subject:"Re\: \[Vo\]\:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion"


At 04:39 AM 9/30/2009, Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote:
Rothwell (admitting he edits papers): Swartz's assertions are 
crazy nonsense. I would never demand to edit papers..

(but then in the next paragraph)
When I am preparing papers for a proceedings, that's another matter. 


Embarrassing. Dr. Swartz is playing gotcha, and rather badly here. 
Preparing papers for a proceedings is entirely different from 
editing papers uploaded to lenr-canr.org without author permission, 
which itself is different from mere reformatting. The context would 
be editing papers that were provided, so what Swartz has done is to 
juxtapose the two different situations to make it look like a comment 
about one is about the other. Perhaps he believes this, and is merely 
inattentive.


Rothwell (admitting he censors papers): Ed and I have on rare 
occasions turned down papers altogether. Maybe 3 to 5 times. These 
papers were off-topic, crazy, utterly incomprehensible, or 
handwritten and illegible. Generally speaking though, if you can 
get a paper published in a proceedings or journal anywhere, and it 
has some connection to cold fusion, we'll take it. We never turn 
down papers because we disagree with them. On the contrary, for 
years I have been trying to get more of the skeptics to contribute papers.

- Jed


Refusing to place a document in a library is a librarian's judgment 
and is not exactly censorship. And the topic wasn't papers on, say, 
biological transformation, but rather specific papers specifically 
about cold fusion, by a notable proponent, Swartz. And not the kind 
of allegedly wild-eyed speculation or dangerously and obviously 
idiosyncratic papers that Rothwell is talking about. Again, it's a gotcha.



  What is nonsense is that Jed Rothwell is disingenuous.
Merely the postings on vortex corroborate the assertions.


Rothwell is about as straight-out as they come, for better or for 
worse. He's not exactly politic, himself. The truth is that 
communication is ambiguous, and a general truth still stands even 
when there are unstated exceptions. It merely needs qualification, 
but tendentious argument will attack a general truth based on the 
existence of exceptions.



  Jed previously explained why he censors at his site.
At 10:45 AM 8/23/2004, Jed Rothwell admitted to censoring, but then 
purported it is for

political reasons, such as not to upset some of his critics (ROTFLOL)
 so he will not get hit with by a baseball bat (given) to Robert Park.

 Rothwell:   I will not hand a baseball bat to Robert Park and ask him
 to please hit me over the head with it! It is a shame that CF is 
so political,

but it is, and we must pay attention to politics, image and public relations.


That's right. Now, we might disagree with some of Rothwell's 
decisions, but the principle is sound. The library isn't a completely 
indiscriminate collection of resources; if it were, it would be less 
useful. However, there is a problem, for sure, where material is 
excluded merely because of its political implications, and I 
immediately think of Vyosotskii. I've seen the political implications 
from this, playing out, for the discussion of Vyosotskii in discussed 
in Storms (2007) is used against Storms by some of the critics. And 
then that Vyosotskii once wrote a paper on water memory, is used 
against Vyosotskii.


Rothwell could set up an advisory board to which he would refer any 
disputes over inclusion. Or he could continue has he has, making the 
decisions himself. He's putting in the work, he has the right. If 
someone else wants to create a library of rejected submissions to 
lenr-canr.org, they could, and my guess is that Rothwell would link 
to it... Basically, he's stated his motive, and it is not censorship. 
It's protective of the reputation of lenr-canr.org, which is 
considerable, and in which there is a great deal invested.



What is also interesting is the following from the late
Dr. Eugene Mallove (discussed on vortex previously) with regards to the
website (Jed's) in question and what Jed and Gene called
political censorship.

Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004
Subject: Storms/Rothwell censorship
From: Eugene F. Mallove edi...@infinite-energy.com
To: Mitchell Swartz m...@world.std.com
Mitch,
FYI -- this was a message that Rothwell posted to Vortex about  a month ago:
At LENR-CANR.org we have censored out some of the controversial claims
related to CF, such as transmuting macroscopic amounts of gold, or
biological transmutations, along with some of the extremely unconventional
theories. This is not because we (Storms and Rothwell) oppose these claims,
or because we are upset by them. It is for political reasons only. The goal
of LENR-CANR is to convince mainstream scientists that CF is real. This
goal would be hampered by presenting such extreme views. Actually, I have
no opinion about most theories, and I could not care less how weird the
data may seem. At the Scientific American and the APS they feel hostility

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-30 Thread Jed Rothwell


Dr. Mitchell Swartz quoted me:


At LENR-CANR.org we have censored out some of the controversial claims
related to CF, such as transmuting macroscopic amounts of gold, or
biological transmutations, along with some of the extremely unconventional
theories.


That is right. As I said, I recall we turned down 4 or 5 papers. One 
was about macroscopic amounts of gold, and one may have been 
biological. I helped the authors find web sites that specialize in 
these topics, and they amicably agreed that these sites were more 
suited to their work.


There are some references to the biological work at LENR-CANR, 
including some in papers by Storms himself, so obviously he and I are 
not excluding all references to this research.


In some ways you have to draw an arbitrary line, for the convenience 
of the reader. We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I 
suppose they are cold fusion. This is not because I have anything 
thing against Mills' work. It is because people come to LENR-CANR to 
learn about metal-lattice based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons 
effect, or whatever you want to call it. It would annoy the readers 
to find many papers about other subjects. If they want to learn about 
Mills they will go to his site.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-30 Thread OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson

As best as I can tell the on-going dispute between Mr. Rothwell and
Dr. Swartz appears to revolve around Dr. Swartz desire to prove that
Jed censors experimental data from CF researchers, himself included.
Meanwhile, from Jed's perspective, it would appear that Dr. Swartz
refuses to follow a few simple steps that would let him publish Dr.
Swartz's experimental data out the lenr-canr web site.

Said differently: Mr. Rothwell and Dr. Swartz do not appear to get
along with each other. I don't know why there is this on-going
animosity between these two individuals. I suspect additional
reason(s) that remain obscured from our view, and that are none of our
concern, certainly none of mine.

All I know is what Dr. Swartz has previously stated:
 You [Mr. Rothwell] were given copies.  Multiple copies.
 By disk. On paper. By mail with green card.

For which Mr. Rothwell has replied:
 I couldn't read them.

Mr. Rothwell then went on to suggest that in order to get Dr. Swartz's
data posted out at the lenr-canr web stite:
 1. You [Dr. Swartz] first upload these papers to your web site.
 2. You give me permission, here, publicly, to copy them.
 3. I will then upload them. I will do it within the hour.


I'm left with two conflicting perspectives. I don't understand why Mr.
Rothwell wasn't able to read/scan what I presume were hardcopy
documents allegedly given to him by Dr. Swartz at a prior encounter.
Presumably such hardcopy could have been scanned. Were such
hardcopy documents so unreadable that they couldn't be easily
scanned - documents presumably assembled from a professional
researcher, like Dr. Swartz? OTOH, I also don't understand why Dr.
Swartz has been unwilling to follow Mr. Rothwell's three simple
requests that would allow him to publish Dr. Swartz's data out at the
lenr-canr web site.

