Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
On second thought the weeding would have to be done now, otherwise people will try for ever to replicate the so-and-so experiment without success, or worse bringing in their own sources of errors and thinking they have succeeded. To be able to concentrate on good experiments, the bad ones must be identified I am afraid, including when the people who performed them are close friends, that's where it gets hard. Michel - Original Message - From: Michel Jullian [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 12:39 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) OK this sounds more sensible, we have gone even beyond the stage of a hypothesis (I myself have witnessed such bad CF experiments). CF presented in this more realistic light, mistakes and all, looks more like real science. A lot of weeding would have to be done, but that's another story. Best is to concentrate on the experiments which are thought/known to work, and validate them. Ideally they should pass the Earthtech test, after which they could go and claim the Randi prize without further ado. Michel - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 12:05 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) Edmund Storms wrote: Let me throw my two cents into this discussion. Of course some people doing cold fusion have made mistakes and reported bad data. Right. And this is like saying that some programmers write programs with bugs, some doctors accidentally kill patients, and some people drive their cars into trees by accident. People in all walks of life make mistakes. This is not the issue. When this happen in normal science, people go back to the lab and try again. Right again. And programmers correct their mistakes. (Or at Microsoft, they declare that the mistake is a feature, they charge extra for it, and then they charge you to get rid of it.) In cold fusion, the error is used to discredit the whole idea. That is the issue! Cold fusion needs to treated just like any other science, mistakes and all. Exactly. Just because some drivers sometimes run into trees, you do not declare that no one can drive, or that cars do not exist. I know perfectly well that some CF researchers are wrong, but it is inconceivable that all of them are wrong. The two assertions must not be confused. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Jed, you are right in everything you say. Though by the same token there are many things that are proven and yet utterly ignored because people think that the limits they place on the universe actually mean something, why they think their model of the universe trumps irrefutable proof of how the universe really works I don't honestly know. To quote a TV pilot that you'll never see on TV 'It doesn't have to make sense to you, it just has to make sense'. My point is that while you are right, cold fusion is the least of what is provably real yet denied and I'd wonder if you may flat out deny some of the other stuff too. (No, I don't want to get into an argument about different types of evidence) On 2/10/07, Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michel Jullian wrote: Now try another impersonation. Imagine yourself in the place of a hypothetical CF experimenter who realizes years later that his past overunity claims were erroneous for some unobvious reason, but still believes (rightly so maybe) that there must be a way to make CF work. Would you endanger the whole field -and therefore the world- by admitting your error, or would you keep quiet? I would say the likelihood of this is roughly equal to the likelihood that scientists will discover that copper and gold are the same element, or that the world is only 6000 years old. The over unity claims are not based on a researchers' opinions. They are based on replicated, peer-reviewed experimental evidence, fundamental laws of physics, and instruments and techniques that have been used in millions of experiments and industrial processes since the mid-19th century, such as calorimetry, autoradiographs and other x-ray detection, spectroscopy, tritium detection techniques and so on. These techniques have been used to confirm the results by hundreds of scientists in thousands of runs. If they could all be wrong for some reason, the experimental method itself does not work, and science would not exist. If a cold fusion researcher were for some reason to question his own high-Sigma result, he would be wrong. To take a concrete example, researchers at Caltech were convinced that they did not observe excess heat. They thought the calibration constant in their isoperibolic calorimeter was changing instead. However, I am sure they were wrong about that, and they did actually observe excess heat. Their opinions to the contrary count for nothing. Just because the people at Caltech cannot bring themselves to believe indisputable experimental proof of cold fusion, that does not give them leave to rewrite the laws of thermodynamics or to claim that an instrument developed by J. P. Joule in the 1840s does not work! Science is not based on opinions. It is based on what nature reveals, in replicated observations and instrument readings. The bedrock basis of the scientific method is that in the final analysis, all questions must be