Joshua Cude said on
http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-sun-rossi%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Denergy-catalyzer%E2%80%9D-and-the-%E2%80%9Cneutron-barometer%E2%80%9D/#comment-5907
[I'd written:]
> "because the measured helium correlates very well, at the
expected value for deuterium -> helium; this was known by the
mid-1990s. It's a reproducible and reproduced experiment, see
Storms, Status of cold fusion (2010), Naturwissenschaften."
This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.
Cude does not show this, at all, he essentially ignores the claim, by
confusing his nitpicking with a proof of misrepresentation.
A correlation between heat and helium is clearly an important and
definitive experiment for cold fusion.
Yes, and this was noticed by Huizenga in the second edition of his
book. Huizenga wrote that, if confirmed, Miles' report would clear up
a central mystery of cold fusion, the ash. Huizenga went on to state
that he expected it would not be confirmed, and, besides, "there are
no gammas." I.e., Huizenga was assuming that if the fuel is deuterium
and the ash is helium, the reaction must be the well-known d+d ->
He-4, which *must* produce a gamma or there is an additional mystery.
(Besides how the hell it happens in the first place.) Huizenga was
impressed that the helium was within an order of magnitude of the
helium expected if the reaction was deuterium -> helium. Cude is now
completely blase about it. Ho-hum. Just another nutty cold fusion claim....
And yet, in the referenced paper, the most recent peer-reviewed
results used to demonstrate such a correlation come from a set of
experiments by Miles in the early 90s.
Miles did an extensive series of cells, I think it was 33 in all.
Nobody else, to my knowledge, has done that, but others have done
more careful work, with smaller numbers of cells. The correlation
holds in all the work. As to one crucial finding, there are no
exceptions: if no excess heat is found, no helium is found. In the
Miles series, this was 12 cells, out of the 33. In that series, as to
the remaining 21 cells, there are three anomalies, i.e., there was
some excess heat, but no helium was found. With one of those cells,
Storms (2007) notes that there was a particular possibility of
calorimetry error, and with the other two, the *cathode material was
different.* We know now, from Rossi and prior work, that there may be
more than one reaction involved. Not all reactions produce helium,
apparently. But that's speculation. The fact is that the 18/33 cells
that did produce heat, also produced helium that correlated with the
heat, quantitatively.
These were very crude experiments in which peaks were eyeballed as
small, medium, and large, the small taken as equal to the detection
limit (which seemed to change by orders of magnitude over the years).
Measuring helium in an experiment with mass spectrometry which
involves deuterium is extremely difficult, because He-4, which is
only a little lighter than D2+, must be discriminated from it. Later
work had access to better mass spectrometers, Storms is working, for
example, with a mass spectrometer than can easily discriminate the
two species (and, in fact, it was built for that, it can't measure
above AMU 4, I think.)
But there is another problem with measuring helium quantitatively,
which is capturing it. Variable amounts of helium will be held in the
cell materials. Miles simply captured samples of the effluent gases.
The real meat of this is the correlation, not the correlation value,
as long as that value is within range. It's estimated that about half
the helium will be trapped in the metal matrix, if it is created near
the surface (which positional analysis has shown), with a velocity
vector that is inward, half would escape, roughly.
Cude wants to deprecate "eyeballing," but naturally, since his
purpose is only to indict evidence and not to examine it neutrally,
he doesn't mention that Miles used a lab which didn't know what the
cell behavior was that the samples came from. So these were blind
measurements. If the correlation between heat and helium did not
exist, the results would have been nowhere near so clear.
Even in the best of Miles results, the energy per helium varies by
more than a factor of 3.
Remember, Huizenga thought an order of magnitude, a factor of 10, was
amazing. Further, Miles' results are overall statistics, and loss of
helium can easily occur in various ways. (As well as leakage into the
cell from ambient, though from the very low levels measured, far
below ambient, and the total absence of helium from the effective
"controls," i.e., cells that were otherwise identical, but simply
didn't generate heat, we can largely exclude leakage from ambient as a factor).
Sometimes skeptics, looking at this, have theorized that, since the
cells in which helium was found were "hotter," they think, perhaps
this enhanced leakage. However, they were not necessarily any hotter,
the amount of heat measured by calorimetry wasn't high, and this
objection is also addressed by later work, by McKubre, where helium
levels, measured over time, approached and exceeded ambient with no
reduction in rate, as would be expected from leakage. With McKubre's
flow calorimetry, as I recall, the cell temperature is held constant
(at an elevated temperature above ambient), and the power necessary
to maintain that temperature is recorded. Constant temperature. So
much for that alleged artifact.
Miles' results were severely criticized by Jones in peer-reviewed
literature. And although there was considerable back and forth on
the results, and in Storms view (of course) Miles successfully
defended his claims, that kind of disagreement and large variation
simply cries out for new and better experiments. So what have we got since?