What seems to be extremely odd from my perspective is the apparent
statement by Mr. Rothwell that the experimental data Dr. Swartz
compiled (the data for which allegedly had previously been given to
Mr. Rothwell in various formats) does not appear to be posted out at
Dr. Swartz's own web site. If this is an accurate statement, it makes
no sense to me. Why would Dr. Swarts complain about his papers not
being published out at lenr-canr when they aren't even available at
his own web site. Is this an accurate statement I've made? Please
correct me if I'm wrong! It would tend to leave an observer (like me)
with the following conclusions: That (1) Dr. Swartz's experimental
data does not (or may no longer) exist, in a format that would lend
itself to be easily reproduced at any web site, or (2) Dr. Swartz is
far more interested in proving to the world that Mr. Rothwell censors
experimental CF data of other researchers, rather than getting his own
CF experimental data posted out at the lenr-canr web site.

I freely admit that both of my conclusions could be inaccurate, or
flat out wrong. But at present that's the best that I (as a third
party observer) can conclude. From a voyeuristic POV these
transactional spats are fascinating to witness - the source of
speculation as to what this is really all about. However, from a
professional POV they seem to reveal a unique (and volatile)
collection of personal politics that feed off of the seemingly
boundless energy of each other's outrage. Unfortunately, if either of
my previously stated conjectures are reasonably accurate it would seem
to indicate that both will never be able to resolve the continuing
saga we bear witness to, because both have different objectives they
wish to accomplish, objectives that unfortunately have no interest in
cooperating with each other's goals since at their cores they are at
the other's expense.

Regards,
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.orionworks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-30 Thread Jed Rothwell


Chris Zell wrote:

Umm. where might these alternative sites be, that offer papers 
on transmutation?  I think reading them might be an enriching experience.


That was a paper by Roberto Monti. He has attended several cold 
fusion conferences. He does Medieval lead-to-gold style 
transmutation. Gene Mallove dabbled in it.


You can find his work on the Internet in various places by searching 
for his name.


I think it is far enough removed from cold fusion that it should be 
considered off-topic. That's what I told him, and he agreed. I have 
no problem with him coming to conferences, and if he had a paper in 
an ICCF proceedings and asked me to upload it, I would. Of course I 
would include it if I upload the entire proceedings, as I hope to do 
with the next ICCF, and maybe ICCF14. Any paper the editors accept is 
fine with me.


ICCF editors usually accept any and all papers.

As Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, we now have some papers by Vysotskii. He 
published them in recent ICCF proceedings and then sent me an earlier 
one, so why not?


Also as noted in my old message thoughtfully uploaded by Swartz, I 
used to limit the number of papers because bandwidth was expensive. I 
think the cost has fallen by about a factor of 10 or more since 2002. 
It used to cost me a lot of money to distribute these papers when we 
went over quota. The quota has been raised to 50 GB per month . . . 
but we are up to 36 GB (72%) this month! Some of these new large 
files such as the NSF/EPRI proceedings are eating up bandwidth.


It now costs me $33 per month from Jumpline. That's probably a little high.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-30 Thread John Berry

I have heard of websites paying huge data costs and I have never understood
it at all.
While $33 a month isn't quite what I'm talking about a host such as say
GoDaddy charges...

$4.99/mo for 300GB Transfer
$6.99/mo for 1,500GB Transfer
$14.99/mo for Unlimited Transfer (and unlimited space)
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote:

 Chris Zell wrote:

  Umm. where might these alternative sites be, that offer papers on
 transmutation?  I think reading them might be an enriching experience.


 That was a paper by Roberto Monti. He has attended several cold fusion
 conferences. He does Medieval lead-to-gold style transmutation. Gene Mallove
 dabbled in it.

 You can find his work on the Internet in various places by searching for
 his name.

 I think it is far enough removed from cold fusion that it should be
 considered off-topic. That's what I told him, and he agreed. I have no
 problem with him coming to conferences, and if he had a paper in an ICCF
 proceedings and asked me to upload it, I would. Of course I would include it
 if I upload the entire proceedings, as I hope to do with the next ICCF, and
 maybe ICCF14. Any paper the editors accept is fine with me.

 ICCF editors usually accept any and all papers.

 As Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, we now have some papers by Vysotskii. He published
 them in recent ICCF proceedings and then sent me an earlier one, so why not?

 Also as noted in my old message thoughtfully uploaded by Swartz, I used to
 limit the number of papers because bandwidth was expensive. I think the cost
 has fallen by about a factor of 10 or more since 2002. It used to cost me a
 lot of money to distribute these papers when we went over quota. The quota
 has been raised to 50 GB per month . . . but we are up to 36 GB (72%) this
 month! Some of these new large files such as the NSF/EPRI proceedings are
 eating up bandwidth.

 It now costs me $33 per month from Jumpline. That's probably a little high.

 - Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-30 Thread mixent

In reply to  Jed Rothwell's message of Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:16:39 -0400:
Hi,
[snip]
In some ways you have to draw an arbitrary line, for the convenience 
of the reader. We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I 
suppose they are cold fusion. This is not because I have anything 
thing against Mills' work. It is because people come to LENR-CANR to 
learn about metal-lattice based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons 
effect, or whatever you want to call it. 

I have suspected this bias for some time, and I suspect the influence is
primarily that of Dr. Storms. Personally, I think that restricting CF (general
term) to metal lattices may be too severe a restriction. Note that in at least
one of Dr. Oriani's papers he reports ionizing radiation emitted from the vapor
above a CF cell. 
I think any interest in the field is due to our common need to find a new source
of energy, so I think your belief that people only want to read about lattice
based CF is probably misguided.

I also think that while a lattice may well *frequently* provide the necessary
environment, it may not be a *necessary* requirement.


It would annoy the readers 
to find many papers about other subjects. If they want to learn about 
Mills they will go to his site.

- Jed
Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


At 11:16 AM 9/30/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:

In some ways you have to draw an arbitrary line, for the convenience 
of the reader. We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I 
suppose they are cold fusion.


Most of Mill's claims are only peripheral to cold fusion or 
low-energy nuclear reactions. If hydrinos exist, and if there is some 
mechanism for hydrino formation in the experiments, the reduced-orbit 
electrons might more effectively shield the Coulomb repulsion and 
thus catalyze fusion, but that doesn't make articles on hydrinos, 
themselves, relevant, nor are the BlackLight Power reactors 
relevant, that's definitely not cold fusion, but hydrino chemistry. 
New kind of chemistry, but not nuclear.


 This is not because I have anything thing against Mills' work. It 
is because people come to LENR-CANR to learn about metal-lattice 
based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons effect, or whatever you 
want to call it. It would annoy the readers to find many papers 
about other subjects. If they want to learn about Mills they will 
go to his site.