settled by experiment, and *experiment alone*. Experiment always trumps theory. When instruments show that a phenomenon occurs many times, in many different labs, with different instrument types, at a high signal-to-noise ratio, the issue is settled forever. It is beyond any rational doubt or argument. No better proof can exist in the physical universe. A scientist cannot choose not to believe the instrument readings, any more than a pilot can choose to pretend he is on the ground when the airplane is actually flying at 1,000 meters altitude. Let's push it further. Imagine you lack, unknowingly, the particular technical skill (some exotic subbranch of EE or plasma physics or statistics, whatever) which you would need to realize your error. Cold fusion results are not based on exotic skills or subbranches. They are based on 19th century science that only a lunatic or creationist would dispute. The excess heat and tritium results are sometimes subtle, but in other cases they are tremendous and far beyond any possible instrument error. Sigma 100 excess heat and tritium at a million times background are not debatable, and there is no chance they are caused by error or contamination. I said that people who do not believe what the instruments reveal are not scientists. Everyone knows that some working scientists do not believe cold fusion results, but they have temporarily stopped acting as scientists, just as a policeman who goes on a rampage and beats innocent people is not acting as a policeman. Skeptical scientists who reject cold fusion fall in two categories: 1. Those who have not seen the evidence, or who refuse to look at it. 2. Those who look at the evidence, agree that it is indisputable and then dismiss it anyway, such as the DoE reviewer who looked at Iwamura and wrote: The paper by Iwamura et al. presented at ICCF10 (Ref. 47 in DOE31) does an exhaustive job of using a variety of modern analytical chemistry methods to identify elements produced on the surface of coated Pd cold-fusion foils. . . . The analytical results, from a
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Pass? Fail? A -excellent? E -poor? Harry Michel Jullian wrote: On second thought the weeding would have to be done now, otherwise people will try for ever to replicate the so-and-so experiment without success, or worse bringing in their own sources of errors and thinking they have succeeded. To be able to concentrate on good experiments, the bad ones must be identified I am afraid, including when the people who performed them are close friends, that's where it gets hard. Michel - Original Message - From: Michel Jullian [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 12:39 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) OK this sounds more sensible, we have gone even beyond the stage of a hypothesis (I myself have witnessed such bad CF experiments). CF presented in this more realistic light, mistakes and all, looks more like real science. A lot of weeding would have to be done, but that's another story. Best is to concentrate on the experiments which are thought/known to work, and validate them. Ideally they should pass the Earthtech test, after which they could go and claim the Randi prize without further ado. Michel - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 12:05 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) Edmund Storms wrote: Let me throw my two cents into this discussion. Of course some people doing cold fusion have made mistakes and reported bad data. Right. And this is like saying that some programmers write programs with bugs, some doctors accidentally kill patients, and some people drive their cars into trees by accident. People in all walks of life make mistakes. This is not the issue. When this happen in normal science, people go back to the lab and try again. Right again. And programmers correct their mistakes. (Or at Microsoft, they declare that the mistake is a feature, they charge extra for it, and then they charge you to get rid of it.) In cold fusion, the error is used to discredit the whole idea. That is the issue! Cold fusion needs to treated just like any other science, mistakes and all. Exactly. Just because some drivers sometimes run into trees, you do not declare that no one can drive, or that cars do not exist. I know perfectly well that some CF researchers are wrong, but it is inconceivable that all of them are wrong. The two assertions must not be confused. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Jed...You could also let readers rank the quality of the experiments on your website. Harry
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
On 2/10/07, Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exactly. Just because some drivers sometimes run into trees, you do not declare that no one can drive, or that cars do not exist. Doctors and drug companies kill people by the thousands (scratch that, millions) and only slowly are they getting any criticism. But if a natural therapy, or antioxidants are shown to have the slightest negative effect it's big news, and legislation is made to basically stop people from taking supplements or natural remedies. The same thing happens with the medias reporting on global warming as illustrated in an inconvenient truth. Fair and balanced!
