I apologize for attempting to contribute without fully understanding the intracies and subtleties of Wiki-culture, I can see that I have ruffled some feathers. I will, as you suggest, "troll elsewhere." I thank you for your volunteer contribution of time to this Internet project and wish you well.

Steve Krivit

Superconductivity

The article claims that high-Tc superconductivity is not understood. I am pretty sure this is not the case, I have read passages that generally seemed to state that it is due, like the low-Tc cases, to cooper pairing.

Furthermore there is a real problem with the claim that we simply don't understand it. The issue is not that we don't understand cold fusion, but that it appears to be impossible. That is a HUGE and VITAL difference. It doesn't mean its true, either the understanding could be wrong or its application, but it is still more than simply "we don't know".

Maury 6 July 2005 12:13 (UTC)

Maury - it's not theoretically impossible, read up on it. There are a lot of very reasonable potential mechanisms proposed for how it could work. I'll just give you a couple. One, as you know the electrode becomes saturated with deuterium without changing the palladium lattice spacing, and deuterium nuclei in palladium deuteride are very closely packed, it conceivable that some kind of phase transformation occurs (perhaps to palladium dideuteride) which lowers the potential barrier between deterium nuclei (evidence: excess energy is only observed at Pd:D rations > 1:0.90 or so; also a similar effects has been directly demonstrated [3]). Two, it is conceivable that the deuterium nuclei exhibit cooperative effects, so that a pair of nuclei fusing transfer their energy non-randomly to adjacent nuclei and touch off a localized chain reaction (evidence: neutrons are usually produced in bursts). Three, the level of energy needed for D-D fusion is a "mere" 15kEV, but the electric field gradient right at the surface of an electrode can be gigavolts per meter, and strange things can happen under high current and high potential gradient conditions, in particular current flow forms filaments (and other interestng structures, sometimes highly regular) which can get pinched off with a magnetic field burst, so it is conceivable that some process can result in concentration of energy, either thermally (inertial or magnetic confinement) or again due to some kind of cooperative effect which prevents thermal collisions. I think people who haven't seen one of these things running are misled by the "cold" in "cold fusion", it's really a rather energetic process which is sufficiently complex to allow energy to be highly concentrated in some parts of it. And no, nobody *really* knows how it works, but that's not the same as impossible ;) ObsidianOrder 6 July 2005 14:14 (UTC)

todo

I think this article needs a fair amount of work. Specifically:

  1. state clearly the reproduction status (mostly positive) of PF-type experiments (if necessary, citing meta-studies/literature reviews) and the extent of experimental work done on that (huge). also state some regularities in which reproduction attempts are successful: depends a lot on the preparation of the electrode material and on the duration for which the reaction is run.
  2. describe the signs of a nuclear reaction beyond "excess energy": nuclear products (possibly with unusual isotopic composition), neutrons, etc. state which ones have/have not been observed.
  3. why is this hard to square with conventional physics? amount of energy to bring two nuclei together, energy loss in collisions, cross-section, expected reaction products (both isotopic and radiation), etc.
  4. add other (non-PF-type) experiments that demonstrate cold nuclear reactions: electrolysis of fused salts, gas discharge in D2, plasma discharge in liquid D2O and solutions, bombardment of metals with D+ ions, proton conduction in solids, cavitation, biological transmutation, etc.
  5. add proposed theoretical mechanisms: cross-section enhancement, dineutrons, clusters of neutrons/protons/deuterons/electrons, particle-wave transformation, tunneling
  6. add proposed explanations for/criticisms of PF and similar experiments: difficulties in calorimetry/calibration errors, current measurement errors, chemical reactions, stored energy in Pd stress, peltier effect, etc. and why these are not adequate explanations.

Yeah, some of that stuff is already there but scattered all over the place. I think each of these probably deserves its own section.

Finally, need to hunt for all the little POV gems such as

  • "The vast majority of scientists consider current cold fusion research to be pathological science"
  • "the reported energy output has never been associated with an equivalent amount of fusion products of any kind"
  • "Although there may be a genuine physical phenomenon at work, the theory that it involves nuclear fusion is unproven and widely seen as unlikely."
  • "It is not difficult to be convinced that such phenomenon [fusion of isolated deuterium nuclei at ordinary temperatures] is impossible"

While we're at it, get rid of discussion of n-rays/polywater/etc which is of minimal relevance.

Cold fusion is definitely a real phenomenon. I think all possible sources of experimental error have been quite thoroughly ruled out, and what remains is a very strange phenomenon (perhaps not 100% reproducible, but >80% with proper electrode preparation or using powdered electrodes) which at present has no (good) theoretical explanation. ObsidianOrder 7 July 2005 19:52 (UTC)

Please don't edit this article to say that cold fusion is "definitely a real phenomenon" - that is quite a POV statement which is not accepted by the majority of physicists. It may well prove to be true down the road, but it is not proven true now and wikipedia shouldn't say that it is.
Also, remember that if an article gets too long, it can explodes browsers. Consider breaking it up into sections and linking to them, as is done on most articles about countries: for example, Belize includes a few paragraphs on the country geography with a link to Main article: Geography of Belize that goes into more detail. You could do that with, say, proposed theoretical explanations, or why it is hard to square with mainstream theoretical physics. - DavidWBrooks 7 July 2005 20:26 (UTC)
"POV statement which is not accepted by the majority of physicists" - well, I was just stating my own POV, as a disclaimer if you will. However, I have a problem or two with your statement. One: what is the source for that claim? Two: would that also be true if you count only physicists who have actually done any practical cold fusion work? Three: since when is science a count of hands anyway? ;) The phenomenon has been replicated (many times) by people with unimpeachable scientific reputations (Miley, Bockris, McKubre, etc) I think it's time to accept that it is real. ObsidianOrder 7 July 2005 20:57 (UTC)

unsourced claims

Let's start with this: "The vast majority of scientists consider current cold fusion research to be pathological science". Does anyone have a source for it? I would offer the latest DOE report (which was not exactly in favor of cold fusion) as counter-evidence. If 1/3 of reviewers thought there was some merit in the work they looked at, that makes it a legitimate scientific controversy/dispute, and not pathological. Moreover 2/3 is definitely not a "vast majority". If this overly-broad claim cannot be sourced, I would like to modify (perhaps "a number of scientists") or delete it. I also would question whether the opinion of scientists who have nothing to do with the field should count (perhaps make that "physicists and electrochemists"?) ObsidianOrder 9 July 2005 05:14 (UTC)

2/3rds represents a super majority, so to out right reject it as "vast majority" is silly. Also, those 1/3rd thought that the research had merit, not that they believed it was actually fusion. THere is a supermajority based on the DOE report, so to call that "a number of scientists" would be incredibly misleading. Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 14:24 (UTC)
I think the problem he's having with it is that the claim is unsourced. The fact that scientists (or more specifically, physicists) aren't exactly polled about their opinions makes it seem more suspect. Also, there were only 18 scientists (were they physicists?) in the DOE report, which may or may not be representative of the total "population". --brian0918™ 9 July 2005 14:28 (UTC)
Why wouldn't the scientists on the review panel be physicists? It's not like they couldn't easily find 18 physicists, do you have any actual reason to believe they weren't (other than "it's a conspiracy--they hired marine biologists!")? Furthermore, if they aren't really representative, then why are cold fusion papers continually rejected by mainstream journals? If the journals don't stand for mainstream scientific opinion, then I don't know what does and frankly trying to negate mainstream scientific opinion based on your own analysis goes along the lines of original research. Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 18:19 (UTC)
For someone who prides himself on his logical infallability, I'm surprised at your latest slew of fallacies. I'll leave you to comb the List of fallacies for the cool Latin names to throw around. --brian0918™ 9 July 2005 18:26 (UTC)
Then feel free to cite some instead of making a blind accusation. I've noticed you have a tendency to try to undermine my credibility and contribute nothing of value to the discussion. I won't be suprised if you can't cite any, because you know they'd easily get shot down. Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 18:32 (UTC)

Here are some fun ones:

"In contrast, hundreds of researchers worldwide claim they have reproduced cold fusion, often at very high signal to noise ratios. Excess heat has been measured at sigma 50 to 100, and tritium between 60 and 1 million times background. Roughly 500 papers were published about polywater at the peak, but most were theory and only a handful claimed positive results, whereas over 3,000 papers on cold fusion have been published."

"In most bulk palladium electrochemical experiments, an incubation period of 10 to 20 days is followed by continuous excess heat production, which often continues longer than the incubation period."

I'll look through it later and I'll bet there are few more doozies like that. Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 14:24 (UTC)

Nathan J. Yoder writes: "Here are some fun ones . . ." I added those statements. I will add some source footnotes for them. Note that there were already foodnotes for the statement about polywater, which comes from Franks, F., "Polywater," (MIT Press, 1981). All of the other statements refer to well-known experiments that are familiar to everyone who has read the literature. Over 3,000 have been published and are listed at LENR-CANR.org. I will add a footnote for that.
It should be noted that claims by the skeptics in this article have no footnotes, and many are unsupported by either theory or experiment. For example, "These relationships do not appear to hold consistently, and the inability to establish any definite relationships between the energy output of the experiments and experimental inputs leads to skepticism that what is being observed has anything to do with fusion." That is a figment of someone's imagination, and it is so wrong in so many ways I hardly know how to begin correcting it, so I shall refrain from even trying. As usual, the skeptics are themselves guilty of what they accuse us of.
--JedRothwell 16:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

pseudoscience?

I'd also like to know why this is in the pseudoscience and pathological science categories. Let's not get really worked up, just a nice rational debate. I'll start off by looking at the criteria in the pseudoscience article. The ones which could conceivably apply are:

  • "failing to provide an experimental possibility of reproducible results" - it's not every-time-reproducible, but it certainly has been reproduced many times. I don't see that the definition requires perfect reproducibility, only that it should be possible to reproduce an observation independently more than once.
  • "failing to submit results to peer review prior to publicizing them" - blame P&F for that. cold fusion had been very good about this since, but unfortunately many publications automatically refuse to even consider such work.
  • "lack of progress toward additional evidence of its claims" - I don't think that's the case. many of the things that can make PF-type experiments fail are now understood, and there are similar experiments which are much more reproducible. there are also a lot of other experiments which are far less ambiguous. considering the vilification that people working in the field have to live with, progress has been considerable.

All in all, I don't think any of those criteria apply to any significant degree, and therefore the label doesn't fit. ObsidianOrder 9 July 2005 05:26 (UTC)


Your idea of "reproduction" is producing some amount of heat whilst ignoring the incosistencies in the all the data in the experiments. You can't ignore cold fusion's history because you don't like it and it does seem the "peer review" consists of submitting it to a very pro-cold fusion publication, which doesn't mean much. You say the failures of PF-type experiments are understood, but really it's all just speculation. If that's really the case, then why can't you reproduce consistent PF experiments today given that you understand the flaws? (I'd like to emphasize purity is not a valid argument since we can produce _extremely_ pure materials, including fluids.) The newer non-PF experiments like the ones you pasted to me haven't been retried yet, so you can't say that they signify improvement.
"considering the vilification that people working in the field have to live with, progress has been considerable."
That's what all proponents of pseudoscience say. Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 14:31 (UTC)

I found some more helpful information regarding this meeting criteria for pseudoscience (including quotes from McKubre):

  • [Bold claims] "Cold fusion," he writes in an e-mail, "has the potential to replace all sources of energy and power, indefinitely."
  • [Basic errors] While Garwin found no huge blunder in McKubre's experiments, he saw a host of possible problems, ranging from false signals in the equipment to simple measurement errors. Asked to summarize his technical report, Garwin replies with a characteristically brief e-mail: "Did not support any finding of 'excess heat.' "
  • [Leading researcher supporting fraud] McKubre often speaks about a company in Israel, Energetics Technologies, that has received a couple of million dollars a year in private support to research cold fusion and has achieved "startling results," producing much higher levels of power and heat than his own experiments.
    • But the scientist behind the Israeli group is Irving Dardik, a former surgeon, who secured funding from Sidney Kimmel, the billionaire head of Jones Apparel Group Inc. Dardik's state medical license was revoked by New York in the mid-1990s after several patients testified to a review committee that he had promised to cure them of multiple sclerosis using "waveform therapy."
    • McKubre and Hagelstein have consulted for Dardik; McKubre has cited Dardik's research to the DOE, now works closely with him and has repeatedly touted the work of Dardik's group.
    • McKubre traces waves along the wall with his hand and begins to talk about Dardik's theories of biological rhythms. He pauses, looking a little embarrassed. He acknowledges that, even to a cold fusion supporter such as himself, the theory requires a certain "leap of faith."
  • [Acknowledgement of minimal reproduction by proponents (note thhe only one is a single qualitative one)]While cold fusion proponents now claim better success in re-creating their results from one experiment to the next, Hagelstein acknowledges that their consistency is far from perfect, and some experimental results have never been reproduced.
  • [Still blaming things on bad materials] Like McKubre, he holds out the hope that better materials will produce more consistent results down the road.
  • [Ignoring the massive amount of negative results as using bad methods, praising the much lesser positives] Yet he argues that already there have been enough positive results, from experimentalists he trusts, that at least some of them must be accurate. "I think that things are well past the point that experimental error is a likely possibility," he writes in an e-mail. The scientific method, however, doesn't work that way, Garwin says. As he puts it, it's absurd to claim that experiments that seem to support cold fusion are valid, while those that don't are flawed.

Warming up to Cold Fusion (Washington Post)

Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 18:30 (UTC)

Archive

I have archived another portion of this talk page, which was getting humongous. It's still pretty big. Unfortunately, because people sprinkle comments throughout the page, I couldn't just move the old stuff. - DavidWBrooks 9 July 2005 12:56 (UTC)

Discussion moved over from pseudoscience article

As for cold fusion, it's been well established that it does contradict well-established principles, it doesn't have any succesful experimentation and comes close to being a perpetual source of energy. To classify it as a protoscience when it has been tested and failed miserably, time and time again, is a bit misleading.