It could be argued that some of Mills' papers are relevant to cold 
fusion. On the other hand, the political implications are 
problematic. Mills is working out his own karma, so to speak; if he 
manages to pull the rabbit out of the hat, and then someone else 
making a hat from the specifications likewise pulls out a rabbit, the 
whole issue might bear revisiting; we are likely to know within a few 
years. Meanwhile mentioning hydrinos simply confirms for critics how 
nutty these cold fusion people are. While we can't run our lives 
based on those opinions, we also might wisely avoid unnecessarily 
feeding the beast with tasty tidbits.


Really, did Storms (2007) actually have to mention spontaneous human 
combustion? It was speculation upon speculation. (p. 142.) He does 
have much more reason to discuss Mills, and he does it in quite some 
depth. For some unknown reason, the more extensive discussion (p. 
184-186) is missing from the index; he actually gives much more ink 
to Mills than to any other proposed explanations.

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-30 Thread Jed Rothwell

Robin van Spaandonk wrote:


 We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I
 suppose they are cold fusion. This is not because I have anything
 thing against Mills' work. It is because people come to LENR-CANR to
 learn about metal-lattice based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons
 effect, or whatever you want to call it.

 I have suspected this bias for some time, and I suspect the influence is
 primarily that of Dr. Storms. Personally, I think that restricting CF
 (general
 term) to metal lattices may be too severe a restriction. Note that in at
 least
 one of Dr. Oriani's papers he reports ionizing radiation emitted from the
 vapor
 above a CF cell.


Bias is too strong a word. It is more a case of neat-freak programmer (me)
who likes to keep things in neat categories. I meant what I said: people
come to LENR-CANR looking for one thing, and I don't want them to find much
stuff that doesn't seem to fit. That annoys me when I go to other
specialized websites.

The beauty of the Internet is that anyone can find Mills in an instant, so
they don't need me.

A few unclassifiable odds things such as Oriani or Vysotskii will not bother
readers. Think of it this way. You go to the Freer Gallery to say Oriental
art. It is chock full of magnificent ancient paintings and sculptures from
China and Japan. There are also a few paintings by Whistler interspersed
among them -- also masterpieces. They don't bother the viewer even though
they are off topic as it were, because Whistler was influenced by the
Japanese and his work looks wonderful in juxtaposition with it, and there
are only a few paintings (plus one dreadful kitchy room full of his stuff
that he designed which you should avoid). That's fine, but if they started
cramming in pop-art, op-art or Renaissance Italian art it would be
exasperating. You go across the Mall to see that.

I don't recall ever discussing this with Ed. I also do not recall Mills or
anyone else in his team submitting a paper to LENR-CANR, although I met with
them at MIT and at other time. At MIT I got the distinct impression they
considered their gigantic bulk Ni experiments to be a form of cold fusion,
and I expect most cold fusion researchers think so. I have thought about
uploading their MIT slides but I can't find any of the authors to ask
permission. (And as you have seen, some authors do go ape shit when you
upload without permission!)

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

At 04:13 PM 9/30/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:

Chris Zell wrote:

Umm. where might these alternative sites be, that offer papers
on transmutation? I think reading them might be an enriching experience.

That was a paper by Roberto Monti. He has attended several cold
fusion conferences. He does Medieval lead-to-gold style
transmutation. Gene Mallove dabbled in it. You can find his work on
the Internet in various places by searching for his name.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4alchem.htm

I think it is far enough removed from cold fusion that it should be
considered off-topic.

Jed, your web site is not coldfusion.org, but lenr-canr.org. He's
definitely talking about low energy nuclear reactions! He claims to
have published a paper shortly before Fleischmann's publication in
1989 (in J. Electrochem), in Italian, with his new model of the
atom, and that this model made it easy for him to understand what
had really happened and where Fleischmann and Pons were wrong. If
he's not blowing smoke, he predicted the kinds of transmutations that
were later found by Mizuno, Brockris, etc. Definitely of interest.
And definitely out there.

[...]
As Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, we now have some papers by Vysotskii. He
published them in recent ICCF proceedings and then sent me an
earlier one, so why not?

He's also published in the ACS LENR Sourcebook. The big mystery for
me is that I've seen no sign of any attempts to replicate
Vyosotskii's work. Some of it seems not only simple, but definitive.
When Mossbauer spectroscopy detects Fe-57, it's there. That can't be
simulated. Hence I Have some idea that a replication kit might be
possible for Vyosotskii's work. It would involve finding an
affordable Mossbauer analytical service. I suppose I could try to
build a cheap Mossbauer spectrograph, that would make for a fun
science kit all by itself. But that's not where I'm starting! I'm
starting with what's already been replicated The transmutation of
radioactive waste, which is what his latest work has been about, is
not so easy a topic for home LENR kits, unless one happens to have
some nuclear waste lying about. Fun for the kids?

My kids' mother would kill me. But a little deinococcus radiodurans,
maybe I can get away with. Why did that bacterium evolve the capacity
to withstand tremendous radiation levels? It might be fun to have
some as pets, probably cheaper to feed than my cat. Could it be that
it needed the radiation resistance to handle damage from the LENR it
was catalyzing? Where does one go about getting some?

http://www.atcc.org/ATCCAdvancedCatalogSearch/ProductDetails/tabid/452/Default.aspx?ATCCNum=13939Template=bacteria.
$195.00, plus you have to sign away your first-born. Non-commercial
use only, except, of course, for industry-sponsored academic use.
The culture is considered safe, non-pathogenic.

RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-30 Thread Frank Roarty

Abd,

  I don't think Mills papers or theory can be used without
interpretation because the fractional states are actually relativistic. I do
believe his data should be considered valuable as a measure to confirm new
theories. I believe that soon someone with more math skill than I will
calculate the DiFiore et al acceleration and redirected energy of a heated
reactor in this confined cavity to better account for Mills output heat
energy than he did. I understand this thread is about what information
should and shouldn't be included on the LENR site but fractional orbit
electrons keep detouring this subject and are not possible except
relativistically. This is what Naudts suggested in 2005 but when Ron
Bourgoin solved for the 137 fractional states in 2007 he did not realize the
significance of Naudts statement or that the use of the Poincare
transformation with an electron was only possible because of a relativistic
perspective - A 1996 paper Cavity QED*
http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/acta/vol27/pdf/v27p2409.pdf   by Zofia
Bialynicka-Birula supports the use of these equations normally associated
with photons because of the destruction of isotropy inside a cavity and
resulting effect on invariance under transformations of the Poincare group
which therefore establishes the relativistic nature of their solutions. Put
simply math performed from a relativistic perspective allows electrons to
apparently occupy the same spatial coordinates and states because from an
external perspective these hydrogen populations can have the same spatial
coordinates but different temporal co-ordinates.

