subject:"Wikipedia"

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:
> I wrote:
>
>> If the subject is controversial, you can [have] two articles, one by
>> supporters, and one by opponents. Why not?
>
>
> This is against the rules in Wikipedia. They insist that people reach a
> compromise taking into accounts all points of view. They want one and only
> one article per topic. (Actually, you are not supposed to have a "point of
> view.") I do not understand why they have this rule, or why they are so
> opposed to articles with distinct, separate points of view.
>
> It reminds of newspapers and TV news from the 1950s to 1990s, when they
> tried hard to be "neutral." Meaning "objective." Some people considered
> Walter Cronkite the epitome of reliable neutrality. He had an aura.
>
> I never thought the newspapers were neutral. Frankly, I prefer the approach
> newspapers had in the 19th century and again today, where you knew which
> side the editorial staff sympathized with. You could judge how objective
> they were by reading different accounts of the same story.
>
> Incidentally, you do have to give Wikipedia credit for knowing about and
> discussing their own weaknesses, such as their fetish for incorporating all
> points of view:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Randy_in_Boise
>
> The see the problems, but they don't do anything about them.
>
> - Jed
>

It reminds me of the persistent absuse that has occured within some
institutions. The abuse persists because it happens behind closed
doors, but in the case of wikipedia anonymity serves the function of
closed doors. It also reminds me cyber bullying. There are probably
(new) laws against cyber bullying that could be applied to wikipedia.

Harry

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

2012-09-12 Thread Alain Sepeda

in fact I've heard of wikipedia spitrit in the old time :
it was to express reasonable opinion, all reasonable opinions, with
reference data, show controversies, ...

but on some subject I follow I've see that peer-reviewed but non mainstream
point of view get thrown out by ideological non scientific lobbies...

some subject that are proved scientifically are presented as controversial
or fringe, while their are mainstream in the technical domain, yet
unpopular in popular ideology...
(see ormesis)...
clearly wikipedia sine 5-8 years have been cleaned by some non scientific
powerfull lobbies (and not corporate)...
More over I see more and more fringe science , but popular for those
lobbies.

funnily on a vulgarization science , futura-science.fr, I've seen the same
"thought-police", allowing very fringe discussion, but violently rejecting
some serious non consensual discussion, like LENR..

2012/9/12 Jed Rothwell 

> I wrote:
>
> If the subject is controversial, you can [have] two articles, one by
>> supporters, and one by opponents. Why not?
>>
>
> This is against the rules in Wikipedia. They insist that people reach
> a compromise taking into accounts all points of view. They want one and
> only one article per topic. (Actually, you are not supposed to have a
> "point of view.") I do not understand why they have this rule, or why they
> are so opposed to articles with distinct, separate points of view.
>
> It reminds of newspapers and TV news from the 1950s to 1990s, when they
> tried hard to be "neutral." Meaning "objective." Some people considered
> Walter Cronkite the epitome of reliable neutrality. He had an aura.
>
> I never thought the newspapers were neutral. Frankly, I prefer the
> approach newspapers had in the 19th century and again today, where you knew
> which side the editorial staff sympathized with. You could judge how
> objective they were by reading different accounts of the same story.
>
> Incidentally, you do have to give Wikipedia credit for knowing about and
> discussing their own weaknesses, such as their fetish for incorporating all
> points of view:
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Randy_in_Boise
>
> The see the problems, but they don't do anything about them.
>
> - Jed
>
>

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

2012-09-12 Thread Alain Sepeda

2012/9/12 Jed Rothwell 

> Harry Veeder  wrote:
>
>
>> I think contributors to a controversial subject must self-identify as
>> either pro or con. That way readers can *immediately* see from the
>> user name on which side of the controversy each contributor stands.
>>
>
> Exactly. To simplify: Just have signed articles, like in Encyclopedia
> Britannica. You can have multiple authors. If the subject is controversial,
> you can two articles, one by supporters, and one by opponents. Why not?
>

I agree.

there is a strong demand of specific lobbies to have their own
wikipedia-like.
Wikiliberal (for liberal economics, not US liberal...)
some green wiki
...

We have set a wiki on lenrnews, but we don't have much resource to feed
it...
I just wood like to have basic information, description of various point of
view , even if negative, with arguments.

anyway, is it productive if LENR reach the market in 12 month...

>
> The controversial subject should also be moderated but not in
>> anonymity.
>>
>
> Right. That is is in line with what Larry Sanger wrote:
>
>
> http://wikipediocracy.com/2012/09/05/on-the-moral-bankruptcy-of-wikipedias-anonymous-administration/
>
> (I appended a comment.)
>
> - Jed
>
>

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

I wrote:

If the subject is controversial, you can [have] two articles, one by
> supporters, and one by opponents. Why not?
>

This is against the rules in Wikipedia. They insist that people reach
a compromise taking into accounts all points of view. They want one and
only one article per topic. (Actually, you are not supposed to have a
"point of view.") I do not understand why they have this rule, or why they
are so opposed to articles with distinct, separate points of view.

It reminds of newspapers and TV news from the 1950s to 1990s, when they
tried hard to be "neutral." Meaning "objective." Some people considered
Walter Cronkite the epitome of reliable neutrality. He had an aura.

I never thought the newspapers were neutral. Frankly, I prefer the approach
newspapers had in the 19th century and again today, where you knew which
side the editorial staff sympathized with. You could judge how objective
they were by reading different accounts of the same story.

Incidentally, you do have to give Wikipedia credit for knowing about and
discussing their own weaknesses, such as their fetish for incorporating all
points of view:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Randy_in_Boise

The see the problems, but they don't do anything about them.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

Harry Veeder  wrote:

> I think contributors to a controversial subject must self-identify as
> either pro or con. That way readers can *immediately* see from the
> user name on which side of the controversy each contributor stands.
>

Exactly. To simplify: Just have signed articles, like in Encyclopedia
Britannica. You can have multiple authors. If the subject is controversial,
you can two articles, one by supporters, and one by opponents. Why not?

The controversial subject should also be moderated but not in
> anonymity.
>

Right. That is is in line with what Larry Sanger wrote:

http://wikipediocracy.com/2012/09/05/on-the-moral-bankruptcy-of-wikipedias-anonymous-administration/

(I appended a comment.)

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:
> Harry Veeder  wrote:
>
>> Perhaps all the very controversial subjects from the current wikipedia
>> should be removed and placed in a distinct wikipedia dedicated to very
>> controversial subjects.
>
>
> I do not think that will happen. The Wikipedia management would not agree. I
> do not see any need for that. Here is how I imagine it might work:
>
> Someone else starts an on-line encyclopedia of science, based on traditional
> academic standards. Maybe the APS or a university could do this. Gradually,
> more readers turn to the academic website. Wikipedia articles on science are
> read less often. They are not updated as much. Some are revised with
> information from the academic site, and links to it.
>
> (I don't like the APS policies toward cold fusion but I suppose they can
> handle other subjects better than Wikipedia does.)
>
> Getting back to my analogy, the Model T was not replaced overnight. It was
> replaced gradually over many years as competition heated up. Sales at GM
> overtook Ford in 1927. That was the year Ford finally stopped producing the
> model T.
>
> The car was improved over the production run. It wasn't the exact same
> machine from 1908 to 1927. Wikipedia has also been improved. It might be
> improved again, with a better structure, to address the weaknesses that I
> and others have pointed out.
>
> - Jed
>

I think contributors to a controversial subject must self-identify as
either pro or con. That way readers can *immediately* see from the
user name on which side of the controversy each contributor stands.
The controversial subject should also be moderated but not in
anonymity.

harry

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

Harry Veeder  wrote:

Perhaps all the very controversial subjects from the current wikipedia
> should be removed and placed in a distinct wikipedia dedicated to very
> controversial subjects.
>

I do not think that will happen. The Wikipedia management would not agree.
I do not see any need for that. Here is how I imagine it might work:

Someone else starts an on-line encyclopedia of science, based on
traditional academic standards. Maybe the APS or a university could do
this. Gradually, more readers turn to the academic website. Wikipedia
articles on science are read less often. They are not updated as much. Some
are revised with information from the academic site, and links to it.

(I don't like the APS policies toward cold fusion but I suppose they can
handle other subjects better than Wikipedia does.)

Getting back to my analogy, the Model T was not replaced overnight. It was
replaced gradually over many years as competition heated up. Sales at GM
overtook Ford in 1927. That was the year Ford finally stopped producing the
model T.

The car was improved over the production run. It wasn't the exact same
machine from 1908 to 1927. Wikipedia has also been improved. It might be
improved again, with a better structure, to address the weaknesses that I
and others have pointed out.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

Perhaps all the very controversial subjects from the current wikipedia
should be removed and placed in a distinct wikipedia dedicated to very
controversial subjects.
harry



On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 10:05 AM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:
>
> As I said, Wikipedia is good for some things but not others. If fails when
> the encyclopedia entry is controversial. The main problems are that it
> allows anonymous editing, and it has no respect for authorities in
> complicated, specialized subjects. I hope that it is reformed, or -- if it
> is not -- that some competing encyclopedia arises. Perhaps another
> encyclopedia can be established that specialized is scientific subjects such
> as cold fusion, and that does a better job using more traditional academic
> standards. We can leave the present Wikipedia to deal with popular culture,
> Japanese comic strips, and so on.
>
> - Jed
>

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

refer-a-pedia

wiki-ference

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:31 AM, Terry Blanton  wrote:
> I agree Eric; but, I use wikipedia a little differently from most.  I
> use it as a reference source, rarely quoting wiki together because the
> truth is volatile there; but, the reference base at the bottom of the
> articles is a treasure trove.
>
> T
>

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-12 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 10:04 PM 9/9/2012, Jouni Valkonen wrote:
On 10 September 2012 02:52, Jed Rothwell 
<jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:


You do not need to satisfy people. You need to 
report the replicated, peer-reviewed facts of 
the matter. Science is not a popularity contest.



That is true, but here cold fusion science has failed.Â

Correlation of excess power and helium 
production duringÂ D2O and H2O electrolysis using palladium cathodes

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

Here is one example of the good peer-reviewed 
paper, but where is the replication of the data?


The correlation has been confirmed, with higher accuracy.

 This finding about the correlation to be 
reliable, there should be several successful 
replication attempts published. But where are those?


Look at Storms, "Status of cold fusion (2010)," 
Naturwissenschaften. A preprint is hosted on lenr-canr.org.


Basically, any PdD experiments that measure heat 
helium serve as partial replication, or full 
confirmation if the experiments are a coherent 
series. It's not been done as much as I'd like, 
but what has been done is quite adequate to confirm the fact of correlation.


The paper is almost 20 years old. There are few, 
yes, but not good enough quality data and often 
the data is evenÂ conflicting. E.g. some studies 
suggest that both H and D are working.


There are thousands of studies in the field. You 
are lumping them together and expecting them to 
be consistent. First of all the field is named 
"cold fusion," and there are some ready 
assumptions that there is only one effect. That 
is very unlikely to be the case, though Storms 
does propose a common mechanism. His theory is 
highly speculative in certain ways (but it's 
designed to fit what is known, so it's quite 
worthy of respect, even if it might be incorrect in various ways.


PdD experiments produce helium. That is 
considered established in the field, and the 
inference that the reaction has an expected Q of 
23.8 MeV/He-4 (that of deuterium fusing to 
helium, by whatever mechanism or intermediate 
pathway) is so strong that some papers which 
measure helium then use the expected helium as a 
comparison value. But it can be quite difficult 
to accurately capture and measure all the helium.


We have no idea what is produced if there is a 
heat effect with light water. What was recognized 
early on was that light water was not a "clean 
control." However, in Pd experiments, light water 
used as a control shows far less heat than 
deuterium. In SRI P13/P14, the hydrogen control 
is essentially dead. It's noisy, when the 
bubbling gets intense as the current is ramped up, that's all.


Whether or not light water results were an effect 
from the low deuterium content of light water 
would be one idea, but there have been persistent 
reports of light water heat results, particularly with nickel.


This has *nothing to do* with PdD results. NiH 
could be wonderful or bogus. Referring to varying 
reports of NiH results as in some way weakening 
the heat/helium work is an ungrounded fantasy.


Further, the FPHE is known to be highly variable. 
That is, what appear to be the exact same 
conditions (which is typically with a single 
experimenter, since researchers vary their exact 
approaches), results can vary widely. Most 
research has had a simple goal: to increase the 
heat signal, and to increase reliability. Much 
progress has been made, to the point where many 
groups can expect most cells to show heat, but it still varies a lot.


Given that helium is accepted, and that it's 
expensive and difficult to measure, not a lot of 
work has been done. However, if I were running a 
lab doing CF experiments, with PdD, I'd want to 
routinely measure helium, even if only as cell 
samples. It's a confirmation of the calorimetry.


The work to nail down the heat/helium ratio is of 
little commercial value, so it's unwise to expect 
it to be done by commercially-funded research. 
This is a job for academia, mostly.


Now, given the variable effect, this allows 
identical experiments to be used to measure the 
heat/helium ratio. Just treat all cells the same, 
measure the heat, and measure the helium. There 
are more details than that, but this is the basic 
idea. No additional control is needed, though 
running hydrogen controls has been done. Hydrogen 
control cells do not show helium. Only deuterium 
cells producing excess heat show helium, in the 
reported work. The analyses are done blind, so 
that those measuring the helium do not know the 
history of the cell from which the sample was taken.


Perhaps the status of cold fusion could be 
better if there were better marketing of ideas.


Scientists are not trained in marketing. How Pons 
and Fleischmann were treated by the scientific 
community was a travesty. This has all been 
well-documented in the academic literature, it 
was a total break

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

Eric Walker  wrote:

> I appreciate the sentiment.  But I'll place myself on record for thinking
> that Wikipedia is incredible.  It is one of the handiest things to come
> about in the last ten or so years.
>

The Model T Ford was also incredible. It was wonderful breakthrough
technology. My mother drove one at age 13 through the streets of New York
City. She said that people who grew up in a world where cars are everywhere
cannot imagine how liberating they were. Along the same lines, young people
today who grew up with computers have no idea how difficult it was to use
typewriters and pens, and paper reference books.

The Model T was great, but it was a first-generation product. It had a lot
of problems. It was dangerous. It worked well on dirt roads and rough
surfaces, but by the mid 1920s paved roads were becoming more common,
speeds were faster, and in any kind of wind the Model T was blow all over
the road. It lasted for a long time, but was eventually replaced with the
Model A and by competing cars from other manufacturers.

Wikipedia was a good first generation product. It is still quite useful,
just as Model T cars were used well into the 1940s. But it is unwieldy,
poorly designed in many ways, and the administrative structure is chaotic,
corrupt, and badly in need of replacement. Henry Ford said wanted to keep
making the Model T "forever" but he was finally forced to stop, and upgrade.

Ford was forced to upgrade mainly by competition from GM and other car
companies. For years, he had the whole market to himself. If GM had not
starting eating his lunch, he would have cranked out Model T cars for
another decade. What we need is competition with Wikipedia. Unfortunately,
it appears to be "natural monopoly" the way telephone service was until the
1980s, and the way microcomputer operating systems are today. A natural
monopoly produces a hegemony, in these cases AT&T and Microsoft. They
happened to come along first, in a situation where the first to arrive
takes everything. Wikipedia is the same way.

As I said, Wikipedia is good for some things but not others. If fails when
the encyclopedia entry is controversial. The main problems are that it
allows anonymous editing, and it has no respect for authorities in
complicated, specialized subjects. I hope that it is reformed, or -- if it
is not -- that some competing encyclopedia arises. Perhaps
another encyclopedia can be established that specialized is scientific
subjects such as cold fusion, and that does a better job using more
traditional academic standards. We can leave the present Wikipedia to deal
with popular culture, Japanese comic strips, and so on.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

2012-09-12 Thread Jones Beene

Terry, Eric

You ever open a "Sampler" box of Godiva or other fine chocolates and find
that are a few that you do not like as well as the rest...

Most are close to heaven, of course ...

Wiki is like that. You pass over the one or two that you do not favor (i.e.
cherry-filled) and savor the rest.

For those of us who dabble in the cutting-edge - trying to make sense of
LENR - Wiki is fully one-half the value of the internet. It is simply too
onerous to convey complicated ideas without it, since a Wiki citation avoids
a couple of pages of needed text in your posting, in favor of a more cogent
explanation. 

Here is an apt spur-of-the-moment example, by way of a metaphor for a force
that is so powerful, that you can kill it off one day, and it will be back
in full regalia the next:

The king is dead, long live the king 

QED - Yup, wiki's even got that bit of self-contradiction covered.

-Original Message-
From: Terry Blanton 

I agree Eric; but, I use wikipedia a little differently from most.  I
use it as a reference source, rarely quoting wiki together because the
truth is volatile there; but, the reference base at the bottom of the
articles is a treasure trove.

T

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

2012-09-12 Thread Terry Blanton

I agree Eric; but, I use wikipedia a little differently from most.  I
use it as a reference source, rarely quoting wiki together because the
truth is volatile there; but, the reference base at the bottom of the
articles is a treasure trove.

T

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

2012-09-11 Thread Eric Walker

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

No, I hope it withers away.
>

I appreciate the sentiment.  But I'll place myself on record for thinking
that Wikipedia is incredible.  It is one of the handiest things to come
about in the last ten or so years.

Obviously readers must beware.  It is not good for the unlucky junior high
school student who reads it uncritically.  And there are articles, such as
the one on cold fusion, that are guarded by ignorant trolls.  But if one
can apply a filter to everything one reads, Wikipedia is a trove of
valuable information.