Nathan J. Yoder 7 July 2005 22:35 (UTC)

That's like saying gravity has failed miserably, when all you're talking about is Newtonian gravity in the regimes where it fails. Have you actually read the cold fusion article, and recent news about current experiments? Also, standard practice isn't to revert, then discuss. Rather, you discuss his current changes (without reverting), and then decide what to do about it. --brian0918™ 7 July 2005 22:52 (UTC)
Cold fusion is a protoscience. There have been close to a hundred independent verifications in different labs. You might want to read up on that first. ObsidianOrder 8 July 2005 01:15 (UTC)
No, because gravity is a clearly and directly observable phenomenon, not a theory that needs to be tested. Newtonian gravitiation clearly works well within certain constraints. Cold fusion works well...it never works well in any situation. Yes, I've seen the "recent" news, it's nothing special. Every couple of years a new group of scientists shout "I've got it!", then no one else can reproduce the experiment in a controlled setting after that. These so-called verifications don't exist, the attempts have verification have _failed_. In other words, it has a 100% failure rate. By all means, point me to the experiment that's been reproduced over and over. Or are you proposing some vast scientific conspiracy to suppress an expirment that has actually worked?
I will revert nonsense like that first because I'm not going to get into a lengthy discussion first for something which was removed from a list of widely accepted pseudosciences just because the edit has a gut feeling it's not pseudoscience. It fits at least 5 of the 10 bullet points used to classify pseudoscience, that should tell you something. Nathan J. Yoder 8 July 2005 01:29 (UTC)
"verifications don't exist" - 34 independent replications of the Pons-Fleischman experiment are listed here [4]. There are more, in particular at Los Alamos and MIT (the former did not publish; the latter falsely claimed that the replication failed by fudging the data [5] [6] but were caught and retracted their conclusions). Recently the US Navy published a summary of their work over the past decade [7]. "vast scientific conspiracy" - no, just entrenched interests in "hot" fusion, and people unwilling to admit they were wrong. Strange how all the verification attempts at "hot" fusion labs failed, but the ones done by electrochemists with nothing at stake worked, isn't it? Also, I should point out the absurdity of claiming there is no evidence when most mainstream scientific journals refuse to publish such evidence (which is why the field has its own journals). ObsidianOrder 8 July 2005 02:32 (UTC)
So your argument is basically "they've failed in the past, so they'll always fail"..... What is your educational background, and can you please cite some sources for your sweeping remarks? --brian0918™ 8 July 2005 03:41 (UTC)
Those 34 are different experiments performed under different conditions with different results with NONE of them verifying anything other than some form of output being produced. Even reading the cold fusion article as you suggest, it even says the results from different studies are erratic and haven't produced anything meaningful. "Well, something came out of it, surely that's verification that it's working!" Strange idea of verification, indeed.
As for brian, I appreciate your logical fallacy (ad hominem) and it's not my job to make your argument for you. You're asking me to prove a negative, which actually shifts the burden of proof on to you to produce an actual success. Under what criteria are you including it under protoscience? Sounds more like wishful thinking "science" to me, to be put up there with alchemy and perpetual motion.
I should add, brian, that this has barely been discussed and you already reverted back. In fact, his removal of those two criteria hasn't been discussed at all by anyone. That is quite the sound decision there to lie about things which haven't actually been discussed. Nathan J. Yoder 8 July 2005 04:18 (UTC)
Well, I learned from you: reverting without any discussion at all. Where did I call cold fusion a protoscience? Again, I ask what your scientific background is. You've made many claims without providing any sources. I've yet to make any claims. --brian0918™ 8 July 2005 04:29 (UTC)

Kbk claimed it was a protoscience, moved it into that category and you expressed agreement with him, what else am I supposed to take that as? Are you now going to claim that you weren't actually claiming it's not a pseudoscience? Again, I emphasize my background is entirely irrelevent, take your ad hominem (a LOGICAL FALLACY) elsewhere. I am wondering about your education background if you keep insist on pursuing a logical fallacy. The burden of proof is not on me, as I already explained, but feel free provide evidence of reproducibility ("here are 34 experiments performed differently with different results" doesn't exactly qualify) or something indicating that it's not just an abysmal failure. If you want evidence of irreproducability, just look at the examples that obsidian conveniently provided for me. What do you expect, a line item run down of every cold fusion study in existence showing that each had bad results when reproduction was attempted under the same controlled conditions? Nathan J. Yoder 8 July 2005 05:18 (UTC)

Njyoder - the 34 experiments were essentially reproductions of the original Pons-Fleischman experiment, i.e. palladium electrodes in deuterium oxide. some of them are *exact* reproductions. the main variation in the rest is they chose one of several approaches to measuring heat production (flow-type, double-cell, open vs closed). aside from that their operating parameters (current density, temperature, etc) and the order of magnitude of the effect are very similar. the fact that different measurement methods show the same effect makes this stronger evidence, not weaker. as for why the results don't match numerically, well, for one people have found that some batches of palladium just work well and others don't, for reasons unknown (plus, even minute H2O contamination destroys the effect). this is not that different from the early days of the transistor, when one out of a hundred worked at all (because it had the right impurities on the order of a few parts per million, but they didn't know that at the time, of course). now, what you're saying is that an experimental setup that is shown to be accurate to +-0.05 watts and produces 5.0 watts of excess energy for several days from a volume of a couple of cubic centimeters is ... what exactly? "some form of output"? hah. if an effect can be reproduced *often* but not always and not exactly, all that means is that we don't know all of the factors involved, not that it doesn't exist. ObsidianOrder 8 July 2005 05:52 (UTC)

Take a look at the last column for table 2 (which provides rather limited information in asessing whtether it was reproduced in the first place), those values are far, far from lining up with eachother. The "objective paper" you present is really just a subjective summary of a bunch of studies. I'd like to see the actual data from them laid out rather than this unexplained "precision" measure (no calculations/raw data given). Your assertion that there is an "exact reproduction" is absurd, since even in the most well tested hard sciences you're not going to get *exact* reproductions, so that claim right there sets off alarm bells. Even proponents are only claiming that specific aspects of it are reproducible, while excess heat quantity is not.

You'd think after so many years they'd at least be able to get that reproduced. Of course, you're claiming little impurities in the process based on past history, but that's only really applicable historically because their technology was too primitive to produce "clean enough" materials. Today though, we can produce clean enough materials down to minute scales for practically anything. Nathan J. Yoder 8 July 2005 06:23 (UTC)

Njyoder - by "exact reproduction" I mean same setup not results. you could have probably deduced that if you were not being difficult. "values are far from lining up with each other" - actually they are in perfect qualitative agreement, being positive and outside the range of possible errors. "I'd like to see the actual data" - by all means, go and read the original papers. "impurities in the process based on past history" - I'm merely bringing that up as the thing we don't know about yet factor. the palladium used is usually five-nines or better, zone-refined and degassed, but that does not necessarily matter since the factor may not be chemical impurities, it could be (probably is) some type of physical property related to the way the metal was processed. while you're looking for "irreproducibilities" - how about the considerable (days to weeks) delay before each particular electrode starts working? this gives you some of the reasons why the early attemps to reproduce this failed (i.e. wrong supplier of palladium, water vapor not excluded, and didn't run the reaction long enough). the most reliable results are produced with electrochemically deposited thin layers on graphite, and have much shorter delays. this is waaay too much detail for this discussion though, I urge you to go read the original papers. the only relevant question here is whether anyone can reasonably claim the effect *doesn't exist* or *isn't a nuclear reaction*. and the answer to both of those is a resounding no. ObsidianOrder 8 July 2005 12:08 (UTC)
P.S. have you ever done any experimental work? how about an experiment in which you didn't know the "right" answer? i think you have pretty unreasonable expectations for how basic research is supposed to work, especially as in this case exploratory research. if there is an interesting effect which you can produce one time in ten - why, after you've eliminated all possible sources of error, you'd do the experiment a few hundred times, dance a jig and write a paper entitled "anomalous factors in the reproduction of Y effect". this is nothing remarkable. if anything is remarkable, it is the fact that anyone would even raise the lack of 100% reproducibility as an objection. in this case most of the causes of failure are pretty well understood by now, and there are some recent experiments which are getting close to 100% reproducible. but i really don't think that matters to you, does it? ObsidianOrder 8 July 2005 12:08 (UTC)

It's not a lack of 100% reproducability, it's the very minimal reproducability and even then only in specific areas. From the DOE Report: "Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not, stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented." Only in 5 out of 16 cases (less than a third) were higher than normal levels of 4He detected in cases where there was excess heat. Keep in mind that this is the newst review in 2004. Over a decade later and they're still getting the same results that they got before despite having better equipment (AND better refined materials) to compensate for their "we're living in the technological dark ages" theory. Of course, the articles you pasted are claiming some conspiracy on the part of the DOE.

I'm not sure why you're going for the absolutely most leanient qualitative measurement since they are orders of magnitude off from eachother. Not just that, but many of the values have a big fat question mark in their place. How can you even claim reproducability when the data is unknown? That alone should say something about the credibility about that article summarizing the data. The old 1989 studies claiming that level of accuracy couldn't have been that good and it's since been discovered that they were using faulty equipment.

I'm not going to read through each individual study as it's rather tedious and it would qualify as me doing your reasearch for you. I'm also wondering why there aren't any data summaries or tables from the studies showing that they aren't simply power stores (as described in the cold fusion article). It just claims that the reactions are sustained longer than the 'build up' period "often" in the cold fusion article, but doesn't provide a source that confirms that. One just says it's possible to sustain it that long, but provides nothing showing that it happens "often" in experiments. If anything, it seems that it's often NOT the case and that this could be explained as a power store.

I'm not really sure what criteria you're gauging this to be a protoscience under. It's not showing significant improvement despite more funding and better equipment for over a decade. Proponents are still trumpetting old, flawed and ill reported experiments as strong evidence. Reproducability is very poor and at best explains some other unknown behavior. The reactions are only sustainable for a short period. At what point does it lose protoscience status? What if this anti-progress continues for 50 years? 100?

You also are forgetting something of key importance here, the list of pseudosciences is a list of things _commonly_ (as in by scientific consensus) to be considered pseudoscience, or at the very least, not convincing enough to be considered a protoscience. It seems to be teh scientific consensus that it is is a pseduoscience, so it does fit in that list as it's described. Likewise, it's NOT commonly considered a protoscience.

DOE Report Article Skeptic's Dictionary DOE Report itself

Nathan J. Yoder 8 July 2005 17:56 (UTC)


I should add, I wasn't expecting this much of a response for something as trivial as this, so I hope someone else picks it up since I'm really not interesting in arguing it much further.

Nathan J. Yoder 8 July 2005 18:01 (UTC)

  • I simply asked what your educational background is. That is not a logical fallacy, and besides, I don't understand your obession with logical fallacies... since when did we start discussing things logically? --brian0918™ 8 July 2005 18:03 (UTC)
  • Njyoder - your objections merely prove that you don't know anything about this. the "energy storage" explanation is bogus because (a) there should be a corresponding shortfall before the surplus, but there is not and (b) the amount of energy produced is anywhere between 50 and 500 gigajoules per kilogram (depending on how long the reaction is run), when the absolute maximum chemical energy that could be stored by anything is several orders of magnitude lower. also the field has advanced tremendously: most of the causes of failure in PF-type experiments are well understood, and there are much better experiments (such as pyroelectric [8], deuterium diffusion, etc) which show the same underlying effect more clearly and repeatably. for example the bombardment of metal deuterides with deuterons directly shows an anomalously high reaction cross section. most of these experiments have been shown to produce new isotope products as well. you can gripe about the quality of the experiments all you want, but they do produce results which are clearly non-null at a level vastly higher than possible measurement error, and you (and all the critics) haven't really proposed any plausible explanation for that. ObsidianOrder 8 July 2005 23:13 (UTC)
A shortfall of what? At your own admittance there is no significant heat output for weeks after it's started, I'd consider that a shortfall. I'm not just going to take your word for these numbers and the severe lack of them on websites that promote cold fusion can only make one wonder. That goes along with the claim of these setups "often" running for weeks producing heat whilst refusing to cite the number of studies which are part of that "often." I'd much sooner take the word of the scientists who have individually reviewed each study in their entirety than some summary given by someone over the internets. I also find it odd that you admit flaws in the PF experiments right after you got finished praising them, especially when the table you gave was filled with question marks (unknown data) and inconsistent results.
If you want to show repeatability, then do it, but don't cite some old studies with incosistent results that have since been discredited. And again I emphasize, your argument is all contingent on a DOE conspiracy existing and some bad data. Oh and the newest studies which haven't been attempted to be reproduced yet and the cold fusion page itself says it requires more power than it produces. FYI, I can invent a device that produces less (heat based) power than electrical power that is feed into it, it's called a radiator. Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 00:05 (UTC)
Njyoder - I'm getting tired of this. if you're not clear on why storage is not a possible explanation, and what shortfall means, read this Cold fusion#Energy source vs power store. "more power than it produces" simply means you could not convert the produced heat back to electricity efficiently enough to run a closed loop; the heat energy output is certainly greater than the electric energy input. you want infinite references from me but you have not documented a single thing you have claimed (for starters, what has "since been discredited"?). anyway, if you want to keep going, start a thread on the cold fusion talk page. ObsidianOrder 9 July 2005 04:05 (UTC)
Agreed. It seems he does not know the difference between "fusion" and "ignition". I suggest reading the necessary sections of Fusion energy gain factor. --brian0918™ 9 July 2005 04:10 (UTC)
You're not actually addressing what I'm saying and you're focusing exclusively on the power store thing. I have presented documents, but you ignored them. It *really* doesn't help your point if you have to lie. Apparently the DOE and everyone who supports them is part of a giant conspiracy. Apparently they weren't using faulty equipment either, inconsistent and unknown results don't mean anything. Even though you acknowledge they had serious problems, apparently it didn't apply to those other studies allegedly following the basic methodology for no apparent reason. You also haven't addressed that the results are inconsistent nor have you addressed that these so-called definite reproductions contain a bunch of unknown data. Of course I'm asking you for more documentation, because what you provided actually goes against your point. The other stuff isn't documentation, it's just random websites saying "yes, cold fusion is possible." You still haven't explained why late 80s technology suddenly took a leap backwards in terms of purity of materials, your comparison between that technology and what was available in the 40s is silly.
You haven't addressed that these newer experiments you've talked about haven't even had an attempt to reproduce. And you don't understand the power store thing at all, for some reason you're focused on converting heat back into electricity, which demonstrates a complete misundertanding of what that's proposing. The point is that the electrical energy is stored from the beginning while it's not producing any significant heat output, not that it's converted back. It's rather appalling that you'd overlook that. There's this amazing thing called a rechargable battery that can store energy when a current is run through it. Oddly, it never exhibits a heat defecit when you run current through it. As for brian, your link would only be meaningful if you assume what you're trying to conclude. Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 13:58 (UTC)
While a rechargeable battery is charging, it will indeed exhibit a heat deficit. That's really basic physics.
The DOE has never made it known who the reviewers are, so I can't comment on their qualifications or biases. The unknown data is mostly electrode current density, which is not available since the electrode area is sometimes not accurately measured and also because the macro- and microscopic areas can differ. It is just listed as an ballpark order-of-magnitude number which makes different scale experiments easier to compare. Purity of materials may not be the issue, it could be physical properties related to the way the material was processed, although purity at levels considerably less than one part per million may also play a role (you can see areas of the same zone-refined rod of palladium which work and others which don't). I have addressed the inconsistency of results, it shows that there are factors involved which are still not known. Failure to reproduce every time does not mean that the effect does not exist. ObsidianOrder 20:31, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
You also haven't addressed the 'often' claim on the cold fusion page. Nathan J. Yoder 9 July 2005 14:09 (UTC)
It says right there, "Ref 1 shows typical examples." Ref 1 is this [9]. Enjoy. ObsidianOrder 21:03, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
Really? Show me something documenting a significant heat deficit in rechargable batteries while recharging. I'm also curious why they didn't monitor the _total_ energy input and output from the beginning, which you could do some basic math to see if it would producing energy of its own. That would have been easier than looking for chemical traces left over.
Those problems you discuss would invalidate the experiment as a reproduction. You explicitly said those were 34 verifications, but obviously if they had basic problems with the materials and measuring instruments, they can't be counted as reproductions no matter how much you try to pervert the word. It seems like you're trying to use the typical pseudoscience approach--just discount all failed experiments (which are numerous in number) as having some mystery failed factor. Also, if you notice the figures vary by orders of magnitude, not just one, so they're not really ballpark figures, they're more like state-wide figures.
I saw that reference to the document and looked it over, but couldn't find anything confirming what was said. Further, even if it gives a few examples, that hardly lends itself to saying it happens "often" when really it just happened in a few cases. Nathan J. Yoder 22:51, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
Oh, last thing. Since this is just a category and since obviously you're not going to go by consensus or anything logical in this discussion, it's reached the maximum level of my asinine-o-meter, so I'll leave it others to read what I've left and carry on this discussion for eons. Nathan J. Yoder 23:02, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh please, my background is entirely irrelevent and you trying to make an issue out of it can only serve to aid in an ad hominem attack. It's really not hard to see what your motivations are. Aside from that, you tried using an odd "two wrongs make a right" mentality, which is also a logical fallacy. And I'd hope that Wikipedians always attempted to discuss things logically, without it, there'd be nothing but POV/emotionalist nonsense everywhere. Nathan J. Yoder 8 July 2005 19:45 (UTC)

