Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Cold fusion

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This Request for Mediation has been closed.

This case was closed at 01:21, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
The reason given for closure was: The underlying issues have been marked as resolved, and the draft has been copied to Cold Fusion where any future discussions should continue.
Parties: If you wish to resume this mediation, please file a new request.

Contents

[edit] Cold fusion

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Filed: 09:45, January 3, 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Involved parties

  1. Pcarbonn (talk · contribs)
  2. JzG (talk · contribs)
  3. ScienceApologist (talk · contribs)
  4. Ed Poor (talk · contribs)
  5. Itsmejudith (talk · contribs)
  6. Noren (talk · contribs)
  7. Kevin Baas (talk · contribs)
  8. MigFP (talk · contribs)
  9. ObsidianOrder (talk · contribs)

[edit] Articles involved

[edit] Other steps in dispute resolution that have been attempted

See the article's talk page. This article has been in a constant state of dispute for over three years, has twice been reverted back to a version which passed FA in 2004, has been subject to RfCs, has been protected numerous times due to edit warring.

Provisional agreement ot mediation exists on the article talk page, at least one party has expressed a preference for a mediator who has a degree in a science subject. Ed Poor has offered to mediate, but is unacceptable to some parties as he is considered a party to the dispute.

I have also offered to informally mediate, but there seems to be more of a consensus to take this route. I am open to either option. — BQZip01 — talk

[edit] Issues to be mediated

  • When referencing a US Department of Energy report, should the reference summary quote a paragraph from the body of the report, or the report's conclusions?
    • Or both? E.g., should it cover the three questions put to the reviewers in the 2004 review along with a summary of the reviewers' responses, as well as the conclusions?
  • WP:UNDUE: does (e.g.) counting the number of published papers violate WP:UNDUE in the manner that "teach the controversy" gives undue weight to minor dissent from scientific consensus; one party wishes to emphasise that "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production"; others note that this is qualified in that paragraph and qualified again in the conclusions (http://www.science.doe.gov/Sub/Newsroom/News_Releases/DOE-SC/2004/low_energy/CF_Final_120104.pdf), and Physics Today has publsihed two reports which indicate that the subject is unquestionably considered fringe science ([1], [2]).
    • Is it proper to mediate a question under the assumption that the article is in error, in the same way that an unrelated article which is likely unfamiliar to many of the parties is claimed, without evidence, to be in error?
    • Is it proper to mediate a question which conflates the question of counting the number of peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals with the question of which sections of an individual review to summarize in the article?
  • Is it appropriate to rely on Physics Today as an indicator of how the subject is currently viewed by the mainstream ([3])
    • Is it appropriate to rely on such a source when it is a non-peer-reviewed news item reporting with condescension and invective on a peer-reviewed source being separately summarized in the article?
    • Is any source using condescension and invective appropriate for articles on a scientific topic?
  • Does the section quoting cold fusion advocates as accusing others of pathological disbelief violate WP:UNDUE; is it special pleading?
    • Is it an appropriate balance to the accusations an insinuations of pathological science in, e.g., the introduction of the article?
  • Does the overall tone of the article accurately reflect the present state of the art, as reflected by independent sources, and does it accurately reflect the prominence and reputation of this field among mainstream scientists.
    • Is there a better way to accurately reflect the present state of the art, as reflected by independent sources, than to count the number of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles which contain different kinds of positive, neutral, and negative effects?
  • Should the article reflects what the 2004 DoE report said, or some other sources? Which ones?
    • Or both, as it does now?
  • If the DoE is selected, did the DoE say that there is a controversy?
    • Even if the DoE did not say there was a controversy, is there any reason to not use the plain dictionary definition of the word "controversy" in describing the state of the peer-reviewed literature in the field?
  • If so, what were the different side of the controversy, and how much weight did they have?
    • Can the relative weight of the sides of the controversy be approximated by counting the number of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles with positive, negative, and neutral research results?
  • If several views are significant, should the article represents all the significant views of the DoE panel, or just the most important one?
    • How would such importance be objectively determined by the parties?
  • Should a summary of the most recent peer-reviewed review published in a scientific journal be included in the article?
    • If not, how should the reviews selected to be included in the article be determined?
  • Does the current version represent the DoE panel's view(s) appropriately?
  • Was it appropriate to revert the entire article wholesale to a version of three years ago without making incremental changes instead?
  • Should proposed theoretical explanations of anomalous results reported in peer-reviewed sources be included following the article's summary of why conventional theories of fusion do not explain the reported anomalies?
    • If so, what should be the standards for which proposed theoretical explanations are included in the article?
  • Should the article explicitly describe and quantify the relatively small amount of power gain reported by the most promising published results? In the lead?
  • Should the Szpak and Mosier-Boss "codeposition" technique findings from US Navy SPAWAR be described in detail, as the reports of the largest power gain in the published literature?
    • Or, is this giving undue weight to a single experiment which fails to resolve the underlying questions as identified by the DoE review?
      • Was the SPAWAR work even considered by the 2004 DOE review?
  • Should the the LENR sessions at ACS be discussed, and if so, how?
  • In the "Reproducibility of the result" section, should just the point of view from reviews (such as the DOE reviews) suggesting that the effect is not reproducible be included, or should we also include conclusions from reviews (such as the most recent, from the U.S. Naval Research Lab) that it is reproducible?
  • Should the largest research effort to date on the subject (the 1992-1997, $20+ million program by the Japanese government) be mentioned in the lead?

[edit] Parties' agreement to mediate

All parties should sign below, indicating that they agree to mediate the issue. If any party fails to sign, or if a party indicates they do not agree, then the mediation will be rejected. Only "Agree" or "Disagree" and signatures should appear here; any comments will be removed, but can be made at the talk page.
  1. Agree. Guy (Help!) 09:45, 3 January 2008 (UTC) (note: this user is JzG mentioned above)
  2. Agree Pcarbonn (talk) 10:16, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
  3. Agree MigFP (talk) 11:29, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
  4. Provisionally agree. [Comment moved to talk by AGK at 13:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC] ScienceApologist (talk) 17:20, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
  5. Agree Itsmejudith (talk) 09:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
  6. Agree Uncle Ed (talk) 16:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC) (note: this user is Ed Poor mentioned above)
  7. Agree — BQZip01 — talk 21:13, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
  8. Agree Kevin Baastalk 15:26, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  9. Agree Noren (talk) 20:39, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Note to whoever is monitoring this page: All parties have agreed to mediation

[edit] Decision of the Mediation Committee

A member of the Mediation Committee will indicate acceptance/rejection/other relevant notes in this section. Non-Committee members should not edit this section.
Accept.
For the Mediation Committee, -- tariqabjotu 19:08, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Accepted if it is acceptable to the others. See the talk page for further comments. My analysis and review of the points will begin on 14 January 2008, although you can expect to see stuff crop up until then. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 01:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)