Regards

Fran

 

-Original Message-
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:23 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

 

At 11:16 AM 9/30/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:

 

In some ways you have to draw an arbitrary line, for the convenience 

of the reader. We have nothing about Mills claims, even though I 

suppose they are cold fusion.

 

Most of Mill's claims are only peripheral to cold fusion or 

low-energy nuclear reactions. If hydrinos exist, and if there is some 

mechanism for hydrino formation in the experiments, the reduced-orbit 

electrons might more effectively shield the Coulomb repulsion and 

thus catalyze fusion, but that doesn't make articles on hydrinos, 

themselves, relevant, nor are the BlackLight Power reactors 

relevant, that's definitely not cold fusion, but hydrino chemistry. 

New kind of chemistry, but not nuclear.

 

  This is not because I have anything thing against Mills' work. It 

 is because people come to LENR-CANR to learn about metal-lattice 

 based cold fusion -- the Fleischmann Pons effect, or whatever you 

 want to call it. It would annoy the readers to find many papers 

 about other subjects. If they want to learn about Mills they will 

 go to his site.

 

It could be argued that some of Mills' papers are relevant to cold 

fusion. On the other hand, the political implications are 

problematic. Mills is working out his own karma, so to speak; if he 

manages to pull the rabbit out of the hat, and then someone else 

making a hat from the specifications likewise pulls out a rabbit, the 

whole issue might bear revisiting; we are likely to know within a few 

years. Meanwhile mentioning hydrinos simply confirms for critics how 

nutty these cold fusion people are. While we can't run our lives 

based on those opinions, we also might wisely avoid unnecessarily 

feeding the beast with tasty tidbits.

 

Really, did Storms (2007) actually have to mention spontaneous human 

combustion? It was speculation upon speculation. (p. 142.) He does 

have much more reason to discuss Mills, and he does it in quite some 

depth. For some unknown reason, the more extensive discussion (p. 

184-186) is missing from the index; he actually gives much more ink 

to Mills than to any other proposed explanations.

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


At 06:30 PM 9/30/2009, mix...@bigpond.com wrote:

Note that in at least
one of Dr. Oriani's papers he reports ionizing radiation emitted 
from the vapor

above a CF cell.


I don't think that there is any substantial suspicion that this 
radiation results from anything other than decay of radioactive 
products coming from the cathode. (Or maybe some level of radiation 
from the cathode.)


 I think any interest in the field is due to our common need to 
find a new source

of energy, so I think your belief that people only want to read about lattice
based CF is probably misguided.


He didn't say that. He said that people interested in lattice-based 
CF might not like having a lot of papers on a lot of other 
only-peripherally related subjects.



I also think that while a lattice may well *frequently* provide the necessary
environment, it may not be a *necessary* requirement.


I'm unaware of anything other than muon-catalyzed fusion that 
bypasses the Coulomb barrier, without substantial confinement. It 
might not be a metal lattice; the whole biological transmutation 
approach, we might suspect, would represent protein-catalyzed fusion, 
basically a protein, I assume, setting up confinement conditions that 
facilitate fusion.

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


At 10:25 PM 9/28/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
(A blogger asked me what is the source of the dispute, and the 
academic politics. I like my answer, so let me copy it here. This 
is, perhaps, a softer, more understanding response than I might have 
made years ago.)


That's a good explanation, Jed. I'm not quite as old as the 
generation described as supportive of the experimental work, but my 
background led me, as well, to trust in experiment over theory, and 
that divide is broader than science. Originally, I thought I'd be a 
nuclear physicist, and I was on my way, as an undergraduate student 
at Caltech. But my life took me to different places, so I never 
developed an investment in theory; I simply got an attitude and an 
approach from sitting with Feynmann -- who taught physics my first 
two years at Caltech, those lectures were the ones that became the 
standard text. I also had Linus Pauling for freshman chemistry, but 
he wasn't nearly as memorable.


The rejection of cold fusion is very understandable, but also tragic. 
My own long-term interest is in the development of social structures 
that can avoid these kinds of errors, without becoming vulnerable to 
the opposite errors. In a word, social structures that are 
intelligent, not merely dependent upon individual habits and 
individual limitations, summed.


The name Cold fusion was an error (i.e., preumature speculation), 
but a very understandable one, and, rather than reject it, as Krivit 
suggests (for good reason), I'd prefer to embrace it. There remain 
possibilities that don't involve fusion as normally defined, such as 
neutron absorption and resulting fission, but I'm going to be 
marketing science kits, and, as they say, bad press is better than no 
press. And cold fusion has the press low energy nuclear 
reactions and condensed matter nuclear science, though far more 
accurate, don't have the press.


Yes, Teller should be considered a supporter of cold fusion; bottom 
line, he didn't reject it and very clearly did not consider it to 
violate known physical principles, and he encouraged the research. It 
violates assumptions, that's all, and the assumptions it violates can 
be shown to be weak extrapolations of experience from one field to 
another. Before Fleischmann and Pons, how many researchers had made a 
systematic attempt to falsify the assumption that the calculations of 
quantum mechanics, simplified to the two-body problem, were good 
enough to accurately predict nuclear behavior in condensed matter? 
Fleischmann expected to establish an upper bound for the deviations 
as below his experimental accuracy, he's written. Instead, he showed 
that the deviations were much greater than expected, and easily 
measurable under the right conditions.


For their part, the cold fusion believers did a lousy job of 
selling it. Probably because of the obvious interest in energy 
generation, most attempts to explain cold fusion focus on the 
originally-discovered effect, excess heat, and, for lots of reasons, 
it is easy to impeach that and to dismiss it, when it is emphasized 
in isolation. The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was 
heat/helium correlation, which cut through the replication problem 
and turned it into classic proof through correlation (and this makes 
failures into controls). Somehow the presentation at the 2004 DoE 
review managed to sufficiently confuse the reviewers and the DoE so 
that the correlation was missed, and totally misrepresented in the 
summary report. I documented that confusion on Wikipedia, on the Cold 
fusion Talk page, but I've not seen it mentioned elsewhere. Probably 
the problem resulted from the Appendix on the Case effect results, 
which are a red herring, compared to the heat/helium work as reviewed 
by Storms. I had to read that appendix several times before I 
understood what was being presented. It shouldn't have been so hard, 
and I don't wonder that the negative reviewer who commented on it, 
and the DoE summarizer, misunderstood it.

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:


For their part, the cold fusion believers did a lousy job of selling it.


I agree their public relations efforts have not been good. I think it 
is a bad idea to make conference proceedings only available as 
copyright books. Biberian recently told me that they have sold only 
85 copies of the ICCF-10 and ICCF-11 proceedings.


However, I think many researchers have a good job presenting their 
results in well-written, convincing papers. There is enough good 
material out there to make a solid case. Goodness knows, there is 
also enough bad material to make cold fusion look crazy. But all 
endeavors involving large numbers of people are a mixture of 
competent and incompetent, brilliant and stupid. You have to judge by 
what is best.