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
In most cases the quality can't be judged by just reading a paper, so such ranking by the readers would be worthless IMHO. But a ranking scheme might work if it was done by the fellow CF researchers, so they wouldn't have to tell about erroneous experiments made by friends, they would just not rank them or give them a lower ranking. Then replicators could concentrate on the most promising experiments rather than wasting their time and money in dead alleys. How does this sound Jed? Michel - Original Message - From: Harry Veeder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 10:41 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) Jed...You could also let readers rank the quality of the experiments on your website. Harry
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Michel Jullian writes: On second thought the weeding would have to be done now, otherwise people will try for ever to replicate the so-and-so experiment without success, or worse bringing in their own sources of errors and thinking they have succeeded. Well, what is good and what is bad is a matter of opinion and scientific judgement. The system works by free exchange of information. Everyone is allowed to publish results, and everyone else is free to judge for themselves. People can write reviews of the work, the way Storms has done, but nobody hands out grades in academic research, and no one should be allowed to act as an arbitor or censor. (Least of all someone running an on-line library, such as me!) Anyway, a person who would try to replicate the so-so, marginal experiments is not qualifed to work in this field and will not contribute anything no matter what. In other words, if you have to depend on others to tell you what is a good result, you are not To be able to concentrate on good experiments, the bad ones must be identified I am afraid . . . This is like saying that to succeed in business you should identify good investment opportunities. True, but if you are not qualified to do that -- or good at doing that -- no one can teach you the knack or give you a set of guidelines beyond the obvious textbook stuff. To participate in science, business, art or any other field that depends on the free exchange of information and competition, you must think for yourself. . . . including when the people who performed them are close friends, that's where it gets hard. I do not see what relevance that could possibly have. All of the top electrochemists in the world such as Bockris, Fleischmann, Will and Oriani, have known one another well for decades. They are either good friends or old enemies. It is a small field. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
John Berry wrote: On 2/10/07, *Jed Rothwell* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exactly. Just because some drivers sometimes run into trees, you do not declare that no one can drive, or that cars do not exist. The same thing happens with the medias reporting on global warming as illustrated in an inconvenient truth. Fair and balanced! Unfair and agenda driven. Particularly with regard to the natural treatments. --- http://USFamily.Net/dialup.html - $8.25/mo! -- http://www.usfamily.net/dsl.html - $19.99/mo! ---
[Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Empathy: the ability to imagine oneself in another's place and understand the other's feelings, desires, ideas, and actions... (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Congratulations Jed, few people if any are capable of such a high level of empathy, sincerely! Now try another impersonation. Imagine yourself in the place of a hypothetical CF experimenter who realizes years later that his past overunity claims were erroneous for some unobvious reason, but still believes (rightly so maybe) that there must be a way to make CF work. Would you endanger the whole field -and therefore the world- by admitting your error, or would you keep quiet? Let's push it further. Imagine you lack, unknowingly, the particular technical skill (some exotic subbranch of EE or plasma physics or statistics, whatever) which you would need to realize your error. Then your claims are perfectly sincere aren't they, so how could anyone lacking the same skill, but admirative of what other skills you may have -say you've got a nobel prize in electrochemistry and another one in calorimetry whether such prizes exist or not-, realize your error? Now push it further, imagine that among all CF experimenters (among whom, as an aside, you can see that some such as Naudin are clearly incompetent and/or fraudulent even with your limited scientific and technical skills), there are several such people whom you highly esteem, persisting in their error, some of them knowingly (some for commendable reasons and others not) but you're not aware of that, and you believe CF would be a really good thing for mankind, rightly so. How could you distinguish false claims from legitimate ones? Michel - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 1:44 AM Subject: [Vo]: More about the skeptics' mindsets I wrote: But in the case of the NHE and Toyota, I sense that the decision makers do not believe the results, so they lie about them. . . . Our guess, based on talking with these people, is that when they saw positive results emerge, they thought something like this: Damn, that looks like excess heat. It must be some kind of crazy instrument error, or just noise. What I am trying to say is, I do not think that any opponent of CF thinks the effect might exist. None of them is thinking: This is real! I'll be out of a job if people find out! They will shut down the hot fusion program! Even in the oil industry I doubt anyone would go that far, but who knows. As far as I can tell, no opponent imagines that he is quashing what Michel Jullian called important stuff. They are sure it is unimportant. Opponents are 100% certain that it is nonsense, garbage, fraud, or, at least, a ridiculous waste of time. They figure, why not lie a little or fudge the data to get rid of what is obviously a big lie and a travesty? Also, they think it is a good idea to employ insults, ridicule and ad hominem attacks. As David Lindley wrote in