[I am thinking about uploading something along these lines to the web page.]
The March 2005 issue of scientific American has a one-page article describing the 2004 DoE review of cold fusion:
Choi, C., News Scan: Back to Square One, in Scientific American. 2005. p. 21.
The main part of the article is reasonably accurate. It describes the doe report and the conclusions that report reaches. However, the scientific American also added a sidebar, titled "Nuclear Doubts" that includes four statements which are incorrect, and totally at odds with the literature. They are:
1. Helium 4, a suggested cold fusion by-product, was detected at amounts close to background levels.
Correction: In some experiments helium-4 has been close to the background, but in others it has been hundreds of times above background. And at least one case the concentration has been above atmospheric helium.
2. Expected gamma rays were not produced; experts doubted the explanation that all energy was generated as heat instead.
Correction: gamma rays have been detected in many experiments although not in amounts commensurate with a conventional hot fusion reaction. Other nuclear products including tritium, helium and transmuted elements have also been detected, sometimes at levels millions of times above background. It is a fact that the energy was generated as mainly as heat; these unnamed experts cannot contradict facts established by replicated experiments.
3. Not all chemical explanations for the excess heat were eliminated.
Correction: All chemical explanations for the excess heat were eliminated long before Fleischmann and Pons went public 1989. The cold fusion effect has been replicated hundreds of times and laboratories all around the world, and there is not a single instance in which chemical fuel was present in the so or chemical changes were observed. The heat generated by many cells has ranged from 100 to 10,000 times greater than the absolute maximum amount of energy that could be generated by an equivalent mass of chemical fuel.
4. Excess power was only a few percent more than the power applied, suggesting that measurement errors could account for the purported net energy.
Correction: Excess power has ranged up to 300% when input power was supplied. In gas loading and heat after death experiments, there is no input power, so any detectable output heat comes from cold fusion, since there are, as noted above, no chemical changes in the cells, and no chemical fuel.
The article expresses bias in several other more subtle ways. For example, it repeats spurious claims made by some of the DoE reviewers that top-of-the-line instruments have not been used to measure cold fusion effects. The best instruments on earth have been used to measure excess heat, helium, tritium and transmutations, mainly in Italy and Japan. Top-of-the-line instruments have not been available in the United States mainly because there is so much opposition to the research. Skeptics are complaining that could instruments have not been used yet they themselves are to blame for this situation.
Finally, it should be noted that the caption on the photograph says, "cold fusion allegedly occurs in a jar of heavy water with electrodes." Apparently after 16 years, the Scientific American still cannnot distinguish between a "jar" and a Dewar test tube. This is like calling the Mount Palomar telescope "a big magnifying glass."
- Jed
