At 09:07 PM 2/25/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <<mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com>a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
Ah! That's one I hadn't thought of.
This is my point, there may be a million things you haven't thought of.
Nope. That does not work. A good experiment cannot have a million
possible problems. If we had to think up a million ways that an
experiment might be wrong (or fake -- pretty much the same thing)
then no experiment would ever prove anything, and there would be no progress.
This is a misunderstanding. There may be a million things we have not
thought of. However, there is no requirement or necessity that we
think of every possible error or artifact or -- in this case --
mechanism for fraud.
With a single report, lots of opportunities exist for error or, yes,
fraud. With many reports, and especially with independent
confirmations -- as with helium confirming excess heat -- the
possibility of artifact or error becomes more and more remote, until
we routinely disregard it.
A bad experiment can have a large number of possible errors (or ways
to make it fake).
A good experiment may also have a large number of possible errors!
The "skeptical" assertion that there might be an undiscovered error
is fundamentally at odds with the scientific method for the same reason.
No, it's largely irrelevant to the main approach of the method. It's
a reasonable operating assumption, for a time, with an "extraordinary
claim." As long as it is not forgotten that the task, then, is to
find that "undiscovered error," not to sit with assuming that it
exists and then turning off the radio.
If we allow this argument, then no issue will ever be decided, no
experiment ever conclusive. There has to be a statute of limitations
on critiques.
That's preposterous, actually. Nothing is every finally conclusive.
However, doubt recedes and becomes increaingly preposterous. My
opinion is that cold fusion passed this point more than a decade ago,
for those who were familiar with the evidence. Some may hold out
longer than others, and I do not find that offensive, as long as it
is not preposterously asserted in blatant contradiction to the
well-confirmed evidence.
Quoting Melich and Rothwell's comments on the 2004 DoE review:
Some skeptics claim that there might be a yet-undiscovered error in
the experiments. See the comment by Beaudette about this, above, "if
the measurements are incorrect, then an avid pursuit of the
'science' must in due course explicitly and particularly reveal that
incorrectness."
Yes. There was a major failure on the part of the physicists, to
understand that there was, indeed, some unexplained anomaly here,
confirmed as such, widely enough to not be easily dismissed as "just
one of those occasional mysteries that are never explained." They
failed to be curious, a serious failure in those who love science;
they failed because they had become attached to outcome, and to
avoiding threats to the solidity of their knowledge.
More to the point, the claim that there might be an undiscovered
error is not falsifiable, and it applies to every experiment ever performed.
It is not falsifiable, which means that it is not a scientific
theory. That does not mean it is without worth. It is a routine
application of ordinary prudence, to isolated observations. When the
observations are no longer isolated, it is being applied outside its
legitimate scope.
There might be an undiscovered error in experiments confirming
Newton's or Boyle's laws, but these experiments have been done so
many times that the likelihood they are wrong is vanishingly small.
That's right, which is why findings that those laws are not accurate
under some conditions were accepted only because the necessary
conditions were outside of the normal experimental range of all those
many confirmations. Most experiments were not done with relative
velocities that were an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, eh?
With cold fusion, the skeptics claimed that a huge body of
experimental work would have to be wrong if CF was real. That was
pure fluff, bad reasoning. All that work had been done in a plasma,
and the prior work with palladium deuteride was not, almost without
exception, at loading above 70%. If, in some rare case, loading above
70% were reached, and there were some excess heat, it was probably
not noticed, or was passed of as "just one of those things that happen."
Furthermore, skeptics have had 20 years to expose an experimental
artifact, but they have failed to do so.
I've made the point many times.
A reasonable time limit to find errors must be set, or results from
decades or centuries ago will remain in limbo, forever disputed, and
progress will ground to a halt.