The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was heat/helium 
correlation, which cut through the replication problem and turned it 
into classic proof through correlation (and this makes failures 
into controls). Somehow the presentation at the 2004 DoE review 
managed to sufficiently confuse the reviewers and the DoE so that 
the correlation was missed, and totally misrepresented in the summary report.


This is true, but I doubt it was the fault of the presenters. The 
paper given to the panel explains the helium results clearly in section 3:


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

Some people feel this paper should have said more about Miles or 
Iwamura. I asked the authors, Hagelstein and McKubre, about that. 
They said they emphasized their own work because they understood 
their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the 
panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. 
That seems sensible to me.


By the way, all those papers listed in the references were given to 
the panel members. I gather they were given big goodie boxes crammed 
with papers as take-home prizes (homework). So if they didn't get it, 
it was because they didn't do their homework. It isn't all that hard 
to understand, after all!


The documents they were given are listed here:

http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Submissions

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-29 Thread Roarty, Francis X

I think the biggest disconnect is trying to make a direct jump from the 
materials to fusion without better explaining the interim step that  supplies 
the energy to
Create the fusion artifacts. I am following a current thread Zero point 
fluctuations and the Casimir 
effecthttp://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=517524#post517524  
over on scienceforums that relates to this.
Fran


From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 11:03 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com; vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:


For their part, the cold fusion believers did a lousy job of selling it.

I agree their public relations efforts have not been good. I think it is a bad 
idea to make conference proceedings only available as copyright books. Biberian 
recently told me that they have sold only 85 copies of the ICCF-10 and ICCF-11 
proceedings.

However, I think many researchers have a good job presenting their results in 
well-written, convincing papers. There is enough good material out there to 
make a solid case. Goodness knows, there is also enough bad material to make 
cold fusion look crazy. But all endeavors involving large numbers of people are 
a mixture of competent and incompetent, brilliant and stupid. You have to judge 
by what is best.



The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was heat/helium correlation, 
which cut through the replication problem and turned it into classic proof 
through correlation (and this makes failures into controls). Somehow the 
presentation at the 2004 DoE review managed to sufficiently confuse the 
reviewers and the DoE so that the correlation was missed, and totally 
misrepresented in the summary report.

This is true, but I doubt it was the fault of the presenters. The paper given 
to the panel explains the helium results clearly in section 3:

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

Some people feel this paper should have said more about Miles or Iwamura. I 
asked the authors, Hagelstein and McKubre, about that. They said they 
emphasized their own work because they understood their own work best, and they 
could discuss it in depth with the panel without fear of making a mistake or 
misrepresenting the work. That seems sensible to me.

By the way, all those papers listed in the references were given to the panel 
members. I gather they were given big goodie boxes crammed with papers as 
take-home prizes (homework). So if they didn't get it, it was because they 
didn't do their homework. It isn't all that hard to understand, after all!

The documents they were given are listed here:

http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Submissions

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-29 Thread Dr. Mitchell Swartz



At 11:03 AM 9/29/2009, you wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
wrote:
For their part, the cold fusion
believers did a lousy job of selling it.
I agree their public relations efforts have not been good. I think it is
a bad idea to make conference proceedings only available as copyright
books. Biberian recently told me that they have sold only 85 copies of
the ICCF-10 and ICCF-11 proceedings.
However, I think many researchers have a good job presenting their
results in well-written, convincing papers. There is enough good material
out there to make a solid case. Goodness knows, there is also enough bad
material to make cold fusion look crazy. But all endeavors involving
large numbers of people are a mixture of competent and incompetent,
brilliant and stupid. You have to judge by what is best.

The earliest effect that was
actually conclusive was heat/helium correlation, which cut through the
replication problem and turned it into classic proof through correlation
(and this makes failures into controls). Somehow the
presentation at the 2004 DoE review managed to sufficiently confuse the
reviewers and the DoE so that the correlation was missed, and totally
misrepresented in the summary report.
This is true, but I doubt it was the fault of the presenters. The paper
given to the panel explains the helium results clearly in section
3:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinnewphysica.pdf
Some people feel this paper should have said more about Miles or Iwamura.
I asked the authors, Hagelstein and McKubre, about that. They said they
emphasized their own work because they understood their own work best,
and they could discuss it in depth with the panel without fear of making
a mistake or misrepresenting the work. That seems sensible to
me.
By the way, all those papers listed in the references were given to the
panel members. I gather they were given big goodie boxes crammed with
papers as take-home prizes (homework). So if they didn't get it, it was
because they didn't do their homework. It isn't all that hard to
understand, after all!
The documents they were given are listed here:

http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Submissions

- Jed
 Jed, thank you for that list. 
 Had not seen it before.
 How ironic (or not) that the two LANR/CF researchers
who actually had perfomed open demonstrations at ICCF10,
Dr. Dash and myself, did not have a single paper
on that highly selected, therefore censored, list.
 BTW, the DOE made quite reasonable 
requests/complaints which Dr. Dash and I had 
actually done. 
 Dr. Mitchell Swartz

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-29 Thread Dr. Mitchell Swartz




The documents they were given are listed here:

http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Submissions



- Jed



   Jed, thank you for that list.

   Had not seen it before.

   How ironic (or not) that the two LANR/CF researchers
who actually had perfomed open demonstrations at ICCF10,




The URL for the open demo is here:

http://theworld.com/~mica/jeticcf10demo.html



More uncensored information on cold fusion here:

http://world.std.com/~mica/cft.html





Dr. Dash and myself, did not have a single paper
on that highly selected, therefore censored, list.

  BTW, the DOE made quite reasonable
requests/complaints which Dr. Dash and I had
actually done.

  Dr. Mitchell Swartz

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote:


   How ironic (or not) that the two LANR/CF researchers
who actually had perfomed open demonstrations at ICCF10,
Dr. Dash and myself, did not have a single paper
on that highly selected, therefore censored, list.


Yes, it is censored, but you yourself are the censor! Hagelstein 
included one of your ICCF-10 papers, #19 on the list of References:


M. Swartz and G. Verner, Excess heat from low-electrical 
conductivity heavy water spiral-wound Pd/D2O/Pt and Pd/D2O-PdCl2/Pt 
Devices, Proc. ICCF10, (2004).


It is not shown on my list because I do not have a copy in the 
library. Many papers are missing from the list, as shown by the gaps 
in the numbers. I do not have a copy of any of your papers in the 
Library, or on my hard disk, because you have not given me any copies 
of your work. And you have steadfastly denied me permission to upload 
any of your papers, even threatening a lawsuit when I posted an 
abstract from one of your papers.


So the only person censoring anything here is you. Don't blame 
Hagelstein, McKubre or me because you censor your own work, for 
crying out loud.


Dash is #52, ICCF6. Dash never censors anything and never denies 
permission, but I don't happen to have that paper in electronic format.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

I think they gave the reviewers all those papers because years ago I 
was in someone's office, and I noticed a cardboard box full of papers 
with familiar titles. I asked what's all this? and the person said 
that's what we gave the reviewers. Those are all the references in 
Peter's paper.