Eric

Re: [Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

2012-09-11 Thread Moab Moab

The rules/policies are absolutely ok when applied by editors with
common sense or for non-controversial articles.

For articles on controversial topics a group of editors will feel that
they have to protect the article from "evil POV pushers". They have a
mission: "Wikipedia must not expound fringe ideas"

In some cases they do the right thing by deleting really bad sources,
but they have simply lost any form of perspective, they overshoot,
some willingly, some unwillingly. They turn the article into a "dark
alley" where only they rule. There is no way to evolve an article in
such atmosphere.
Those who tried all got blocked or banned, as there will always be a
reason to ban an editor. "polite POV pushing" is suffient.
Uninvolved editors who really enjoy working on wikipedia stay away
from controversial articles.

Wikipedia is based on consensus and just as crooks in a dark alley the
editors will have reached a consensus to misuse the rules/policies.

Example:
The indian scientific journal "current science" was dismissed by one
editor as "not reliable source", because they had published a paper by
Steven Krivit and it was argued that their peer review is not done
properly and that the journal is not significant. The atmosphere is
already so devoid from common sense that such a argumentation is
simply accepted by fellow editors, just to keep a paper from being
mentioned in the article.

Wikipedia fails with the set of editors that make up the consensus.

POVbrigand

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 8:48 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:
> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax , an expert in Wikipedia, wrote
> descriptions that seem contradictory to me. First he says the policies are
> great, then he says they are not followed:
>
>>
>> If you are interested in helping with Wikipedia, do register, but be aware
>> that it can be an abusive community, the policies and guidelines are
>> fantastic, and commonly not followed. They are not followed because the
>> users who understood them gave up pushing the boulder up the hill and
>> watching it roll back again. . . .
>
>
> I do not see how a set of rules can be "fantastic" when they are routinely
> ignored. A rule is only fantastic when it is enforceable.
>
> The rules lead to many problems:
>
>> Users who persisted in insisting on policy, against the desires of any
>> kind of cabal or informal collection of editors pushing a particular point
>> of view . . .
>
>
>> That is, the Arbs know how to be administrators, they all come from that,
>> but they don't know how to *manage* administrators. They are chosen by
>> popularity, not for management skills, and Wikipedia overwhelms even the
>> best of them.
>
>
> It seems to me you need rules that people can live with and that do not
> overwhelm even the best administrators. Rules that result in people being
> "overwhelmed" need revision.
>
>
>>
>> The larger community *does* support the guidelines and policies, the
>> cabals attempt to subvert them and even sometimes openly oppose them.
>
>
> If the larger community supports these things, why are they not enforced? Is
> there no enforcement mechanism? In that case the rules are inadequate.
>
>
>>
>> Look, want to accomplish something on Wikipedia?
>
>
> No, I hope it withers away.
>
> Maybe what Abd has in mind here is that the rules are good and with a little
> tweaking they would work.
>
> It seems to me these rules were invented for Wikipedia. They do not work
> well because they are novel. I am conservative. I think it is better to
> apply old rules that were invented for conventional media and for
> conventional academic forums, such as the rules used to run physics
> conferences. Rule number one should be everyone has to use his or her real
> name.
>
> - Jed
>

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-10 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 06:01 PM 9/9/2012, Jouni Valkonen wrote:

What comes to cold fusion, there are no 
established scientific point of view, therefore 
it is impossible to write a good Wikipedia 
article on cold fusion that would satisfy everyone.


Actually, there is. The claim Jouni makes is one 
that misunderstands both the current science and 
Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not based on truth. 
Editors actually are not supposed to work from 
conclusions on truth, including "scientific 
truth." That would be SPOV, Scientific Point of 
View, and it misunderstands both science and Wikipedia.


Wikipedia is an organized compilation of what is 
available in Reliable Source, at least in theory. 
"Reliable" does not mean "True." It refers to a 
principle that Wikipedia developed for what 
knowledge to include in a publicly-edited 
encyclopedia. If Wikipedia had structure that 
would actually facilitate enforcement of the 
guidelines (and/or ordered improvement of them), 
in the presence of factional controversies where 
the ad-hoc methods Wikipedia uses for fast 
decision-making, the principles would be brilliant.


The principle is that independent publishers must 
make notability decisions. If no independent 
publisher will publish something on a topic, it 
is probably not "notable." Further, independent 
publishers have reputations to maintain, so they may emply fact-checkers, etc.


For science articles, the "gold standard" is 
peer-reviewed and academic publications.


But that's not "truth." It is what publishers have published, that's all.

In theory, if it has been published in a Reliable 
Source, it has a place in Wikipedia. *How* it is 
placed is another story. Is it presented simply 
as fact? Or is it attributed? Those are editorial 
decisions, and are ideally made by consensus. 
Where this breaks down is where factions 
coordinate, knee-jerk, and neglect policy and the 
seeking of consensus in favor of their point of 
view. The pseudoskeptical faction was famous for 
this. It's lost many times, when the matter was 
successfully brought to the community's 
attention. But, as well, they were able to 
successfully frame efforts of people like 
Pcarbonn as "Point of View Pushing," it was 
purely political, and Pcarbonn was banned without 
ever having violated any policy.



Cold fusion advocates have failed to market 
their ideas. Instead many cold fusion advocates 
(such as Krivit) took seriously that there would 
be evidence for Ni>Cu transmutations, although 
scientific evidence was mostly zero. If 
Krivit-level experts are doing such mistakes in 
basic science, how it is possible that this 
field could be taken seriously by Wikipedia?


Because it is covered in Reliable Source, though 
not scientific RS. It's News. Rossi and his work 
are "notable." Jouni imagines that for something 
to be in Wikipedia, it must be "scientifically" 
established. Nope. Most content in Wikipedia is entirely non-scientific.


Tons of content also does not meet RS standards, 
but that's policy violation. Basically, your 
random Wikipedia article probably violates policy 
somewhere. It's easy to find stuff to improve, 
but it's work to actually improve it. For most 
articles, it can take a long time for someone 
with both the inclination and skill to show up and fix it.


Krivit is not ordinarily considered RS, though 
that is debatable. What "field"? What is being 
considered is an article on Rossi's E-Cat. That 
is perhaps too narrow a topic, but all this is 
pretty new. The E-Cat is notable, and so is Rossi.


Ni->Cu transmutation is merely a theory that has 
been mentioned, by Rossi. There is no scientific 
evidence for it that I know of, nothing 
confirmed. Basically, as to what is publicly 
known -- which is what Wikipedia must depend on 
-- we have no clue. We don't even know if these 
devices work for generating heat, there are only 
unverified claims. People witnessed managed 
demonstrations, which don't mean anything 
scientifically. They do mean something, though, 
for news. Where the demonstrations are reported 
in RS, they are notable. Hence this information belongs in Wikipedia.


And now to something completely different.

Although Abd is saying that there is good 
correlation with helium and excess heat, somehow 
I find it very odd, that if correlation is good, 
why it is so darn difficult to replicate?


It isn't difficult to replicate heat/helium, if 
you can set up the effect. Setting up the effect, 
specifically the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect, is 
notoriously difficult. That's what people who have done it say.


 The correlation is so difficult to understand 
that even Krivit cannot understand it. 
Therefore I would say that Abd is exaggerating 
the quality of evidence. Quantity does not replace quality.


Krivit is not a scientist and has demon

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-10 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 06:52 PM 9/9/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Jouni Valkonen 
<<mailto:jounivalko...@gmail.com>jounivalko...@gmail.com> wrote:


What comes to cold fusion, there are no 
established scientific point of view . . .



Yes, there is. It is the set of facts in the 
peer-reviewed literature published in mainstream 
journals. This is the definition of an 
"established scientific point of view." There is no other definition.


These facts constitute overwhelming evidence 
that the effect is real. The people at 
Wikipedia, at Sci. Am. and elsewhere have 
replaced this standard with a set of rumors or 
nonsensical assertions made by people who know nothing about the research.


Rothwell is right. When he pointed this out on 
Wikipedia, even though it was only in suggestions 
on the cold fusion article talk page, he was 
banned, with ridiculous and clearly false charges 
heaped on top of the only real thing that could 
be said about his writing. He was blunt, and thus possibly uncivil.


In fact, I learned about cold fusion because, as 
a Wikipedia editor, interested in community 
process and neutrality policy, I noticed that 
lenr-canr.org was blacklisted. I intervened, and 
eventually this went to the Arbitration 
Committee. The Committee found that administrator 
JzG had, being involved in the topic (as a 
skeptic, based on what a friend, an 
elecrochemist, had told him years before, and 
which he very likely did not understand), used 
his tools in violation of recusal policy. JzG was 
actually an egregious violator, but he'd also 
been a very helpful volunteer in certain areas. I 
was told, before the case concluded, that he'd be 
gently reprimanded. That was correct. However, I 
was also told that he would then be on a short 
leash. That was not correct. He was careful not 
to use his adminstrative tools, *usually*, but he 
used his reputation as an administrator to get away with lying about evidence.


I'd successfully gotten cold fusion removed from 
the spam blacklist on Wikipedia, but as soon as 
that possibility appeared, he went to the meta 
coordinating wiki and requested a *global* 
blacklisting. It was immediately granted, this 
was their old friend, JzG. Contrary arguments 
there were ignored. So while the Arbitration 
Committee was reprimanding JzG for what he'd 
personally done on Wikipedia, the same thing, 
with broader consequences, was done on meta. And 
meta was "outide the remit" of the Arbitration Committee.


The meta decision had been closed by a steward 
who, I later found, was abusive in a lot of ways. 
He eventually resigned, when he started losing 
debates. I then requested a reconsideration of 
the blacklisting decision. It was simple, but JzG 
appeared and presented the same lies. You can 
present a series of lies in a few words. 
Demonstrating that they are false can take a lot 
of words, and calling them "lies" can get you 
banned. (Technically, it could be said that these 
were merely errors, not lies, except that the 
same issues had been considered many times by the 
community, JzG's claims had been roundly 
rejected, so *he knew* that there was a problem 
with what he was saying. But he said it anyway, which is why I call it "lies.")


So, to respond, I needed to cover the evidence on 
each claim. I did so, keeping it as concise as I 
could reasonably manage with the time I had. (It 
takes longer to write less, if one needs to be 
complete.) Meanwhile, JzG requested, on 
Wikipedia, that I be banned. There was a 
discussion and the usual suspects collected and 
voted for a ban. A few people pointed out the 
lack of evidence, etc. An administrator looked at 
the discussion and looked at the discussion on 
meta, saw the "wall of text," and decided to ban 
me for writing walls of text. Wikipedians, 
typically, dislike "walls of text," which really 
means anything longer than their attention span 
for the topic. It doesn't matter how well the material is organized.


And then the request for delisting was granted by 
an independent administrator. And that is why it 
is now possible to link to lenr-canr.org. The 
links are often removed, using the very same 
discredited arguments that were considered *in detail* in many places.


Wikipedia does not build knowledge in the 
community. The same issues get considered over and over and over.





. . .  therefore it is impossible to write a 
good Wikipedia article on cold fusion that would satisfy everyone.



You do not need to satisfy people. You need to 
report the replicated, peer-reviewed facts of 
the matter. Science is not a popularity contest.


For Wikipedia, editors need to insert neutrally 
worded text that is referenced by the best 
possible sources. The gold standard is a 
peer-reviewed review of the field, published in a 
mainstream journal (i.e., not a specialist 
journal that might be leniently reviewed, the 
CMNS Journ

[Vo]:How can the Wikipedia process be so good if does not work?

2012-09-10 Thread Jed Rothwell

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax , an expert in Wikipedia, wrote
descriptions that seem contradictory to me. First he says the policies are
great, then he says they are not followed:


> If you are interested in helping with Wikipedia, do register, but be aware
> that it can be an abusive community, the policies and guidelines are
> fantastic, and commonly not followed. They are not followed because the
> users who understood them gave up pushing the boulder up the hill and
> watching it roll back again. . . .


I do not see how a set of rules can be "fantastic" when they are routinely
ignored. A rule is only fantastic when it is enforceable.

The rules lead to many problems:

Users who persisted in insisting on policy, against the desires of any kind
> of cabal or informal collection of editors pushing a particular point of
> view . . .


That is, the Arbs know how to be administrators, they all come from that,
> but they don't know how to *manage* administrators. They are chosen by
> popularity, not for management skills, and Wikipedia overwhelms even the
> best of them.


It seems to me you need rules that people can live with and that do not
overwhelm even the best administrators. Rules that result in people being
"overwhelmed" need revision.



> The larger community *does* support the guidelines and policies, the
> cabals attempt to subvert them and even sometimes openly oppose them.
>

If the larger community supports these things, why are they not enforced?
Is there no enforcement mechanism? In that case the rules are inadequate.



> Look, want to accomplish something on Wikipedia?


No, I hope it withers away.

Maybe what Abd has in mind here is that the rules are good and with a
little tweaking they would work.

It seems to me these rules were invented for Wikipedia. They do not work
well because they are novel. I am conservative. I think it is better to
apply old rules that were invented for conventional media and for
conventional academic forums, such as the rules used to run physics
conferences. Rule number one should be everyone has to use his or her real
name.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-10 Thread Alan J Fletcher



The page is up for formal deletion.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Energy_Catalyzer_(2nd_nomination)
 
I haven't decided yet whether to vote for Delete or Keep.  I'll
probably go with a snarky Keep.

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-10 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax

At 01:39 PM 9/9/2012, Alan Fletcher wrote:

> From: "Kelley Trezise" 

> Please consider going to the article, read it and vote on its
> truswothiness, objectivity, etc. at the bottom of the page.

The "talk" page isn't the place to vote. If it comes up for a formal 
request for deletion then a new page will be opened up for 
discussion (though not for formal voting -- I'm not sure who decides 
what the consensus is).

Last time I argued against deletion -- this time I will support it.

Deletion is very unlikely, there is too much "Reliable Source." Don't 
confuse Wikipedia RS with an idea that the *information* is 
"reliable." It can be dead wrong, even. Wikipedia is a collection of 
information from "reliable sources," which has a very technical 
meaning. Generally, it means that the publisher is independent and 
has some kind of reputation to maintain. If RS information is 
questionable, it's still, by definition of RS, notable, so it can be 
used in an article with attribution. "According to ..., Romney is a 
"poo-poo head."

The E-Cat has been covered in newspapers (RS) and on-line news 
publications (like Mats Lewan's reports) (RS).

The Energy Catalyzer article has often contained material that 
violates RS guidelines. I'm banned on the topic of cold fusion 
entirely, and am site-banned to boot, partly because I completely 
gave up on "due process" on Wikipedia, having exhausted it (Wikipedia 
can be highly abusive, and violates its own guidelines and policies. 
The guidelines and policies are actually excellent, but the 
mechanisms for enforcing them are highly defective, and what one is 
seeing with the E-Cat article is, often, pseudoskeptics, often the 
same people who have sat on the main Cold fusion article for years.

Anyway, I did create a block-evading sock, Energy Neutral, and edited 
the E-Cat article, and most of it stuck for a while. I was largely 
removing weakly sourced stuff, and synthesis (where editors read 
sources and draw conclusions from them, presenting conclusions that 
are not found in the sources).

Last time I looked, there was material from a non-notable blog. 
Self-published material is ordinarily not allowed as RS; this was 
outrageous. There are exceptions, and the blog doesn't fit it. That 
the author of a blog is a "professor" somewhere isn't enough. If 
someone is notable as an expert in a field (they would probably then 
have their own Wikipedia article), and they self-publish something, 
it can sometimes be used to show their opinion or view.

The deletion of the page is, as I mentioned, highly unlikely. Lots of 
irrelevant claims will be raised, if the past is a guide. For 
example, "Rossi is a fraud" is totally irrelevant to the notability 
of the topic. There are articles on famous frauds, as there should be.

What is much more possible is that a decision will be made to merge 
the article with the article on Rossi himself. I don't support that, 
but I would support splitting up the matter into coverage of NiH 
claims, if there is enough RS on "Other Than Rossi," and then Rossi's 
specific history with the E-Cat in the Rossi article, or some other 
such division.

Lumping NiH claims in with "cold fusion" is problematic, but 
Wikipedia painted itself into this corner by rejecting articles on 
"Condensed matter nuclear science," or "Low energy nuclear 
reactions." Way too little is known about NiH work to come to any 
strong conclusions about it, but, remember, Wikipedia is an organized 
collection of information about what is in RS.

A merge would not result in deletion of the page, what would be done 
is to create a redirect to the new page, the "merge target." The 
original page history will remain. If you ever want to see a 
redirected page history, go to the page, your browser will 
automatically load the target. But below the name is a message that 
this was redirected from X. If you click on X, you will be taken to 
the redirect page, and you can click on the history tab there.

The writer above did not know how the deletion decision is made. 
Technically, any Wikipedia editor may close a discussion, but 
normally, only administrators make them, and only an administrator 
can implement a Delete decision. (I don't recommend non-admins 
attempt to make any controversial close, it's difficult, sometimes, 
even for users with high levels of experience.) Admins review the 
Articles for Deletion discussions and, typically after 10 days, will 
review the discussion and close it with a decision, which can be 
Keep, Delete, or No Consensus -- No Consensus keeps the article for 
the time being. Merge is sometimes a close, but it's a variety of 
Keep in that the admin will not necessarily implement the merge, 
because exactly how a

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-10 Thread Alain Sepeda

You want to test the Hydrobetatron/Athanor ?

as Jed repeated, good LENR experiment are expensive, and the calorimetry is
so difficult that many mainstream team failed even to make  good enough one.