Sure, in an ideal world, there would be more work. Still will be, but
this is not where the money is. The results are already convincing,
for those who examine the evidence. As it has been in cold fusion for
years, researchers are investing their own money and time, and why
waste it on trying to prove what you already know? From Mile's
results and the more careful work that followed (particularly certain
work by McKubre), helium is the primary product. What is being done,
you can see it in some work published since 2000, is that helium is
being used as a marker that the reaction occurred, a confirmation of
the excess heat results. It is always a good idea to have an
independent confirmation that a reaction occurred. You can see it in
the work, the researchers, for quite some time, have been completely
unconcerned about proving that CF is real; rather, they have been
investigating what conditions set up the reaction, and, as well, are
there other reaction products (such as radiation -- almost none -- or
transmutations, which might be taken to include tritium?
The kind of work that Cude seems to demand is what would normally be
done by graduate students, but the wall of skepticism that was set up
in 1990 made sure that this source of labor was cut off. Once a grad
student's PhD thesis was rejected because it involved evidence for
cold fusion, that was it. Would you risk your future on this? The
researchers who continued were largely senior professors and other
researchers with tenure and nothing to lose.
But, this is the point: Storm's analysis was recently accepted under
peer review. There is no contrary analysis in the literature. There
are no contrary experiments. Cude will imply that Gozzi is contrary.
A very careful set of experiments looking for helium by Gozzi, which
was published in peer-reviewed literature in 1998, concludes that
the evidence for helium is not definitive.
Gozzi concluded that his evidence, alone, was not "definitive." This
is selective quotation, out of context, by Cude, typical of his
polemic. Here is a link to the Gozzi paper:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GozziDxrayheatex.pdf
(Ever notice that Cude doesn't make it easy to verify what he's
claiming? Typical.)
From the abstract:
The energy balance between heat excess and 4He in the gas phase has
been found to be reasonably satisfied even if the low levels
of 4He do not give the necessary confidence to state definitely that
we are dealing with the fusion of deuterons to give 4He.
This makes it clear that Gozzi is using "definitive" in a very strong
way. Gozzi's results are consistent with what came before, Gozzi is
"definitely" a confirmation of the heat/helium correlation, but none
of this work is completely "definitive" as a proof that the reaction
is entirely deuterium -> helium. Storms estimates 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4,
which is quite close to the theoretical value for deuterium fusion of
23.8 MeV/He-4. But Cude will seize on the 20% variation as if this
refutes the primary statement I made. Remember, ""because the
measured helium correlates very well, at the expected value for
deuterium -> helium; this was known by the mid-1990s. It's a
reproducible and reproduced experiment, see Storms, Status of cold
fusion (2010), Naturwissenschaften."
(I was speaking generally. There are, however, very few candidates
for the reaction that would produce energy in this range, Storms covers that.)
Gozzi is pointing out that the absolute levels of helium measured
were small (as would be expected from the measured heat!), so the
values obtained for heat/helium were not precise enough to nail it
down at the deuterium fusion value. Cude wants to turn this caution
into a rejection of the primary issue here: the correlation itself.
The thrust of the Gozzi paper is opposite to what Cude wants us to
conclude from his citation of it. In the body of the paper, Gozzi
concluded this:
The results show an overall picture with its own
internal consistency: 4He is produced at the surface of
the wires, but only the innermost wires in the bundle
are active (see the discussion about the spots on X-ray
film) and it is not found inside Pd. On the other hand,
the low levels of 4He do not give the necessary confidence
to state definitely that we are dealing with the
fusion of deuterons to give 4He. No evidence of contamination
by atmospheric 4He was found by the detection
of 20Ne2, and the energy balance seems quite well
satisfied when 4He, expected by the measured heat
excess, is compared with 4He found. This results
markedly overcomes the stagnant situation in the understanding
of cold fusion phenomena, where heat excess
measured was never counterbalanced by a proper
number of nuclear particles, such as neutrons, as expected
by the d, d fusion in plasma. Moreover, the
exposure of the X-ray film is a clear-cut proof (very
simple experimental device for which errors of measurement
and:or of procedure, as well as artefacts cannot
be invoked) that a nuclear phenomenon is at work. We
believe that the radiation detected has to be searched
for among the stable isotopes of Pd or among its
impurities having intense nuclear transitions close to
the energy found. Work is in progress to check this
route.
This is far, far stronger than Cude implies. Cude cannot be trusted, at all.
The only results since Miles that Storms has deemed worthwhile to
calculate energy correlation come from conference proceedings, and
the most recent of those from year 2000.
Again, this is a typical skeptical approach: deprecate conference
papers. It's true: conference papers are not peer-reviewed, but what
Cude misses, doesn't want to bring up, is that *Storms* is
peer-reviewed, and his usage of those conference papers is, in fact,
a kind of review. Storms paper is a "review," and such reviews are
not limited to what has been published under peer review, and for
good reason. The reviewer makes those judgments, and the
peer-reviewers of the review sign off on it.
I stated that the helium results were established in the 1990s, and
Cude is simply verifying that! But he wants to make that into some
kind of negative. It's a pain in the rump to measure helium, it
requires special equipment, which is quite expensive. It may be worth
it -- that's why Storms has that mass spectrometer -- but confirming
the value is by far not a major research priority in cold fusion.
Making results reliable and stronger is.