  • It's just that you seem to know a lot about fusion and physics (to be able to make sweeping statements so easily). --brian0918™ 8 July 2005 20:04 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your contributions, Nathan. Your patience in this is more than mine. I quite understand your fatigue in dealing with ... advocates ... of cold fusion. This may be a flaw in Wikipedia- in a situation where the vast majority sees a subject as false and finds it uninteresting for that reason, it's difficult to get people inspired to defend against the few enthusiastic True Believers who seem irrationally obsessed with promoting it. --Noren 14:55, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Since when am I an advocate of cold fusion? I advocate citing sources, that is all. I'm glad to see you're siding with someone under arbitration for conduct such as this. --brian0918™ 16:25, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
      • The vast majority of the argumentation to which I was referring was from ObsidianOrder- that comment was not principally directed at you. My comment was made with the intention of support rather than as an indirect attack, as skeptics editing this page often become fatigued and cease activity, and I thought some encouragement and sympathy was appropriate. (Your insistence on categorizing 'cold fusion' as a protoscience does strike me as an advocate's stance, but I assure you I was not thinking of you when I wrote the above.) I was unaware of Nathan J. Yoder's activities outside of this page, and I don't see why they are relevant here. You're using this locally irrelevant biographical fact as an Ad hominem attack against him rather than addressing his contributions to this page, with an implied Guilt by association attack against me. In this particular discussion, the one to which my comments refer, he has been significantly more civil than has ObsidianOrder. Even if you had a legitimate grudge against Nathan J. Yoder based on his activities elsewhere, it would not be germane to this page. --Noren 20:27, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
        • Yes, I realize I was committing various logical fallacies, but didn't really care, since we weren't having a logical discussion at the time. --brian0918™ 20:40, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Noren, who is the true believer here? I have argued in what I hope is a fairly evenhanded way as for why this is a protoscience, citing evidence and making logical arguments all along. You're happy to dismiss the entire field with an offhand remark (like "None of these three categories is applicable to this topic, as no fusion is actually occurring." - is that a fact?) I don't have a lot at stake here. I don't have billions in hot fusion funding, or my scientific reputation, or my tenure etc at stake. I look at the evidence on both sides and I see an extensive series of really anomalous experimental results. I am not willing to blithely dismiss them all as experimental errors: one, there are too many such experiments, two, the controls are far too good for that, and three, the scientists who are running the experiments have pretty damn good credentials. Okay, so they're erratic, and so what? Obviously we don't understand what is going on, erratic is only to be expected. If someone came along and explained this all in a reasonable way as something other than fusion, I'm willing to listen. Notice the key word explain, not dismiss. I've read what the critics (Park, Huizinga, etc) have to say, and it does not add up to an explanation. What is your explanation? ObsidianOrder 00:41, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
      • It is not my responsibility to come up with an explanation of a large number of reports which show a vast variety of claimed results all allegedly using the same setup. Your assessment of motives is quite bizarre, though. If a novel physical effect were occuring, no one would be more excited and fascinated by it than theoretical physicists. A conspiracy theory postulating a syndicate of physicists seeing a real phenomenon and deliberately suppressing important new results, and all staying quiet about it and not publishing anything on the topic for many years in order to preserve their hot fusion funding is absurd. Many of the scientists involved were not recieving hot fusion money, and even if they were the normal behavior of scientist presented with a promising new field of research is to move in and stake a claim in researching it- that's how careers are made, and where their own self-interest lies. On the other hand, you are ignoring the fact that those promoting cold fusion were obtaining money by doing so. The economic incentive leading to a conspiracy argument is much much weaker in reference to all the mainstream academic physicists than when it is applied to the reverse possibility of 'cold fusion researchers' acting as a unit to bilk the credulous by shameless, deceptive self-promotion. I look for evidence and see a panel of 18 peer reviewers, chosen by DoE as the best qualified to review the topic, and I see that 2/3 of these experts did not find the assembled evidence for low energy nuclear reactions at all convincing, and that only 1 of the 18 thought it was fully convincing. I find that review more convincing than you. Those making the extraordinary claim (that a fusion counter to all known forms occurs) have failed to provide proof. It is those who make an extraordinary claim who have the burden of proof. --Noren 06:26, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
        • "conspiracy theory" - not at all, i'm just considering the history of science: ideas that go against well established theories are often (irrationally) rejected out of hand despite compelling evidence. nothing new about that, and it doesn't require any conspiracy, just ordinary pig-headedness. "seeing a real phenomenon and deliberately suppressing important new results" - you mean like this? (look at the graphs on pg12) "not publishing anything on the topic" - the sad fact is that you can't publish anything on the topic in most journals, regardless of credentials or quality of experiments. "18 peer reviewers ... best qualified to review the topic" - and we still don't know who they are. also 1/3 vs 2/3 is not unanimity, it is a legitimate disagreement. "provide proof" - excess heat in a large number of experiments, which you are (once again) simply dismissing. ObsidianOrder 07:12, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
          • You're ignoring the very large number of scientists who tried the P&F experiment in April and May 1989 and failed to replicate it- as well as substantial problems with the original paper. (For example, "Stirring in these experiments [and in those listed under (1)] was achieved, where necessary, by gas sparging using electrolytically generated D2.", to quote from the original paper, is an utterly inadequate method of equalizing temperature within the cell.) Your cite (authored by the same person who wrote the solicitation for money in my reference above) refers to a study that was published after the furor had mostly died down, and is far from a smoking gun. I don't know why those graphs are different, but the possibility that an honest mistake was made during the early stages of working up the data was caught shortly before publication is plausible to me. In any case, one paper published months after the mass of experimental failures in April and May 1989 is hardly the whole story. On the subject of the DoE review, it is normal and obvious that we don't know who the peer reviewers are, as that's absolutely standard procedure for scientific peer review. I do not find it plausible that the DoE, who had decided independently to solicit this review, would either deliberately or incompetently choose poor reviewers. The ratios were 1/18 convinced, 5/18 somewhat convinced, and 12/18 not at all convinced of low energy nuclear reactions- not 1/3 versus 2/3 as you inaccurately summarize. These reviewers saw all the data you mention here and more, and were more expert than on the relevant science than it is likely anyone in this discussion is, and yet were mostly unconvinced. --Noren 20:45, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
            • "the very large number of scientists who tried the P&F experiment in April and May 1989 and failed to replicate it" - do you have a list handy? Ok, if we really need to go that far back in history (never mind the successful reproductions since then), here are the ones I know about: (1) MIT (2) CalTech and (3) Harwell. In the same time period (1989), there were the following successfull reproductions: (1) Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) at China Lake (2) Shell (3) Amoco (4) SRI (5) Texas A&M (6) Los Alamos. NAWCWD also conducted an extensive review of the failed replications (see ICCF-3, pg 113, and J Phys Chem v98, pg 1948), finding major errors in all three failed replications, and also strong evidence of excess energy in the CalTech data. MIT you already know about, and before you try to explain that away as "an honest mistake", let me mention that (a) the data is not merely shifted uniformly up or down, it shifted down more at later times, basically it looks as though someone subtracted a time-average, and there is no honest explanation for that (b) they have never made the raw data available despite numerous requests and (c) IIRC they issued a half-assed correction/retraction to the report with different conclusions later. The Harwell data was extensively analysed by a team from Utah State (Melich and Hansen, ICCF-3, pg 397) which concluded that there is excess energy in some of the experiments, and also found numerous errors which make this a poor replication. So who else failed to replicate? ObsidianOrder 10:00, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
              • It turns out that 'we tried this and many variations thereof and it didn't work' doesn't make for a very compelling story to publish in a scientific journal, and no matter how careful you are or how many variations you try someone afterward can always claim you failed for some reason in hindsight. It's simply very difficult and often unrewarding to publish purely negative results. For a (by no means a complete) list, let's just start with some of the speakers at the May 1989 American Physical Society meeting session (already referenced in the cold fusion page, unfortunate that you don't seem to have read it): Nate Lewis (Caltech), Brooks (Ohio State), Hirosky (U. of Rochester), Dickens (Oak Ridge Nat. Lab.), Sur (Lawrence Berkeley Nat. Lab.), Seelinger (Dresden Tech. U.), Cantrell (Miami U.), Moshe Gai (joint effort between Yale and Brookhaven Nat. Lab.). All of these were representatives of teams of experimentalists who tried (some with direct advice from P or F) to replicate and failed. On the later MIT data, notice that the original data on that same page trends downward, but has gone through some sort of transformation that straightened it out and put the zero line in there. I don't know what math was used to do that, but errors in that process could include anything from a typo in a formula to forgetting to compensate for the greater density of D2O and thus getting the mass of water used over time slightly wrong because of it. Making a mistake in transforming data isn't bizarre, nor is catching it before publication. Deliberately lying about data for no good reason would be bizarre. --Noren 14:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
              • I don't want to get into a line by line refutation, but having read the cold fusion article I do know that the Texas A&M team withdrew their claim shortly after making it. --Noren 14:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
                • Well, that's certainly an interesting reference. I wonder, why aren't any of the positive results presented at that meeting? I'm also somewhat skeptical about the timing considering this meeting is exactly 37 days after the P&F announcement, and these cells can need running times on the order of a few weeks before they become active. I also found this very useful reference [10] which shows a mix of early positive and negative results. The count is 16 positive, 26 negative. Interestingly, a couple of the groups that report a negative here later have reported positives. As for a Texas A&M retraction, I don't know of any such thing, although there may be some confusion since there were several independent teams working there. The Bockris team certainly hasn't retracted anything. ObsidianOrder 16:29, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
                  • As the meeting notes mention, "Fleischmann was invited as soon as this special session was organized, and said that either he or Pons would try to attend. A few days ago, the conference was notified than both Fleischmann and Pons were too busy to attend." It does appear that at least those two were invited but didn't attend. Part of the problem here is in classifying a particular report as either positive or negative- it seems that reporting any anomoly (energy, neutrons, helium, etc.) is counted as in 'positive' category- rather than standard of full replication of results.--Noren 06:35, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
                • Regarding the MIT data - "trends downwards"? I'm not sure what you mean, it appears to step from zero to a steady-state noticeably greater than zero (looks like 0.05W plus noise) at around 40-50 hours. The initial high values at 0-15 hours are probably a calibration run. "density of D2O" is a totally bizarre explanation since density doesn't play a part, quantity is (typically) measured by total electrolysis current and confirmed by gas volume. I'm not proposing an explanation, I'd just like to hear one (or see the raw data) from them, but what it looks like is subtracting a time average, which would be cheating. I'm not the only person who thinks this is very problematic (see e.g. Swartz & Mitchell, ICCF-4). ObsidianOrder 17:29, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
                  • To clarify, I'm speaking of the heater power decline raw data, located at the very bottom right of page 12 of that document, not the July 10 excess power graph on the left that had already been transformed in some fashion from the heater power data, which has an obvious downward slope.--Noren 06:35, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
            • p.s. regarding gas sparging, sure it's not a great design, but it can only produce short-term fluctiations (on the order of minutes). there is no way it can produce overall apparent excess energy. ObsidianOrder 10:00, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
              • The combination of inadequate stirring and temperature readings taken at only one location in the cell leads to systematic errors when the temperature changes in locations away from the thermometer.--Noren 14:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
                • The level of inaccuracy introduced by this is small, probably under one percent. The mixing time in the original P&F cell was ~20s while the thermal relaxation time was ~3000s. Remember this is an indirect isoperibolic setup, so your primary power measurement is the level of power applied to the compensating heater, not temperature per se. Imperfect mixing can cause fluctuations in compensation power on a time scale of the same order as mixing times, but there is no way it can produce a systematic error (except maybe in the expansion enthalpy of gas products, but that's on the order of 0.1%). Plus, any such error will apply equally to the light-water controls. You may want to look at this paper [11] for more details. I think frankly a lot of the criticisms aimed at the original P&F setup come from a lack of understanding of how indirect calorimetry works. However, this does not matter (except perhaps historically) since mechanically stirred cells, as well as flow and Seebeck calorimeters which are essentially immune to any mixing effects, all have been used to show the same effect. ObsidianOrder 16:29, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
            • finally, a general observation, if I may: you (and most critics) seem to have a very odd perception of the importance of negative results. when it comes to a phenomenon which is poorly understood, and hence is erratic in experiments (that was true in 1989 but perhaps less so today), a significant (even overwhelming) number of negative results is to be expected. it in no way implies the phenomenon doesn't exist, unless the ratio of positive to negative results asymptotically approaches zero, which it did not in this case. even if you only had two independent, carefully done positive experiments plus a dozen negatives, that would still weigh on the side of "there's something to it". what we have as of now is perhaps a dozen negatives (almost all poorly-done) and up to a hundred positives (of varying quality, but many recent ones are very good) most of which show all of the hallmarks of nuclear reactions including neutrons and isotopic producs. i wonder what would be sufficient proof? particularly, what would be sufficient to conclude that this merits further study? ObsidianOrder 11:57, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
              • There probably is something to it. That something is probably chemical and almost certainly not fusion. This overhype of a implausible explanation requires a response, even if there may be an interesting chemical phenomenon occurring. Had the report been of unusual energetics involved in loading hydrogen into a palladium matrix during electroysis and the interesting Kinetic isotope effects associated with it without the fusion hype it would meet with less criticism. --Noren 14:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
                • Nothing chemical can produce excess energy on the order of 50 to 500GJ/kg of reactant, as observed in many cold fusion experiments. We're not talking about a barely measurable effect, we're talking about 20-30% excess energy for hundreds of hours. Oh, and a variety of odd isotope products (tritium and 4He but also much weirder things as in the Japanese experiments with deliberate impurities in the cathode which get transmuted [12]). Sorry, "chemical" is just not a reasonable explanation. ObsidianOrder 16:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Okay, maybe my temper got somewhat short with Nathan towards the end of the discussion - and I apologize for that - but only because he is making elementary mistakes. That's not an ad-hominem attack, it's a fact. (Or do I need to explain to you as well why a charging battery will have a heat shortfall?) ObsidianOrder 00:41, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Has this content been included? (UCLA research)

I remembered reading about this experiment at UCLA recently, and hunted up the link (similar article here if it prompts for subscription). Has their work been included in the article yet? According to the articles, the experiment has been repeated successfully, and the results made it into Nature as well: Full Text, PDF. Here's the abstract for non-subscribers:

"While progress in fusion research continues with magnetic and inertial confinement, alternative approaches—such as Coulomb explosions of deuterium clusters and ultrafast laser−plasma interactions—also provide insight into basic processes and technological applications. However, attempts to produce fusion in a room temperature solid-state setting, including 'cold' fusion and 'bubble' fusion, have met with deep skepticism. Here we report that gently heating a pyroelectric crystal in a deuterated atmosphere can generate fusion under desktop conditions. The electrostatic field of the crystal is used to generate and accelerate a deuteron beam (> 100 keV and >4 nA), which, upon striking a deuterated target, produces a neutron flux over 400 times the background level. The presence of neutrons from the reaction D + D -->He (820 keV) + n (2.45 MeV) within the target is confirmed by pulse shape analysis and proton recoil spectroscopy. As further evidence for this fusion reaction, we use a novel time-of-flight technique to demonstrate the delayed coincidence between the outgoing alpha-particle and the neutron. Although the reported fusion is not useful in the power-producing sense, we anticipate that the system will find application as a simple palm-sized neutron generator."
Non-subscribers might be able to see this figure (though I can't check): [13].