Few researchers have really tested the LENR, and now they are believers,
thus nobody trust them. See Robert Duncan (Uni Missouri), Celani, Dawn D
Dominguez(spawar)

doing the experiment yourself will make the high risk of error, higher than
the risk of peer review result...

moreover there is hundreds of very good experiments, with different
protocols, having very different potential artifacts, with coherent
correlations found ...
Rather believe in UFO conspiracy (sorry for the UFOist here).

just for curiosity, can you build a theory of the reason why so many team.

a precise one, with explanation of all the results ?
I mean, the thousands of loose experiments, and the 180 good results, the
dozens of peer review one, the replicated and the non replicated, the
electrolysis, the co-deposition, the gas permeation, the NiH nanostrutured
materials, the isoperibolic calorimetry, the isothermal calorimetry, the
gaz permeation rough calorimetry...

then could you give credible explanation why a canadian economist can jump
on a fraud scheme launched by an italian, joined by a big board of
director, with an engineer team, of people who give their name in public,
one even working for a university...

you have to disprove all of that evidence to disprove LENR.
ALL.
you can use wildcard arguments, but positively, not easy excuses. and also
explain why it was so frequent (bad luck, correlation of risk, bias...).

NB: this is what I'm doing every time someone repeat the stupidities based
on obsolete and false data that I read, because when I read critics, I
cannot ignore them... And each time, I fail to reach a credible scenario
for non-existent LENR. same for the LENR businesses, where fraud is not
credible, even if the high probability scenario will be that the industrial
will be late, as usual (see last Hydrofusion press release), and some can
even fail to reach the market. I've also noticed that people here are much
more skeptical than me, and after discussing with a professional innovator,
I realize that I was even much more skeptical than professionals. LENR have
a huge database of proofs,(peer review, not reviewed, circumstantial) much
better than Higgs boson, and many officially accepted theory or databases
todays. because LENR is not a theory, but a phenomenon.

Note also that the theory that there is a pathologic consensus against is
so blatant that not considering it is a sign of a BIG PROBLEM. Benabou
effect theory is thousands more credible (even if not absolutely confirmed)
than your group fraud theory.

2012/9/10 Jouni Valkonen 

> On Sep 10, 2012, at 10:48 AM, Alain Sepeda  wrote:
> > we need to have rock-solid statements to answer the hyper-skeptics.
>
> Rock-solid answer would be that anyone could go their local university and
> do the necessary measurement by himself. With Miley's and Celani's cells
> this kind of situation would be trivial to arrange. I can personally
> sponsor demonstration set to the University of Turku, Finland.
>
> We do not need statements, we need rock-solid evidence. The problem is
> that there is no good evidence presented to support the claims, but there
> are just statements that are in science next to worthless.
>
> --Jouni
>

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-10 Thread Jouni Valkonen

On Sep 10, 2012, at 10:48 AM, Alain Sepeda  wrote:
> we need to have rock-solid statements to answer the hyper-skeptics.

Rock-solid answer would be that anyone could go their local university and do 
the necessary measurement by himself. With Miley's and Celani's cells this kind 
of situation would be trivial to arrange. I can personally sponsor 
demonstration set to the University of Turku, Finland.

We do not need statements, we need rock-solid evidence. The problem is that 
there is no good evidence presented to support the claims, but there are just 
statements that are in science next to worthless.

―Jouni

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-10 Thread Alain Sepeda

2012/9/10 Jouni Valkonen 

>
> I did not say that. I just said how science works and it is working very
> well. Science has (almost!) nothing to do with politics and actually it is
> surprising immune for political prejudices. And usually when someone gets
> caught on political bias (such as Climate Gate) that will lead into global
> scandal. Cold fusion research is far more valuable than puny climate
> science.
>

Is'nt climategate officially a non-event, especially on Wikipedia ? yet
it's content is confirmed by the authors, and there was clear manipulation
of peer-review process, magazine terrorism, political pressure...
Isn't CF a denied scandal already...


By the way when I ask my beloved  political expert, she said me that after
that after her PhD, workin in research prepared her well to work as NGO
lobbyist, then PM assistant...
Saying that real science is not driven by politics (palace battle, not
necessarily left/right battles) is...
lie, naiveness or incompetence.




>
> Miley et al. experiment was not expensive by any means and yet Miley was
> unable to produce an apparatus for demonstration purposes that could have
> allowed other scientists to replicate helium correlation experiment with
> their own instruments.
>

Just question to the expert, naively I've look for replication of LENR...
I'm serious, it is not (only) a rhetorical question. I might me innocent,
since my experience of science is mostly corporate and applied.

am i wrong when I quote Spawar, and claim it have been replicated after
they publish their protocol and even gave kits ?

Am I wrong when I quote Iwamura and claim it has bee replicated in china by
another japanese motorist (toyota?)

Am I wrong when I quote, like Miles in ICCF17, the experiments of CEA
Grenoble as a better replication of F&P

Am I wrong when quoting the initial loose experiment of NASA GRC in 89,
lose because the fousn anomalous heat but don't look further because no
neutrons. that have been replicated in China with an US company support,
and re-replicated by Nasa GRC in 2008.

Am I wrong quoting report 41, and the Science rejection letter, as a proof
that peer-review is not working. Was that experiment deserving respect. was
it worse than many other Science papers.

Am I wrong when I quote National Instruments claiming 10 labs have worked
on that subject... I don't know exactly who, where, and I don't know the
paper, but as I'm more corporate than longitudinal hair cutter, I can
imagine that they checked the details more than Science peer-reviewer,
before making a public claim.

Was the McKubre isothermal calorimetry lacking of reliability. The protocol
seems one of the best I've read. Was is replicated?

Can someone give me any credible paper criticizing one of the famous
replicated calorimetry with an experiment proving a real artifact in the
measures.

I assume you all have access to those article so I don't give the
references (all is on lenrforum.eu, where you can correct my errors)

as i say in my open letter, only one of that pair of replication should
have raised huge interest and heavi research... Is it wrong to assuma that
a good pair of 5 sigma experiments, without any credible experiments
proving it is artifact, is enough to assume that LENR is a reality (non
chemical, ie nuclear or alien), until proved else. Maybe I misunderstood
science method.

Finally observing that all those experiment are ignored, that the scientifc
method is not respected, is it right to assume there is a problem of non
scientific nature ...

I'm convinced to be right with the statements above, yet I know I can be
convinced an wrong. Please, if I've made false assumption, correct me.

we need to have rock-solid statements to answer the hyper-skeptics.

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Jouni Valkonen

On 10 September 2012 07:39, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

>
> In essence, you are saying we should ignore the data because people
> opposed to cold fusion have successfully cut off funding. We should let
> politics dictate what we believe.
>

I did not say that. I just said how science works and it is working very
well. Science has (almost!) nothing to do with politics and actually it is
surprising immune for political prejudices. And usually when someone gets
caught on political bias (such as Climate Gate) that will lead into global
scandal. Cold fusion research is far more valuable than puny climate
science.

However as I said, it is question of marketing ideas and successful
marketing is not impossible. Mark Gibbs said it well, that with all your
brain power, yet you are unable to bring even single convincing argument.
Even moderate understanding does require open mind and quite a lot
literature research.

Besides that your idea about the funding cuts is silly conspiracy theory
and if you are throwing such lazy arguments, it will not help the field.

Miley et al. experiment was not expensive by any means and yet Miley was
unable to produce an apparatus for demonstration purposes that could have
allowed other scientists to replicate helium correlation experiment with
their own instruments. If nothing else, Miley should have invited several
groups of scientists into his own lab to replicate the correlation studies.
Successful replication of his findings would have been the greatest science
news of the 90's and it would have diverted hundreds of billions of dollars
research funding to the field.

This is really important thing. Also if Celani is not going to let other
people to validate his quantum reactor with their own instruments, then
that means only one thing that Celani has nothing that has scientific
significance.

—Jouni

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Jed Rothwell

Jouni Valkonen  wrote:

> Here is one example of the good peer-reviewed paper, but where is the
> replication of the data?
>

There have been only a few replications in Italy, at SRI and elsewhere
because the experiment is expensive and time consuming, and there is no
money to do cold fusion. That is a political problem. It has nothing to do
with the quality of the science.

In essence, you are saying we should ignore the data because people opposed
to cold fusion have successfully cut off funding. We should let politics
dictate what we believe.

> This finding about the correlation to be reliable, there should be several
> successful replication attempts published.
>

Should be? Only if funding is made available. You can't do experiments
without funding.

> But where are those? The paper is almost 20 years old. There are few, yes,
> but not good enough quality data and often the data is even conflicting.
>

Nonsense. There are no conflicts in the data.

> E.g. some studies suggest that both H and D are working.
>

That has nothing to do with helium correlation. Helium has only been
checked against D.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Jouni Valkonen

On 10 September 2012 02:52, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

>
> You do not need to satisfy people. You need to report the replicated,
> peer-reviewed facts of the matter. Science is not a popularity contest.
>

That is true, but here cold fusion science has failed.

*Correlation of excess power and helium production during D2O and H2O
electrolysis using palladium cathodes*
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesMcorrelatio.pdf

Here is one example of the good peer-reviewed paper, but where is the
replication of the data? This finding about the correlation to be reliable,
there should be several successful replication attempts published. But
where are those? The paper is almost 20 years old. There are few, yes, but
not good enough quality data and often the data is even conflicting. E.g.
some studies suggest that both H and D are working.

Perhaps the status of cold fusion could be better if there were better
marketing of ideas.

Cold fusion science is notoriously difficult and if you do not have burning
will and money to commit to research it is almost impossible to reproduce
the data. But as it is difficult and expensive, it is also huge liability
problem, that the urge to see something may cloud the judgement. If you do
not see anything, then the money is quite difficult to find. Here
e.g. Miley et al. did not see anything with light water. How is that
possible? Can we be sure that that they did not just assume that cold
fusion should not work with light water?

Because scientist are humans, science lives from replication to eliminate
the erroneous human factor.

—Jouni

PS. Thanks Edmund for your new paper!

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Alan Fletcher


Luigi Versaggi
September 8th, 2012 at 9:05 PM

Congratulations for the Zurich E-CAT Conference.
I suppose this time the main stream media cannot ignore the facts.
We must thank you, the world must thank you.

Andrea Rossi
September 9th, 2012 at 6:13 PM

Dear Luigi Versaggi:
The main stream media need to see plants in operation: they will be satisfied 
soon.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Jed Rothwell

Jouni Valkonen  wrote:

>
> The problem is that it is difficult to write about Rossi, because he has
> not shown any reasons why anyone should take him seriously. On the other
> hand, there are very serious reasons to believe that he
> is committing massive fraud.

I do not know of any reasons to believe that he is committing fraud. He is
flamboyant and he often says contradictory things. Many people suspect he
is committing fraud, but no one has stepped forward and said "Rossi
defrauded me."If he defrauded anyone, I suppose it would be Defkalion or
Ampenergo. I have heard from both of them. Neither says he defrauded them.

Unless you can point to actual evidence of fraud, I think you should
refrain from making such serious accusations here. It is inappropriate.

> What comes to cold fusion, there are no established scientific point of
> view . . .
>

Yes, there is. It is the set of facts in the peer-reviewed literature
published in mainstream journals. This is the definition of an "established
scientific point of view." There is no other definition.

These facts constitute overwhelming evidence that the effect is real. The
people at Wikipedia, at Sci. Am. and elsewhere have replaced this standard
with a set of rumors or nonsensical assertions made by people who know
nothing about the research.

> . . .  therefore it is impossible to write a good Wikipedia article on
> cold fusion that would satisfy everyone.
>

You do not need to satisfy people. You need to report the replicated,
peer-reviewed facts of the matter. Science is not a popularity contest.

> Cold fusion advocates have failed to market their ideas. Instead many cold
> fusion advocates (such as Krivit) took seriously that there would be
> evidence for Ni–>Cu transmutations, although scientific evidence was mostly
> zero. If Krivit-level experts are doing such mistakes in basic science, how
> it is possible that this field could be taken seriously by Wikipedia?
>

Krivit is mistaken. He is not an expert at any level. What he takes
seriously has no bearing on what is true. You need to look at journals and
professional scientists to judge what should go into an encyclopedia.

> Although Abd is saying that there is good correlation with helium and
> excess heat, somehow I find it very odd, that if correlation is good, why
> it is so darn difficult to replicate?
>

You are confused.

The quality of the correlation and the ease of the experiment are
completely separate qualities. They have absolutely nothing to do with one
another. The correlation might be very low with an experiment that is dead
simple to do; or the correlation might be high with an easy experiment; or
the experiment might be difficult and the correlation nonexistent -- which
the case with tritium.

> The correlation is so difficult to understand that even Krivit cannot
> understand it.
>

Understanding the correlation is quite easy. Anyone can see it in the
graphs. Krivit cannot understand it because he often fails to understand
simple concepts such as scientific notation. In any case, you should not
gauge the validity of the arguments by looking at Krivit's understanding of
them. This is a nutty metric.

Therefore I would say that Abd is exaggerating the quality of evidence.
>

You say this based on Krivit's (mis)-understanding? I suggest you look at
the data yourself!

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Jouni Valkonen

The problem is that it is difficult to write about Rossi, because he has
not shown any reasons why anyone should take him seriously. On the other
hand, there are very serious reasons to believe that he
is committing massive fraud.

There is very good article about Blacklight Power in Wikipedia. That is
because BLP is respectable company. Rossi instead is just nothing. There is
already an article about Andrea Rossi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_(entrepreneur)

There is no need to separate article for his latest probably fraudulent and
certainly controversial cold fusion stunt.

On 9 September 2012 23:07, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

>
> Wikipedia is dysfunctional and cannot be fixed. The problem is in the
> structure and guiding philosophy.
>
>
That is untrue. And I am sad that although you are mostly rational, you are
saying this. I fully understand that you have personal grudges, but I am
sad that this personal conflict is clouding your judgement.

What comes to cold fusion, there are no established scientific point of
view, therefore it is impossible to write a good Wikipedia article on cold
fusion that would satisfy everyone.

Cold fusion advocates have failed to market their ideas. Instead many cold
fusion advocates (such as Krivit) took seriously that there would be
evidence for Ni–>Cu transmutations, although scientific evidence was mostly
zero. If Krivit-level experts are doing such mistakes in basic science, how
it is possible that this field could be taken seriously by Wikipedia?

Although Abd is saying that there is good correlation with helium and
excess heat, somehow I find it very odd, that if correlation is good, why
it is so darn difficult to replicate? The correlation is so difficult to
understand that even Krivit cannot understand it. Therefore I would say
that Abd is exaggerating the quality of evidence. Quantity does not replace
quality.

I hope that Celani could produce first ever clear and replicable cold
fusion cell that produces, not quantity, but high quality data. That is
what we need. There is needed only one convincing demonstration, that can
be replicated at independent laboratory, and then the amount of skeptical
scientist is exactly zero. Therefore it is sad that Celani is refusing
independent replication of his cell. How could we the scientists take him
seriously if he is refusing the independent replication?