It was clear from the reviews that some of panel members read the 
material and understand cold fusion, and others did not. I do not 
think Hagelstein's paper was difficult to grasp, and these were 
distinguished professional scientists, so they darn well should have 
done their homework and figured out the helium versus heat part. But 
as Lomax pointed out, they got that wrong. That's sloppy. But even 
the best scientists sometimes make mistakes and jump to unwarranted 
conclusions. See the endorsement blurbs on the back of Taubes' book 
by Lederman, Richter, Schwartz, Seaborg and Rowland. Four Nobel 
laureates and the director of the AAAS! All of them full of bunk. 
Yeah, they should have known better, but they didn't. I expect it was 
an honest mistake. I know it was a sloppy one.


I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still alive), 
you would find they have not learned a thing about cold fusion and 
they would not change a word of their endorsements.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-29 Thread Dr. Mitchell Swartz



At 01:09 PM 9/29/2009, you wrote:
Dr. Mitchell Swartz
wrote:
 How ironic (or not)
that the two LANR/CF researchers
who actually had perfomed open demonstrations at ICCF10,
Dr. Dash and myself, did not have a single paper
on that highly selected, therefore censored, list.
Yes, it is censored, but you yourself are the censor! Hagelstein included
one of your ICCF-10 papers, #19 on the list of References:
M. Swartz and G. Verner, Excess heat from low-electrical conductivity
heavy water spiral-wound Pd/D2O/Pt and Pd/D2O-PdCl2/Pt Devices, Proc.
ICCF10, (2004).
It is not shown on my list because I do not have a copy in the library.
Many papers are missing from the list, as shown by the gaps in the
numbers. I do not have a copy of any of your papers in the Library, or on
my hard disk, because you have not given me any copies of your work. And
you have steadfastly denied me permission to upload any of your papers,
even threatening a lawsuit when I posted an abstract from one of your
papers.

 Jed, 
 Sorry that you took this personally, but ...
 Wrong. You were given copies. Multiple copies.
By disk. On paper. By mail with green card.
 In fact, what is most boggling, is that you were given a CD
with the papers when I gave you a ride back from Gene
Mallove's
funeral to Newbury St. You left the car, with it in hand.
 So the confabulations by you are nonsense. 
 Corroborating your fabrications, Jed, you have told others and us

that you demand to EDIT the papers. 
[ Now, to think about it, that is more censorship, isn't it?
]
 =
So the only person censoring
anything here is you. Don't blame Hagelstein, McKubre or me because you
censor your own work, for crying out loud.

BTW, when the late Dr. Mallove was murdered, 
you were still even censoring the titles of the three 
papers at ICCF-10. 
Since then you have the titles listed, and added others
whom were not listed, like those by Dr. Bass.
Thank you for all that.
 No one blames/d Prof. Hagelstein or Mike McKubre
for the censorship by you at the LENR/CANR website.
It wouldn't be logical.
 In fact, corroborating that, when you one wrote Gene and I
about why you censor papers at your website, you named 
someone in the field, and it was neither of them.
 [ Also, FYI, Gene Mallove posted on vortex quite a bit about the

censorship at your website. Some of them are quite interesting,
although never understood what he meant about 'political
censorship'. ]
==
Dash is #52, ICCF6. Dash never
censors anything and never denies permission, but I don't happen to have
that paper in electronic format.
- Jed
 Gosh. I don't see Prof. Dash at #52 in that table,
so I must not understand what you meant.
 Have a good day.
 Mitchell

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote:


  Sorry that you took this personally, but ...

  Wrong.  You were given copies.  Multiple copies.
By disk. On paper. By mail with green card.


I couldn't read them.

Look, we have been over this 100 times. I will repeat once more. Here 
is what you must do if you want me to upload the papers:


1. You first upload these papers to your web site.
2. You give me permission, here, publicly, to copy them.
3. I will then upload them. I will do it within the hour.

It couldn't be any simpler. If you refuse to do that, everyone will 
see that you do not want the papers uploaded, by me or by anyone else.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


Dr. Mitchell Swartz wrote:

Dash is #52, ICCF6. Dash never censors anything and never denies 
permission, but I don't happen to have that paper in electronic format.



  Gosh. I don't see Prof. Dash at #52 in that table,
so I must not understand what you meant.


I just explained that in the previous sentence! I said I do not have 
that paper in electronic format, for crying out loud. If you want to 
scan it an OCR it for me, I will upload it. I don't feel like doing 
it myself. I have had enough of scanning.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


At 11:03 AM 9/29/2009, you wrote:

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:


For their part, the cold fusion believers did a lousy job of selling it.


I agree their public relations efforts have not been good. I think 
it is a bad idea to make conference proceedings only available as 
copyright books. Biberian recently told me that they have sold only 
85 copies of the ICCF-10 and ICCF-11 proceedings.


Right. Now, what that means, probably, is that the publishers lost 
money. Bad model. Better model: on-line copies free. On-demand 
printed copies for a modest price that includes some funding to 
support the activity. The system as it is provides nothing to the 
people who actually do the hard work, the researchers. At least as 
far as I understand it. Now, it seems that the ACS LENR Sourcebook 
sold out and went into at least one additional printing. And it's 
phenomenally expensive, for what it is. It could be a small fraction 
of the price for an on-demand published and bound book, yet have the 
same utility for readers.


However, I think many researchers have a good job presenting their 
results in well-written, convincing papers. There is enough good 
material out there to make a solid case. Goodness knows, there is 
also enough bad material to make cold fusion look crazy. But all 
endeavors involving large numbers of people are a mixture of 
competent and incompetent, brilliant and stupid. You have to judge 
by what is best.


You have to judge by all of it, though it depends on what you are judging!



The earliest effect that was actually conclusive was heat/helium 
correlation, which cut through the replication problem and turned 
it into classic proof through correlation (and this makes 
failures into controls). Somehow the presentation at the 2004 DoE 
review managed to sufficiently confuse the reviewers and the DoE so 
that the correlation was missed, and totally misrepresented in the 
summary report.


This is true, but I doubt it was the fault of the presenters. The 
paper given to the panel explains the helium results clearly in section 3:


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


There is an old logical fallacy. Because we tried, we must be 
successful. Look at the results. Section 3 was largely ignored and 
what was covered in the review was the Appendix. Why was that? Well, 
perhaps, people remember most what they read last. To a CF 
researcher, the Appendix was of considerable interest. To the 
reviewers and the DoE, it was a colossal distraction, and they easily 
misinterpreted it, for reasons I could probably explain.


Some people feel this paper should have said more about Miles or 
Iwamura. I asked the authors, Hagelstein and McKubre, about that. 
They said they emphasized their own work because they understood 
their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the 
panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. 
That seems sensible to me.