--brian0918™ 20:44, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes, it's already been added twice, in different sections, by different people. See the last entry in the "Continuing Efforts" section and the pyroelectric fusion section of the "Other kinds of fusion" section. The final link in the news section refers to this effort as well. Additional or more recent information on the topic may be helpful, of course. --Noren 21:48, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Oh yeah, I forgot I added that. How can "cold fusion" still be considered boondoggle with results like this, where the peak temperature is about 50 degrees F? --brian0918™ 22:40, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
      • Heh, I didn't check who had done so, but remembered thinking someone should collapse the two entries into one after the second was added- I guess you were the second, after 81.168.80.170 added it initially. I'm afraid I'm going to have to refer to another logical fallacy- you're operating from a false premise. The crystal remains at low temperature, but it accelerates a beam of deuterium ions to a speed sufficient that some fuse upon impact with a deuterated target. The temperature of the accelerated deuterium is effectively quite high, high enough to fuse in the normal 'hot fusion' way. This is why it is in the 'Fusion with high energy reactants in relatively cold condensed matter.' part of the other kinds of fusion section of the Cold Fusion page.--Noren 23:30, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
        • Alright, I was assuming "cold fusion" referred to the system remaining at low temperature, not the reaction itself. --brian0918™ 23:56, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
      • I was thinking of merging the information on 'pyroelectric' fusion from the last paragraph of the 'Continuing Efforts' section into the 'Other Kinds of Fusion' section since it clearly doesn't involve low energy reactants. Any objections?--Kbk 00:12, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
        • No objection, though there's already an entry there, so I'd call it more of a merging of the two, but that sounds like a good idea. --Noren 05:11, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

"Cold fusion power" versus "Cold fusion"

This article is about relatively-low-temperature fusion, just as Fusion is about fusion. The article called Fusion power discusses fusion as a power source (systems generating more energy than required from the wall outlet, with a relatively high reprate). This article, however, seems to focus on low-temperature fusion as a power source, rather than simply on low-temperature fusion, as if it is completely discounted by not being useful as a power source. Such language might be proper in an article titled Cold fusion power, but not necessarily in Cold fusion. Cold fusion may definitely still be considered controversial in the "sustainable-energy-source" aspect, but not in the "actually-occurring" sense, at least for certain setups such as that at UCLA. --brian0918™ 23:09, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

  • The particular example you cite of Pyroelectric fusion involve deuterium ions accelerated to speeds corresponding to millions of Kelvins, so I don't think that's a good example, but the cold fusion example of Muon-catalyzed fusion is well established in the literature. The essential problem here is that this page is sort of a hydra. In a way there are two things discussed here. The palladium based 'cold fusion' claimed by the P&F announcement and its descendants, which is what many people think of when 'cold fusion' is mentioned, merits a page on its own. There's a significant history of science aspect to it that would not be appropriate in more uncontroversial physics topics. The harder science aspects of all forms of fusion also merits a page, but since the scientists in these fields tend to distance themselves from the 'cold fusion' term these parts have been put in the 'other types' list and linked to their own pages. --Noren 23:52, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Noren, correct me if I'm wrong, but from the original paper it appears that D+D->3He+n is the predominant pathway in pyroelectric fusion? This is abnormal, and supports the idea that solids can influence nuclear reactions. Aside from that, sure, the deuterium ions have sufficient energy to fuse without any special mechanism, but they're not in palladium. As you probably know, the tunneling of deuterium ions between sites in a metal crystal lattice (which shows up as enhanced conductivity) has been proposed as a theoretical explanation of cold fusion, and there's no special reason to assume that will work in any other solid. ObsidianOrder 00:13, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
      • I believe that this is the pathway they observe, but I'm not sure why you characterize it as abnormal. There's a table of important fusion reactions over in the nuclear fusion page that includes D+D pathway. The D+T pathway is regarded as easier to achieve for fusion power purposes, but D+D is well established physics and in no way 'abnormal'. As you probably know, deuterium atoms in molecular D2 are closer together than are deuterium atoms in the palladium lattice, yet no tunneling to produce fusion is observed in that case, nor is any likely according to current physical models. --Noren 02:30, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
        • It's abnormal because you'd expect to see about 50/50 3He+n and T+p. Re tunneling - it has nothing to do with distance, you need a large number of (shallow) potential wells with close energy levels. This is a current physical model (for anomalous conductivity in deuterated metals) but nobody knows what exactly it does to interaction between nuclei. The thinking is that each position in the lattice is not occupied by a single deuteron, it's occupied by a fraction of one plus much smaller fractions of the ones from adjacent positions. Which explains how they could (in theory) fuse. ObsidianOrder 09:04, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Yeah, I realize that the article is more about P&F, and that should probably be changed. It currently isn't very neutral, considering that the muon-catalyzed fusion is stuck under "other" when it should have it's own section. The article's layout should be more along the lines of "History", "Failed setups", "well-established setups", with the latter two including their own histories if necessary. --brian0918™ 13:07, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
      • The problem is that I expect that most people seeking out this page are thinking of the P&F 'cold fusion', so it really should be center stage. Possibly some sort of disabiguation would be appropriate. I agree that this page is not neutral, though I'm not certain I mean that in the same sense you do. What neutral is in this case is very debatable. --Noren 02:36, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Two Topics To Add

As of the recent development it would be good if someone would add news in the recent development of cold fusion: Bubble Fusion takes next hurdle This verified experiment shows that cold fusion is possible.

Also a reverence to the currently in development hot fusion reactor ITER would be nice.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Helohe (talk • contribs) 09:56, 18 July 2005.

First, on bubble fusion, there is already an entry in the "Fusion with high energy reactants in relatively cold condensed matter" section of the "Other kinds of fusion" section. The particular article you cite has significant errors- for example, "Until then only nuclear fusion in experimental reactors as big as houses were scientifically accepted" ignores the well-established tabletop Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor that has been known since the late 1960s. In any case, bubble fusion is thought to be done (though whether it occurs at all is also debated) by making a small area of a collapsing bubble very hot, on the order of 108 K. Strictly speaking this would not be cold fusion. As it's not quite on topic, we mention it here and link to it, but leave extensive discussion of it to its own page.
ITER is even farther from the cold fusion topic than is bubble fusion. Also in the "Other kinds of fusion" section, this page does link to fusion power, which itself links to the ITER page. --Noren 15:58, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

references

Describing Huizenga as a representative of the scientific mainstream is hardly controversial. He was the head of the DOE panel, made up of prominent scientists, which established the consensus in that presently exists in the scientific community regarding the Pons and Fleischmann experiment. Likewise, describing Park as skeptical is absolutely accurate: from the OED, a skeptic is one who maintains a doubting attitude with reference to some particular question or statement. Also, one who is habitually inclined rather to doubt than to believe any assertion or apparent fact that comes before him; a person of sceptical temper. I don't see how you can disagree with that. NPOV is not an excuse to adopt a solipsistic attitude. –Joke137 21:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"the consensus in that presently exists" - there is no consensus on this. "majority view" (which this may be, rightly or wrongly) is not the same "consensus". there are some pretty damn prominent people who disagree (Brian Josephson, Bockris, ...). Huizenga and Park may be members of the scientific mainstream (although I believe both are better known as bureaucrats of science than as researchers) but they are in no way "representatives of" it... there isn't any such thing, and even if there were they wouldn't be it ;) Finally, they are not skeptics: writing a book that calls something "the scientific fiasco of the century" or "voodoo science" while it is still very much an open question is not indicative of skepticism, it is indicative of blind faith. ObsidianOrder 22:32, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

You've got me there. You believe there is no consensus, I believe there is one. Certainly there are strong voices on both sides. People like Ramsey and Happer, who are prominent in research, did sign off on the DOE report and are certainly more mainstream than iconoclasts like Bockris and Josephson. I don't think that consensus implies total agreement, but I think that a poll of rank-and-file physicists and chemists would reveal that it is the mainstream opinion. If such a thing exists, I would like to see the results.

I agree that Park's book wasn't presented as a dispassionate scientific assessment. That isn't incompatible with calling him a "skeptic" as I understand it. But really the reason I changed it was that "Park gives an account of cold fusion and its history from the perspective that cold fusion is a fallacy" is an extremely inelegant sentence. –Joke137 23:15, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"strong voices on both sides" - isn't that the definition of non-consensus? ;) "I don't think that consensus implies total agreement" - of course not, it's something considerably more than simple majority but less than unanimity. it doesn't exist here. "Park's book" - Huizenga's as well, actually. I do think rushing to conclusions is incompatible with skepticism. "inelegant sentence" - ok, true. "did sign off on the DOE report" - do you mean the old or the new one? the new one is just a face-saving way to restart that research in the US, as far as I'm concerned. ObsidianOrder 04:49, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Patent rejection

The U.S. Supreme Court recently denied review of a federal appellate decision, which affirmed the rejection of a cold fusion-related patent based on scientific doubt as to its utility. The decision affirmed was In re Dash, 118 Fed.Appx. 488 (Fed. Cir. 2004). If someone versed in the science could take a look at this and get started on describing what it was talking about, I'll help with the legal analysis. Postdlf 18:12, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

  • The science isn't real thick because the standard of review for utility/operability is substantial evidence. The guy claimed to have produced "excess heat", read more energy. He cited higher relative temperature and some melting. The PTO didn't believe the guy and explained the evidence away. The Fed. Cir. didn't really have to do the science. Like perpetual motion machines, I think that the PTO just has a blanket objection ready for anyone trying to patent cold fusion stuff. Of course, this is more evidence than you usually get for some inventions, like Utter balm to cure baldness. Was there something in particular you were looking for? Mmmbeer 03:24, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

Ok, it seems this article has only gotten worse since I last saw it. It is in clear violation of NPOV policy. For every criticism of cold fusion, it has maybe 2-3 sentences, followed by several paragraphs attempts to address those criticisms. That is simply not NPOV. Given that cold fusion is a minority view, it should actually be the opposite if anything. NPOV represents views in proportion to their popularity, this clearly is doing the exact opposite, so I'm putting this tag on here. NPOV tags don't expire, so don't remove it until this has been addrsesed. I also notice that the nonsense about heat defecits with power stores is still there, despite the fact that charging batteries don't need to exhibit a heat deficit. I read back an noticed obsidian never provided evidence for that claim, probably because in many cases the opposite is true--batteries being charged often heat up while charging. So much for "basic physics." Nathan J. Yoder 18:23, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I must dispute your view of NPOV. It is very common that an assertion can be expressed in a short and compact form, but any attempt to dispute it takes several paragraphs. If you assert that "Coulomb force makes it impossible for nuclear fusion to occur at temperatures lower than X" (which is what all arguments against cold fusion boild down to, ultimately), any assertions to the contrary must include either experimental results showing othewise or theoretical mechanisms by which Coulomb force could be overcome, neither which is likely to fit into a single sentence in an understandable form. Please also note that the number of adherents a given view has has nothing to do with the validity or lack of it of said view.
No, that's not NPOV. You must explain their reasoning behind their criticism. I seriously doubt their criticism is simply limited to a single sentence "culomb force makes it impossible....", they explain WHY it is impossible. Explaining WHY it is impossible would take just as long. You've given a very brief summary of the criticism, and then inserted a detailed multi-pargraph counter-criticism.
  • In short, this article is about physics, and physics is not a popularity contest. And even if it was, Neutral POV is not defined as Majority POV. If anything, minority POV should be carefully examined, since it is likely to be much less well known as majority POV; why waste space telling things that everyone knows, instead of examining less well known claims?

80.186.183.217 10:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually NPOV IS defined as giving preference to the majority POV. I suggest you actually read WP:NPOV, they explicitly suggest that fringe minority views don't even get a say. That's how NPOV works--it gives balance in proportion to the popularity of views. Wikipedia is NOT "scientific POV," quite the contrary. People have tried to support such an idea in the past, but it got rejected because it contradicts NPOV. Nathan J. Yoder 21:12, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree with Nathan's sentiments but for a different reason — while it may be justified in some cases to dedicate disproportionate text to a minor point for the purpose of clarity, it should still be made explicit that these points are minor and not widely accepted as true. Science may not be a popularity contest, but when it comes to unproven or poorly understood phenomena, an important aspect of these subjects is the general opinions held by researchers at large regarding them, whether or not they turn out to be correct in the end. This is particularly important for laypersons, who often don't have enough background to establish their own meaningful opinions on a technical topic, and they are Wikipedia's primary audience. In short, we don't want to give the false impression that the minority viewpoint is what most researchers believe. Deco 11:12, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I tend to agree that it is a lttle too pro cold fusion POV in the arguements and counterarguements. The sense I get is that the coutners are a bit grasping at straws to support their belief in cold fusion. I'm just hypothsizing at this, but I think cold fusion researchers would recognize the arguements agasinst as valid concerns, but not many skeptics of cold fusion would accept their counterarguements as valid. Bubba73 (talk), 03:21, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Nathan - I need not provide any evidence for the fact that charging batteries exhibit a heat deficit; that is basic conservation of energy. In particular: batteries generally produce heat both while charging and discharging, because their internal resistance is non-zero. If we call the amount of electrical energy input into a battery while charging E1 and the heat produced H1, the electrical energy output while discharging E2 and the heat produced H2, then by conservation of energy E1 = E2 + H1 + H2, where E1 and E2 are positive by definition (H1 and H2 are usually positive, but regardless of their sign the equality holds). This is assuming the ending state of charge is the same as the beginning state (if not just add any stored energy S on the right side as well). Therefore H1+H2 < E1 is always true (and typically also H1 < E1 since H2 > 0). That is the "heat deficit". In the same terms, a cold fusion cell displays the property that H1+H2 > E1, which is clearly quite impossible for any battery. This is really basic physics. I hope that helps. ObsidianOrder 06:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
You have a strange definition of heat deficit if it doesn't actually mean a reduction in heat. They are heating in both stages, which is indicated by H1 and H2 being greater than zero as per your own analysis. Or perhaps you meant H2 is greater than H1 and that's the deficit? Well, that doesn't follow from your math nor would it disprove a power store hypothesis. If you're trying to equate a _heat_ deficit to an electrical energy deficit, that wouldn't make much sense.
What you meant to say, but actually didn't was: "the energy output is greater than the energy input." The only way you disprove a power store would be to demonstrate that E2+H2+H1 > E1 (note that E1 must include chemical and not just electrical energy). That's not demonstrated by any kind of "heat deficit," because even if H1=H2=0, E2 would still have to be greater than E1. Nathan J. Yoder 21:07, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Nathan - Heat deficit while a battery is charging means that H1 < E1, i.e. heat output is less than the energy input (also by the way H1+H2 < E1). What do you think it means? The original thing we were talking about is whether conventional electrochemical cells exhibit that property while charging, and the answer is obviously yes.
The cold fusion experiments on the other hand measure precisely the total H1+H2, and they observe that H1+H2+E2 > E1 (E2 is zero in this case as per the definition). Even if you assume there is an unknown positive term S of "chemical energy" on the right hand side (which I earlier referred to as "differences in state of charge"), any plausible value for S should be less than the total bond dissociation energy of all of the substances in the cell, on the order of MJ/mol. Usually the value of the discrepancy is much greater than that, up to GJ/mol. ObsidianOrder 00:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Are you being serious? So you're comparing heat energy to electrical energy? I would have thought "heat deficit" would be comparing heat levels of some kind, but I guess not. Given the history of fraud and self-admitted poor measurements, I doubt this is the case. Nathan J. Yoder 03:14, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Regarding the NPOV objection - I would say that way too much space is given to P&F and (typically not well thought out) objections to it, and not enough space to much more solid and extensive experimental work done since. It is POV, but not the way you think ;) To rehash: the big objections are: (a) calorimetry is inaccurate - but there have been extremely accurate measurements in Seebeck and flow-type calorimeters, in some cases accurate down to microwatts, which show excess heat on the order of watts (b) there are no neutrons - but there don't have to be, according to the latest theoretical models of cooperative behaviour in metal lattices (c) there are no unusual isotopic products - but those have been incontrovertibly demonstrated in samples from the surface of cathodes (d) the result is not always reproducible - but it is quite reproducible for a specific cathode preparation technique (electrodeposited palladium on carbon); also reproducibility clearly depends on the physical state of a bulk palladium cathode, and is killed by very low levels of water vapor contamination among other things. All this later work is not adequately represented in the article. ObsidianOrder 06:34, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
With as subject as controversial as cold fusion, I do not see how there can be a "neutral point of view." This is a politicized, divisive, polarizing, tooth-and-nail academic battle. I doubt there are any neutral observers. If all articles in Wikipedia must be neutral then I recommend you delete this one, along with other highly divisive subjects such as Holocaust denial, the war in Iraq, and so on. If you are going to leave this article here, and you want it to be fair, it will have to include comments by supporters and opponents. It will be quite clear who wrote which comment. The two sides are light-years apart. --JedRothwell 17:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Go read the article again then. The entire section on power stores asserts, as a matter of fact that the power store hypohtesis is _wrong_ and has several paragraphs detailing while it's wrong, all stated as a matter of act and 'correct.' That's definitely not POV. Nonetheless, you don't seem to understand NPOV policy. It's not ok to write one thing, then say "this is wrong because..." and proceed to write a million paragraphs in response to one. Even asserting that it's wrong is a violation of NPOV policy. Nathan J. Yoder 21:07, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