There is no specific time limit. However, because experimental
evidence has accumulated, because, many times, skeptics examined it,
and tried their own experiments, but the Great Artifact was not
identified, we start to have an Occam's Razor assumption that the
Great Artifact does not exist. There may be artifacts in individual
experiments, that is practically certain. But not the Great Artifact.
Nobody found it, so far. (Artifacts have been asserted, with
increasing preposterousness. One of my favorites is Shanahan's idea
that the back side tracks reported by SPAWAR are the result of shock
waves created by mini-explosions of deuterium oxygen recombination
that happens when a stray oxygen bubble hits the cathode. Really. I
kid you not. He actually wrote that on his Talk page on Wikipedia. He
retired from Wikipedia shortly thereafter, I think he might have
realized that he went off the deep end.
The calorimeters used by cold fusion researchers were developed in
the late 18th and early 19th century. A skeptic who asserts that
scientists cannot measure multiple watts of heat with confidence is,
in effect, rejecting most textbook chemistry and physics from the
last 130 years.
yeah, I'd think so!
As a practical matter, there is no possibility that techniques such
as calorimetry, x-ray film autoradiography or mass spectroscopy are
fundamentally flawed. It must be emphasized that although cold
fusion results are surprising, the techniques are conventional and
instruments are used within their design specifications. . . .
yes, again, preaching to the choir, Jed.
Flow calorimetry experiments similar to this, with boiling water or
flowing water, have been done many times. The potential errors are
well understood and their number is strictly limited -- unless you
are aiming for the kind of precision SRI achieved.
Now we are talking about Rossi, which is another matter, for different reasons.
In an experiment with only 4 main parameters -- input power, inlet
temperature, outlet temperature and flow rate -- the number of
potential significant errors will small, and so will the number of
ways deliberately fake data can be surreptitiously introduced.
No. This is an error. The number of ways data could be faked is not
limited. "Fake" is not, as I've mentioned a "fair claim." It can
*never* be refuted by a single person.
When the method is complicated, and the results close to the margin,
with many parameters with, for example, the possibility of
recombination producing a significant error, then there are many
ways an error can creep in, and many ways to deliberately introduce fake data.
With marginal results, interpretation can occur with no fakery at
all. Fakery would take only a small nudging of the data. With large
results, ordinary error becomes much more unlikely. I'm not going to
estimate whether or not fakery becomes more likely. It is still a
very uncivil claim, and the general possibility of fakery is not a
proof of any kind of anything except raw possibility, leading to
skeptical inquiry. With multiple independent confirmations, this
becomes unnecessary. Skeptical inquiry is then limited to
interpretation, the data, if it is reasonably consistent, will
routinely be accepted.
Complexity and a low s/n ratio invite error, misinterpretation or
fraud. This experiment is as simple as anything can be, and the s/n
ratio is astronomical.
Got it. Fraud, however, may be motivated more highly to produce
striking results. Once one sets out to deceive, why not do a bang-up
job? I can think of reasons why to keep it modest, but not everyone
will think like me, certainly!
Once again, we'll likely know within about a year. Can we agree on
that? What will you be saying if, come a year from now, we haven't
heard from Rossi or we are getting this or that excuse why the Big
Demo -- or even just some more open demo than what he's done so far
-- isn't happening?
10 - 15 KW seems like it is not utterly beyond the possibility of
some kind of trick. 100 KW is probably well there. So if Rossi fails
to come up with a 1 MW reaction, perhaps because he decides the thing
is too dangerous, I won't be offended. What do I need to heat my
house? 10 KW is more than enough. If you can make a reliable 10 KW
reactor, I'm not sure why one would need something bigger. The
technology sounds, to me, like there would be no serious economy of
scale, it is probably mostly a matter of how much material one uses.
Economy of scale might be better reached though smaller reactors, you
just make many of them. Want 100 KW, just install ten. From the demo
size, that could be smaller than a present one-house gas furnace, but
it could heat ten. (Actually, 5 KW might be a better unit. But I'd
leave it to the engineers....)