Nature, in March 1990: All cold fusion theories can be demolished one way or another, but it takes some effort... Would a measure of unrestrained mockery, even a little unqualified vituperation have speeded cold fusion's demise? (You can see that I am not just trying to read their minds, and I am not making this stuff up as Dave Barry used to say. The skeptics boldly go on record saying things that in normal circumstances, any scientist would consider appalling!) Skeptics attack CF only to prevent a small amount of funding from being taken away from real science and diverted to schlock science. And to protect the public reputation of science. Not because they fear CF might actually someday succeed and then take away their entire program. Also, they attack it because they are upset that anyone would take it seriously. They put it in the same category I put astrology or creationism. The difference is that although I consider these things to be nonsense, I am not upset by them. I do not care whether other people spend time or money on them. But I would be upset if someone got government funds to do creationist research, or if he taught it in a public school. So I guess I can understand how the skeptics feel about government funding for cold fusion. It is difficult for people who share my beliefs to understand how these people think. You should not imagine they are evil, or they are deliberately trying to prevent progress and quash academic freedom. That is not how they see themselves. They commit evil acts, but it is unintentional. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Michel Jullian wrote: Now try another impersonation. Imagine yourself in the place of a hypothetical CF experimenter who realizes years later that his past overunity claims were erroneous for some unobvious reason, but still believes (rightly so maybe) that there must be a way to make CF work. Would you endanger the whole field -and therefore the world- by admitting your error, or would you keep quiet? I would say the likelihood of this is roughly equal to the likelihood that scientists will discover that copper and gold are the same element, or that the world is only 6000 years old. The over unity claims are not based on a researchers' opinions. They are based on replicated, peer-reviewed experimental evidence, fundamental laws of physics, and instruments and techniques that have been used in millions of experiments and industrial processes since the mid-19th century, such as calorimetry, autoradiographs and other x-ray detection, spectroscopy, tritium detection techniques and so on. These techniques have been used to confirm the results by hundreds of scientists in thousands of runs. If they could all be wrong for some reason, the experimental method itself does not work, and science would not exist. If a cold fusion researcher were for some reason to question his own high-Sigma result, he would be wrong. To take a concrete example, researchers at Caltech were convinced that they did not observe excess heat. They thought the calibration constant in their isoperibolic calorimeter was changing instead. However, I am sure they were wrong about that, and they did actually observe excess heat. Their opinions to the contrary count for nothing. Just because the people at Caltech cannot bring themselves to believe indisputable experimental proof of cold fusion, that does not give them leave to rewrite the laws of thermodynamics or to claim that an instrument developed by J. P. Joule in the 1840s does not work! Science is not based on opinions. It is based on what nature reveals, in replicated observations and instrument readings. The bedrock basis of the scientific method is that in the final analysis, all questions must be settled by experiment, and experiment alone. Experiment always trumps theory. When instruments show that a phenomenon occurs many times, in many different labs, with different instrument types, at a high signal-to-noise ratio, the issue is settled forever. It is beyond any rational doubt or argument. No better proof can exist in the physical universe. A scientist cannot choose not to believe the instrument readings, any more than a pilot can choose to pretend he is on the ground when the airplane is actually flying at 1,000 meters altitude. Let's push it further. Imagine you lack, unknowingly, the particular technical skill (some exotic subbranch of EE or plasma physics or statistics, whatever) which you would need to realize your error. Cold fusion results are not based on exotic skills or subbranches. They are based on 19th century science that only a lunatic or creationist would dispute. The excess heat and tritium results are sometimes subtle, but in other cases they are tremendous and far beyond any possible instrument error. Sigma 100 excess heat and tritium at a million times background are not debatable, and there is no chance they are caused by error or contamination. I said that people who do not believe what the instruments reveal are not scientists. Everyone knows that some working scientists do not believe cold fusion results, but they have temporarily stopped acting as scientists, just as a policeman who goes on a rampage and beats innocent people is not acting as a policeman. Skeptical scientists who reject cold fusion fall in two categories: 1. Those who have not seen the evidence, or who refuse to look at it. 2. Those who look at the evidence, agree that it is indisputable and then dismiss it anyway, such as the DoE reviewer who looked at Iwamura and wrote: The paper by Iwamura et al. presented at ICCF10 (Ref. 47 in DOE31) does an exhaustive job of using a variety of modern analytical chemistry methods to identify elements produced on the surface of coated Pd cold-fusion foils. . . . The analytical results, from a variety of techniques, such as mass spectroscopy and electron spectroscopy, are very nice. It seems difficult at first glance to dispute the results. . . . From a nuclear physics perspective, such conclusions are not to be believed . . . http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#StormsRothwellCritique This person is not acting as a scientist, and the last sentence has no meaning. It is not a nuclear physics perspective; it is an imaginary prospective, or one based on a kind of faith, a cult, or superstition. If you cannot dispute replicated results -- meaning you cannot find a technical error -- then you must believe them. Without this rule, no technical argument can be