Nathan J. Yoder writes: "The entire section on power stores asserts, as a matter of fact that the power store hypothesis is _wrong_ and has several paragraphs detailing while it's wrong . . ."
Yes, I wrote that. As I said elsewhere in this discussion, it is easy to make a preposterous and unsupported skeptical claim such a "cold fusion might be caused by chemical storage," but it is harder to prove that is incorrect. If I were to rebut that claim by saying "cold fusion researchers disagree" and nothing more, the reader would learn nothing.
". . . all stated as a matter of fact and 'correct.'" It is all a matter of fact, and it is all correct -- as far as I know. The statements about the limits of chemical storage come straight out of elementary physics textbooks, and the statements about cold fusion are from peer-reviewed journal papers describing cold fusion experiments. What other sources would you suggest we use? Can you think of a better or more reliable source of information about a scientific discovery? Cold fusion is not a matter of opinion. It is not a popularity contest, or a theoretical finding. It is a matter of fact revealed by objective, replicated, high-sigma experiments.
These are matters of fact as far as I know, but perhaps you know something I don't know. If you can list a chemical reaction that produces gigajoules per mole please list it. If you know of any reason or reasons to doubt the calorimetry in the top ~100 papers, please list them.
--JedRothwell 23:14, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but you don't understand how NPOV policy works. You can't state that it's correct, especially on a controversial issue. That's a blatant NPOV violation. I strongly suggest you read WP:NPOV. One would think, even without having reading it, that by the name alone that they could deduce that asserting that something is correct on a controversial issue is wrong. Yes, I could think of a more reliable source, well respected journals. The peer reviewed journals you mention were created exclusively as cold fusion journals because the popular physics journals wouldn't accept their pseudo-science. Not that it matters whetther or not it is "correct" for NPOV policy anyway. Seriously, go read WP:NPOV, it doesn't care whether or not something is true or not. Nathan J. Yoder 03:14, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Nathan J. Yoder wrote:
The peer reviewed journals you mention were created exclusively as cold fusion journals because the popular physics journals wouldn't accept their pseudo-science.
That is incorrect. The journals I refer to predate the discovery of cold fusion. They include, for example, Accountability Res., Acta metall. Mater., Beijing Shifan Daxue Xuebao. Ziran Kexueban, Curr. Topics Electrochem., Denki Kagaku oyobi Kogyo Butsuri Kagaku, Electrochim. Acta, Fusion Sci. & Technol., Int. J. Hydrogen Energy, J. Fusion Energy, J. Electroanal. Chem., Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., Kotai Butsuri, Naturwiss., Phys. Lett. A and ~200 others. These are well respected, especially Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., the second-most cited journal in the world.
The journals you have in mind probably include Infinite Energy. Please note that is not peer-reviewed, and I did not include it in my database of peer-reviewed journals.
You are correct that it is much harder to publish a cold fusion paper in these journals that a paper about some other subject. Cold fusion papers are held to a much higher standard because the subject is controversial. Also, the editors are prejudiced against them. That is why, for example, the September 2004 issue of J. Fusion Energy published an attack on cold fusion on page 161 (based on a newspaper report) and peer-reviewed paper in favor of cold fusion on page 217 (based on experimental research).
Since you have no idea where these papers were published it is clear that you have not read them. (It was clear anyway, because you have never cited one, or even tried to rebut one.) I suggest you refrain from commenting on scientific papers you have not read. It is unprofessional, to say the least. Obviously a person cannot have a "neutral point of view" regarding a subject he has not read about! Or do you acquire knowledge by ESP?
--JedRothwell 17:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


Let me add that I find it a little odd you would be upset by this, and you think that it is unbalanced or biased toward the researcher's point of view. Look at the overall article. It begins with 1,271 words of skeptical blather -- rumors, opinions, misstatements and myths about the early history of cold fusion. There is not single footnote or reference to anything that would normally be considered scientific. Yet, you have not complained about that. Instead you cite this section about chemical storage. This section is 454 words long and it cites 4 scientific papers to back up the assertions made in it. This section was prompted to a skeptical assertion. But for some reason you find this a POV, and you think it is too long.

- Jed

No, it doesn't begin with "1,271 words of skeptical blather," you seem to be reading a different article. In the beginning of the article, it even calls the results of the Pons and Fleischmann experiments "astounding," a clear bias in favor of cold fusion and a blatant NPOV violation. The one section is just an example, all the other sections are the same. Again, you don't understand Wikipedia NPOV policy at all. It is not "scientific POV" nor "correct POV." It is _neutral_ POV. You really should not be editng this article if you don't understand what that means. Go read through the entire WP:NPOV article and do not respond to me again until you've read every single word on that page. Nathan J. Yoder 13:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I was counting the 1,271 words devoted to what Pons said to Triggs, the grant proposal at BYU, and the many phantom replications that were supposedly attempted. This is trivial stuff having nothing to do with cold fusion.
You wrote: "It is _neutral_ POV." Oh come now! Do you seriously, honestly consider yourself neutral with regard to cold fusion? You do not know yourself. At least I honestly admit that I am biased. The notion that anyone can be neutral about such a divisive subject is ridiculous to start with. The best we can do is to honor our opponents enough to refrain from deleting their statements. That is why I have not touched any of the blather about chemical energy storage. I have written a rebuttal based on elementary physics and peer-reviewed papers published in major journals, but I have not erased a single skeptical statement.
--JedRothwell 15:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

So you admit that you don't abide by NPOV policy? Well that's nice. Go read WP:NPOV so you actually understand what it means to be neutral. Seriously, go read that. I'm going to repeat this again, because you seem to want to REFUSE to obey the policy and want to refuse to even read the policy, instead you're hung up on the policy's name and have made assumptions about it based on its name. You really should not even be editing the article at all if you don't know what NPOV means. Nathan J. Yoder 15:58, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I admit that I am not neutral, and I assert that you are not. You deny your own bias; I admit to mine. I cannot imagine anyone less neutral than you! The best I can do to abide by the policy is to hold my nose and refrain from deleting the bigoted, ignorant, baseless nonsense that you and other so-called "skeptics" post here. Your statements not only violate the Wikipedia rules, they violate laws of physics that were established by Laviosier, Watt and Joule. Furthermore, you do not have any evidence to support your claims -- you have not citied a single experimental paper in the peer-reviewed literature -- whereas I have cited and uploaded hundreds.
In the future, when historians finally develop an rational, objective, neutral point of view, and when they separate the hysteria from the facts about cold fusion, I am confident that they will say that I wrote scientifically proven facts and you wrote empty opinions based on nothing more than your overworked imagination and your knee-jerk loathing of cold fusion. Of course, you believe the opposite: you think that I am doing pathological science. We will have to agree to disagree. But in the meanwhile, I suggest you stop trying to fool yourself and stop imagining that you -- of all people -- are "neutral." You are an extremist, and you should at least have the courage of your convictions to admit it, the way Robert Park does.
--JedRothwell 16:32, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
That may be born out, but the fact is cold fusion is widely held by mainstream scientists not to be real science. Therefore the NPOV policy requires giving that view prominence and the view that there is excess energy produced a small proportion of coverage in the article in relation to it's minority status in acceptance. Cold fusion could very well be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but the article must reflect that fact that it is not accepted by very many scientists. I again send you to read the NPOV policy because you don't understand it and are far from following it. - Taxman Talk 16:45, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


Taxman wrote:
"That may be born out, but the fact is cold fusion is widely held by mainstream scientists not to be real science.
That is not a fact. It is your opinion. It is not in evidence as far as I know. Do you have any objective proof of this assertion? Can you point to a public opinion poll questioning mainstream scientists? The only thing I know of like that is the 2004 DoE Review. The opinions in that review included 7 No, 5 Yes, and 6 Maybe, by my tally. I would not call that opposition "widely held." If you disagree, I suggest you read the opinions and tally them yourself. Also, I suggest that only people who have read the literature can hold a valid opinion. Scientists are not magicians who can understand a subject by ESP. A scientist who has not read the literature is no more qualified to discuss cold fusion than the cop on the corner is. So a poll of scientists would have to include a question along these lines --
  • How many peer-reviewed mainstream journal papers about cold fusion have you read, that were published after 1990:
  • Zero
  • 1 to 9
  • 10 to 100
  • 100 or more
I would disqualify anyone who has read fewer than 10, or anyone who thinks that no papers have been published.
"Therefore the NPOV policy requires giving that view prominence . . ."
This point of view is given prominence! What are you complaining about?
". . . and the view that there is excess energy produced a small proportion of coverage in the article in relation to it's minority status in acceptance."
That is not a "view." It is an objectively established fact. It was proved by widely replicated high sigma experiments. In science, experiments are the only standard of truth. Once something has been replicated, it is true even if a million scientists believe otherwise. Science is not a popularity contest or an exercise in public relations.
Furthermore, if you are counting opinions expressed in the peer-reviewed literature, which is supposed to be the standard for quality, you will find far more papers showing excess heat than papers showing no heat, or advancing reasons to doubt the heat. If you want to base your beliefs on a "poll" (which is an absurd way to judge a scientific issue), you should at least confine your sample to actual papers on this subject -- rather than mixing in newspaper articles, Wide World News tabloids, Internet rumors, the opinions of people who do not understand the laws of thermodynamics, and other fluff.
--JedRothwell 17:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
It would take a recklessly optimistic view of the DoE review to think it resulted in anything better than a negative stance on the current state of cold fusion research. It reads in part: "Two-thirds of the reviewers commenting on Charge Element 1 did not feel the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced. Many reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented." And that's the better of the results of the two charge questions. But we don't even have to go that far to find an answer on the current state of the scientific establishment. Nature won't even take papers on cold fusion. Even assuming nothing better than outright bias, Nature would not be able to maintain that position in the face of scientific consensus against it. Any truly repeatable experiment that did find excess heat well beyond noise would be quite an event and would of course change the state of affairs and of scientific consensus. That hasn't happened to the satisfaction of the scientific community. And you are correct, scientific consensus doesn't establish truth, but it does dictate Wikipedia policy. So your apparent zeal to promote cold fusion research is all fine and good, but it can't continue to bleed over into violating Wikipedia policies as it has so far. Please stop editing Wikipedia articles to reflect your views and carry on your promotional efforts elsehwere. - Taxman Talk 22:08, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


Taxman writes:
It would take a recklessly optimistic view of the DoE review to think it resulted in anything better than a negative stance on the current state of cold fusion research.
I agree! I did not say that. I think the DoE Review Summary was biased and unfair, but I was not commenting on that. I said that the reviewers' own comments were split 7 No, 5 Yes, and 6 Maybe. I suggested (and I reiterate the suggestion) that you have a look at them and tally them yourself. As noted in the article, there are here: [14]
"Nature won't even take papers on cold fusion. Even assuming nothing better than outright bias, Nature would not be able to maintain that position in the face of scientific consensus against it."
Again, I could not agree more. Nobody knows better than I that cold fusion is controversial, and that the editor of Nature has it in for the subject. The editor of Sci. Am. wrote me a gleeful series of e-mail messages bragging about how he despises the subject and he has read nothing about it. See: [15] So I know such people exist, and that many of them are in positions of power.
But that is not what you claimed. You said "cold fusion is widely held by mainstream scientists not to be real science." WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE? Show me a poll or some other objective evidence. Nature and Scientific American often say that too, but they have no evidence either. You point out that their readers do not complain when they bash cold fusion. For that matter, when the Jap. J. of Applied Physics or J. Fusion Energy publish positive papers about cold fusion, their readers do not complain either. You and the editors of Nature and Sci Am. simply do not know what is or is not "widely held" by "mainstream scientists." The only thing resembling a poll would be the DoE Review, and it was split down the middle.
You might wish to say that cold fusion is widely denigrated and attacked. I can offer plenty of proof of that! I have quotes from recent attacks, and many documented cases in which cold fusion researchers were persecuted, threatened, fired for expressing opinions, reassigned to menial jobs. I know of experiments that were sabotaged. I can point to a Nobel Laureate who went on record saying that this treatment is an outrage and it will lead to the "death of science." (See Julian Schwinger.) There is no question that the opposition to cold fusion is highly politicized and opponents are noisy -- and very, very sure of themselves even though most of them have not read the experimental literature. But that proves nothing about what fraction of professional scientists these activists represent, or how many professional scientists would approve of this persecution.
Frankly, I am in a better position to judge the popularity and the level of acceptance of cold fusion than either you or those editors. I know that researchers from all over the world visit LENR-CANR.org and download 3,000 papers per week, and they have downloaded 440,000 in the last couple of years, and visited 1.6 million times. These are turgid, boring, technical papers, which would only interest a scientist. For these and various other reasons I described elsewhere in this discussion I am pretty sure that is the audience. This comparison cannot be calibrated, because there are no skeptical web sites featuring 450 papers attacking cold fusion. (There have only been two "skeptical" papers published in the last 16 years as far as I know, and we have both of them on file.) Granted this is only suggestive, but it seems to me this shows there are large numbers of people seriously interested in the subject who do not consider it "pathological science."
You wrote:
Please stop editing Wikipedia articles to reflect your views and carry on your promotional efforts elsehwere.
I am editing Wikipedia articles to reflect the peer-reviewed, published facts discovered in experiments. I have provided copious footnotes referencing the literature. (The skeptics, on the other hand, have given us only unsupported opinions. If anyone is promoting a mere "view" -- undocumented and unsupported by facts -- you are.) Any opinions I added are strictly based on a consensus formed by experts researchers who have published papers and studied electrochemistry for decades. These are emphatically not my own private views and opinions. I have also written about my views and opinions. I am not shy about them! For example, I invite you to read an e-book I wrote, recommended by Arthur Clarke and others. See: [16]
--JedRothwell 23:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


Let me add that if you think some of my additions are not sufficiently well documented, and I should add more references to the literature, please let me know. I have hundreds of papers here, and a database of thousands, and I could add dozens more footnotes to each claim, but I have been holding back, to avoid cluttering up the article.
If you agree that my additions are well documented, and the papers I point to say what I claim they say (I have summarized them correctly), then you should be arguing with the cold fusion researchers and the editors of the journals that published these papers. Not with me. As I said, these are not my views, and this is not my research. People like Martin Fleischmann and John O'M. Bockris literally wrote the book on modern post-war electrochemistry. (They wrote multi-volume textbooks and hundreds of seminal papers.) Fleischmann is a Fellow of the Royal Society. For me to claim that I speak for him would be outrageous chutzpah. When you and the other skeptics here dismiss him and claim his results are all mistaken -- when you have not even read his papers -- that's outrageous chutzpah raised to the third power. Frankly, it is incredible to me that people like you and the editor of Sci. Am. think you know better than these world class experts. Who do you think you are, anyway?!? --JedRothwell 23:51, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


