Part 2A On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>wrote:
> 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.... How does Huizenga feel about it now after more than 15 years, and no replications that pass peer-review? I'm pretty sure blase would describe it pretty well. > Miles did an extensive series of cells, I think it was 33 in all. Nobody else, to my knowledge, has done that, That's the problem. There are no peer-reviewed replications. But there were peer-reviewed challenges, and there was a peer-reviewed null result (too weak to be definitive). When that happens in science, people normally do better experiments to get replications, to obviate challenges, to get definitive results. In cold fusion, there is nothing that passes peer-review. >> 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, and therefore prone to error. Presumably experiments get better over time, but Gozzi's experiment is less definitive than Miles', and nothing has passed peer review since. > The real meat of this is the correlation, not the correlation value, as long as that value is within range. For a preliminary experiment, like Miles', that's ok, but the value gives the measurement credibility, especially if it's consistent, and there are no material inconsistencies to interfere with this. If Miles' preliminary results were believable, there would be a race among scientists to get associated with the definitive experiment, to publish in Nature, to get the Nobel prize. Instead, crickets. > 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. We really have to trust the experimenters that this was blind, because no one has been able to reproduce his results under peer-review. And because, in spite of these blind measurements, Jones found plenty of reasons to believe the results would have been "so clear" without nuclear reactions. And because, in spite of Miles' results, scientists in the main, including Huizenga, do not believe evidence for nuclear reactions is conclusive. And that includes 17 of 18 members of the DOE panel that examined cold fusion, and to whom Miles' results were available. >> 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. For a preliminary experiment in 1994. He was holding out for replication, which under peer-review has not yet come. > 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, All these problems, yet you have so much confidence... > 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. Such great results, but he didn't see fit to publish them in a credible journal? Odd. It is also odd how these results have been severely criticized for consistency and credibility by a journalist and LENR advocate. That's why peer-review exists. So scientific results are not vulnerable to a lay person's criticism. >>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. That's ridiculous. That's exactly where the money is. The heat-helium correlation, if reproducible, and accurate, and published in credible places, would be very strong evidence for a nuclear reaction. And that's exactly what's needed to get respect from funding agencies -- to get the money. > The results are already convincing, for those who examine the evidence. That's not true, as in, it's a lie. Jones examined the evidence and was not convinced. The DOE panel examined the evidence and were not convinced. You can define "examined the evidence" as "convinced by the evidence" if you want, but that's not what it means. The world is hungry for cheap, clean energy, and scientists are eager to get on board with new, revolutionary science. That was proved in 1989, when the world went gaga for cold fusion. Scientists have seen enough of cold fusion to reject it with confidence, because it doesn't work, not because it contradicts their bias. > 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? Silly. So they don't have to use their own money, obviously. Prove it to the DOE, and you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams. Combine that with the satisfaction of saving the planet, and what more motivation would anyone need? > 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. Ah yes. The conspiracy theory. But, as I said, 1989 proved that the world, including the scientific world is hungry for revolutionary science and clean, abundant energy. In spite of skepticism, every scientist on the planet payed attention, and I suspect most physics and chemistry departments did experiments in the area. There's a reason for the wall of skepticism for cold fusion, just as there is for perpetual motion. Show some good evidence, and you will get attention. And anyway, blaming lack of replication on a want of graduate students is pretty lame. It's been 20 years. Even tenured professors can get something done in that time.