Sensible and very wrong. There is another reason to discuss your own 
work. It's your work, you are close to it, you think it's important. 
And your judgment about that might well be clouded. The big lacuna is 
Miles, of course, very old evidence, and heavily verified. Really, a 
better effort might have been done by talking only about heat/helium, 
because it's a reframe of the replicability problem. It cuts through 
the most obvious objection to cold fusion, efficiently, as long as it 
isn't buried in less relevant and more controversial evidence. 
Appendix 1 was misunderstood because the point wasn't clear, and when 
I figured out the point, it was a truly minor one, important only 
with respect to *one* experimental example. Rather, because it 
reported, on the face, a series of experiments, there was a tendency 
to treat it as more than it was. People don't read factually, they 
(mostly!) read emotionally and with some sense of the purpose of a 
writing, and if they get the purpose wrong, they will misinterpret 
and misremember the facts.


By the way, all those papers listed in the references were given to 
the panel members. I gather they were given big goodie boxes crammed 
with papers as take-home prizes (homework). So if they didn't get 
it, it was because they didn't do their homework. It isn't all that 
hard to understand, after all!


If you don't believe that the effect could be real, you won't read 
the papers, or you will skim them looking for some possible imaginary 
reason to reject them, even if, on examination, that reason turns out 
to be preposterous.


I do not know if, in fact, it could have been done more successfully. 
A one-day session is probably inadequate unless there is a lot of 
pre-session communication. Imagine that a mailing list had been set 
up, with all the reviewers anonymously subscribed (through googlemail 
or something like that), or a wiki had been set up for them, and for 
the presenters, and a wider community had been included as 
presenters. And each detail were

RE: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


At 11:37 AM 9/29/2009, Roarty, Francis X wrote:
I think the biggest disconnect is trying to make a direct jump from 
the materials to fusion without better explaining the interim step 
that  supplies the energy to
Create the fusion artifacts. I am following a current thread Zero 
point fluctuations and the Casimir effect  over on scienceforums 
that relates to this.

Fran


It's very difficult to dissociate the field from the name it 
originally got. Fusion is a hypothesis; Francis is correct. What 
are the artifacts, under what conditions to they arise, and theory 
should have been way down the list of matters to investigate.

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


At 01:35 PM 9/29/2009, you wrote:

I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still alive), 
you would find they have not learned a thing about cold fusion and 
they would not change a word of their endorsements.


Unless you could approach them in a way likely to generate rapport, 
and discuss the issues in detail, perhaps following the approach of 
someone you love to hate, Hoffmann. It's not impossible, but, yes, it 
can be very difficult.


On the other hand, if you know someone who knows one of them well, 
and you can approach this second person and have that conversation, 
it might be possible.

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still 
alive), you would find they have not learned a thing about cold 
fusion and they would not change a word of their endorsements.


Unless you could approach them in a way likely to generate rapport, 
and discuss the issues in detail, perhaps following the approach of 
someone you love to hate, Hoffmann. It's not impossible, but, yes, 
it can be very difficult.


Difficult or easy, why would I bother? I don't care what these 
nudniks think. They sure don't care what I think!


As Mike McKubre says, I wouldn't cross the street to hear a lecture 
by Frank Close.


I have nothing in common with the extreme skeptics and the Avowed 
Enemies of Cold Fusion. No meeting of the minds is possible between 
us. I never communicate with them unless there is an audience and I 
wish to score points. Discussing the issues with them is a futile 
waste of time.


Needless to say, they think the same thing about me, as they have 
often said. Here is one that said that about me yesterday:


http://evildrpain.blogspot.com/2009/09/freedom.html

Here is the heated discussion linked to in the blog:

http://missatomicbomb.blogspot.com/2008/06/gullible-part-2.html

This person thinks that he won the debate, and that:

This debate, of course, turned out to be an utterly pointless 
exercise, as the advocate descended predictably into nonsensical 
argument, and what amounted to name calling, in order to defend his position.


From my point of view, I made mincemeat out of him, and I never 
engaged in any name calling. I believe this is cognitive dissonance 
on his part. Mainly it was a discussion of matters of fact, not even 
technical matters. For example, he claimed that no nuclear scientists 
have worked on cold fusion, so I gave him a long list of 
distinguished nuclear scientists who have. He claimed that no 
replications have been done, so I gave him a list of replications. And so on.


By the way, I would never claim that I won the debate by virtue of 
superior intellect or legerdemain. Any fool who bothers to read the 
literature can easily win this sort of debate.


I am in the same position as someone in 1906 debating whether 
airplanes could exist. All you have to do is point out that those 
Wright brothers have done public demonstrations, flying for up to 40 
minutes, as attested in affidavits by leading citizens of Dayton, OH. 
And they have a patent, and they have published scientific papers in 
leading journals of engineering, and there are photos, etc., etc. The 
skeptic may make an absurd technical objection: Even if someone did 
fly, they could never land, because they would be moving so rapidly 
through the air. (A famous scientist in 1903 actually said this.) 
Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of flight would respond: Birds 
solve this problem by stalling at the last moment, and falling on 
their feet. A human pilot can do the same thing, to fall on landing 
gear. Which is exactly the case, and which the Wrights and others 
knew perfectly well, and had been doing for many years. This is 
analogous to me saying to the cold fusion skeptic: Many different 
calorimeter types have been used, so this cannot be a systematic 
error caused by one calorimeter type. It is one of the first things 
you lean when you study the subject, and it is easy to understand.


(Many things about cold fusion -- and aviation for that matter -- are 
difficult to understand, but the skeptics of 1906 and 2009 fail to 
grasp even the ABCs.)


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

They said they emphasized their own work because they understood 
their own work best, and they could discuss it in depth with the 
panel without fear of making a mistake or misrepresenting the work. 
That seems sensible to me.


Sensible and very wrong. There is another reason to discuss your own 
work. It's your work, you are close to it, you think it's important. 
And your judgment about that might well be clouded. The big lacuna 
is Miles, of course, very old evidence, and heavily verified.


They made a big deal about Miles! Right there in section 3. They 
didn't ignore other people's work, especially not his. They 
emphasized their own work, but they commented on many others.


I wasn't there. I don't know what the presentations were like. But 
McKubre is an accomplished lecturer. I have transcribed his talks and 
published them pretty much verbatim, as papers. Hagelstein is pretty 
good too. The paper they presented makes things quite clear. It as 
edited, improved and commented upon by many people before the 
presentation, including me. It was not dashed off in a rush. Some of 
the panel members understood the issues perfectly well. If the others 
did not, I suppose they were not paying attention or thinking things 
through. I doubt it was the fault of the people making presentations.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

2009-09-29 Thread mixent

In reply to  Dr. Mitchell Swartz's message of Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:44:24 -0400:
Hi,
[snip]
  Corroborating your fabrications, Jed, you have told others and us 
that you demand to EDIT the papers.  
[snip]
..from the perspective of an outsider to all of this, I get the impression that
Jed edit's papers to make them more comprehensible, however I can understand
that some authors would object to any interference at all. Therefore, I have a
the following suggestion for Jed. In those cases, you could add an additional
document to the web site, that accompanies the unedited original, and is clearly
marked as either your list of edits, or as your edited version, whichever is
easiest, while the unedited original is also marked as such. That way, both
requirements are met.