–Jouni

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Jeff Berkowitz

I have been meaning to ask about this! I will start a separate thread.
Jeff

On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Alain Sepeda  wrote:

> yes we should keep archive, for a future Nuremberg Trial on Wikipedia...
>
> same for peer-review, magazines, and other insults
>
>
> 2012/9/9 James Bowery 
>
>> Part of the value of keeping an article from deletion is the history of
>> edits doesn't disappear.
>>
>> A big part of my motivation in suggesting the use of Wikipedia as the
>> basis for the Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge was
>> the virulence of the editors of Wikipedia needs to be objectively
>> analyzed.  When an article is distorted the editorial history tells a very
>> important meta-tale.  When an article is deleted, their tracks are covered.
>>
>> I don't think it is any coincidence that the E-Cat article is up for
>> deletion at this point in time.  I suspect its an attempt to delete the
>> edit history -- or at least make it harder to go back and figure out what
>> is really going on in a society that produces something like Wikipedia's
>> virulent content.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Kelley Trezise 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> **
>>> Some time back I fought the battle of the E-Cat article on Wikipedia but
>>> found it too frustrating and in the end even enfuriating as there are some
>>> very tennatious editiors that really, really don't like cold fusion
>>> articles in any way shape or form. Their obnoxious behavior have driven off
>>> the more moderate people and as a result have had their way and have
>>> written a very twisted article.
>>>
>>> Here is a paragraph from the article that portrays the involvement of
>>> Hanno Essen, and Sven Kullander in the E-Cat as if they are passive
>>> observers and not experimentalists that were actually involved in a test in
>>> an active way:
>>>
>>>
>>> "Swedish physicists, Hanno 
>>> Essén<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_Ess%C3%A9n>
>>>  and Sven Kullander<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Kullander_(physicist)>
>>>  stated that if the claims that they had read were true, then it has to
>>> be a nuclear reaction. However the claims that they had read kept secret
>>> the catalysts in Rossi's device. Kullander said it was important "to
>>> consider the experimental facts and not indulge too much in speculation
>>> about what could happen in theory". Saying measurements must be made
>>> accurately and independently, which is not possible in this case, as "You
>>> have to rely on Rossi that he is true to what he conveys and through
>>> discussions with him we may try to conclude how reliable the measurements
>>> are."[27] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer#cite_note-26> [
>>> 28] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer#cite_note-27>"
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> How pathetic is that? I really can't understand why the administrators
>>> at Wikipedia allow the abusive behavior of that gang but I have the
>>> impression that those thugs have friends in the form of a few
>>> administrators.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Please consider going to the article, read it and vote on its
>>> truswothiness, objectivity, etc. at the bottom of the page.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Please be honest
>>>
>>> Zedshort
>>>
>>>
>>
>

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Alain Sepeda

yes we should keep archive, for a future Nuremberg Trial on Wikipedia...

same for peer-review, magazines, and other insults

2012/9/9 James Bowery 

> Part of the value of keeping an article from deletion is the history of
> edits doesn't disappear.
>
> A big part of my motivation in suggesting the use of Wikipedia as the
> basis for the Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge was
> the virulence of the editors of Wikipedia needs to be objectively
> analyzed.  When an article is distorted the editorial history tells a very
> important meta-tale.  When an article is deleted, their tracks are covered.
>
> I don't think it is any coincidence that the E-Cat article is up for
> deletion at this point in time.  I suspect its an attempt to delete the
> edit history -- or at least make it harder to go back and figure out what
> is really going on in a society that produces something like Wikipedia's
> virulent content.
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Kelley Trezise wrote:
>
>> **
>> Some time back I fought the battle of the E-Cat article on Wikipedia but
>> found it too frustrating and in the end even enfuriating as there are some
>> very tennatious editiors that really, really don't like cold fusion
>> articles in any way shape or form. Their obnoxious behavior have driven off
>> the more moderate people and as a result have had their way and have
>> written a very twisted article.
>>
>> Here is a paragraph from the article that portrays the involvement of
>> Hanno Essen, and Sven Kullander in the E-Cat as if they are passive
>> observers and not experimentalists that were actually involved in a test in
>> an active way:
>>
>>
>> "Swedish physicists, Hanno 
>> Essén<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_Ess%C3%A9n>
>>  and Sven Kullander<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Kullander_(physicist)>
>>  stated that if the claims that they had read were true, then it has to
>> be a nuclear reaction. However the claims that they had read kept secret
>> the catalysts in Rossi's device. Kullander said it was important "to
>> consider the experimental facts and not indulge too much in speculation
>> about what could happen in theory". Saying measurements must be made
>> accurately and independently, which is not possible in this case, as "You
>> have to rely on Rossi that he is true to what he conveys and through
>> discussions with him we may try to conclude how reliable the measurements
>> are."[27] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer#cite_note-26> [
>> 28] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer#cite_note-27>"
>>
>>
>>
>> How pathetic is that? I really can't understand why the administrators at
>> Wikipedia allow the abusive behavior of that gang but I have the impression
>> that those thugs have friends in the form of a few administrators.
>>
>>
>>
>> Please consider going to the article, read it and vote on its
>> truswothiness, objectivity, etc. at the bottom of the page.
>>
>>
>>
>> Please be honest
>>
>> Zedshort
>>
>>
>

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread James Bowery

Part of the value of keeping an article from deletion is the history of
edits doesn't disappear.

A big part of my motivation in suggesting the use of Wikipedia as the basis
for the Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge was the
virulence of the editors of Wikipedia needs to be objectively analyzed.
When an article is distorted the editorial history tells a very important
meta-tale.  When an article is deleted, their tracks are covered.

I don't think it is any coincidence that the E-Cat article is up for
deletion at this point in time.  I suspect its an attempt to delete the
edit history -- or at least make it harder to go back and figure out what
is really going on in a society that produces something like Wikipedia's
virulent content.

On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Kelley Trezise wrote:

> **
> Some time back I fought the battle of the E-Cat article on Wikipedia but
> found it too frustrating and in the end even enfuriating as there are some
> very tennatious editiors that really, really don't like cold fusion
> articles in any way shape or form. Their obnoxious behavior have driven off
> the more moderate people and as a result have had their way and have
> written a very twisted article.
>
> Here is a paragraph from the article that portrays the involvement of
> Hanno Essen, and Sven Kullander in the E-Cat as if they are passive
> observers and not experimentalists that were actually involved in a test in
> an active way:
>
>
> "Swedish physicists, Hanno 
> Essén<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_Ess%C3%A9n>
>  and Sven Kullander<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Kullander_(physicist)>
>  stated that if the claims that they had read were true, then it has to
> be a nuclear reaction. However the claims that they had read kept secret
> the catalysts in Rossi's device. Kullander said it was important "to
> consider the experimental facts and not indulge too much in speculation
> about what could happen in theory". Saying measurements must be made
> accurately and independently, which is not possible in this case, as "You
> have to rely on Rossi that he is true to what he conveys and through
> discussions with him we may try to conclude how reliable the measurements
> are."[27] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer#cite_note-26> [28
> ] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer#cite_note-27>"
>
>
>
> How pathetic is that? I really can't understand why the administrators at
> Wikipedia allow the abusive behavior of that gang but I have the impression
> that those thugs have friends in the form of a few administrators.
>
>
>
> Please consider going to the article, read it and vote on its
> truswothiness, objectivity, etc. at the bottom of the page.
>
>
>
> Please be honest
>
> Zedshort
>
>

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Jed Rothwell

I think it is best to delete the article. I wish they would delete the
article on cold fusion.

Wikipedia is dysfunctional and cannot be fixed. The problem is in the
structure and guiding philosophy.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Kelley Trezise

I think Roth's reaction is a bit childish. Simply because he does not like 
the way he was treated is no reason to trash all of WP. We should not throw 
the baby out with the bath water. I wrote 75% of the article on "Soil" and 
would hate to see "my" beautiful baby destroyed.


Zedshort

- Original Message - 
From: "MJ" 

To: 
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2012 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion



On 09-Sep-12 15:36, Alan Fletcher wrote:

From: "Kelley Trezise" 
Sent: Sunday, September 9, 2012 9:31:22 AM
Some time back I fought the battle of the E-Cat article on Wikipedia
but found it too frustrating and in the end even enfuriating as there
are some very tennatious editiors that really, really don't like cold
fusion articles in any way shape or form. Their obnoxious behavior
have driven off the more moderate people and as a result have had
their way and have written a very twisted article.
I think it's just time to give up on that wiki. Brian Josephson gave up. 
I gave up (Alanf777) . Others gave up.

It's so distorted that it's better just to delete it.

If and when something happens (and is reported in the main stream 
scientific journals and/or media) then it can be reconstructed -- one way 
or another.





http://truthfall.com/wikipedia-editor-bias-gets-in-the-way-of-facts/

MJ

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Kelley Trezise

I can understand your frustration, but I see no reason to throw in the 
towel. Just read the article and vote at the bottom of the page so anyone 
coming there will understand that there is a problem with the article.

- Original Message - 
From: "Alan Fletcher" 

To: 
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2012 11:39 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

From: "Kelley Trezise" 

Please consider going to the article, read it and vote on its
truswothiness, objectivity, etc. at the bottom of the page.

The "talk" page isn't the place to vote. If it comes up for a formal 
request for deletion then a new page will be opened up for discussion 
(though not for formal voting -- I'm not sure who decides what the 
consensus is).

Last time I argued against deletion -- this time I will support it.

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread MJ


On 09-Sep-12 15:36, Alan Fletcher wrote:

From: "Kelley Trezise" 
Sent: Sunday, September 9, 2012 9:31:22 AM
Some time back I fought the battle of the E-Cat article on Wikipedia
but found it too frustrating and in the end even enfuriating as there
are some very tennatious editiors that really, really don't like cold
fusion articles in any way shape or form. Their obnoxious behavior
have driven off the more moderate people and as a result have had
their way and have written a very twisted article.

I think it's just time to give up on that wiki. Brian Josephson gave up. I gave 
up (Alanf777) . Others gave up.
It's so distorted that it's better just to delete it.

If and when something happens (and is reported in the main stream scientific 
journals and/or media) then it can be reconstructed -- one way or another.




http://truthfall.com/wikipedia-editor-bias-gets-in-the-way-of-facts/

MJ

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Alan Fletcher

> From: "Kelley Trezise" 

> Please consider going to the article, read it and vote on its
> truswothiness, objectivity, etc. at the bottom of the page.

The "talk" page isn't the place to vote. If it comes up for a formal request 
for deletion then a new page will be opened up for discussion (though not for 
formal voting -- I'm not sure who decides what the consensus is).

Last time I argued against deletion -- this time I will support it.

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Alan Fletcher

> From: "Kelley Trezise" 
> Sent: Sunday, September 9, 2012 9:31:22 AM

> Some time back I fought the battle of the E-Cat article on Wikipedia
> but found it too frustrating and in the end even enfuriating as there
> are some very tennatious editiors that really, really don't like cold
> fusion articles in any way shape or form. Their obnoxious behavior
> have driven off the more moderate people and as a result have had
> their way and have written a very twisted article.

I think it's just time to give up on that wiki. Brian Josephson gave up. I gave 
up (Alanf777) . Others gave up.
It's so distorted that it's better just to delete it.

If and when something happens (and is reported in the main stream scientific 
journals and/or media) then it can be reconstructed -- one way or another.

[Vo]:Wikipedia E-Cat article for deletion

2012-09-09 Thread Kelley Trezise

Some time back I fought the battle of the E-Cat article on Wikipedia but found 
it too frustrating and in the end even enfuriating as there are some very 
tennatious editiors that really, really don't like cold fusion articles in any 
way shape or form. Their obnoxious behavior have driven off the more moderate 
people and as a result have had their way and have written a very twisted 
article. 

Here is a paragraph from the article that portrays the involvement of Hanno 
Essen, and Sven Kullander in the E-Cat as if they are passive observers and not 
experimentalists that were actually involved in a test in an active way:

"Swedish physicists, Hanno Essén and Sven Kullander stated that if the claims 
that they had read were true, then it has to be a nuclear reaction. However the 
claims that they had read kept secret the catalysts in Rossi's device. 
Kullander said it was important "to consider the experimental facts and not 
indulge too much in speculation about what could happen in theory". Saying 
measurements must be made accurately and independently, which is not possible 
in this case, as "You have to rely on Rossi that he is true to what he conveys 
and through discussions with him we may try to conclude how reliable the 
measurements are."[27] [28]"



How pathetic is that? I really can't understand why the administrators at 
Wikipedia allow the abusive behavior of that gang but I have the impression 
that those thugs have friends in the form of a few administrators.



Please consider going to the article, read it and vote on its truswothiness, 
objectivity, etc. at the bottom of the page. 



Please be honest

Zedshort

[Vo]:Wikipedia Entry for Defkalion Green Technologies

2012-02-16 Thread Robert Leguillon

If anyone is sitting on their hands, and is looking for a challenge, it may be
time to begin construction on a Wikipedia entry for Defkalion Green
Technologies. Such an entry needs to be entirely confined to reliable sources
(e.g., Republic of Greece, Government Gazette, 4 April 2011; Greek newspapers;
mainstream news outlets (not just their blogs); NO "free energy" sites)

See Wikipedia: Notability(organizations and companies):
An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of
significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources. Trivial or
incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to
establish notability. All content must be verifiable. If no independent,
third-party, reliable sources can be found on a topic, then Wikipedia should
not have an article on it.

To avoid the disarray that is the wiki Energy_Catalyzer entry, a
straightforward example, avoiding WP:NOT#NEWS and WP:NOTCRYSTALBALL, would
entail the company's creation, Praxen parent, and corporate headquarters (which
we know has been visited by third parties).
Any mention of the Hyperion (if there needs to be any) would need to be
extremely concise, state openly that it has not been independently verified
(yet), completely avoid talk of underlying principles, and I'd recommend
leaving any questionable material on the "talk" pages until independent testing
is completed.

The notoriety of Defkalion is currently based on speculation of future impact
(and a Board of Direectors that consists of some interesting people). This is
why a simple "corporate info" page can be set now as a "bookmark", and the
Hyperion data can be moved from "discussion" to the "main mage" contingent upon
the testing at the end of this month. As for now, let's stick to the facts.

Any pushback from Wikipedia moderators/editors is not a concerted effort to
silence new energy, but more likely a genuine belief that DGT do not currently
meet the necessary qualifications for Wikipedia: Notability (above). This is
why it is VERY important to leave any speculation in draft form in discussion
pages. Do not (no, really) treat the discussion section as a forum to argue
the merits of cold fusion.

At the end of January, Defkalion verified that two members of their BoD have
changed since July 2011. This will be published in the Greek Government
Gazette, but I have been unable to find a copy dated after mid-January to
check. Once we have a Wikipedia entry started, they may be more forthcoming
with corporate details.

Best,

R.L.

Note: The reliable sources may refer to Defkalion as "ΔΕΥΚΑΛΙΩΝ−ΠΡΑΣΙΝΕΣ
ΤΕΧΝΟΛΟΓΙΕΣ", or equivalent.
(http://www.et.gr/idocs-nph/search/fekAeEpeForm.html?args=ghPriTbqMLO1KL8YLjv4MblPftDoqEuJ5N0HUtBAxOX7SbR6Q7-y5HuAEP5mMG8HbpDiIXIxcVX8UqWb_zFijE2LC0GwoJ8mFjUcTxKNsKPAajKm-t06xeV1nojoUnjs)

[Vo]:Italian Wikipedia article

2011-05-17 Thread Jed Rothwell

This is pretty good:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusione_nucleare_fredda

I ran it through Google translate.

I would appreciate it if someone who speaks Italian would please add a link
to LENR-CANR.org at the bottom.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia: Rossi granted patent

2011-05-07 Thread noone noone

This might not be the patent for the catalysts.





From: Jed Rothwell 
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Sat, May 7, 2011 8:23:19 AM
Subject: [Vo]:Wikipedia: Rossi granted patent

Brian Josephson reports:


"According to infallible Wikipedia:


The Italian Office for Patents and Trademarks issued the patent for
>the invention on 6 April 2011
>
Eccellente!  Bravissimo! (how come we didn't hear about it earlier?)"


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Wikipedia: Rossi granted patent

2011-05-07 Thread Jed Rothwell

See:

http://www.uibm.gov.it/uibm/dati/Avanzata.aspx?load=info_list_uno&id=1610895&table=Invention&#ancoraSearch

[Vo]:Wikipedia: Rossi granted patent

2011-05-07 Thread Jed Rothwell

Brian Josephson reports:

"According to infallible Wikipedia:

The Italian Office for Patents and Trademarks issued the patent for
> the invention on 6 April 2011
>

Eccellente!  Bravissimo! (how come we didn't hear about it earlier?)"

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Hysterical comment in Wikipedia discussion

2011-03-29 Thread Jed Rothwell

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:42 PM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson <
svj.orionwo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> You may suddenly discover the fact
> that you have performed your librarian duties so well that you've
> actually put yourself out of a job!
>

Nothing would please me more. It would be like winning a war and going home.

> What to do next? One possibility would be to publish, of course!
> Publish your memoirs on the battle to help restore CF... Your memoirs
> would have to include some of the stupidest quotes attributed to
> famous skeptics, statements they were known to have said pertaining to
> their opinion on Cold Fusion.
>

One of the depressing collection of comments was in response to the 60
Minutes show, especially the people who said that cold fusion has already
been given a chance and does not deserve any more funding:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4952167.shtml

I do have hundreds of comments but they are so depressing I think I will
leave it to posterity to sort them out. One good thing about computers and
the modern era is that people write things down, and the text is preserved
in my computer and elsewhere. In the past, people would say things and then
deny they said them, and written records were lost.

In U.S. presidential history, it is said that the LBJ administration
preserved the least amount of original-source information because LBJ
conducted most of his business on the telephone, and he did not allow a
telephone voice recorder. Before LBJ most presidents wrote many memos.
Nowadays presidents and staff use e-mail as much (or more) than voice
telephones. That trend is widespread in society.

President Jefferson ran the whole administration and government by writing
out messages in longhand. He was a text-oriented guy. He used
a parallelogram pen recorder to keep a copy of everything he wrote.

Despite ubiquitous electronic media, some politicians still get away saying
contradictory things without losing support. I hesitate to introduce
politics but Newt Gingrich has been having a knock-down, drag-out fight with
himself over the last few weeks regarding Libya.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Hysterical comment in Wikipedia discussion

2011-03-29 Thread OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson

Jed sez:

> Someone named TenOfAllTrades deleted my remarks, with a comment "rv, banned
> User:JedRothwell"
>
> That's probably good for me. It will prevent me from wasting any more time
> posting message there.

Someone unknowingly has just paid you a very high complement. You know
better than to stick you nose in places where you are not wanted. ;-)

BTW, over the years I would think that you must have accumulated a
database of wacky statements & proclamations issued by "authorities",
skeptics and debunkers.  Surely you've managed to document plenty of
"exchanges" that will live in infamy - enuf to assemble a hilarious
assemblage to patronizing, ignorant and pontificating conclusions that
DESPERATELY need to be published. All of these statements should not
be swept under the rug, particularly as they start flipping and begin
saying things like: "Of course! I knew it all along!"

I think such a publication would make for both hilarious and
educational reading. It would be a great public service, too.

Something to think about, Jed. If Rossi and the inevitable hoards of
scientific progeny get their way, your web site, lenr-canr.org, may
have fulfilled it's major purpose. You may suddenly discover the fact
that you have performed your librarian duties so well that you've
actually put yourself out of a job!

What to do next? One possibility would be to publish, of course!
Publish your memoirs on the battle to help restore CF... Your memoirs
would have to include some of the stupidest quotes attributed to
famous skeptics, statements they were known to have said pertaining to
their opinion on Cold Fusion.

