Dear Jed, I wish you are right here but the problem of reproducibility is a bit more complicated. It is about what kind of reproducibility we are speaking- and it is obvious that it is about scientific, qualitative reproducibility-in-principle. See e.g. the results in Mike McKubre's presentation p. 21 - heat excess always but very variable from 1% to 300% without an explanation- what is the reason for this variation. An other name for this variation is lack of control- at least for the time given. OK we can tell that CF/LENR is still in an incipient phase and that reproducibility is steadily improving (is it really and do we understand how and why and how much is it improving?) It seems we have tried a lot of tricks, know-how. stimulation elements etc.,but the progress is very slow and purely empirical.
Cold fusion is or wants to be a source of energy not some lab curiosity so the kind of reproducibility we need is quantitative (reasonably), at mucher higher levels of energy, upscalable - it has to be technological. If we want to "sell" cold fusion. Sorry but I think the best analogy for CF now is that of a WHISPERING TENOR. Say you are an opera director- would you hire a guy who has a wonderful voice but is able to sing at maximum 15-30 decibels? When a good tenor is mastering 90 and even 110 decibels?.You even will not notice his amnesia sometimes quite surprisingly he will forget the words, sometimes the melody. Also you will not know that sometimes, very rarely, he is able to sing wonderfully, perfect high C, glass-breaking intensity, pure beauty. You will not know that it is some bad spell on his voice, exactly as cold fusion systems are usually, systematically, poisoned. Just asking you to consider these facts for your reproducibility FAQ. Not all reproducibilities are equal- and reproducible. Peter On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 11:24 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > Skeptics conflate many different issues under the heading of > "reproducibility." They cannot keep these questions apart in their minds, > poor dears. So here is an FAQ: > > Has anyone replicated? Obviously, yes. Hundreds of labs have replicated. > > Can I replicate? Probably not, unless you are an electrochemist. > > Can you replicate on demand? That is to say, can I go an see a replication? > Maybe. But maybe not on *your* demand. Who are you? > > Can one lab produce the same results with same materials as another. Yes, > more or less the same results. See McKubre's ICCF-15 presentation, p. 18 and > 21: > > http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCcoldfusion.pdf > > (This is an important presentation, by the way. Everyone should see it.) > > Can I produce the effect independently, without getting help or materials > from the ENEA or some other proven source? Probably not, but if you are > skilled and willing to spend a few years at it after reading the literature > carefully, maybe you can. > > Can you produce the exact same level of heat every time? No, but they > couldn't make transistor performance uniform in 1955, either. No one claimed > that transistors did not exist for that reason. > > Can you make every single device work? Only with some techniques. With most > other techniques the success rate is higher than it was for most transistor > types in 1955. > > Does a low replication success rate, or extreme difficulty in replicating, > mean the effect does not exist? No. Countless experiments are difficult to > reproduce. Cloning, building a Tokamak reactor, and sending robots to Mars > are good examples. Prior to the discovery of cold fusion no one in the > history of technology ever suggested that things which are difficult to make > do not exist. > > Can you make produce neutrons in the same ratio to the heat as plasma > fusion does? No. > > Can you make a cup of tea? Richard, please just shut up. > > - Jed >