I don't deny anything. NPOV isn't about correctness. You don't even know what NPOV policy says, so how can you claim to understand it? Nathan J. Yoder 16:49, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I haven't read the policy? YOU have not even read the cold fusion papers! You do not even know where they are published, or who wrote them. And you presume to lecture me about objectivity. How can you possibly claim to be "objective" about a subject you have not even bothered to read about?!?
As a matter of fact I have read the policy, and I think that I am doing a pretty good job of abiding by it. I am at least as objective as, for example, a biologist would be while commenting on Creationism. At least I have actually read the papers and books critiquing cold fusion.
Note that the heart of the NPOV policy is: "Does the article fairly represent all significant viewpoints, in proportion to the prominence of each?" How can you claim that your point of view is "significant"? You have not read about the subject. You do not even know the names of the mainstream journals where papers on cold fusion have been published. You have never cited a paper. Are we supposed to give equal time and equal space to every person in the world who happens to have some random opinion about a subject he has never studied? People who claim they know about a subject without reading about it are not "significant"; they are crackpots. It is as if you plowed into the Wikipedia article on Japanese and demanded equal time for the notion that it is acually a varient of Klingon. You would render both words -- "significant" and "view" -- meaningless. You cannot have a "view" of something you refuse to look at.
The NPOV policy goes on to say, "If we are to represent the dispute fairly, we should present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties." Obviously, "experts" do not include people who have read nothing about a subject. The policy also says it is okay to exclude views such as those of the Flat Earth Society, or to mention them only briefly in passing. In the context of chemistry, for example, this means we can exclude people who persist in claiming that chemical reactions might produce gigajoules per mole of fuel, and people who think that hundreds of autoradiographs and scintillation counters might show massive evidence of radiation, in experiment after experiment, in a hundred different labs, but they are all magically wrong for no reason. That isn't a "competing" view; it is a crackpot view.
Of course we should give some space to Huizenga's opinions, and the views of the DoE. They are experts, although in my opinion they are misinformed and incorrect experts. And indeed most of the article is given over to their views. Since there have been only a handfull of "skeptical" peer-reviewed papers, versus thousands of positive ones, if we were making this article even-handed and proportionally representative of significant views, we would include one sentence at the end mentioning that a few scientists disagree with the findings, but the evidence for the findings is overwhelming.
--JedRothwell 17:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Revised "Current understanding of physics" section

I revised the "Current understanding of physics section." I feel that it was incredibly biased toward the skeptical point of view. I preserved all of the skeptical statements but added a few paragraphs representing the cold fusion researchers views. I hope the skeptics do not come in and erase what I have written.

I realize that Wikipedia tries to maintain a neutral point of view, but in cases like this it fails drastically. The only way to deal with this is to try to represent both points of view and to clearly demarcate them.

I could say much more about this section but I shall refrain from doing so on the main page. Let me just point out a few of the other skeptical errors in this section:

"Although requiring exotic or unknown physics does not rule out the existence of a process . . ."

Cold fusion researchers do not require exotic or unknown physics. They are experimentalists; they do not require any explanation. Their experiments are based on 19th-century instruments, techniques and thermodynamic theory. Some theorists feel that cold fusion can only be explained with "exotic or unknown physics" but others say it can be explained with conventional physics. This discussion is beside the point because cold fusion is not based on theory.


". . . it does drastically increase the level of evidence needed to establish a process . . .

No it does not. This is a variation of the ridiculous notion that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. All claims should require equal levels of proof. All should be held to the same rigorous standards. The more extraordinary the claim is, the more "ordinary" and conventional this proof should be. Fortunately, cold fusion is based on calorimetry, mainly on the instruments and techniques that James Joule perfected in the 1840s.


". . . while at the same time making it much harder to perform experiments to verify that the process exists."

There is no inherent difficulty in cold fusion experiments. The techniques have been an accepted part of mainstream science for 160 years. It does require considerable skill, of course, but most research does. It is no more difficult than cloning, or open-heart surgery, or constructing a tokamak plasma fusion reactor.


"Requiring exotic or unknown physics increases the skeptic's suspicion that the underlying cause of the experimental results lies in errors of experimental design or misinterpretation of results . . ."

This is a non sequitur, as I said. No one requires exotic or unknown physics, and in any case the skeptic should judge experimental results strictly according to the experimental techniques and instruments, not the implication the results may hold. the person who rejects cold fusion experimental results because he thinks they may violate theory turns the scientific method upside down.


". . . and causes the scientific community to be skeptical of marginal results and demand unambiguous demonstrations of a process."

As I noted in the main page, cold fusion results are unambiguous. Excess heat has been demonstrated at Sigma 90 and above, and the effect has been replicated hundreds of times. The skeptics have been given what they demand year after year starting in 1990 yet they ignore this evidence and continue to publish statements like this.

Please note that I left all of these absurd statements in the main page unchallenged. I will let the skeptics have their say. I hope they do not erase the few statements I wrote in rebuttal.

Let me also point out that skeptics often publish a single sentence on this page -- usually an unsupported opinion without any proof or published references -- and then they object when cold fusion researchers respond with two or three sentences in rebuttal. They claim that we are dragging out the argument or adding more detail than an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia normally includes. Suppose we play by these rules. The debate would go like this:

SKEPTIC: A "power store" discovery would yield only a new, and very expensive, kind of storage battery, not a source of abundant cheap fusion power.

CF SUPPORTER: Cold fusion researchers disagree.

That is useless. The reader sees there is a disagreement but he has no idea whether the disagreement has been carefully considered or resolved or on what basis it might be resolved. It might as well be a matter of taste, or whimsy. We must add at least a few verifiable, experimentally based statements about actual energy releases reported in the literature, and we have to show how they relate to conventional physics and chemistry. That is why I added these statements:

"[Cold fusion researchers] point out that in all experiments in which excess heat has been recorded, the overall balance has been positive; there are no instances in which a heat deficit was recorded first, that would balance out the excess. In most bulk palladium electrochemical experiments, an incubation period of 10 to 20 days is followed by continuous excess heat production, which often continues longer than the incubation period. 'Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the D/Pd System' shows typical examples. [10]" . . .

And so on, for a couple of paragraphs.

If that is too much detail, then the entire debate should be removed, including both the skeptical statements and my rebuttal. Actually, you might as well delete the whole article, because this assertion -- that the heat is easy to detect and that it is far beyond the limits of chemistry -- is at the very heart of the cold fusion claims. I could write a 10-page essay describing all the reasons the skeptical claim about a "power store" is wrong, and I could list hundreds of experiment proving my points. The skeptics should not be allowed to throw in unfounded opinions and wild assertions that contradict 19th century physics, and then complain when we add in slightly more detail showing how and why they are in error. It is much easier to make an absurd assertion that it is to correct one.

--JedRothwell 23:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

History of cold fusion in introduction is pure POV nonsense

The history of cold fusion at the beginning of this article is hopelessly biased in favor of the skeptical point of view. It describes all kinds of trivial nonsense that occurred up until May 1989 -- just before serious researchers began serious replications. These replications were not completed until 1990 and most were not published until 1991 or 1992. I added a paragraph mentioning these replications, and I added that the National Institute was established after all, and it published definitive experiments proving that cold fusion produces tritium. (This proves it is a nuclear effect.) If the skeptics have paid any attention to the institute the whole debate would have ended in 1990.

I despair of cleaning up this article. It is a mish-mash of unfounded skeptical point-of-view opinion mixed in with a few facts from peer-reviewed literature (real science). But the science part is unorganized, fragmented and interrupted by ridiculous heckling and misinformation inserted by "skeptics" who clearly have not read the literature.

There is nothing here about the research in India, China or Italy, for goodness sake. There is so much more that could be said, but 90% of the article if devoted to trivia, newsmedia hearsay, and whacky skeptical objections that try to prove that theory overrides facts.

Wikipedia is admirable in many ways but I am afraid it is not an adequate place to present a serious debate about a profound scientific controversy.

Hey, it beats Encyclopaedia Britannica! They do not even mention cold fusion.

--JedRothwell 00:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Jed - don't despair, just rewrite it (or write one from scratch). I'll back you up on this, I think you've done a pretty good job of both pointing out the problems with what exists and writing original text. My feel is that aside from some of the wild statements you listed above, the biggest problem with the article is the relative allocation of space to different topics. Namely "Arguments in the controversy" is about 1/2, P&F about 1/3 and "Continuing Efforts" is the remainder (tiny). I'd say "Continuing Efforts" (or should that be "Current Research" ;) really ought to take up about half of the article, and be presented in a very straightforward "In 1995, A reported that B (cite). This is significant because it implies that C. The result was confirmed by D (cite)." kind of format. ObsidianOrder 20:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Well okay. I left intact all the media rumors and blather about who said what to whom in 1989, and the mythical "growing body of failed experiments" -- which as far as anyone knows all turned out to be one experiment at Georgia Tech. That stuff has nothing to do with cold fusion, but the skeptics love it and we wouldn't want to deprive them of their gossip. I inserted a few actual facts and references to literature, such as papers by Fritz Will and Wilford Hansen. Plus I added a note mentioning the infamous "Wake For Cold Fusion" held at MIT in June 26, a short time before MIT's own experiment began producing excess heat. We won't go into the fact that they panicked and diddled with the data to cover that up. We wouldn't want to make subject controversial, after all.
As for rewriting the whole thing . . . I don't think that would be a good idea. The skeptics have a right to publish their version of events here at Wikipedia. If I cut out all of what I consider nonsense written by them, they will be justified in chopping out what I write. They say that everything I write is unfounded nonsense and a violation of basic physics, and I say the same about them. (Specifically, I say that their assertions violate the conservation of energy, since they apparently believe that static, flow and Seebeck calorimeters and mass spectrometers do not work.)
To some extent, I think it may be a good idea to leave the skeptical statements here, so that readers can see that skeptics believe theory trumps experiment, and that trivial gossip about Pons is more germane than, say, research published by the Atomic Energy Commission, Government of India.
But the whole article is a tangled mess, and I despair of fixing it. Perhaps the only way to deal with this would be to have two versions of the cold fusion article, both locked, one written by skeptics, and one by supporters. (Or a clear demarcation halfway down the page.) The Wikipedia editors do have the power to "lock" pages, but unfortunately, when I contacted them, they expressed no interest in setting up something like that for cold fusion. So the article will have to remain fragmented and organized, and researchers such as Miles, Storms and Fleischmann tell me they will not take the time to review the article or add to it.
--JedRothwell 22:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


I believe it is false to claim that Lewis of Caltech, Brooks of Ohio State, Hirosky of Rochester, Dickens of ORNL, Sur of LBL, Seeliger of Dresden Tech, Cantrell of Miami, and Moshe Gai of Yale were all not 'serious researchers'. 1 Of course, as they did not agree with you, you wish to ignore them. --Noren 19:11, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Lewis of Caltech is serious and he is a skilled electrochemist. That is why his experiments produced excess heat. (He made a mistake in his analysis and did not recognize the heat, but others corrected him; see: [17]) Gai has raised theoretical objections to facts that have been established by replicated, high sigma experiments. This turns the scientific method upside down. I do not see how he can be serious, but perhaps he is.
Your ref. 1 is from May 1989. No replications had been performed at that time. Since then, hundreds of replications were performed and thousands of papers published. So even though Lewis, Hirosky et al. were serious and they used their best judgment in May 1989, they were guessing and jumping to conclusions about an unexplored phenomenon. Their information was far out of date by 1990, and it is even more out of date now. Do you have any more recent skeptical objections? Anything that passed peer-review and was published in a real journal? Or is this the best you can come up with after 16 years?
--JedRothwell 17:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Non-english links moved out of article

Dear Anonymous Person: Why were these moved? Did you move them to the other versions of Wikipedia? Is there there some kind of policy at Wikipedia banning non-English articles?
If there is such a policy, kindly point it out to me. If not, let us put the links back. Also, I would appreciate it if you would sign your work in future.
The subject is cold fusion after all, and hundreds of papers have been written about it in Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Russian. Most of the research on the subject is conducted in those countries. People in other countries do want to know about cold fusion. The papers in Spanish and Portuguese have been downloaded hundreds of times, and people outside the U.S. download roughly 8,000 papers a month from LENR-CANR.org.
--JedRothwell 22:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
First, there are a lot of speakers of languages other than English in the US, and a lot of native English speakers outside the US. Countries do not equal languages.
Secondly, we have Spanish and Portuguese and Chinese wikipedias for a reason. I don't know of any hard policy against links to non-English sites, but there are lots of links on this article, and those links should be kept as managable and usable as possible. Links to articles in non-English languages are not useful to many of our readers, and should be removed for that reason. If we have an English version of a link, we don't need links to translated versions. --Prosfilaes 22:58, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Wow. More bickering here than on the VN boards for Asheron's Call. I think I will go feed my animals now.

Huh. Well, if there is no official policy banning links to non-English sites, I think I'll put 'em back. I disagree with you. I think these links will be useful to many people, for the following reasons. Billions of people speak Spanish and Chinese, but unfortunately the Spanish & Chinese versions of Wikipedia do not appear to have extensive articles about cold fusion, so I suppose many of these speakers will come here, to the English pages. They will also come because English is the de facto international language of science. So I would like to give these people something they understand easily. I read Japanese, but I appreciate it when a Japanese site gives me some guidance in English. These papers are popular with our readers at LENR-CANR.org, so I expect they will be popular here, too. (LENR-CANR is so popular with the Chinese, they have a mirror copy of it at their top technical university, Tsinghua U.)
Also, I agree that "links should be kept as manageable and usable as possible" but I do not see how reducing the number by three will accomplish that. It would be better to organize the links. For example, why is Handel sitting out there under "Journals" when his paper was in a Proceedings? That does not make sense, but I hesitate to mess with someone else's decision to put it there.
Anyway, I shall reinstate the links and I hope you do not remove them again without first discussing the matter here.
- --JedRothwell
Just you adding them here is questionable, since LENR-CANR is your website. I see no reason to change my mind; it's already a link-heavy page, and the number of links has the potential to snowball heavily. Material available in English, that's not an important primary source, has no business being linked to in other languages.--Prosfilaes 03:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah, you chopped it again, and you did not even address the issues I raised here, such as the fact half the people in the world speak Chinese or Spanish. How charming of you! This is Wikipedia's famous collegiate cooperation at work. I see you left the vital links to the movie "The Saint," a 1928 novel no one has ever heard of, and "The Holy Grail." How vital and relevant! Hmmm . . .
Your logic is interesting, too. If I cannot add things from my website, that eliminates just about the whole field. I would not be able to add anything translated from Japanese, or any of the papers from ICCF-9 through 12, since I have them all, and I edited them all. My website lists over 3,000 papers and it includes the full text from over 450 papers. Are you saying they are all out of bounds? If I were adding my own papers you might have a valid point.
Anyway, if the editors here allow you to arbitrarily chop out references to scientific papers while preserving "The Saint," who am I to argue? I will let you have your way. If you like you can replace the whole article. I will not interfere.
--JedRothwell
Pardon the lack of signature on the initial comment. Yes, there is a policy regarding non-English links [18]. The only time a non-English document needs to be referanced is when it is the subject of the article, or when that document contains essential information that can be understood by a purely English speaker. If the links could serve a non-English speaker, then they should exist in those Wikipedias. The fact that half the world speaks Chinese has no bearing on this issue, as half of the visitors to this page do not. We need to cater to the norm, and not the exception, and we need to keep the links to a minimum. As for links like The Saint - they serve to satisfy a different interest, and are placed under "Cold fusion in fiction", which prevents them from crowding the more scientific referances.
Your logic for being able to add links to your site is ridiculous. Nobody is looking down on your links because they are valid information. They are looking down on them because while it is excusable to inform the community of your own site by linking it, it is inexcusable that you should argue bitterly over having those links removed. –MT 15:33, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah, so there is a policy after all. I think it is a silly policy, but I shall abide by it. No, I was not "arguing bitterly." I am amused rather than bitter.
--JedRothwell
To be clear, I and undoubtedly others greatly appreciate your contributions, but you surely must understand the reasoning behind removing those links. Being the owner of the site, you must admit to a bias. What's left then, is to agree or disagree with the statements regarding the utility of links to non-English documents from a purely English article. –MT 15:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
You wrote: "but you surely must understand the reasoning behind removing those links." I see that it is a rule, but I think it is a silly rule, and unjustified. "Being the owner of the site, you must admit to a bias." EVERYONE who knows anything about cold fusion is biased one way or the other. There is no middle ground. The two sides cannot even agree on the most basic facts, such as whether the effect has been replicated, or whether the signal to noise ratio is low or high. It is the most polarized and bitter scientific debate in modern history. (I do not count things like creationism or global warming as a scientific debates, but rather as fights between religion and science, and commerce and science, respectively.)
Actually, although this article is chaotic, one good thing about it is that it includes statements by both skeptics and supporters, and it reflects the sharply divided opinions.
--JedRothwell


Clean up Pons and Fleischmann

The whole section on Pons and Fleischmann needs to be cleaned up and updated, since a lot of new information is available. Maybe Pons and Fleischmann's experiment should be moved to an external article, since there really is enough discussion and information on it to warrant a seperate article. For instance, Bell test experiments have their own article. Currently, Fleischmann-Pons experiment redirects to cold fusion.