A suggested title:


COLD FUSION

How the Promise of Cold Fusion
was Nearly Destroyed
Through Ignorance and Arrogance
Parading as the Scientific Method


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

Re: [Vo]:Hysterical comment in Wikipedia discussion

2011-03-29 Thread Jed Rothwell

Someone named TenOfAllTrades deleted my remarks, with a comment "rv, 
banned User:JedRothwell"


That's probably good for me. It will prevent me from wasting any more 
time posting message there.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Hysterical comment in Wikipedia discussion

2011-03-29 Thread Peter Gluck

The same idiotic thinking like

"The car will not move because has NO horse traction"
"The airplane will not fly because it's heavier than air."

Majority of errors coming from bad assumptions, not flawed logic.

Peter

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 5:30 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> I shouldn't, but I do sometimes read the discussions in the Wikipedia
> article on the Rossi device:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer>This article is holding up
> remarkably well. The skeptics will gut it or delete it sooner or later, and
> they are starting to add their patented weirdness, such as these sentence:
>
> "No gamma ray spectroscopy was performed due to restrictions from Rossi and
> Focardi.[5]"
>
> [Footnote 5 references the Villa report, which describes gamma ray
> spectroscopy. Whaddya know! Just the opposite of it says. I guess they are
> hoping no one reads the reference.]
>
> "The plant which would supply heating for Defkalion's own purposes only,
> was supposed to be inaugurated in October 2011."
>
> [Past tense, because they assume it will not happen. They keep changing it
> from future to past tense.]
>
>
> Anyway, in the discussion section, the skeptics cannot fathom why Rossi
> would self-publish information that appears to draw doubts about his own
> finding; i.e. that the cell does not produce gamma rays in the same ratio to
> the heat as a plasma fusion device. They assume this means the device
> "doesn't work." One of their comments:
>
> "So it's a self-published claim that his own device doesn't work?
> Weird.TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:03, 21 March 2011 (UTC)"
>
> I could not resist responding:
>
>
> You wrote: "So it's a self-published claim that his own device doesn't
> work? Weird." That is a wonderful comment! It distills the essence of
> Wikipedia. Let me explain this situation.
>
> First, Rossi et al. are scientists. When they discover something, they feel
> an ethical obligation to publish it, no matter what the implications are.
> You find that "weird" because here is Wikipedia, when you disagree with
> facts or they do not fit your agenda, you ignore them, suppress them or lie
> about them. Rossi would never do that.
>
> Second, you are wrong. This does not indicate that the device "doesn't
> work." Cold fusion does not produce neutrons or gamma rays in the same ratio
> to the heat as plasma fusion does. Cold fusion has been observed by
> thousands of people in hundreds of major laboratories. If it produced
> radiation in the same ratio as plasma fusion, all of those people would be
> dead. This is a defining characteristic of the phenomenon and one of the
> reasons we know that Rossi's device is a cold fusion reactor. We also know
> this because Rossi's colleagues and others have been publishing
> peer-reviewed papers describing similar nickel light water devices since
> 1994. This device is an improvement with lots of precedent. It is no
> surprise. - Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
>
>
> - Jed
>
>


-- 
Dr. Peter Gluck
Cluj, Romania
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com

[Vo]:Hysterical comment in Wikipedia discussion

2011-03-29 Thread Jed Rothwell

I shouldn't, but I do sometimes read the discussions in the Wikipedia
article on the Rossi device:

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

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer>This article is holding up
remarkably well. The skeptics will gut it or delete it sooner or later, and
they are starting to add their patented weirdness, such as these sentence:

"No gamma ray spectroscopy was performed due to restrictions from Rossi and
Focardi.[5]"

[Footnote 5 references the Villa report, which describes gamma ray
spectroscopy. Whaddya know! Just the opposite of it says. I guess they are
hoping no one reads the reference.]

"The plant which would supply heating for Defkalion's own purposes only, was
supposed to be inaugurated in October 2011."

[Past tense, because they assume it will not happen. They keep changing it
from future to past tense.]


Anyway, in the discussion section, the skeptics cannot fathom why Rossi
would self-publish information that appears to draw doubts about his own
finding; i.e. that the cell does not produce gamma rays in the same ratio to
the heat as a plasma fusion device. They assume this means the device
"doesn't work." One of their comments:

"So it's a self-published claim that his own device doesn't work?
Weird.TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:03, 21 March 2011 (UTC)"

I could not resist responding:


You wrote: "So it's a self-published claim that his own device doesn't work?
Weird." That is a wonderful comment! It distills the essence of
Wikipedia. Let me explain this situation.

First, Rossi et al. are scientists. When they discover something, they feel
an ethical obligation to publish it, no matter what the implications are.
You find that "weird" because here is Wikipedia, when you disagree with
facts or they do not fit your agenda, you ignore them, suppress them or lie
about them. Rossi would never do that.

Second, you are wrong. This does not indicate that the device "doesn't
work." Cold fusion does not produce neutrons or gamma rays in the same ratio
to the heat as plasma fusion does. Cold fusion has been observed by
thousands of people in hundreds of major laboratories. If it produced
radiation in the same ratio as plasma fusion, all of those people would be
dead. This is a defining characteristic of the phenomenon and one of the
reasons we know that Rossi's device is a cold fusion reactor. We also know
this because Rossi's colleagues and others have been publishing
peer-reviewed papers describing similar nickel light water devices since
1994. This device is an improvement with lots of precedent. It is no
surprise. - Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Energy Catalyzer on Wikipedia

2011-03-18 Thread Jed Rothwell

Italian version:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalizzatore_di_energia_di_Rossi_e_Focardi

(Both the English and Italian articles generated links to LENR-CANR.org.)

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Energy Catalyzer on Wikipedia

2011-03-15 Thread OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson

>From Esa:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer

Succinct, and to the point.

I wonder how long it will take before the anti-CF police take notice
and proceed to correct it.

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

[Vo]:Energy Catalyzer on Wikipedia

2011-03-15 Thread Esa Ruoho

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

Re: [Vo]:Yes, cold fusion is a fringe subject by the standards of Wikipedia

2011-03-02 Thread OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson

Abd sez:

...

> It means nothing about the science itself. As Jed has pointed out, there is
> a definition of "mainstream" that's different. Judging "mainstream" has to
> do with publication by independent publishers who are dedicated to general
> science or to some particular science (or engineering.)
>
> Thus, given the two definitions, cold fusion is a mainstream fringe science.
>
> Cool, eh?

I prefer the term "frontier science" myself. ;-)

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

Re: [Vo]:Yes, cold fusion is a fringe subject by the standards of Wikipedia

2011-03-02 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 03:23 PM 2/27/2011, Charles Hope wrote:
There is no mathematical definition of fringe. A topic is fringe if 
the majority of scientists subjectively feel it is. Wikipedia is an 
excellent tool for judging such mass subjectivity.


In a way, this is correct. Wikipedia did classify Cold fusion as 
"fringe." However, that only works to the extent that Wikipedia 
editors, and particularly administrators, would represent a 
cross-section of "scientists." They don't. Nonetheless, there are 
quite a few Wikipedia administrators who are, indeed, scientists of 
some kind or other. Mostly they are young, often grad students. Think 
about who else would have the insane amounts of time it takes to 
sufficiently impress the Wikipedia community that you'd make a good 
administrator.


The problem is that there is another category, called "emerging 
science." Emerging science might not be recognised by the "majority," 
and emerging science may be "emerging" from the "fringe." When that 
is happening, we will see increasing publication, recognition of the 
topic as worthy of research and publication by peer-reviewers at 
mainstream journals, and other signs of acceptance among those 
*actually familiar with the research.*


Cold fusion is, in fact, quite an unusual case. It is difficult to 
classify by normal standards.


If all that "fringe" means is that "the majority of scientists" (who 
are "scientists"? All people with a degree in a science?) think that 
a topic is fringe, regardless of the level of their knowledge of the 
specific topic, it means little except that controversy exists -- 
assuming that there are some scientists think it isn't "fringe."


And most cold fusion researchers do think that Cold fusion is 
"fringe." I.e., that "most scientists subjectively feel it is." It's 
been pointed out that many of the secondary source reviews of cold 
fusion are defensive, and that this is a sign of "fringe science." It is.


It means nothing about the science itself. As Jed has pointed out, 
there is a definition of "mainstream" that's different. Judging 
"mainstream" has to do with publication by independent publishers who 
are dedicated to general science or to some particular science (or 
engineering.)


Thus, given the two definitions, cold fusion is a mainstream fringe science.

Cool, eh?

Re: [Vo]:Yes, cold fusion is a fringe subject by the standards of Wikipedia

2011-02-28 Thread Jed Rothwell

Charles Hope  wrote:

There is no mathematical definition of fringe.


There is, however, a conventional definition of what constitutes mainstream
science. It calls for professional scientists, replication, peer-review, a
high s/n ratio and various other things. According to this definition, cold
fusion is mainstream, not fringe.



> A topic is fringe if the majority of scientists subjectively feel it is.


That would be another definition of "fringe," as I said.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Yes, cold fusion is a fringe subject by the standards of Wikipedia

2011-02-27 Thread Charles Hope

There is no mathematical definition of fringe. A topic is fringe if the 
majority of scientists subjectively feel it is. Wikipedia is an excellent tool 
for judging such mass subjectivity. 



Sent from my iPhone. 

On Feb 27, 2011, at 11:29, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> Let me add that we are talking about two different definitions of "fringe" 
> here. This is, in part, a dispute over semantics.
> 
> Cude is quite right about what he calls "fringe" and I agree that is a valid 
> use of the word. He is right that cold fusion fits that definition.
> 
> However, I think that in the context of a scientific discovery, when we 
> invoke concepts such as "fringe" or "marginal" or "proven" we should use the 
> more rigorous definitions. We should stick to mathematical rather than 
> popular culture definitions. When we talk about movies or politics, "fringe" 
> is defined by whatever the majority thinks. Wikipedia or the New York Times 
> are the arbiters. When we talk about calorimetry or tritium, opinions don't 
> count. The majority view itself may be "fringe," even though that seems 
> contradictory. The existing corpus of knowledge described in the textbooks 
> sets the standard. Quantitative measurements such as signal to noise decide 
> the issue. Not a headcount. Not who pulls political strings and gets to write 
> Op Ed columns in Washington Post (Robert Park), or which anonymous nitwit 
> named after a comic-book character prevails in the edit wars at Wikipedia.
> 
> Decades from now, all knowledge of cold fusion may be lost. After I and 
> others who know the facts die, the mythology alone may survive. The only 
> references in textbooks or the mass media may claim that cold fusion was 
> pathological science that was never replicated, etc. The Wikipedia/Sci. Am. 
> version of history may prevail, because winners write history books. However, 
> the Wikipedia version is incorrect. We can determine this by objective, 
> absolute, universal standards. Cold fusion exists. It always has. It always 
> will. Science does settle some issues beyond question.
> 
> It is rather quaint to assert absolute faith in the scientific method, but I 
> assert it! I may be mired in the 19th century, but I say there will never be 
> any way to disprove the heat beyond the limits of chemistry, tritium and 
> helium. Replicated experiments are the only standard of truth. Once you 
> achieve a certain level of replication, there is zero chance the results are 
> a mistake. Theory can always be overthrown. Experiments may be 
> re-interpreted. But in this case, the results are too simple and clear-cut to 
> be re-interpreted much. If the term "nuclear" means anything, and the 
> distinction between chemistry (changes in electron bonds) versus nuclear 
> (changes to the nucleus) mean anything, then cold fusion is a nuclear 
> reaction, by definition.
> 
> - Jed
>

Re: [Vo]:Yes, cold fusion is a fringe subject by the standards of Wikipedia

2011-02-27 Thread Jed Rothwell

Let me add that we are talking about two different definitions of "fringe"
here. This is, in part, a dispute over semantics.

Cude is quite right about what he calls "fringe" and I agree that is a valid
use of the word. He is right that cold fusion fits that definition.

However, I think that in the context of a scientific discovery, when we
invoke concepts such as "fringe" or "marginal" or "proven" we should use the
more rigorous definitions. We should stick to mathematical rather than
popular culture definitions. When we talk about movies or politics, "fringe"
is defined by whatever the majority thinks. Wikipedia or the New York Times
are the arbiters. When we talk about calorimetry or tritium, opinions don't
count. The majority view itself may be "fringe," even though that seems
contradictory. The existing corpus of knowledge described in the textbooks
sets the standard. Quantitative measurements such as signal to noise decide
the issue. Not a headcount. Not who pulls political strings and gets to
write Op Ed columns in Washington Post (Robert Park), or which anonymous
nitwit named after a comic-book character prevails in the edit wars at
Wikipedia.

Decades from now, all knowledge of cold fusion may be lost. After I and
others who know the facts die, the mythology alone may survive. The only
references in textbooks or the mass media may claim that cold fusion was
pathological science that was never replicated, etc. The Wikipedia/Sci. Am.
version of history may prevail, because winners write history books.
However, the Wikipedia version is incorrect. We can determine this by
objective, absolute, universal standards. Cold fusion exists. It always has.
It always will. Science does settle some issues beyond question.

It is rather quaint to assert absolute faith in the scientific method, but I
assert it! I may be mired in the 19th century, but I say there will never be
any way to disprove the heat beyond the limits of chemistry, tritium and
helium. Replicated experiments are the only standard of truth. Once you
achieve a certain level of replication, there is zero chance the results are
a mistake. Theory can always be overthrown. Experiments may be
re-interpreted. But in this case, the results are too simple and clear-cut
to be re-interpreted much. If the term "nuclear" means anything, and the
distinction between chemistry (changes in electron bonds) versus nuclear
(changes to the nucleus) mean anything, then cold fusion is a nuclear
reaction, by definition.

- Jed

[Vo]:Yes, cold fusion is a fringe subject by the standards of Wikipedia

2011-02-27 Thread Jed Rothwell

I do not want to beat this subject to death, but I would like to say what
while I agree with Joshua Cude here, we have to make a subtle distinction:


> And it’s not just Nature or SciAm. Science, all the APS journals, and most
> others would regard cold fusion as fringe science. It doesn’t matter (for
> this argument) if they are wrong about cold fusion or not; their perception
> of it defines it as fringe. It is one of 3 examples of contemporary fringe
> science on the Wikipedia entry on the subject. And whatever one thinks of
> Wikipedia, it can’t be denied that this indicates that the perception I was
> representing is not my own invention.
>

It is true that many people think cold fusion is a fringe subject. They are
incorrect, but they think so. The thing is, being "fringe" or not is not a
matter of opinion or perception. These people are biased. They are ignorant.
Their views are analogous to the views of white racists in 1900 who did not
realize there were any wealthy, high-achieving, superlative black people in
the U.S. W. E. B. DuBois sponsored at photographic exhibit at the Paris
Exhibition in 1900 to counter this perception. It shocked many Americans,
and it revealed how inaccurate the mass media portrayal of black society
was. See:

http://www.theroot.com/views/web-du-bois-talented-tenth-pictures

In other words, most white people in 1900 did not realize that by objective
standards of education, achievement, wealth and so on, many black people
were among the leading citizens and solid members of the mainstream.
Opponents of cold fusion do not realize that most cold fusion researchers
are distinguished scientists, and by objective scientific standards of
replication, s/n ratios and so on, the research is mainstream.

Cude cites Wikipedia as a standard. I think Wikipedia is biased and
unreliable, for the reasons given here:

http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/commentary/alttext/2006/04/70670

I think it is better to judge by the weight of evidence in the peer reviewed
literature. The fact that most scientists have not, in fact, judged by this
standard is irrelevant. A scientist who has not read the literature
carefully and evaluated it objectively has no standing, and no right to any
opinion about cold fusion, positive or negative. Science is not a popularity
contest.

Cude also cited the opinion of John Rennie at the Sci. Am. I have
corresponded with Rennie. I uploaded his comments. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#SciAmSlam

He told me that he has not read the literature because reading scientific
paper is "not my job." As I said, that disqualifies him. He has no right to
an opinion, and we should ignore anything he says about cold fusion. General
knowledge of science is of no use when evaluating novel and unexpected
experimental results.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined

2011-01-12 Thread David Jonsson

Using sidereal time instead of 86400 seconds lowers the value by 0.001 % and
is thus very small.