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion

Robin van Spaandonk wrote:

In reply to  Dr. Mitchell Swartz's message of Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:44:24
-0400:

 Hi,
 [snip]
   Corroborating your fabrications, Jed, you have told others and us
 that you demand to EDIT the papers.
 [snip]
 ..from the perspective of an outsider to all of this, I get the impression
 that
 Jed edit's papers to make them more comprehensible, however I can
 understand
 that some authors would object to any interference at all.


Swartz's assertions are crazy nonsense. I would never demand to edit papers.
Editing is tedious and thankless work. I would no more DEMAND you let me do
that than I would DEMAND you let me come to your house, do the laundry, and
spray for cockroaches. Any time an author says he does not want me to edit
something, I leave it alone. Often this results in a paper that is
incomprehensible that no one will download or read. I know this for a fact,
because I have detailed statistics from LENR-CANR showing which papers are
popular and which are ignored. However, if an author wants me to upload an
incomprehensible paper that no one will read, that's his or her business. It
will not cost me any bandwidth, so why should I care? As I said there are
thousands of authors and about a thousand papers by now so it makes no
difference if there are a few duds.

When I am preparing papers for a proceedings, that's another matter. The
editors of proceedings usually want to impose some format uniformity because
it makes the book more professional looking. Such as having all papers start
with an abstract which is block text indented on both sides. Also, the
editors do not want to publish papers with spelling mistakes and
incomprehensible English. So they turn to me, because I have been writing
and editing technical documentation for 35 years and I know much more about
Microsoft Word than most scientists do. The decision to edit these papers is
made by the editors (Hagelstein, Biberian, Melich . . .) not by me.
Naturally, I approve. The earlier unedited proceedings were an
embarrassment. Highly unprofessional.

Ed and I have on rare occasions turned down papers altogether. Maybe 3 to 5
times. These papers were off-topic, crazy, utterly incomprehensible, or
handwritten and illegible. Generally speaking though, if you can get a paper
published in a proceedings or journal anywhere, and it has some connection
to cold fusion, we'll take it. We never turn down papers because we disagree
with them. On the contrary, for years I have been trying to get more of the
skeptics to contribute papers.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion


At 04:58 PM 9/29/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still 
alive), you would find they have not learned a thing about cold 
fusion and they would not change a word of their endorsements.


Unless you could approach them in a way likely to generate rapport, 
and discuss the issues in detail, perhaps following the approach of 
someone you love to hate, Hoffmann. It's not impossible, but, yes, 
it can be very difficult.


Difficult or easy, why would I bother? I don't care what these 
nudniks think. They sure don't care what I think!


If, Jed, if. I didn't say you should do it.

As Mike McKubre says, I wouldn't cross the street to hear a lecture 
by Frank Close.


I might, but not if I had to pay, and not if I had to do much more 
than cross the street. And I'd bring a good book. Maybe the ACS LENR 
Sourcebook. On the other hand, I've never read Close. Have I missed anything?


I have nothing in common with the extreme skeptics and the Avowed 
Enemies of Cold Fusion. No meeting of the minds is possible between 
us. I never communicate with them unless there is an audience and I 
wish to score points. Discussing the issues with them is a futile 
waste of time.


Unless certain conditions arose. I don't advise holding your breath 
waiting for them, and I'm sure you don't need this advice. Or lack of 
advice, now, that was a weird construction, wasn't it?


Needless to say, they think the same thing about me, as they have 
often said. Here is one that said that about me yesterday:


http://evildrpain.blogspot.com/2009/09/freedom.html


Supposed scientist uses pseudonym of Evil Dr. Pain. You hang out with 
strange people, Jed. Sounds like Wikipedia.



Here is the heated discussion linked to in the blog:

http://missatomicbomb.blogspot.com/2008/06/gullible-part-2.html


Yeah, Jed, I've watched what you do, it turns up in searches for 
various topics of interest. I've done my share of advocacy responses 
to blogs, and, I must say, I've always found your comments quite 
civil and to the point. So this is the blog of Miss Atomic Bomb 
a.k.a. Nuclear Kelly. I'm always amused by the half-knowledge of some 
of these physics bloggers, who raise the most obvious questions not 
only as if nobody thought of those questions before, but, of course, 
there isn't any answer. Like, How Come the experiments can't be 
replicated? How Come the effect disappears if you use more accurate 
instrumentation? How Come there isn't any nuclear ash? How Come I ask 
all these questions without actually reading anything about the 
topic, and when someone like Jed Rothwell comes along and lays it out 
for me, I retreat further into my shell of contempt? Huh? How Come?


I'd venture a guess that I was studying nuclear physics sometime 
around when Nuclear Kelly's parents were born. She treats Julian 
Schwinger as not a nuclear physicist? Hello? She imagines that 
those who work in the field of cold fusion are totally ignorant of 
the Coulomb barrier. Reminds me of a 12-year-old who once corrected 
my Arabic pronunciation. He'd learned a rule that *usually* applied, 
but not in the case involved. And when I told him about it, he flat 
refused to believe me. After all, I was only four times his age, why 
should he pay attention to me, when he *knew* I was wrong. Bright 
kid, actually, too accustomed to being right around adults who didn't 
know what they were talking about


Her comment, The fact that they call it low energy nuclear 
reactions actually sickens me, reveals a great deal. That's 
emotional attachment, taking offense at what destabilizes her world 
view, her sense of herself. It was quite impossible for her to read 
what you wrote rationally. Could you read if every word made you nauseous?


She's right, of course, it is not what she knows of as nuclear 
fusion. It's something else, but it is, I can say with certainty, 
low energy nuclear reactions. The idea that such reactions are 
impossible is preposterous, examples are known, and all that happened 
is that a new one was found, an unexpected one, to be sure. Her ad 
hoc numerical analysis was way off, and she neglected quite a number 
of important factors. Deuterium in a palladium lattice doesn't just 
sit at random locations, not when the lattice is at high saturation. 
What happens when local concentration exceeds 1:1 is interesting, and 
what happens when there is, near the surface, a population with some 
level of molecular deuterium may be of the highest interest. 
Takahashi -- a nuclear physicist, isn't he -- did his own 
calculations: what happens if somehow, it doesn't have to be for long 
at all, a femtosecond is enough, two deuterium molecules occupy the 
same cubic cell in the lattice? Takahashi's calculations describe 
what appears to be a Bose-Einstein collapse and fusion, predicted 
using quantum field theory, which appears to be totally beyond Miss 
Nuclear Kelly. Is this what

Re: [Vo]:The source of the disagreement over cold fusion