I agree. Much of it is gossip and empty speculation. The section "Experimental set-up and observations" also includes hot air about what Pons said to Triggs. I would chop the whole thing. The articles on aviation history and the Wright bros. do not describe how the Wrights feuded with Hart Berg. (Berg is not even mentioned, which seems unfair.) However this stuff is dear to the hearts of the skeptics, who -- as I said -- would rather talk about what Pons had for breakfast in 1989 than the fact that he later observed 101 watts of excess heat continuing for 30 days. If we start removing the froth and skeptical arm waving, they will start chopping out the real science, so we better leave it as is. Already it seems one of them cannot abide giving half the world's population material in their own languages, for some inexplicable reason. Maybe he is an English-only purist, or he wants to keep cold fusion a secret.
--JedRothwell
There are articles on Cold Fusion in ten languages, currently. I have seen no evidence that anyone objects to these. Perhaps non-English language articles should be placed in their appropriate language Cold Fusion page. --Noren 19:16, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps it's because the Wright bros. flight is uncontroversial, and how much heat was produced and whether it was excess is still controversial.
I find your response bordering on a personal attack, and certainly a failing of assume good faith. It shouldn't be inexplicable, because I explained myself clearly. Adding links to every conceivable page would make it very hard to find the useful links, and nothing can be more redundant than a link to a translation of an volume already available in the language of the article. The only way to produce an NPOV article is by trying to understand your opponent's view, instead jumping to paranoid conclusions.--Prosfilaes 20:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Prosfilaes wrote: "Perhaps it's because the Wright bros. flight is uncontroversial, and how much heat was produced and whether it was excess is still controversial." The Wright bros. flight was very controversial up until 1908, but as far as I know the news articles and scientific papers written about them between 1903 and 1908 did not dwell on their personal lives or the many legal disputes and petty arguments they were involved in. Regarding the Wright controversies, see: [19]
The excess heat is only controversial in the minds of the so-called skeptics, such as the editor of Scientific American. In the peer reviewed scientific literature there are no debates about it. It is established at high sigma in hundreds of experiments. As far as I know there are no skeptical papers showing errors in these experiments, or offering alternative explanations. In that sense, people who oppose cold fusion resemble the creationists who want to "teach the controversy" when in fact there is no controversy.
Delving into the minds of skeptics is tricky business. The best way to do so is to read what the skeptics themselves say. The editor of Sci. Am., for example, told me that he is journalist not a scientist; he has not read any cold fusion literature and he has no intention of reading it; and he cannot judge the issue so he will go with the majority opinion. See: [20] I agree with him on all counts: he is no scientist, he knows nothing, and he understands nothing. (Normally, a person in his position would be ashamed to admit these things, but he brags about them.) His notions about "controversial excess heat" are pure fantasy -- and I have never encountered a skeptic who has anything more substantive to back up this claim, but there may be some out there.
Prosfilaes also wrote: "I find your response bordering on a personal attack." Don't fret about it; I forgive you, and you have not upset me in the least. I would put your feelings down to three possible causes:
1. You and I have a different sense of humor.
2. You are thin-skinned or politically correct.
3. Cognitive dissonance.
--JedRothwell 23:21, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

"Secret" to the experiment

Some skeptic posted the following nonsense:

"Pons and Fleischmann later apparently claimed that there was a "secret" to the experiment; on the other hand, Fleischmann said at a meeting in April that all the necessary details had been given in the published paper . . ." ect.

I was sorely tempted to delete this completely, but I left it, adding only that a skeptic said it, and I added a rebuttal. For the record, I have read every paper by Fleischmann, attended many of his lectures, and spent a week at his house, and I have never ONCE heard him say anything like this. It is ridicuous in any case, since hundreds of researchers replicated the effect -- including some who were hoping not to replicate it, at MIT and CalTech. They cannot all be keeping this imaginary secret.

Skeptics come up with these wild assertions because they write based on rumor, hearsay and their own wishful thinking, instead of the scientific literature.

--JedRothwell 22:53, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Early on, many suspected P&F did have a working apparatus but that they were withholding key details. The vast majority of those attempting to replicate the experiments in April 1989 were unable to do so, and they were trying to figure out why that was... and the thought that P&F were not describing their experiment fully was the more charitable of the plausible explanations, the others being gross incompetence or fraud. It is clear that the vast majority of those(and there were many) making a good-faith effort in April 1989 to replicate using the descriptions P&F gave were unable to do so, and were searching for some explanation of that failure. These experimenters expected to find a real phenomenon and were very disappointed to find nothing. Here's an eyewitness account of the May 1989 APS session:
"I was at the APS meeting Monday night. What I heard most of the speakers say was that USING THE BEST INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO THEM THEY HAD REPLICATED THE THE FLEISCHMANN AND PONS EXPERIMENTS AND HAD BEEN UNABLE TO REPRODUCE THEIR RESULTS.
Most of the physicists are ANGRY that F&P have HIDDEN CRITICAL DETAILS of the experiments from the scientific community, while claiming in their press coferences that this is SO EASY that it can be done with equipment found in any chemistry lab.
If the trick is cast palladium, this fact was certainly NOT revealed in any of the early F&P press conferences, nor in their one paper. Also, I doubt that the "typical" chemistry lab would have just the right type of cast palladium.
I heard VERY FEW physicists say it COULD NOT BE DONE -EVER. I did hear many say it could not be done according to the information provided to date by F&P."
Note that while the popular press claimed those in attendance were jubilant and cheering, this eyewitness did not agree with that claim. Also, the MIT group which seems to be a frequent target of slander here did not even give a presentation.--Noren 20:09, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


Noren quotes someone name Vic Roberts, who attended the APS meeting in May 1989 and got the impression that "F&P have HIDDEN CRITICAL DETAILS." That is incorrect. They hid no details, although they had not finished publishing at that time. There was a terrific brouhaha and it was difficult to communicate with them. Later on they published everything and hundreds of electrochemists successfully replicated them. The most important detail that may not have been clear to everyone at that time was that they were using Johnson Massey palladium designed for hydrogen filters. Not only did Fleischmann make this public, he distributed samples of this material to several researchers, who later reported positive results with it, and he described the metallurgy of the material in detail.
The notion that you should jump to a conclusion a month after an experiment is announced and get upset because you cannot reproduce it right off the bat is ridiculous. It is childish. Fleischmann and Pons told everyone that they had spent five years doing this research and they had barely scratched the surface of the problem. They are world-class experts; Fleischmann is an FRS because of his contributions to the field. So why did people think they could do a better job in a few weeks? This is real life, not a movie. People who try to replicate an experiment of this nature by looking at a video of Pons holding a cell are not doing science. They are doing cargo-cult voodoo -- trying to make a microphone by tying a pine cone to a stick.
"If the trick is cast palladium, this fact was certainly NOT revealed in any of the early F&P press conferences . . ." Please note this was a press conference, not a two-week physics conference or a graduate level course on electrochemistry. Supposedly, many people tried to replicate cold fusion in March 1989. There are few records of these experiments, so it is difficult to say what happened, but most of these experiments failed because of beginner's electrochemical mistakes, contamination and other workaday problems. There is not one "trick" to doing cold fusion; there are thousands. There are textbooks full of "tricks" written by people like Fleischmann and Bockris. If Fleischmann had tried to explain to the audience at the press conference or the APS how to avoid all of these mistakes it would have taken him months.
The notion that anyone could simply throw together an experiment and expect a result was preposterous. Fleischmann, Pons, Bockris, Oriani, McKubre, Mizuno and every other well-known electrochemist said in 1989 that this experiment requires care, expertise, and "heroic chemistry." They also cautioned that it is somewhat hazardous because of the lithium electrolyte, and they said that people should not try to do it without careful preparation and knowledge. Oriani said that in his 50 year career this was the most difficult experiment he ever did. There is a reason why it takes years to get a Ph.D. in electrochemistry. A plasma physicist or some randomly chosen member of the APS could no more conduct an electrochemical experiment than an electrochemist could build a tokamak
". . . and the thought that P&F were not describing their experiment fully was the more charitable of the plausible explanations, the others being gross incompetence or fraud." Since they were widely replicated in the years following 1989, incompetence and fraud play no role in the story. Why keep harping on this when it was disproved 15 years ago? In May 1989, people who had no business trying to do a cold fusion experiment got antsy, jumped the gun, and tried anyway. They failed. Others who were professionally qualified performed serious experiments that lasted months, and they succeeded. End of story.
"Also, the MIT group which seems to be a frequent target of slander here did not even give a presentation." I would not know about a presentation. They published a disputed paper: D. Albagii et al., Journal of Fusion Energy, 9, 133, (1990).
--JedRothwell 21:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Why is this nonsense about "secets" still here?

Noren reverted this paragraph back to the original:

There was considerable speculation that Pons and Fleischmann had withheld key details of the experiment, possibly as a prelude to obtaining a patent; on the other hand, Fleischmann said at a meeting in April that all the necessary details had been given in the published paper. Some claim that if such data had been withheld, the report could not be falsified to the satisfaction of advocates, as advocates could claim failed experiments were missing some unpublished method. A hypothesis that is not falsifiable would be outside the field of modern science.

He removed the fact that only skeptics believe key details were withheld. Since it is obvious that only skeptics believe this, I have no objection. But I wonder why he left this nonsense at all? The experiment was replicated by hundreds of researchers. Not one of these researchers has ever claimed there is a secret to it. Obviously the hypothesis is falsifiable; it was tested; and it was confirmed. It seems crazy to beat this dead horse 15 years later. Frankly I think this makes the skeptics look bad, so I am happy to leave it in the article, but it seems to me that Noren or some other skeptic should remove it

Yesterday I mentioned something that might be construed as a secret by people who are not electrochemists: the fact that Martin Fleischmann selected a palladium silver alloy used in hydrogen filters, produced by Johnson Matthey. He probably did not mention this during the press conference, and it is an essential detail, so perhaps some people thought he was withholding it. (They may still think so, and for that matter, skeptics who know nothing about the experiment and have not read the literature are probably still unaware of this detail).

This was not a secret because every electrochemist who had worked with the palladium hydrogen system selected the same material, for reasons which are obvious to these experts. Along the same lines, they also knew that lithium electrolyte was the best choice. A short time after the announcement, researchers at many labs such as NASA [21], BARC [22], Amoco [23], SRI, Texas A&M and Hokkaido U. selected a similar palladium alloy and lithium salt and conducted successful experiments, measuring excess heat, tritium and neutrons. These people had no direct communication with Fleischmann, but they knew what to do without being told. The people at NASA and BARC actually appropriated an entire filtering machine made by Milton Roy, and used it in experiments, running deuterium through it. This was quite successful, and the same experiment with the same model has recently been repeated successfully in China and France.

I will not go into the technical reasons why these are obvious choices. You can read about that in the literature. (Note that McKubre will soon publish a new paper about the role of lithium.) The point is, any electrochemist worth his salt (LiOD or NaCl) knew this is how the experiment should be done.

The reason Martin Fleischmann selected Johnson Matthey, rather than some other company, is also obvious. Johnson Matthey in the UK; Fleischmann has long-standing connections to them; they are the world's largest supplier of palladium; and they are widely credited with making the best palladium filters. (They may be the only suppliers . . . it seems the material from other companies and in the Milton Roy machine originates from J-M.) As I mentioned, Fleischmann distributed samples of this particular metal to many researchers, and they confirmed that it works better than other alloys. See, for example, Table 10 in this paper by Miles. [24]

--JedRothwell 17:38, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Here's a complete quote of the conclusions section of the first reference you give above(the NASA one):
"This experiment to look for evidence of the second deuterium fusion reaction
2D + 2D → 3He + n
in Pd showed a negative result even at the rather low level of significance of 3 standard deviations. Differences of 1 or 2 standard deviations were observed in the background count as well as when deuterium or hydrogen was present in the hydrogen purifier. One can only speculate about the source of the heating which occurs when D2 and not H2 is removed from the Pd. The lack of neutrons during the heating (indeed during any of the experiments) would seem to rule out the second reaction as an explanation."
This is the very first result that JedRothwell claimed represented a group that "... conducted successful experiments, measuring excess heat, tritium and neutrons." It would appear that he is unable or unwilling to recognize a negative result when presented with a very clear one, and somehow categorizes it as a positive one. If this is the standard he has for judging if a paper is successfully " measuring excess heat, tritium and neutrons" it is not surprising that using these criteria he believes he reads of many replications.--Noren 15:05, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Along the same lines, I wonder why skeptics keep harping on the fact that Fleischmann and Pons incorrectly measured neutrons in the first paper. Everyone knows that, but it is a moot point. In subsequent experiments, researchers used many different instruments to successfully detect neutrons, and they published over 500 papers describing these results, so why does it matter that the very first paper was wrong? Of course the ratio of neutrons to heat is many orders of magnitude lower than it is for plasma fusion, but neutrons are neutrons and they prove that cold fusion is a nuclear effect.

I think the problem is that the skeptics are stuck in a time warp in May 1989. They are obsessed with trivial details such as what Pons said to Triggs. They cite only haphazard half-baked evaluations made of cold fusion at that time and they ignore all of the other evidence that has been published since then.

--JedRothwell 19:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Whoa! Someone deleted this nonsense. Big improvement. Hey you skeptics: It Wasn't Me! Okay? Keep cool. --JedRothwell 23:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed bogus definition of "pathological science"

A skeptic wrote that "pathological science" is:

"a term to describe ideas that would simply not "go away", long after they were given up on as wrong by the majority of scientists in the field."

If we are talking about pathological science as defined by Irving Langmuir, and as described in this encyclopedia, this statement is incorrect. Nowhere in Langmuir's definition does it say that pathological subjects linger for a long time. On the contrary, the only examples usually given, N-Rays and polywater, disappeared abruptly. Also, as I noted in the article on pathological science, cold fusion does not fit a single one of the criteria listed by Langmuir. So there is really no reason why it should be linked cold fusion but I left the link there anyway.

I redefined the term here. I hope Mr. Skeptic does not revert this out of existence.

Skeptics often redefine "pathological science" to mean whatever notion pops into their heads, and then they claim that cold fusion fits the new definition. The most extreme case was the late editor of the Scientific American, J. Piel, who defined pathological science as any phenomenon for which "the mechanism is not fully understood" (In other words, he thought that any unsolved mystery is pathological.) See: [25]

--JedRothwell 17:36, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Serious NPOV Problems

The autoradiograph shown here is a good example of what the skeptics say they want: conclusive evidence other than excess heat. Only a nuclear reaction could produce the copious x-rays shown here.