David

David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370



On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Mauro Lacy  wrote:

> >
> >
> > On 01/11/2011 04:43 PM, David Jonsson wrote:
> >> Yes, under "effects of centripetal acceleration" which is by the way
> >> an erroneous title since it should be centrifugal acceleration.
> >
> > Don't think so.  In Newtonian terms, the acceleration's centripetal,
> > caused by the centripetal force, which is provided by gravity.  The
> > "fictitious" centrifugal force is the outward-pointing acceleration of a
> > uniformly moving non-rotating object (times its mass) which is observed
> > from a rotating frame.  However, in the rotating frame, the acceleration
> > you're concerned with -- and the acceleration which leads to the
> > "centrifugal force" -- is directed inward, and is "centripetal".
>
> If I didn't understand incorrectly, what David is saying is that when you
> determine G empirically, by example by using a scale, centrifugal
> acceleration must be discounted, because it's affecting the scale weights.
> That is, the scale weights are subjected not only to gravitation, but also
> to a centrifugal force, because they are inertial masses in rotation. And
> also translation, by the way. To be extremely precise, you would also need
> to consider the component of Earth's acceleration around the Sun, and
> other accelerations. I suppose all those influences must be much smaller
> than variations in G due to ambiental and geographical factors. The same
> for the difference between sidereal and solar day, probably.
>
> >
> >
> >>
> >> What I write there is in its entirety:
> >> The denominator should use the sidereal day of 86 164.0905 seconds
> >> instead of 86 400 since inertia is relative the stars and not the Sun.
> >> David Jonsson 20:44, 11 January 2011 (UTC) --- Preceding unsigned
> >> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signatures> comment added
> >> by Davidjonsson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Davidjonsson> (talk
> >> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Davidjonsson> . contribs
> >> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Davidjonsson>)
> >
> > That sure sounds right.  (Just to be nit picky, I might argue that
> > rotation is absolute, and the stars just provide some convenient distant
> > markers; there's no reason I can see to think a centrifuge wouldn't work
> > even if the universe were nearly empty.)
> >
> >
> >>
> >> David
> >>
> >> David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 10:39 PM, Harry Veeder  >> <mailto:hlvee...@yahoo.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Is this the right link?
> >> Harry
> >>
> >>
> >> *From:* David Jonsson  >> <mailto:davidjonssonswe...@gmail.com>>
> >> *To:* vortex-l  >> <mailto:vortex-l@eskimo.com>>
> >> *Sent:* Tue, January 11, 2011 3:47:23 PM
> >> *Subject:* [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined
> >>
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> Ain't I right?
> >>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_gravity#effect_of_centripetal_acceleration
> >>
> >> Sidereal period should be used and not solar.
> >>
> >> Do you support a change?
> >>
> >> David
> >>
> >> David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>

Re: [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined

2011-01-12 Thread Mauro Lacy

>
>
> On 01/11/2011 04:43 PM, David Jonsson wrote:
>> Yes, under "effects of centripetal acceleration" which is by the way
>> an erroneous title since it should be centrifugal acceleration.
>
> Don't think so.  In Newtonian terms, the acceleration's centripetal,
> caused by the centripetal force, which is provided by gravity.  The
> "fictitious" centrifugal force is the outward-pointing acceleration of a
> uniformly moving non-rotating object (times its mass) which is observed
> from a rotating frame.  However, in the rotating frame, the acceleration
> you're concerned with -- and the acceleration which leads to the
> "centrifugal force" -- is directed inward, and is "centripetal".

If I didn't understand incorrectly, what David is saying is that when you
determine G empirically, by example by using a scale, centrifugal
acceleration must be discounted, because it's affecting the scale weights.
That is, the scale weights are subjected not only to gravitation, but also
to a centrifugal force, because they are inertial masses in rotation. And
also translation, by the way. To be extremely precise, you would also need
to consider the component of Earth's acceleration around the Sun, and
other accelerations. I suppose all those influences must be much smaller
than variations in G due to ambiental and geographical factors. The same
for the difference between sidereal and solar day, probably.

>
>
>>
>> What I write there is in its entirety:
>> The denominator should use the sidereal day of 86 164.0905 seconds
>> instead of 86 400 since inertia is relative the stars and not the Sun.
>> David Jonsson 20:44, 11 January 2011 (UTC) --- Preceding unsigned
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signatures> comment added
>> by Davidjonsson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Davidjonsson> (talk
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Davidjonsson> . contribs
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Davidjonsson>)
>
> That sure sounds right.  (Just to be nit picky, I might argue that
> rotation is absolute, and the stars just provide some convenient distant
> markers; there's no reason I can see to think a centrifuge wouldn't work
> even if the universe were nearly empty.)
>
>
>>
>> David
>>
>> David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 10:39 PM, Harry Veeder > <mailto:hlvee...@yahoo.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Is this the right link?
>> Harry
>>
>>
>> *From:* David Jonsson > <mailto:davidjonssonswe...@gmail.com>>
>> *To:* vortex-l > <mailto:vortex-l@eskimo.com>>
>> *Sent:* Tue, January 11, 2011 3:47:23 PM
>> *Subject:* [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> Ain't I right?
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_gravity#effect_of_centripetal_acceleration
>>
>> Sidereal period should be used and not solar.
>>
>> Do you support a change?
>>
>> David
>>
>> David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined

2011-01-11 Thread Stephen A. Lawrence

On 01/11/2011 04:43 PM, David Jonsson wrote:
> Yes, under "effects of centripetal acceleration" which is by the way
> an erroneous title since it should be centrifugal acceleration.

Don't think so.  In Newtonian terms, the acceleration's centripetal,
caused by the centripetal force, which is provided by gravity.  The
"fictitious" centrifugal force is the outward-pointing acceleration of a
uniformly moving non-rotating object (times its mass) which is observed
from a rotating frame.  However, in the rotating frame, the acceleration
you're concerned with -- and the acceleration which leads to the
"centrifugal force" -- is directed inward, and is "centripetal".

>
> What I write there is in its entirety:
> The denominator should use the sidereal day of 86 164.0905 seconds
> instead of 86 400 since inertia is relative the stars and not the Sun.
> David Jonsson 20:44, 11 January 2011 (UTC) --- Preceding unsigned
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signatures> comment added
> by Davidjonsson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Davidjonsson> (talk
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Davidjonsson> . contribs
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Davidjonsson>)

That sure sounds right.  (Just to be nit picky, I might argue that
rotation is absolute, and the stars just provide some convenient distant
markers; there's no reason I can see to think a centrifuge wouldn't work
even if the universe were nearly empty.)

>
> David
>
> David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 10:39 PM, Harry Veeder  <mailto:hlvee...@yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
> Is this the right link?
> Harry
>
>
> *From:* David Jonsson  <mailto:davidjonssonswe...@gmail.com>>
> *To:* vortex-l mailto:vortex-l@eskimo.com>>
> *Sent:* Tue, January 11, 2011 3:47:23 PM
> *Subject:* [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined
>
> Hi
>
> Ain't I right?
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_gravity#effect_of_centripetal_acceleration
>
> Sidereal period should be used and not solar.
>
> Do you support a change?
>
> David
>
> David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370
>
>
>

Re: [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined

2011-01-11 Thread David Jonsson

Yes, under "effects of centripetal acceleration" which is by the way
an erroneous title since it should be centrifugal acceleration.

What I write there is in its entirety:
The denominator should use the sidereal day of 86 164.0905 seconds instead
of 86 400 since inertia is relative the stars and not the Sun. David Jonsson
20:44, 11 January 2011 (UTC) — Preceding
unsigned<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signatures> comment
added by Davidjonsson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Davidjonsson>
(talk<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Davidjonsson>
 • contribs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Davidjonsson>
)

David

David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 10:39 PM, Harry Veeder  wrote:

> Is this the right link?
> Harry
>
>
> *From:* David Jonsson 
> *To:* vortex-l 
> *Sent:* Tue, January 11, 2011 3:47:23 PM
> *Subject:* [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined
>
> Hi
>
> Ain't I right?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_gravity#effect_of_centripetal_acceleration
>
> Sidereal period should be used and not solar.
>
> Do you support a change?
>
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_gravity#effect_of_centripetal_acceleration>
> David
>
> David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370
>
>
>

Re: [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined

2011-01-11 Thread Harry Veeder

Is this the right link?
Harry


>
>From: David Jonsson 
>To: vortex-l 
>Sent: Tue, January 11, 2011 3:47:23 PM
>Subject: [Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined
>
>Hi
>
>
>Ain't I right?
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_gravity#effect_of_centripetal_acceleration
>
>
>
>Sidereal period should be used and not solar.
>
>
>Do you support a change?
>
>
>David
>
>David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370
>
>

[Vo]:g on Wikipedia erroneously defined

2011-01-11 Thread David Jonsson

Hi

Ain't I right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_gravity#effect_of_centripetal_acceleration

Sidereal period should be used and not solar.

Do you support a change?


David

David Jonsson, Sweden, phone callto:+46703000370

Re: [Vo]:Abd making waves at Wikipedia again

2010-09-30 Thread Jed Rothwell

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  wrote:


> "Abd, who never learns"? Come on, Jed, that's exactly what they are saying
> about me on Wikipedia.


Ah, but I was kidding. Maybe.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Abd making waves at Wikipedia again

2010-09-30 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 05:55 PM 9/29/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:

Abd, who never learns, is making waves at Wikipedia again. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cold_fusion

I predict they will throw him out again within 2 weeks. It will be 
permanent this time.


"Abd, who never learns"? Come on, Jed, that's exactly what they are 
saying about me on Wikipedia. A year and a half ago I was a skeptic. 
I bought and read the literature, including Huizenga, who was quite a 
piece of work, eh?, and Taubes, but the source that got me going that 
this might be real was ... Hoffman. Jed, it's you who never learn. 
Hoffman opened the door and pointed at what was inside. He left it up 
to me to come to my own conclusions.


And then, of course, I also bought and read Storms and Mizuno. Later, 
I bought a copy of Beaudette, which is really, really well-written, 
and for Wikipedia purposes, it's a shame it was self-published, i.e., 
not published by someone not affiliated with a field regarded as fringe.



I took a quick look at the Wikipedia article. It is even worse than I recall.


It's truly awful. And very difficult to change. Because I now have a 
Conflict of Interest -- that happened to Pcarbon before me, becoming 
sufficiently interested in the field to actually become involved in 
research, which is far more fun than slogging through the crap at 
Wikipedia -- I don't make controversial edits to the article, except 
as self-reverted edits, to show a proposal. I made one to the lede, 
about the Naturwissenschaften review just published. Your old friend, 
Enric Naval put it back in, but not in the lede -- that was fine with 
me, even though this source could be claimed, by Wikipedia policy, to 
supersede everything that came before as to the science -- but he 
also attributed it to a "supporter," and not to the journal. I 
suggested the journal, he wrote that "we aren't citing journals 
elsewhere," but in the same paragraph or just above, a claim that 
cold fusion was still fringe and rejected, I forget the exact 
language, was attributed to Physics Today, instead of to "skeptic Feder."


ScienceApologist, another of the local reptilians, previously banned 
from cold fusion -- and it takes amazingly bad behavior for a skeptic 
to be banned from the article -- showed up, in the trail of 
Hipocrite, who himself had created such a disturbance on the article, 
revert warring everything that might seem to be supportive out of the 
article, and then requesting the page to be protected for revert 
warring, claiming he was revert warring with me, when, in fact, it 
had been other editors, and then immediately, before the protection 
came down (it's almost always granted, and they really don't look 
carefully), stuffing total POV nonsense in the article based on 
proposals by Kirk Shanahan, a blatant mess that even he didn't 
support in the later polling on revisions, setting up conditions and 
cover for WMC to ban me


Basically, it's long been complete mess, with policy ignored by a 
faction of editors who imagine that they are protecting "science" or 
something like that.


Science Apologist showed up and took out the reference to the Storms 
review, pointing out that Storms is on the editorial board at 
Naturwissenschaften. He's just created an entirely new standard for 
reliable source. Instead, he put in a different reference.


The article mentioned that Naturwissenschaften had been publishing 
papers on cold fusion. SA added that they had a cold fusion supporter 
on their board, implying bias in their editorial decisions. However, 
they'd been publishing the papers since 2005, and Storms was just 
added to the board, according to Krivit, in December, 2009. This is 
the kind of "true fact" that is used by blatant pushers of various 
points of view, the skilled ones, to lie with the truth, to create a 
false impression.


Now I know exactly how to counter this, but, one problem. I don't 
care enough. It's way too much work. Wikipedia is designed to waste 
enormous amounts of time with little result. I could probably get 
both Science Apologist and Hipocrite banned. But why? What would I 
gain? Now, the project would gain, and quite a lot. These people have 
done enormous damage, what you see with Cold fusion is a tiny part of 
it. So ... maybe. But the fact is that I personally have a lot of 
much better stuff to do. I paid my dues on Wikipedia, the admin who 
topic banned me got removed as an admin. But the faction that he 
represented still retains a lot of its power. It's been again 
confronted before the arbitration committee, which has done almost 
nothing about it, throwing the book at a series of small-time editors 
for minor indiscretions, and allowing blatant misbehavior to stand 
with no sanction at all.


In other words, it's not worth it.


There is a new statement I find h

Re: [Vo]:Abd making waves at Wikipedia again

2010-09-30 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 05:55 PM 9/29/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:

Abd, who never learns, is making waves at Wikipedia again. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cold_fusion

I predict they will throw him out again within 2 weeks. It will be 
permanent this time.


"Abd, who never learns"? Come on, Jed, that's exactly what they are 
saying about me on Wikipedia. A year and a half ago I was a skeptic. 
I bought and read the literature, including Huizenga, who was quite a 
piece of work, eh?, and Taubes, but the source that got me going that 
this might be real was ... Hoffman. Jed, it's you who never learn. 
Hoffman opened the door and pointed at what was inside. He left it up 
to me to come to my own conclusions.


And then, of course, I also bought and read Storms and Mizuno. Later, 
I bought a copy of Beaudette, which is really, really well-written, 
and for Wikipedia purposes, it's a shame it was self-published, i.e., 
not published by someone not affiliated with a field regarded as fringe.



I took a quick look at the Wikipedia article. It is even worse than I recall.


It's truly awful. And very difficult to change. Because I now have a 
Conflict of Interest -- that happened to Pcarbon before me, becoming 
sufficiently interested in the field to actually become involved in 
research, which is far more fun than slogging through the crap at 
Wikipedia -- I don't make controversial edits to the article, except 
as self-reverted edits, to show a proposal. I made one to the lede, 
about the Naturwissenschaften review just published. Your old friend, 
Enric Naval put it back in, but not in the lede -- that was fine with 
me, even though this source could be claimed, by Wikipedia policy, to 
supersede everything that came before as to the science -- but he 
also attributed it to a "supporter," and not to the journal. I 
suggested the journal, he wrote that "we aren't citing journals 
elsewhere," but in the same paragraph or just above, a claim that 
cold fusion was still fringe and rejected, I forget the exact 
language, was attributed to Physics Today, instead of to "skeptic Feder."


ScienceApologist, another of the local reptilians, previously banned 
from cold fusion -- and it takes amazingly bad behavior for a skeptic 
to be banned from the article -- showed up, in the trail of 
Hipocrite, who himself had created such a disturbance on the article, 
revert warring everything that might seem to be supportive out of the 
article, and then requesting the page to be protected for revert 
warring, claiming he was revert warring with me, when, in fact, it 
had been other editors, and then immediately, before the protection 
came down (it's almost always granted, and they really don't look 
carefully), stuffing total POV nonsense in the article based on 
proposals by Kirk Shanahan, a blatant mess that even he didn't 
support in the later polling on revisions, setting up conditions and 
cover for WMC to ban me


Basically, it's long been complete mess, with policy ignored by a 
faction of editors who imagine that they are protecting "science" or 
something like that.


Science Apologist showed up and took out the reference to the Storms 
review, pointing out that Storms is on the editorial board at 
Naturwissenschaften. He's just created an entirely new standard for 
reliable source. Instead, he put in a different reference.


The article mentioned that Naturwissenschaften had been publishing 
papers on cold fusion. SA added that they had a cold fusion supporter 
on their board, implying bias in their editorial decisions. However, 
they'd been publishing the papers since 2005, and Storms was just 
added to the board, according to Krivit, in December, 2009. This is 
the kind of "true fact" that is used by blatant pushers of various 
points of view, the skilled ones, to lie with the truth, to create a 
false impression.


Now I know exactly how to counter this, but, one problem. I don't 
care enough. It's way too much work. Wikipedia is designed to waste 
enormous amounts of time with little result. I could probably get 
both Science Apologist and Hipocrite banned. But why? What would I 
gain? Now, the project would gain, and quite a lot. These people have 
done enormous damage, what you see with Cold fusion is a tiny part of 
it. So ... maybe. But the fact is that I personally have a lot of 
much better stuff to do. I paid my dues on Wikipedia, the admin who 
topic banned me got removed as an admin. But the faction that he 
represented still retains a lot of its power. It's been again 
confronted before the arbitration committee, which has done almost 
nothing about it, throwing the book at a series of small-time editors 
for minor indiscretions, and allowing blatant misbehavior to stand 
with no sanction at all.


In other words, it's not worth it.


There is a new statement I find h

Re: [Vo]:Abd making waves at Wikipedia again

2010-09-29 Thread Terry Blanton

>From dailygrail.com:

Quote of the Day:

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly
counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.

H. P. Lovecraft

T

[Vo]:Abd making waves at Wikipedia again

2010-09-29 Thread Jed Rothwell


Abd, who never learns, is making waves at Wikipedia again. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cold_fusion

I predict they will throw him out again within 2 weeks. It will be 
permanent this time.



I took a quick look at the Wikipedia article. It is even worse than I 
recall. There is a new statement I find hilarious:


"Cold fusion research sometimes is referred to as low energy nuclear 
reaction (LENR) studies or condensed matter nuclear science, in order 
to avoid negative connotations. [14][15]


The part about "negative connotations" is sourced to:

14. The  BBC (2009) in an article which does not say anything 
remotely like that:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7959183.stm

15. Bart Simon, the proverbial man who has only a hammer and sees all 
problems as a nail. (His hammer is sociology, which seldom drives 
nails straight in my experience but it can be thought provoking.)


In the introduction to the upcoming ICCF-14 Proceedings, Nagel and 
Melich have a Table with 11 "names given to the study of 'cold 
fusion' since 1989." They discuss at some of the reasons these names 
have been introduced:


". . . In the minds of some workers in the field, they suffer from 
various shortcomings. For example, 'cold' and 'low' are relative 
terms without precise meanings. The variety, and indeed confusion, 
over terminology is also promoted by the lack of a clear 
understanding of the basic mechanism (or mechanisms) active in this 
field. . . .  In 2002, a new and broader name was introduced, namely 
"Condensed Matter Nuclear Science" (CMNS). 'Condensed matter' is a 
term that has been employed by the American Physical Society for a 
few decades to embrace both solids and liquids. . . ."