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Dear Jed, This was a bit weak, I must say you did much better in your previous empathy exercise! I never asked what was the probability (which you underestimated BTW, in all fields of science there is at least _one_ renowned scientist who has made an error, can't you think of examples?), only what you would do if you were that scientist, or how you could distinguish that their claims are erroneous if you knew such scientists and trusted them because of their high skills. As for the missing skill or knowledge, nobody can know everything, why wouldn't say a highly competent electrochemist totally lack say EE skills? If you're satisfied now that the probability is not zero, can we go back to the if game? Imagine you're writing a SF book, which you're usually quite good at. Michel - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 5:02 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) Michel Jullian wrote: Now try another impersonation. Imagine yourself in the place of a hypothetical CF experimenter who realizes years later that his past overunity claims were erroneous for some unobvious reason, but still believes (rightly so maybe) that there must be a way to make CF work. Would you endanger the whole field -and therefore the world- by admitting your error, or would you keep quiet? I would say the likelihood of this is roughly equal to the likelihood that scientists will discover that copper and gold are the same element, or that the world is only 6000 years old. The over unity claims are not based on a researchers' opinions. They are based on replicated, peer-reviewed experimental evidence, fundamental laws of physics, and instruments and techniques that have been used in millions of experiments and industrial processes since the mid-19th century, such as calorimetry, autoradiographs and other x-ray detection, spectroscopy, tritium detection techniques and so on. These techniques have been used to confirm the results by hundreds of scientists in thousands of runs. If they could all be wrong for some reason, the experimental method itself does not work, and science would not exist. If a cold fusion researcher were for some reason to question his own high-Sigma result, he would be wrong. To take a concrete example, researchers at Caltech were convinced that they did not observe excess heat. They thought the calibration constant in their isoperibolic calorimeter was changing instead. However, I am sure they were wrong about that, and they did actually observe excess heat. Their opinions to the contrary count for nothing. Just because the people at Caltech cannot bring themselves to believe indisputable experimental proof of cold fusion, that does not give them leave to rewrite the laws of thermodynamics or to claim that an instrument developed by J. P. Joule in the 1840s does not work! Science is not based on opinions. It is based on what nature reveals, in replicated observations and instrument readings. The bedrock basis of the scientific method is that in the final analysis, all questions must be settled by experiment, and experiment alone. Experiment always trumps theory. When instruments show that a phenomenon occurs many times, in many different labs, with different instrument types, at a high signal-to-noise ratio, the issue is settled forever. It is beyond any rational doubt or argument. No better proof can exist in the physical universe. A scientist cannot choose not to believe the instrument readings, any more than a pilot can choose to pretend he is on the ground when the airplane is actually flying at 1,000 meters altitude. Let's push it further. Imagine you lack, unknowingly, the particular technical skill (some exotic subbranch of EE or plasma physics or statistics, whatever) which you would need to realize your error. Cold fusion results are not based on exotic skills or subbranches. They are based on 19th century science that only a lunatic or creationist would dispute. The excess heat and tritium results are sometimes subtle, but in other cases they are tremendous and far beyond any possible instrument error. Sigma 100 excess heat and tritium at a million times background are not debatable, and there is no chance they are caused by error or contamination. I said that people who do not believe what the instruments reveal are not scientists. Everyone knows that some working scientists do not believe cold fusion results, but they have temporarily stopped acting as scientists, just as a policeman who goes on a rampage and beats innocent people is not acting as a policeman. Skeptical scientists who reject cold fusion fall in two categories: 1. Those who have not seen the evidence, or who refuse to look at it. 2. Those who look at the evidence, agree
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Michel Jullian wrote: I never asked what was the probability (which you underestimated BTW, in all fields of science there is at least _one_ renowned scientist who has made an error, can't you think of examples?) Not just one! I know HUNDREDS of renowned scientists who have made huge errors for 17 years. They think cold fusion does not exist. People can always have wrong ideas. Throughout history most of our ideas have been wrong, and probably still are. Furthermore, experimental scientists often make mistakes. As Stan Pons says, if we are right half the time we are doing well. However, it is the experiments which are right, not the researchers. As I said, the researchers at Caltech did the experiment correctly, they got the expected result, but they misunderstood their own work and they do not realize it proves cold fusion is real. On average, scientists doing experiments get it right. That is why we can be sure that replicated results are real. If that were not the case, science would not work. Individual automobile drivers do have accidents, but when you randomly select a group of 200 drivers you can be certain they