And Rossi just tossed a huge monkey wrench into this process, by
going so far outside the envelope of what had been done....
Researchers were happy with results as high as a few watts. Those are
now only of academic interest. (They were scientifically significant,
but not practically significant.)
Nothing that Storms considers adequate quality in this critically
important experiment has met the standard of peer review.
Yes, it has. It met that standard when Storms was reviewed. Such a
review covers all that is contained in the paper, if Storms cites
shoddy work, his work would be shoddy. Cude is not a peer-reviewer at
Naturwissenschaften, and he's utterly unqualified. Let Cude submit a
critique, if he thinks he can cut the mustard. I do know that people
better qualified than him have been trying, and they aren't making it.
There are now about 17 reviews of cold fusion (not primary papers,
there are many more of them) that have been published in mainstream
peer-reviewed journals since 2005. There are no negative reviews. At
this point, there is a massive imbalance, and one would think that,
say, Nature, or Science, would realize that the other journals are
eating their lunch. Surely if a negative review can be written, of
all this research and review that is appearing under peer review, it would be!
But the kinds of arguments that Cude advances are simply popular
polemic, they don't meet academic standards, and Cude completely
neglects the elephant in this living room, that damned correlation!
He simply dismisses it, whereas correlation between otherwise
independent variables is the strongest possible indication of common
cause. It can cut through enormous amounts of noise.
And they're not good enough to allow Miles results to be replaced;
Storms still uses some of Miles results, one assumes because it
improves the average.
The largest reason, I assume, would be the sheer number of cells studied.
The error in the result, even if you accept Storms' cherry-picked,
dubious analysis is still 20%.
Again, this claim of "cherry-picked" is common among skeptics, those
who have even acknowledged the existence of Storms (2010). It's
essentially a lie, because it implies that relevant data has been
rejected. *There is no contrary data.* Nobody has done the repeatable
experiment and come up with contrary data. Nobody. All those famous
"negative replications"? Well, a few of them also looked for helium.
They didn't find any. In other words, they come up with the same
result: no heat, ho helium.
Storms may have given different weights to experimental results,
based on his estimate of the accuracy of the helium measurements, and
how the helium was collected. (Usually, the heat is measured pretty
accurately.) Storms comes up with 25 +/- 5 MeV.
20% brings his result well in range, easily including the ratio that
would be produced if the reaction is 100% deuterium -> helium-4, 23.8 MeV.
But that's not the point: the point is that heat and helium are
well-correlated. That points to common cause. The likely common cause
is obvious. Fusion by an unknown mechanism, taking in deuterium and
producing helium. Almost certainly not d-d fusion, two deuterons
being mashed together, and the correlation is consistent with the
lack of radiation. (If much energy were being dumped by gammas, the
heat would be low. In fact, the heat measured is high, because not
all the helium is captured and measured. But gammas and other highly
energetic radiation has been ruled out, see Hagelstein's paper, last
year, on the upper limit of 20 keV.)
On an experiment that removes the dependence on material quality.
I'm gratified that Cude noticed this. It's a replicable experiment.
And it's been done by a dozen research groups, or more. (More, when
we count the "negative replications" that found no helium as well as
no heat.) By the way, "quality" here doesn't have the ordinary
meaning. It's entirely possible that "high-quality" palladium rods,
for example, have certain kinds of defects, and that these are
required for the reaction.
Heat, it is claimed, can be measured to mW, the helium, it is
claimed, is orders of magnitude above the detection limit, and yet
the errors are huge.
Notice that Cude doesn't mention how accurately the helium can be
measured. There are two problems: absolute accuracy, a severe problem
in Miles' work, and then capturing and measuring the helium so that
total release can be determined. Difficult. The problem isn't
accuracy of the helium measurements (not any more), if I'm correct,
it is extrapolating from that to total release that's tough.
But the existing results are quite good enough to be very, very
confident about common cause, and the ratio to create a presumption
that the reaction is likely to be deuterium -> helium. In P-F cells,
using palladium cathodes. Use other materials, all bets are off.
This is what passes for conclusive in the field of cold fusion. This
is good enough that no measurements of helium-heat in the last
decade entered Storms' calculations.
Yes. It is.
An objective look at the heat/helium results does not provide even
weak evidence for cold fusion.
Who did that "objective look"? Is Cude claiming that he's
"objective"? No, he's got a clear position, and he's selecting
evidence to support it, he is the one cherry-picking, and this is
typical of all his writing.
Huizenga thought this was strong evidence, in 1993, obviously. He
simply thought that it would not be confirmed, though he was already
neglecting that Miles was confirming Bush and Lagowski who had
confirmed Pons and Fleischmann themselves, they had also reported
helium. Huizenga had simply dismissed the earlier results (in his
first edition) and seems to have forgotten about them, thinking them
not conclusive, since of the ready explanation of ambient helium.
Miles simply transcended that by going for correlation across many
cells and many measurements, it was brilliantly done.
"Not even weak evidence" is an objective conclusion from this
evidence? Well, for someone who can't understand "correlation,"
everything is weak. It's a weakness of the mind.