Nowhere in this discussion do they mention  "negative connotations" 
as a reason to replace the term "cold fusion." I am pretty sure they 
know as well as I do it would not work, in any case.


I suppose some people hope that a new name for cold fusion will act 
as a euphemism, but anyone who knows about language knows that 
euphemisms never work for long, you have to continually replace them 
with new ones.



By the way, the ICCF-14 proceedings are actually being printed, 
finally. Thank goodness.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:OT (sort of): Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source

2010-03-16 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 10:27 AM 3/16/2010, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:

Title: "Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source"

Begins with:


"Most any journalism professor, upon mention of Wikipedia, will
immediately launch into a rant about how the massively collaborative
online encyclopedia can't be trusted. It can, you see, be edited and
altered by absolutely anyone at any moment."

But how much less trustworthy is the site for breaking news than the
plethora of blogs and other online news sources?"


Better than a blog, probably, unless it's an expert blog or edited, 
some blogs are subject to editorial supervision.


Wikipedia is pretty good for non-controversial information, but, 
then, it can become deadly boring, as articles accumulate facts 
without discrimination. My sense is that Wikipedia is collapsing 
under its own weight, I see signs that the community process, which 
never worked truly well, is breaking down. The Wikipedia model was 
quite interesting, much better than many imagine, but it was missing 
certain elements and thus was ultimately way too inefficient, it 
shouldn't take any work at all to maintain a good article! New work 
on the same article should be channeled through procedures that make 
it harder for an article to slide back, but which allow the article 
to remain open to true improvement.


It's known how to do it, but the Wikipedia community structure froze 
into a highly dysfunctional one, attached to the status quo, for 
reasons I won't explain here, but it's generic, it could have been 
expected. And anyone who sees the problem and tries to fix it, 
working within the system, is "disruptive" and is at continual risk 
of ejection, it's happened over and over. Part of the problem is that 
the community does not know how to deal with "disruption" other than 
by trying to exclude it! Which very process guarantees more 
disruption, it's like a repressive government that tries to stomp out 
dissent, the effort creates more dissent.


Meanwhile, the "winners," those who ejected the others, end up burned 
out from the continual effort, not realizing that they created the 
very problem that burned them out they blame it on the others, 
the "disruptive" editors that they are tired of dealing with. There 
is one editor, originally called Scibaby, who has created many 
hundreds of sock puppets (600 by now), because, some three years ago 
or so, he was abusively treated by the Global Warming cabal (he's a 
skeptic.) He was blocked by cabal administrators ("cabal" here just 
means an informal group who work together in pursuit of some point of 
view or content or content-philosophical position), in decisions that 
would no longer be allowed today. Scibaby fought back, he realized 
that it was actually impossible to completely block editors, so he 
continually registers new accounts, it's become a game. He's 
routinely identified and detected, but the process takes up 
administrator time, and there is no end to it in sight. All because 
of a few relatively harmless edits. Actual Scibaby edits are 
generally harmless. Mostly, they aren't appropriate, and they are 
quickly reverted. Far more effort goes into keeping him out than 
would be involved in simply watching a known account! It's a really 
good example of how inefficient exclusion is at control of a community.


Cold fusion? All the experts have been blocked or are severely 
constrained. And the blocks were all out-of-process, technically 
improper, but Wikipedia doesn't actually recognize rule of law, 
decisions are ad-hoc, and precedent is explicitly denied. It's quite 
a trap. The latest issued ban was of Pcarbonn, once again, this time 
"by the community." I.e., JzG, who is no longer an administrator, but 
who was an old enemy of Pcarbonn and who was behing Pcarbonn's 
original ban by a poisonous framing of a very good article on 
Wikipedia process published by New Energy Times in 2008, I think it 
was, when Pcarbonn came off his ArbComm ban, and was thus allowed to 
edit Cold fusion, went to the Administrator's Noticeboard and 
requested a ban of Pcarbonn for "pushing the same point of view as 
before." Problem was, Pcarbonn wasn't banned for "pushing a point of 
view," that was JzG's opinion, not the actual ArbComm decision. 
Pcarbonn had become employed in the field, and was now a Conflict of 
Interest editor, thus obligated to stay away from contentious edits 
to the article, but allowed to make suggestions in Talk, which is the 
proper role of experts, actually. JzG didn't mention that there were 
no contentious edits to the article. And it's very easy for ignorant 
editors to look at a suggestion for a source on cold fusion, which is 
what Pcarbonn was doing, and

Re: [Vo]:OT (sort of): Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source

2010-03-16 Thread Jed Rothwell

Some Wikipedia articles are better than others. The format is good 
for some subject areas, but not so good for others. I think 
controversial subjects that call for expert knowledge probably fare 
worst. Especially subjects that attract self-appointed experts. That 
also happens in the science-oriented mass media articles in 
newspapers and the Scientific American. There is a lot of bunk 
published about global warming, for example. In the newspaper 
crowdsourced blogs today, I get the sense that just about everyone 
with a driver's license considers himself an expert in Toyota's 
technical problems and the role of software versus hardware in cars.


The institution and rules it follows make a large difference, but 
individual people also make or break an institution. All banks in the 
U.S. operate under the same set of detailed rules and strictures. Yet 
some are honest, profitable, and socially constructive, while others 
loan money to dead people, and still others appear to be set up 
mainly to rob the stockholders and FDIC. It depends on the people in charge.


- Jed

[Vo]:OT (sort of): Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source

2010-03-16 Thread OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson

Title: "Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source"

Begins with:


"Most any journalism professor, upon mention of Wikipedia, will
immediately launch into a rant about how the massively collaborative
online encyclopedia can't be trusted. It can, you see, be edited and
altered by absolutely anyone at any moment."

But how much less trustworthy is the site for breaking news than the
plethora of blogs and other online news sources?"

...



http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_wikipedia_should_be_trusted_or_how_to_consume.php
http://tinyurl.com/ybq3xbv


The commentary concerning how the Mumbai Terror Attacks was interesting:

**
"...by the end of the first day of the Wikipedia article's life, it
had been edited more than 360 times, by 70 different editors referring
to 28 separate sources from news outlets around the web. While this
could seem like a situation rife for misdirection and misinformation,
the constant discussion swirling around the creation of an article,
Pantages explained, is "really similar to what you would think should
be in a newsroom." Nonetheless, we still disparage Wikipedia as an
untrusted source of news."
**

I get the feeling the same mechanisms didn't work as well in regards
to the WIKI Cold Fusion article. Apples versus oranges? ...Or are they
really the same thing??? But if both really are apples, why did it not
work for CF but apparently did work for reporting on the Mumbai Terror
Attacks?

As always, there is a comments section at the end of the article where
you can add your two cents.

Mr. Lomax, try to keep your comments down to a page length! ;-)

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

RE: [Vo]: Yet another Wikipedia use of CF in a bad light...

2010-01-05 Thread Mark Iverson

Yes, it does...
 
I can remember a college lecture in some science-related class (think it might 
have been ethology),
where the point of one of the prof's lectures what to avoid using 'cute' or 
'descriptive' labels for
things in your research papers...  
 
I guess I just find it very sad that the acceptance of a completely new 
phenomenon of science ends
up being delayed (partially) because of the label that got attached to it 20 
years ago... its even
more frustrating when that new science could be our way out of the age of oil!  
I wonder how future
(100 yrs from now) science texts will look at this time, and whether references 
to this time will be
'it was just science operating as it should', or, 'science gone awry'!

-Mark

   _  

From: Steven Krivit [mailto:stev...@newenergytimes.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 1:58 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]: Yet another Wikipedia use of CF in a bad light...


At 08:41 AM 1/5/2010, you wrote:


Wikipedia's use of CF as an example for 'science by concensus' and 'burden of 
proof'...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
About 4/5s the way down the page.

"Examples in science

As a general rule, the less coherent and less embedded within conventional 
knowledge a claim
appears, the heavier the burden of proof lies on the person asserting the 
claim. ***The scientific
consensus on cold fusion is a good example.*** The majority of physicists 
believe cold fusion is not
possible, since it would force the alteration or abandonment of a great many 
other tested and
generally accepted theories about nuclear physics."

-Mark


Mark,

It would be helpful if more people distinguished between the *theory* of "cold 
fusion" from the
observations of low-energy nuclear reaction experimental evidence. The theory 
of cold fusion -
like-charged atomic nuclei joining together at room-temperature - may never get 
accepted. It would
be unfortunate if the non-acceptance of the theory of cold fusion impedes the 
acceptance of LENR.

Does this make sense?

-Steve
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com 
Version: 9.0.725 / Virus Database: 270.14.126/2601 - Release Date: 01/04/10 
23:35:00

Re: [Vo]: Yet another Wikipedia use of CF in a bad light...

2010-01-05 Thread OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson

>From Stephen:

> The "theory of cold fusion" would be a theory explaining
> how such nuclei join, not simply the assertion that they do
> join.  The assertion that fusion happens at room temperature
> is a simple binary statement, and is either true or false;
> it's quite different from what is meant by a "theory".

> The question of whether "cold fusion" -- the joining of like-
> charged nuclei at room temperature -- actually happens is a
> simple question of fact and, assuming it does, one would hope
> strongly that the fact of its existence is eventually accepted.

> In any case the existence of cold fusion wouldn't require
> the abandonment of "many ... generally accepted theories" any
> more than the existence of superconductivity did.  Extensions
> to theories, for sure, but that's all -- it's not at all like
> the hydrino, whose non-existence is directly predicted by
> modern quantum theory.

I agree that often "sacred" theories end up getting tweaked and
adjusted to fit the actual evidence at hand.

As is obvious to many, there are issues having to do with the use of
word "fusion" to explain the excessive heat that has been documented
countless times. The "cold fusion" community seems to be hampered by
the simple fact that the phenomenon has been labeled "cold fusion",
and the combination of THOSE two simple words used together to explain
the phenomenon seem to have produced enormous confusion and
distraction of an adverse kind, especially within the rest of the
scientific community. This confusion has been going on for decades. Of
course, that's where other terminology like "LENR" and "CANR" hope to
fix such popular misunderstandings.

I will be very curious to see how the Widom-Larsen theory is either
accepted or rejected by the "cold fusion" community as a whole. Can it
survive, and/or evolve into something even more robust? I gather lines
have already been drawn in the sand. Nevertheless, this theory does
seem to have its supporters. Some of the things I find intriguing
about the theory, from what I've read so far, is the fact that it
seems to do a decent job of explaining a lot of "cold fusion"
phenomenon without the need of having to introduce a lot of new
untested-theoretical physics. Perhaps one of the biggest things this
theory seems to have going for it is the fact that it completely does
away with having to deal with the nasty coulomb barrier issue. The
implication is that there really is no traditional FUSION going on.
It's my understanding that the theory explains how free low energy
neutrons are "generated", which in turn can easily -merge- with nearby
atoms, which in turn immediately changes the atomic weight and
possibly the atomic number when certain nuclear reactions subsequently
occur/decay. The result: lots of usable heat is generated. A key point
is the fact that neutrons are not subject to the coulomb barrier in
the same manner that positively charged protons are.

...While I agree that some may academically disagree with the
following conclusion, it would seem that the W-L theory does this all
without having to introduce "fusion" (at least "fusion" as it is
traditionally thought of as) into the recipe.

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

Re: [Vo]: Yet another Wikipedia use of CF in a bad light...

2010-01-05 Thread Stephen A. Lawrence

On 01/05/2010 04:57 PM, Steven Krivit wrote:
> At 08:41 AM 1/5/2010, you wrote:
>> Wikipedia's use of CF as an example for 'science by concensus' and
>> 'burden of proof'...
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
>> About 4/5s the way down the page.
>>
>> "Examples in science
>>
>> As a general rule, the less coherent and less embedded within
>> conventional knowledge a claim
>> appears, the heavier the burden of proof lies on the person asserting
>> the claim. ***The scientific
>> consensus on cold fusion is a good example.*** The majority of
>> physicists believe cold fusion is not
>> possible, since it would force the alteration or abandonment of a
>> great many other tested and
>> generally accepted theories about nuclear physics."
>>
>> -Mark
> 
> Mark,
> 
> It would be helpful if more people distinguished between the *theory* of
> "cold fusion" from the observations of low-energy nuclear reaction
> experimental evidence. The /_theory of cold fusion_/ - like-charged
> atomic nuclei joining together at room-temperature - may never get
> accepted. It would be unfortunate if the non-acceptance of the /_theory
> of cold fusion_/ impedes the acceptance of LENR.
> 
> Does this make sense?

No.

The "theory of cold fusion" would be a theory explaining how such nuclei
join, not simply the assertion that they do join.  The assertion that
fusion happens at room temperature is a simple binary statement, and is
either true or false; it's quite different from what is meant by a "theory".

The question of whether "cold fusion" -- the joining of like-charged
nuclei at room temperature -- actually happens is a simple question of
fact and, assuming it does, one would hope strongly that the fact of its
existence is eventually accepted.

In any case the existence of cold fusion wouldn't require the
abandonment of "many ... generally accepted theories" any more than the
existence of superconductivity did.  Extensions to theories, for sure,
but that's all -- it's not at all like the hydrino, whose non-existence
is directly predicted by modern quantum theory.

> 
> -Steve

Re: [Vo]: Yet another Wikipedia use of CF in a bad light...

2010-01-05 Thread Steven Krivit


At 08:41 AM 1/5/2010, you wrote:
Wikipedia's use of CF as an example for 'science by concensus' and 'burden 
of proof'...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
About 4/5s the way down the page.

"Examples in science

As a general rule, the less coherent and less embedded within conventional 
knowledge a claim
appears, the heavier the burden of proof lies on the person asserting the 
claim. ***The scientific
consensus on cold fusion is a good example.*** The majority of physicists 
believe cold fusion is not
possible, since it would force the alteration or abandonment of a great 
many other tested and

generally accepted theories about nuclear physics."

-Mark


Mark,

It would be helpful if more people distinguished between the *theory* of 
"cold fusion" from the observations of low-energy nuclear reaction 
experimental evidence. The theory of cold fusion - like-charged atomic 
nuclei joining together at room-temperature - may never get accepted. It 
would be unfortunate if the non-acceptance of the theory of cold fusion 
impedes the acceptance of LENR.


Does this make sense?

-Steve

Re: [Vo]: Yet another Wikipedia use of CF in a bad light...

2010-01-05 Thread Terry Blanton

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Mark Iverson  wrote:
> Wikipedia's use of CF as an example for 'science by concensus' and 'burden of 
> proof'...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
> About 4/5s the way down the page.
>
> "Examples in science
>
> As a general rule, the less coherent and less embedded within conventional 
> knowledge a claim
> appears, the heavier the burden of proof lies on the person asserting the 
> claim. ***The scientific
> consensus on cold fusion is a good example.*** The majority of physicists 
> believe cold fusion is not
> possible, since it would force the alteration or abandonment of a great many 
> other tested and
> generally accepted theories about nuclear physics."

You would think they would realize that relativity did not force such
changes on newtonian calculations except at the extremes.

Terry

[Vo]: Yet another Wikipedia use of CF in a bad light...

2010-01-05 Thread Mark Iverson

Wikipedia's use of CF as an example for 'science by concensus' and 'burden of 
proof'...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
About 4/5s the way down the page.

"Examples in science

As a general rule, the less coherent and less embedded within conventional 
knowledge a claim
appears, the heavier the burden of proof lies on the person asserting the 
claim. ***The scientific
consensus on cold fusion is a good example.*** The majority of physicists 
believe cold fusion is not
possible, since it would force the alteration or abandonment of a great many 
other tested and
generally accepted theories about nuclear physics."

-Mark

[Vo]:Wikipedia loses thousands of editors

2009-11-27 Thread OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson

Wikipedia loses thousands of editors

http://news.techworld.com/networking/3207443/wikipedia-loses-thousands-of-ed
itors/?

http://tinyurl.com/yh6s8dj


Excerpt:

> The staggering loss of editors from the user-generated site
> was reported by Felipe Ortega from the Universidad Rey Juan
> Carlos in Madrid. Ortega built and used a computer program
> to analyse editing history on Wikipedia.

...

> Responding to speculation that tightening the rules on who
> can edit Wikipedia pages may have caused editors to leave,
> Peel said: "We're trying to engage a bit more at the moment
> with people who are very knowledgeable."


Ah, so they are now focusing on locating "editors" who are "knowledgeable".

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

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia

2009-11-21 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax

The hilarity continues. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Coppertwig&diff=next&oldid=326828319


::P.S. Think about it. If cold fusion had any remote possibility of 
working, would the DIA be releasing this publicly, so that foreign 
governments could read it and start putting serious money into 
clandestine energy weapons research? For real? It's laughable. 
[[User:Phil153|Phil153]] ([[User talk:Phil153|talk]]) 00:30, 20 
November 2009 (UTC)


This is an editor who cheerfully rejects sourced posts by experts in 
the field on the basis that they are "original research," but who 
uses his own highly speculative arguments to keep out reliably 
sourced information.


The report is concerned about possible "disruption" from commercial 
advantage, not military applications per se, beyond the obvious 
(possible battlefield power source), and possible usage for weapons 
is a speculative aside, most people in the field think cold fusion 
isn't particularly useful for weapons, as we've seen in a thread here 
on making a CF cell go boom. Easy to do from the ordinary chemical 
reactions going on, very difficult to do with CF, it could be the 
nature of the beast.