will not all have an accident the same morning. When you take a group of 200 electrochemists and have them do research for 17 years, they will not all get the same wrong answers. What scientists do is a form of animal behavior -- primate behavior. Like any other animal behavior, it works most of the time, or they would stop doing it. Cats are good at catching birds and mice. Even though a cat will often fail to catch a mouse, you can be sure that as a species cats successfully catch mice because otherwise they would go extinct. . . . only what you would do if you were that scientist, or how you could distinguish that their claims are erroneous if you knew such scientists and trusted them because of their high skills. I do not judge claims according to whether I trust the scientists or whether they are skilled and not. I judge the claims to be correct when the experiment is good, and it has been replicated. I interpret it according to the laws of physics. I know how calorimeters work. I know a good calorimeter when I see one, and I am confident that the laws of thermodynamics are intact, so I can be sure that cold fusion produces excess heat beyond the limits of chemistry. I do not trust researchers any more than I trust cats to catch mice. I do not need to have faith in cats. I know a dead mouse when I see it, and I know excess heat. As for the missing skill or knowledge, nobody can know everything, why wouldn't say a highly competent electrochemist totally lack say EE skills? First of all, that is impossible. No one can totally lack such skills and still get a degree in electrochemistry. All experimental scientists learn to use such instruments. Second, I have enough EE skills to recognize that a calorimeter is working -- or not. I recognize schlock research. Third, the the EE skills, instruments and techniques required to do cold fusion are not all that advanced. As I said, most of the instruments were perfected between 100 and 160 years ago. Of course even ancient instruments and tools can be difficult to use. Violins and axes were invented thousands of years ago yet they take skill to use correctly. I cannot play a violin, and although I have operated calorimeters, I have a lot to learn about them. But I can tell when someone else is using a violin or calorimeter correctly. If cold fusion called for advanced knowledge of complex instruments, and if the claims were extremely esoteric and subject to interpretation, or complex mathematical analysis, like the claims of the top quark, then perhaps hundreds of scientists working in one group might all be wrong. But hundreds of scientists could not have made independent mistakes measuring excess heat or tritium. If you're satisfied now that the probability is not zero . . . The probability of 200 professional scientists making elementary mistakes day after day for for 17 years is as close to zero as you can get. It would not happen in the life of the universe. As I said, this would be like randomly selecting a group of 200 drivers every morning for 17 years and in every single case finding that all of the drivers you selected make a mistake and caused an accident every single day. 1,241,000 accidents in a row! Or, as I said, it is like randomly selecting 200 cats every month, and seeing every one of them starve to death in a country filled with mice. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
I said imagine one CF experimenter, just one for a start, has been wrong and won't admit it, and you keep throwing various things at me to avoid the perspective. Why? Can't you question your beliefs even as a mere hypothesis? I am not saying this is so, just imagine. Michel - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 10:13 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) Michel Jullian wrote: I never asked what was the probability (which you underestimated BTW, in all fields of science there is at least _one_ renowned scientist who has made an error, can't you think of examples?) Not just one! I know HUNDREDS of renowned scientists who have made huge errors for 17 years. They think cold fusion does not exist. People can always have wrong ideas. Throughout history most of our ideas have been wrong, and probably still are. Furthermore, experimental scientists often make mistakes. As Stan Pons says, if we are right half the time we are doing well. However, it is the experiments which are right, not the researchers. As I said, the researchers at Caltech did the experiment correctly, they got the expected result, but they misunderstood their own work and they do not realize it proves cold fusion is real. On average, scientists doing experiments get it right. That is why we can be sure that replicated results are real. If that were not the case, science would not work. Individual automobile drivers do have accidents, but when you randomly select a group of 200 drivers you can be certain they will not all have an accident the same morning. When you take a group of 200 electrochemists and have them do research for 17 years, they will not all get the same wrong answers. What scientists do is a form of animal behavior -- primate behavior. Like any other animal behavior, it works most of the time, or they would stop doing it. Cats are good at catching birds and mice. Even though a cat will often fail to catch a mouse, you can be sure that as a species cats successfully catch mice because otherwise they would go extinct. . . . only what you would do if you were that scientist, or how you could distinguish that their claims are erroneous if you knew such scientists and trusted them because of their high skills. I do not judge claims according to whether I trust the scientists or whether they are skilled and not. I judge the claims to be correct when the experiment is good, and it has been replicated. I interpret it according to the laws of physics. I know how calorimeters work. I know a good calorimeter when I see one, and I am confident that the laws of thermodynamics are intact, so I can be sure that cold fusion produces excess heat beyond the limits of chemistry. I do not trust researchers any more than I trust cats to catch mice. I do not need to have faith in cats. I know a dead mouse