That ain't even close to NPOV. "What the skeptics say they want" is an increadibly loaded phrase, and no NPOV article can make a stand on a controversial position like this one does. I'm tempted to revert it back the Featured Article.--Prosfilaes 17:54, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


Well, if you can think of a way to rephrase this that will satisfy the skeptics, go right ahead.

I am quoting the paragraph above that, which was written by a skeptic. It says, ". . . [skeptical] objection could be overruled either by creating an experiment which is less subject to errors, or by looking for signs of fusion which have nothing to do with excess heat."

There is no question that is what they say they want. They say it all the time, here and in magazines and newspaper articles in which they attack cold fusion. They ignore the fact that dozens of autoradiographs have been published by different institutions (not just BARC) along with a great deal of other nuclear evidence, such as data showing transmutations.

I agree that is a NPOV, but the point of view in question is skeptical, and I do not think I should erase skeptical comments that do not meet Wikipedia standards.

--JedRothwell 18:01, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

This is not a debate board. The article is not supposed to be a series of skeptical and unskeptical comments; it's supposed to be a coherant NPOV encyclopedia article.
To say "that is what they say they want" is hostile. You need to distance yourself from the subject before trying to write; if you can't write both sides, you shouldn't be writing just one.--Prosfilaes 18:14, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


But that is what they say they want. They say it frequently! One of them wrote it right here. I do not see how it can be hostile when they themselves agree and I am quoting one of them directly. Anyway, how would you rewrite this? Go ahead and take a shot at it, preferably here, if you don't mind. I am open to any suggestions or compromises.
You wrote: "The article is not supposed to be a series of skeptical and unskeptical comments . . ." What do you want me to do about that? I am not inserting skeptical comments. Tell them to stop inserting statements that are not supported by the experimental evidence.
Seriously, what do you recommend? Should I erase the rebuttals I have written in response to the skeptics, and let them dictate the entire article? Or should I erase their statements, and start a flame war?
Anyone, no one can write "both sides" of the cold fusion debate. That is like trying to write both sides of Creationism. The people on opposing sides speak different languages and we have radically different world views.
--JedRothwell 18:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
"You say you want" implies that you're lying about what you really want. Actually, yes, I believe I could write a balanced treatment of Creationism. WP:NPOV says "Articles without bias describe debates fairly instead of advocating any side of the debate." The sentence I started with advocated a side. Don't erase the statements; form them into an [[WP:NPOV|NPOV] description of the debate.--Prosfilaes 18:47, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


I am not aware of that nuance. When I wrote "the skeptics say they want . . ." I meant it literally, and I had no intention of indicating that the skeptics are lying about what they want.
Again let me ask: how would you phrase this? We could make it more specific, perhaps: "One of the skeptics wrote in this article (above) that he wanted to see conclusive evidence other than excess heat. This autoradiograph is a good example of such evidence . . ." That seems like a long-winded circumlocution that means the same thing.
--JedRothwell 18:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


How about this:
"The autoradiograph shown here is a good example of what the skeptics demand: conclusive evidence other than excess heat. . . ." ("say they want" is replaced by "demand.")
I went ahead and changed it that way.
- Jed
P.S. If you do not like the word "demand" please feel free to change it to something like "ask for," "desire" "pine for" or what have you. It would be most accurate to say "The autoradiograph shown here is a good example of what the skeptics refuse to look at, and what they repeatedly claim does not exist . . ."

Changes "peer review" in intro.

This is nitpicking but I changed this sentence in the intro:

"In a recent peer review of the topic by the USDoE only one of the eighteen reviewers found the evidence of excess heat production to be fully convincing."

The word "peer review" was linked to the Wikipedia article that begins: "Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of funding for research. . . ." The 2004 DoE Review did not fit that description. There was no manuscript to be corrected or funding at stake. (Actually, the panel recommended funding but the DoE decided not to fund research.) Also, the reviewers were not "peers" strictly speaking; they were chosen because they are outside the field -- not electrochemists or material scientists.

Also, I noted yet again that a third of the reviewers were "somewhat convinced." Assuming this group is representative of scientists in general, I thought that it is exaggerated to say "the vast majority" think that "cold fusion does not exist." One-third are somewhat convinced that it does exist, and two-thirds is not "vast." So I changed that to "majority." As I noted above, no one has take a poll so we do not actually know what scientists think.

--JedRothwell 18:16, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


Oops. It turns out someone repeated the term "peer review" with regard to the 2004 DoE review. Oh well. I will not quibble with the second appearance, although it does give the mistaken impression that the group of reviewers commented on or modified the Hagelstein paper.

I changed all appearances of "DOE" to "DoE" (lowercase "o").

I modified this sentence:

U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) decided to review all previous research of cold fusion in order to see whether further research was warranted by any new results.

They did not review all previous research. That would have taken months. They spent a day or so reviewing papers about some research. They did not actually look at any experiments in the laboratory, talk to many researchers, or attend any conferences.

Finally, some skeptic repeated the fact that the review panel was mainly unconvinced several times, so I deleted one appearance of that statement. This is in the introduction and I think all readers will duly note it.

--JedRothwell 21:04, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Created a "2004 DoE Review" section

There were several comments about the 2004 DoE Review scattered through this article, and some were duplicated, so I brought them together in a new section. I added some more comments from the reviewers themselves, and I posted a tally of what I consider their opinions:

". . . a cold fusion supporter feels that the breakdown of opinions were:
  • 7 unequivocally No
  • 5 conclusively Yes (for at least some aspects of cold fusion)
  • 7 maybe (including the four quoted above)
Skeptics may feel the breakdown is different."

I am sure they will disagree. For reference, here is my tally:

  • 7 unequivocally No: #1, 2, 6, 14, 15, 17, 18
  • 5 conclusively Yes: 4, 8, 9, 13
  • 7 maybe: 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 16

--JedRothwell 21:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Scientific papers

Have you considered the fact that less papers are published refuting the existence than confirming the existence because scientists just don't think it is worth refuting? I mean how many papers are there refuting the idea that the sun moves around the earth? - FrancisTyers 23:34, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


I assume this question is directed to me.

I suppose this is possible, but I am not a mind reader so I cannot judge why scientists write or do not write papers. Here are the facts:

1. The majority of papers are positive.

2. These papers are published in reputable, mainstream journals and they undergo very rigorous peer review, which sometimes takes years. So on the face of it, it seems unlikely that these claims would be akin to claims that the sun moves around the earth. The peer-review process usually does a good job of eliminating such things.

I myself do not know of any valid skeptical objections or problems with the experimental instruments and techniques. Most of these instruments and techniques were perfected in the 19th century, so it seems unlikely to me that people would find problems with them now. For example, autoradiographs are the oldest and most reliable means of detecting x-rays. Hundreds of positive autoradiographs have been made by experts at the Navy, Los Alamos, and BARC Bombay and elsewhere. Elaborate precautions are taken to avoid things like chemical stains on the film, for example by putting a stack of two or three unexposed films next to the sample (with none touching it) and observing the same images on all. So it seems extremely unlikely to me that they are all caused by experimental error.

Therefore, I assume the reason there are no skeptical rebuttals to these papers is that skeptics cannot think of any reason to object. If you feel differently, and you know of valid objections, I suggest you write a paper and submit it to a journal.

There was one skeptical journal paper by the late Douglas Morrison, but I do not think it has merit. I encourage you to read it and judge for yourself. See: [26]

Some of the 2004 DoE Reviewers' comments were skeptical. My take on them is here: [27] and I also agree with Beaudette, here: [28].

--JedRothwell 16:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Reinstated comments about Thomas Kuhn

Taxman, I think it was, deleted the following text from the introduction:

"If the phenomena in question truly exist, contemporary resistance to work in this area may reflect historical and institutional processes of the kind famously examined by historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn in his seminal work on scientific revolutions. If cold fusion exists then there is indeed a scientific revolution in the works."

I put this back. I think this reflects the "significant views" of most researchers in the field, which is what the NPOV policy calls for. Taxman is welcome to add a rebuttal but he should refrain from deleting opposing views without, at least, discussing the matter. Please note that supporters do not unilaterally delete skeptical statements in this article, even when we feel they are not in evidence.

This statement about Kuhn pays ritual deference to the skeptics already, since it begins with: "If the phenomena in question truly exist . . ." Removing it altogether is uncalled for.

--JedRothwell 15:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

It clearly fails the No original research policy. It's not that I disagree, in fact the statement is logically sound and even possible, it's just that Wikipedia can't accept material like that. Whether it is true or not is not the point here. If you want to have a try at more directly citing a statement to Kuhn or another prominent person that's one thing, but then it would have to be demonstrated that the point is relevant and important which I'm not sure it makes it. - Taxman Talk 16:46, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


The comments about Kuhn have been made by dozens of authors and researchers, including Mallove (1991, p. 278) and several of the authors in Accountability Res., 2000. 8. This is not a bit original. Please refrain from deleting these comments for this reason.
Also, by the way, I did not add these comments originally, although I agree with them. If you insist I will add one or two footnotes to Mallove and the others who have discussed Kuhn.
--JedRothwell 16:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


Okay, I added a reference to Mallove and another to a paper by Fleischmann. I hope you now agree that this is not original research and that the idea has already been published. I could add a few more refs to Kuhn and cold fusion if you like but I think it would clutter up the article. I also made it clear the second statement is the belief of the researchers. (I expect that is obvious, but anyway, I added it.)

Please let me know if you have other objections to this paragraph.

--JedRothwell 19:33, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball

If the phenomena in question truly exist, contemporary resistance to work in this area may reflect historical and institutional processes of the kind famously examined by historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn in his seminal work on scientific revolutions. If cold fusion exists then there is indeed a scientific revolution in the works.

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Even if this doesn't fit the exact definition, it certainly doesn't belong in the lead. Please bear in mind the WP:3RR before continuing to revert and attempt to reach consensus on the talk page. - FrancisTyers 16:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


Okay, why don't we rephrase this to say that hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles said this in 1989, and many cold fusion researchers think this is true. The prediction would not be made by Wikipedia in that case, but merely quoted from the newspapers and from sources such as Accountability Res.

How's this:

If the phenomena in question truly exist, contemporary resistance to work in this area may reflect historical and institutional processes of the kind famously examined by historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn in his seminal work on scientific revolutions. [1] If cold fusion exists then cold fusion researchers belive there is indeed a scientific revolution in the works.

1. Mallove, E., Fire From Ice. 1991, NY: John Wiley, p. 278.

I could add a few more refs if you like. If this is not satisfactory I suggest you propose a revision rather than simply deleting the text.

--JedRothwell 17:05, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate comment about Nature not publishing removed

Yesterday I inserted a parenthetical comment under "Current understanding of physics"

"(Some journals, such as Nature, refuse to print cold fusion papers, but others accept them.)"

Someone said the same thing today at the beginning of article, so I deleted my comment. No point in repeating it.

I added that Scientific American also attacks the subject, and I mentioned a couple of prestigeous journals that do accept papers on the subject. Let us keep things fair and balanced!

--JedRothwell 19:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


Kaisershatner moved the whole discussion from the Introduction down to "Continuing efforts." That is a big improvement.

Perhaps this topic deserves a new section. Maybe the title should be "Continuing disagreements"?

I think I will delete some of the comments I made about many journals printing papers. There is no need to repeat them. . . . I chopped the one under "Current understanding of physics."

--JedRothwell 19:46, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Kaisershatner also moved two footnotes down to "Notes." That's another big improvement. I found four more footnotes and moved them down. After I moved them I realized that the Fleischmann paper is also available online. I added the hyperlink to the footnote, which is a little inconsistent. It would look odd with a footnote (Mallove) next to a hyperlink.

I have reformatted all footnotes to the EndNote program's default "Numbered" style.

- Jed

Research History

Anything happen in this field between the 1920s and Pons/Fleischmann? Kaisershatner 19:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


I do not know of any published papers, but Mizuno described some interesting protohistory in his book "Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion." He was one of the few people the world working with highly loaded palladium deuterides (for reasons unrelated to fusion). He detected some anomalous charged particles, but he did not know what to make of them so eventually he dismissed them as instrument noise. Also, the electrolyte in one of his cells vanished. It probably boiled away, rather than leaking, but he was not performing calorimetry so there was no clue what happened.

Mizuno says that many electrochemists suspected there might be low level fusion reactions in palladium deuteride, but they were expecting ordinary reactions, like fracto-fusion. No one anticipated massive amounts of excess heat with 10^11 too few neutrons! As far as I know that was a complete surprise to everyone including Fleischmann and Pons. They were papers in the 1980s describing the effects of discharge and recombination overpotential on the cathode surface near protrusions. A few of these papers predicted that over nanoscale areas this might produce enormous pressure, on the order of 10^17 atm, which would be more than enough for conventional fusion.

--JedRothwell 22:37, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


Ah, I just remembered some interesting protohistory from the 1960s which has been documented. I will add it to this section later on. Abstract: "A sharp decrease of the radioactivity of tritium was observed when the hydrogen isotope is sorbed by small monocrystalline particles of titanium and the preparation is heated to several hundred degrees centigrade. . . ." That is probably a cold fusion effect. See: [29] [30]

--JedRothwell 17:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

2004 DOE report

I removed this text. To me citing the individual reviewers doesn't meaningfully add to the article. Kaisershatner 20:22, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

"Reviewer #10 "I think the evidence suggests the possibility of such events, by cannot be considered conclusive beyond a reasonable doubt . . ." Reviewer #11 "There is strong evidence of nuclear reactions in palladium, and suggestions of reactions in the titanium foil experiments. The body of evidence does not rise to the level of being conclusive at this time . . ." Reviewer #12 "I found the nuclear reaction aspect intriguing, but not fully convincing. However, our scientific training taught us to be open-minded . . ." Reviewer #16 "My opinion is that none of the experimental evidence directly presented to us is conclusive that nuclear reactions are occurring in these environments, but some of the evidence is certainly suggestive that they are. . ." Counting statements like this as "maybe" a cold fusion supporter feels that the breakdown of opinions were:

  • 7 unequivocally No
  • 5 conclusively Yes (for at least some aspects of cold fusion)
  • 7 maybe (including the four quoted above)

Skeptics may feel the breakdown is different.


I think you should put it back, perhaps abbreviated. The skeptics are insistent about this. I mentioned that opinions within the review panel were split fairly evenly and they said the Review Summary says it is "a third" and no buts about it. They wanted it to say 4/5th or something . . . I thought it best to post the actual integer numbers, point the reader to the reviews, and let the reader decide for himself.

Also, I think the review summary is biased, and I would like the reader to know that the actual reviewer's comments were mixed.

Also, we better change that to "the full text of the review panel members comments . . ." or something. We need to distinguish between the official DoE document (which the DoE published), and the actual comments made by the review panel (which the DoE tried to hide).

--JedRothwell 20:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


I put back an abbreviated version which I hope meets with everyone's satisfaction.

- Jed

Moved NCFI stuff back to early history

This was moved down to "Continuing efforts" but I moved it back up to the early history section, under the intro to the National Cold Fusion Institute (NCFI):

In September 1990, the National Institute published a tally of replications of cold fusion. [31] It included data from 92 research groups in 10 countries . . .

Reasons:

1. That ended a long time ago; it is not a "continuing effort."

2. This is ancient history. There are lot more than 92 reports now.

3. Let us not split up info about the NCFI.

--JedRothwell 20:37, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


Kaisershatner: Why did you make the "National Cold Fusion Institute" hyperlinked? The link does not go anywhere. I will unlink it for now. --JedRothwell 17:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

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