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia

2009-11-21 Thread Steven Krivit


At 07:26 AM 11/21/2009, you wrote:

Steven Krivit wrote:

Actually, I did not assume. I called Bev up and spoke with her about 
publishing the document before I had done so.



Ha! That's proper form.



Uncharacteristic, I realize. But it was not necessary. She had already 
written to people encouraging its dissemination to interested parties. I 
was an interested party.

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia

2009-11-21 Thread Jed Rothwell

Steven Krivit wrote:

Actually, I did not assume. I called Bev up and spoke with her about
> publishing the document before I had done so.

Ha! That's proper form.

> She did not have a problem with me publishing it . . .

Yes. She didn't object after I told her about my copy either. Apparently
someone complained on Wednesday.

> Very nice lady.

She is indeed.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia

2009-11-20 Thread Steven Krivit

Actually, I did not assume. I called Bev up and spoke with her about 
publishing the document before I had done so. She did not have a problem 
with me publishing it and she even gave me some suggestions as to how I 
could find a copy. Very nice lady.



At 11:09 AM 11/19/2009, you wrote:

Steven Krivit quoted the distribution letter that I also quoted:


OK folks,

The LENR paper (below) finally got released on Friday and should have
gone into the OSD (at least the AT&L) read books this morning.  The paper is
unclassified so feel free to forward it to whomever you think would be
interested . . .


You can see why Steve and I both assumed it would be okay to upload it. 
Besides that, there is no copyright, it says "unclassified" and there is 
not even a sentence saying "please do not distribute." In my experience, 
you can always distribute government documents of this nature. I was taken 
aback to learn that it was not quite fully cleared for distribution on 
Wednesday morning. Anyway, it is now.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia


At 12:51 PM 11/19/2009, Steven Krivit wrote:

I spoke with Barnhart extensively on Monday. I also spoke with Pat 
McDaniels. There is a story to how this document was created and the 
initiative behind it. Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to 
write. But I will. Promise.


Other news is brewingstay tuned...the storm should blow in by 
the weekend


Nice. Thanks, Steve.

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia


At 11:28 AM 11/19/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:

Mauro Lacy wrote:


And also raising the question of how to deal with government documents
which are unclassified, but not published on the internet. A good point to
be made in Wikipedia, I think, for this and future cases.


As far as I know, the ERAB report is not available on any government 
agency web site, and the 2004 DoE report was removed by the DoE 
years ago. But the skeptics would never remove these references just 
because they are not published in official web sites!


The ERAB report is from the "National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS) 
organization." Apparently, that is official enough for the skeptics.


You're beating a dead horse, Jed. The principle of excluding copies 
from lenr-canr.org because it's supposedly a fringe web site was 
totally trounced. It was contrary to policy in the first place, and 
to Arbitration Committee decisions. I wasn't out on a limb when I 
objected to the blacklisting, I was just following policy, and ran 
into obstinate refusal to comply. They got burned, I got liberated.


Funny story: I copied it from NCAS and noted that fact on the first 
page of my version. They went ballistic because I inserted a page in 
front of the thing telling where I got it, and what I think of it. 
They accused me of forging and possibly changing the content.


"They" was JzG. A few people repeated the argument, later, but, Jed, 
this was thoroughly considered and that argument was rejected. It is 
cited from NCAS because it's a more original source. If it were 
hosted directly on a government web site, it would be cited from 
there, or sometimes documents are linked to the Internet Archive. The 
convenience copy is not the source. Your introduction did not make 
the document unusuable, but it did deprecate its use, because of the 
(slight) editorializing. If the NCAS site went dark, I'm sure that 
your copy would be used.


Sure, the skeptics will make this or that fuss, but they lost. And 
they are continuing to lose, because they are not aligned with basic 
Wikipedia policy. The problem with Wikipedia isn't the guidelines and 
policies. While they aren't perfect, they are pretty good. The 
problem is implementation, how policies and guidelines are applied. 
It's a political problem, a problem that I knew how to solve, and the 
solution would destabilize the existing oligarchy (though less than 
they fear, it would really only balance things better and make 
finding balance more efficient), and they were long out to find a 
reason to ban me. Heh! They didn't succeed, I'm only temporarily 
banned, a brief vacation. When I filed the Request for Comment on 
JzG, two-thirds of editors commenting supported banning me. It was an 
RfC on JzG, not me! But the Arbitration Committee basically confirmed 
every point I'd made but it also created and prepared an 
impression of me as a "troublemaker."


Nobody likes troublemakers, eh?

 That's preposterous, because the link to the original is RIGHT 
THERE, on the page, first thing at the top. What kind of forger 
would give you a link back to the original?!? That would be like 
going into a bank to cash a check and saying: "By the way, I just 
mugged that old lady in the parking lot, stole her checkbook, and 
forged her signature. Is that okay with you?"


Dead horse, Jed. That battle was won. Yes, it was preposterous. 
That's why we won.


But so what? The big problem with Wikipedia is that it's 
frighteningly inefficient. You can spend hours upon hours working on 
one sentence, finally find agreement on it. Then weeks later someone 
comes along and removes it or drastically alters it. Imagine writing 
a book where you must continually defend every word.


There are solutions, some of them are coming, some may or may not come.

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia

2009-11-19 Thread John Berry

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

> At 09:41 AM 11/19/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
>
>> It was published by the Agency. Just not on the Internet. It was released
>> on Friday the 13th. Do you think I would upload unpublished material?!? Do
>> you think I want to get in trouble with a Federal agency?
>>
>
> How did you get a copy? The copy I saw was on NET, and no provenance was
> given.


He has said it many times.
He was given it directly by the Authors of the report.

In other words if you take Jed's word for it it is almost without question
genuine and if you don't then expect him to be investigated.


>
>
>  In my opninion, if this reference is not presented, an skeptic can still
>> argument, with a reasonable level of doubt, that the document is a
>> fake/it's not official.
>>
>>
>> By that standard we would not believe the ERAB report is real, or the
>> comments made by the 2004 DoE reviewers. Or any of hundreds of skeptical
>> papers published before 2000 that are not on the web. But the skeptics would
>> never apply that standard to those documents because they support the
>> skeptical point of view.
>>
>
> Actually, they don't accept the reviewer comments. That's actually part of
> the problem. They don't even accept the body of the 2004 review, they just
> want to rely on that comment at the end that the conclusions were much the
> same as in 1989. Which is true, of course. Both 1989 and 2004 came to the
> same conclusion, as to what the DoE was interested in, theoretically:
> whether or not to fund research. No focused program, but specific grants
> under existing programs to resolve the obvious questions.
>
> But that statement applied to the body of the report and the position of
> the panel is preposterous. There was a world of difference between the 1989
> and 2004 reviews. Only a little more, and the 2004 would have been a
> majority "cold fusion is likely" conclusion. In 1989, support for CF was
> very weak, no more than about two panelists, including the co-chair who
> demanded the relatively lukewarm statement. Nobody had to make that demand,
> to threaten to resign, in 2004.
>
>
>   Along the same lines, at Wikipedia Hipocryte wrote:
>>
>> "[The DIA document is] a primary source. Primary sources are not notable
>> unless they are adressed by secondary sources."
>>
>> He did not dismiss the 2004 DoE report for that reason.
>>
>
> That's right. In any case, that report is a secondary source analysis. It's
> not peer-reviewed, perhaps, though that's not clear. It's an ordinary
> secondary source, better than a media source, probably weaker than something
> like the ACS Sourcebook. In other words, there is already lots of secondary
> source reviewing cold fusion, but they keep making up excuses. Obviously,
> Marwan and Krivit managed to hoodwink those at the American Chemical Society
> who are responsible for the Symposium series. And somehow that has managed
> to escape notice, so that those con artists are publishing another volume.
>
> Really, their self-deception gets more and more complicated.
>
>
>  The skeptics will come up with one excuse after another to dismiss or
>> ignore evidence they do not want to see.
>>
>
> Has Denial ever been different? Religious note: this is the meaning of
> "kufr," in the Qur'an. The word is translated, often, as "unbelief," but
> that's a bad translation. The root means to "cover." Denial is a good
> translation. Not "The unbelievers," but "the people of denial." And denial
> means that they deny what they actually see or would know if they reflected.
>
> (Not intending any religious argument here. There is a form of skepticism
> which is essential and which was, I'll assert, characteristic of a major
> early sect of Islam, dominant for a short time until the tide of politics
> turned, they overplayed their hand against the other groups. The Mu'tazila,
> which means "the postponers." On matters not clear, they postpone judgment.
> To apply this to cold fusion, I'd raise the name of Nate Hoffman, who is, I
> know, one of Jed's favorite people. Hoffman was clearly skeptical, but
> didn't appear to worship his skepticism, and acknowledged the existence of
> some interesting evidence. In other words, he didn't close the book with a
> conclusion of bogosity, he left it open. May he rest in peace.)
>

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia


At 10:56 AM 11/19/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Valid, schmalid. It is just silly. If they don't want to believe 
this is a genuine document, that's their problem. They will never 
allow a link to a document like this anyway. They can't link to my 
copy (Wikipedia automatically rejects links to LENR-CANR.org) and 
they wouldn't want to link to Krivit's copy.


They can link to Krivit's copy. I got newenergytimes.com delisted, it 
had only been locally blacklisted.


If the only copy were at lenr-canr.org, it could be whitelisted. I'm 
not banned from meta, and I do intend to go there and request 
delisting of lenr-canr.org. I just haven't gotten around to it. It's 
not like Wikipedia is this big priority for me any more



The latest comments on the wikipedia talk page are a little bit confusing,
to say the least.


They are. That's because Krivit uploaded a short message from the 
DIA to him, and to me, actually, asking us to remove the copy. 
That's kind of embarrassing and I was hoping the subject would not 
come up. Apparently it was not slated for full release until 
yesterday afternoon. I thought it was okay to upload. The cover 
letter said: "The paper is unclassified so feel free to forward it 
to whomever you think would be interested . . ." So I figured that's 
everyone in the world. I uploaded and informed the author. As I 
noted here, I asked the DIA for a better copy in Acrobat text format.


Cool.

Anyway, yesterday before lunch they told me it was not fully, 100% 
released yet so please remove it. After lunch they sent another 
message saying don't worry, everything is fine now, leave it. That 
message was copied to various people in the DIA so I am sure it is okay.


(By the way, they said they can't provide it in Acrobat text format. A shame.)


Can they provide it in any text format at all? What century is this?

In any case, the information we'd want is how a member of the public 
can obtain a copy of this document. Personally, I'm totally 
satisfied. I was worried, in fact, that it might not have been 
officially released yet, and it seems that concern wasn't entirely 
misplaced. But that problem seems to be over. And, surely, our 
intrepid reporter at New Energy Times will want to know and report 
how an interested member of the public can obtain their very own 
official copy. Or do they have to file an FIA request?

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia


At 10:47 AM 11/19/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:


I certainly do not dispute this. However, and as I'm sure you know,
many skeptics use circuitous reasoning. They will refuse to accept the
basis of such information because they have already banned the
original sources of these reports from Wikipedia. It makes life
"easier" for them.


Actually, the situation is a little more complex than that. 
Lenr-canr.org was originally blacklisted on Wikipedia. The "original 
sources" weren't banned. Lenr-canr.org isn't (generally) an original 
source. When I challenged the blacklisting -- I got involved in this 
as pure process, I was neutral on cold fusion -- JzG, a highly and 
very personally involved administrator who had made the blacklist 
entry entirely on his own -- very unusual -- went to Meta 
(meta.wikipedia.org) where the global blacklist is maintained. 
Wikimedia projects use this list, which was designed mostly to 
prevent spam from being added to projects.


Any local project can have its own blacklist, and can also have a 
whitelist, which lists exceptions, all the way from individual page 
exceptions to entire site exceptions (i.e., meta has blacklisted, but 
the local project wants to allow links to the site.)


Now, JzG ended up, in my first sojourn before the Arbitration 
Committee, being admonished for his blacklisting, and the Committee 
decided -- properly, in my view -- that the blacklist wasn't to be 
used to ban web sites based on their point of view.


However, the Arbitration Committee has no authority over meta, it is 
only concerned with the English Wikipedia. In any case, the 
Arbitration Committee doesn't make specific content decisions, it 
only rules on process and editor behavior. So the meta blacklisting 
of lenr-canr.org still stands.


The administrators at meta can be quite obstinate, they dislike 
reversing themselves. The decision to grant the blacklisting 
requested by JzG was an error; the evidence he presented was 
preposterous. However, there is a path to delisting: if pages from 
the site are locally whitelisted, enough of them, and actually used, 
the meta administrators may consider delisting. So ... I requested 
whitelisting for a series of pages on lenr-canr.org, for use for 
"convenience links," so that people can find copies to read easily. 
And nearly all these requests were granted. Some are being used. 
However, at about this point, I was banned from the article as a 
result of Hipocrite's behavior, which created a situation which was 
used by the administrator William M. Connolley to ban me. He didn't 
give a reason. He also ended up losing his administrative privileges over it.


But, meanwhile, maybe two dozen editors, largely loosely affiliated 
with a group of anti-fringe-science and anti-pseudoscience editors, 
piled in to complain about my behavior. ArbComm bought it. After all, 
if I'd made so many editors upset, I must be doing something wrong. 
It's a convenient way to avoid doing much actual research. There was 
one arbitrator who actually read the evidence, and he was assigned to 
start drafting decisions. I thought at that point that it was about 
pure victory. But ... then the, er, rest of the committee, a certain 
faction, showed up and completely disregarded what he'd done. Hence 
I'm site-banned for three months, topic-banned from cold fusion for a 
year, joining the good company of Pcarbonn, who comes off his ban 
next month, and prohibited from intervening in disputes where I'm not 
a primary party. I'm still trying to figure that one out. They are 
trying to save me some time? It had nothing to do with the case! I'd 
done a bit of mediation, and it had been successful.


I'm lucky. There are others still caught in that multiplayer on-line 
role-playing game. Instead of searching for secondary sources to 
write a tertiary source, I'm doing some research myself, from a bit 
of a new angle. I might get my first cell cooking this month, almost 
everything is here, enough to start testing stuff.

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia


At 09:41 AM 11/19/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
It was published by the Agency. Just not on the Internet. It was 
released on Friday the 13th. Do you think I would upload unpublished 
material?!? Do you think I want to get in trouble with a Federal agency?


How did you get a copy? The copy I saw was on NET, and no provenance was given.


In my opninion, if this reference is not presented, an skeptic can still
argument, with a reasonable level of doubt, that the document is a
fake/it's not official.


By that standard we would not believe the ERAB report is real, or 
the comments made by the 2004 DoE reviewers. Or any of hundreds of 
skeptical papers published before 2000 that are not on the web. But 
the skeptics would never apply that standard to those documents 
because they support the skeptical point of view.


Actually, they don't accept the reviewer comments. That's actually 
part of the problem. They don't even accept the body of the 2004 
review, they just want to rely on that comment at the end that the 
conclusions were much the same as in 1989. Which is true, of course. 
Both 1989 and 2004 came to the same conclusion, as to what the DoE 
was interested in, theoretically: whether or not to fund research. No 
focused program, but specific grants under existing programs to 
resolve the obvious questions.


But that statement applied to the body of the report and the position 
of the panel is preposterous. There was a world of difference between 
the 1989 and 2004 reviews. Only a little more, and the 2004 would 
have been a majority "cold fusion is likely" conclusion. In 1989, 
support for CF was very weak, no more than about two panelists, 
including the co-chair who demanded the relatively lukewarm 
statement. Nobody had to make that demand, to threaten to resign, in 2004.



 Along the same lines, at Wikipedia Hipocryte wrote:

"[The DIA document is] a primary source. Primary sources are not 
notable unless they are adressed by secondary sources."


He did not dismiss the 2004 DoE report for that reason.


That's right. In any case, that report is a secondary source 
analysis. It's not peer-reviewed, perhaps, though that's not clear. 
It's an ordinary secondary source, better than a media source, 
probably weaker than something like the ACS Sourcebook. In other 
words, there is already lots of secondary source reviewing cold 
fusion, but they keep making up excuses. Obviously, Marwan and Krivit 
managed to hoodwink those at the American Chemical Society who are 
responsible for the Symposium series. And somehow that has managed to 
escape notice, so that those con artists are publishing another volume.


Really, their self-deception gets more and more complicated.

The skeptics will come up with one excuse after another to dismiss 
or ignore evidence they do not want to see.


Has Denial ever been different? Religious note: this is the meaning 
of "kufr," in the Qur'an. The word is translated, often, as 
"unbelief," but that's a bad translation. The root means to "cover." 
Denial is a good translation. Not "The unbelievers," but "the people 
of denial." And denial means that they deny what they actually see or 
would know if they reflected.


(Not intending any religious argument here. There is a form of 
skepticism which is essential and which was, I'll assert, 
characteristic of a major early sect of Islam, dominant for a short 
time until the tide of politics turned, they overplayed their hand 
against the other groups. The Mu'tazila, which means "the 
postponers." On matters not clear, they postpone judgment. To apply 
this to cold fusion, I'd raise the name of Nate Hoffman, who is, I 
know, one of Jed's favorite people. Hoffman was clearly skeptical, 
but didn't appear to worship his skepticism, and acknowledged the 
existence of some interesting evidence. In other words, he didn't 
close the book with a conclusion of bogosity, he left it open. May he 
rest in peace.)

Re: [Vo]:Hilarious response to DIA paper in Wikipedia