when I see it, and I know excess heat. As for the missing skill or knowledge, nobody can know everything, why wouldn't say a highly competent electrochemist totally lack say EE skills? First of all, that is impossible. No one can totally lack such skills and still get a degree in electrochemistry. All experimental scientists learn to use such instruments. Second, I have enough EE skills to recognize that a calorimeter is working -- or not. I recognize schlock research. Third, the the EE skills, instruments and techniques required to do cold fusion are not all that advanced. As I said, most of the instruments were perfected between 100 and 160 years ago. Of course even ancient instruments and tools can be difficult to use. Violins and axes were invented thousands of years ago yet they take skill to use correctly. I cannot play a violin, and although I have operated calorimeters, I have a lot to learn about them. But I can tell when someone else is using a violin or calorimeter correctly. If cold fusion called for advanced knowledge of complex instruments, and if the claims were extremely esoteric and subject to interpretation, or complex mathematical analysis, like the claims of the top quark, then perhaps hundreds of scientists working in one group might all be wrong. But hundreds of scientists could not have made independent mistakes measuring excess heat or tritium. If you're satisfied now that the probability is not zero . . . The probability of 200 professional scientists making elementary mistakes day after day for for 17 years is as close to zero as you can get. It would not happen in the life of the universe. As I said, this would be like randomly selecting a group of 200 drivers every morning for 17 years and in every single case finding that all of the drivers you selected make a mistake and caused an accident every single day. 1,241,000 accidents in a row! Or, as I
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Michel Jullian wrote: I said imagine one CF experimenter, just one for a start, has been wrong and won't admit it . . . No problem. Heck, I know many CF researchers who have been wrong and will not admit it. Just about everyone at the NHE lab was wrong. I know some false negatives such as CalTech, and false positives. I know a few people -- maybe 5 or 10 -- who found out after a long time that their experiments were wrong, and the excess heat is not real, but they never published a retraction. They just faded away and stopped attending conferences. You are correct that some of these people probably kept a low profile in order to keep from damaging the field. Or they were just embarrassed. Some claimed they lost interest. Of course it makes no sense to talk about damaging the field. A mistaken claim made by one researcher does not cast doubt on results published by Melvin Miles or Mike McKubre. . . . and you keep throwing various things at me to avoid the perspective. Why? Can't you question your beliefs even as a mere hypothesis? No, not these particular beliefs, because they are not hypothetical. They are observations based on experiments. Experiments are never wrong. Observations made by people thousands of years ago are as certain now as they were back then. For example, people found out by experiment that hammering hot iron makes it harder. There is no doubt about this. It is forever true, and beyond question. People found out circa 1985 that loading palladium with deuterium sometimes makes it generate non-chemical excess heat. That is a fact, now and forever. Only hypotheses, theories or conclusions can be wrong. You would have to be crazy or extremely stupid to accept cold fusion as a hypothesis, because it seems to contradict so much accepted theory. There is no hypothetical basis for it, as far as I know. Of course I have many other beliefs which are hypotheses. I can easily imagine that such notions, based on theory, hunch, or blind acceptance of widely held ideas are wrong. In fact, I expect nearly all are wrong! And the rest are inaccurate, oversimplified, or incomplete. Throughout history most people's notions have been wrong, and there is no reason to think we have reached the end of history. I am not saying this is so, just imagine. Trying to imagine that replicated experiments are wrong is like trying to imagine that 2+2=5. I find that simply unimaginable. That's like believing in miracles. You have to make a clear distinction between observed facts, and hypotheses. Of course in some cases it is difficult to separate them and know which one you are dealing with. (But not with cold fusion, fortunately.) They do get mixed together. Plus, theory and wishful thinking always inform observations, and often lead us astray. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Let me throw my two cents into this discussion. Of course some people doing cold fusion have made mistakes and reported bad data. This is not the issue. When this happen in normal science, people go back to the lab and try again. In cold fusion, the error is used to discredit the whole idea. That is the issue! Cold fusion needs to treated just like any other science, mistakes and all. Ed Michel Jullian wrote: I said imagine one CF experimenter, just one for a start, has been wrong and won't admit it, and you keep throwing various things at me to avoid the perspective. Why? Can't you question your beliefs even as a mere hypothesis? I am not saying this is so, just imagine. Michel - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 10:13 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) Michel Jullian wrote: I never asked what was the probability (which you underestimated BTW, in all fields of science there is at least _one_ renowned scientist who has made an error, can't you think of examples?) Not just one! I know HUNDREDS of renowned scientists who have made huge errors for 17 years. They think cold fusion does not exist. People can always have wrong ideas. Throughout history most of our ideas have been wrong, and probably still are. Furthermore, experimental scientists often make mistakes. As Stan Pons says, if we are right half the time we are doing well. However, it is the experiments which are right, not the researchers. As I said, the researchers at Caltech did the experiment correctly, they got the expected result, but they misunderstood their own work and they do not realize it proves cold fusion is real. On average, scientists doing experiments get it right. That is why we can be sure that replicated results are real. If that were not the case, science would not work. Individual automobile drivers do have accidents, but when you randomly select a group of 200 drivers you can be certain they will not all have an accident the same morning. When you take a group of 200 electrochemists and have them do research for 17 years, they will not all get the same wrong answers. What scientists do is a form of animal behavior -- primate behavior. Like any other animal behavior, it works most of the time, or they would stop doing it. Cats are good at catching birds and mice. Even though a cat will often fail to catch a mouse, you can be sure that as a species cats successfully catch mice because otherwise they would go extinct. . . . only what you would do if you were that scientist, or how you could distinguish that their claims are erroneous if you knew such scientists and trusted them because of their high skills. I do not judge claims according to whether I trust the scientists or whether they are skilled and not. I judge the claims to be correct when the experiment is good, and it has been replicated. I interpret it according to the laws of physics. I know how calorimeters work. I know a good calorimeter when I see one, and I am confident that the laws of thermodynamics are intact, so I can be sure that cold fusion produces excess heat beyond the limits of chemistry. I do not trust researchers any more than I trust cats to catch mice. I do not need to have faith in cats. I know a dead mouse when I see it, and I know excess heat. As for the missing skill or knowledge, nobody can know everything, why wouldn't say a highly competent electrochemist totally lack say EE skills? First of all, that is impossible. No one can totally lack such skills and still get a degree in electrochemistry. All experimental scientists learn to use such instruments. Second, I have enough EE skills to recognize that a calorimeter is working -- or not. I recognize schlock research. Third, the the EE skills, instruments and techniques required to do cold fusion are not all that advanced. As I said, most of the instruments were perfected between 100 and 160 years ago. Of course even ancient instruments and tools can be difficult to use. Violins and axes were invented thousands of years ago yet they take skill to use correctly. I cannot play a violin, and although I have operated calorimeters, I have a lot to learn about them. But I can tell when someone else is using a violin or calorimeter correctly. If cold fusion called for advanced knowledge of complex instruments, and if the claims were extremely esoteric and subject to interpretation, or complex mathematical analysis, like the claims of the top quark, then perhaps hundreds of scientists working in one group might all be wrong. But hundreds of scientists could not have made independent mistakes measuring excess heat or tritium. If you're satisfied now that the probability is not zero . . . The probability of 200 professional scientists making elementary mistakes day after day
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Edmund Storms wrote: Let me throw my two cents into this discussion. Of course some people doing cold fusion have made mistakes and reported bad data. Right. And this is like saying that some programmers write programs with bugs, some doctors accidentally kill patients, and some people drive their cars into trees by accident. People in all walks of life make mistakes. This is not the issue. When this happen in normal science, people go back to the lab and try again. Right again. And programmers correct their mistakes. (Or at Microsoft, they declare that the mistake is a feature, they charge extra for it, and then they charge you to get rid of it.) In cold fusion, the error is used to discredit the whole idea. That is the issue! Cold fusion needs to treated just like any other science, mistakes and all. Exactly. Just because some drivers sometimes run into trees, you do not declare that no one can drive, or that cars do not exist. I know perfectly well that some CF researchers are wrong, but it is inconceivable that all of them are wrong. The two assertions must not be confused. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
OK this sounds more sensible, we have gone even beyond the stage of a hypothesis (I myself have witnessed such bad CF experiments). CF presented in this more realistic light, mistakes and all, looks more like real science. A lot of weeding would have to be done, but that's another story. Best is to concentrate on the experiments which are thought/known to work, and validate them. Ideally they should pass the Earthtech test, after which they could go and claim the Randi prize without further ado. Michel - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 12:05 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets) Edmund Storms wrote: Let me throw my two cents into this discussion. Of course some people doing cold fusion have made mistakes and reported bad data. Right. And this is like saying that some programmers write programs with bugs, some doctors accidentally kill patients, and some people drive their cars into trees by accident. People in all walks of life make mistakes. This is not the issue. When this happen in normal science, people go back to the lab and try again. Right again. And programmers correct their mistakes. (Or at Microsoft, they declare that the mistake is a feature, they charge extra for it, and then they charge you to get rid of it.) In cold fusion, the error is used to discredit the whole idea. That is the issue! Cold fusion needs to treated just like any other science, mistakes and all. Exactly. Just because some drivers sometimes run into trees, you do not declare that no one can drive, or that cars do not exist. I know perfectly well that some CF researchers are wrong, but it is inconceivable that all of them are wrong. The two assertions must not be confused. - Jed
