Part 2B On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>wrote:
> But, this is the point: Storm's analysis was recently accepted under peer review. Storms' analysis is a review of conference proceedings. Big deal. > There is no contrary analysis in the literature. There is no confirming experiment in peer-review yet. And Miles' results have been challenged. Only people with a preconceived idea will waste time analyzing a single, 15-year old, controversial experiment, before it has been reproduced under peer-review. > There are no contrary experiments. None published, anyway. Also no confirming experiment published under peer-review. > Cude will imply that Gozzi is contrary. Gozzi failed to confirm. >> 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, […] > 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. No. He says the results are consistent with it, but don't prove it. That's not a confirmation, any more than a falling rock, also consistent with Miles, is a confirmation. > 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: > [yada, yada, yada, … 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… yada, yada yada ] > This is far, far stronger than Cude implies. Cude cannot be trusted, at all. Gozzi, in the all the yadas tries hard to paint a favorable picture of his results, probably to cover his ass, to justify all the time he has wasted on it. But his admission is unmistakeable, even in context. The evidence is not definitive. Normally, if a scientist fails to confirm something he is convinced of, and that he believes has already been demonstrated, then he would improve the experiment, and get *definite* confirmation. This is especially true if the something is revolutionary, Nobel prize worthy, and has potential to save the planet. In fact, it would be unforgivable not to keep trying under these circumstances. So, what did Gozzi do in cold fusion after that paper? Nothing, as far as I can see. He seems to have abandoned the field, except for maybe a review paper in a collection of CF papers. That doesn't lend a lot of confidence to all the context he provided. >> 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. > […] 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. Second-order review? Citation lends some credibility, sure, but no, it is not the same as peer-review. I'm sure granting committees would not allow you to list cited conference proceedings in the peer-reviewed publications sectionof your application. The referees of a review do not referee the source material. If they did, it would be like refereeing dozens of papers; no one would accept the work. In fact, reviews are treated with less rigor than original papers, not more, so none of the cited work could possibly be subject to significant critique. In particular, the referee of a review cannot ask for revision, or additional measurements in the source material. But this discussion is silly anyway. Everyone knows that a peer-reviewed publication is better than a conference proceeding. And heat/helium is a pivotal experiment in cold fusion. So why would people not submit their work to a credible journal? Or if they did, why was it not published. In this experiment especially, the absence of peer-reviewed publication robs the results of any credibility. >> 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. I disagree. See above. > Let Cude submit a critique, if he thinks he can cut the mustard. Nah. What's the point. The world doesn't believe in cold fusion, except for the believers, and they are lost. For me this is sport. > I do know that people better qualified than him have been trying, and they aren't making it. People? I know Shanahan's rebuttal to to a rebuttal to a rebuttal was rejected, but journals are not blogs, and bickering does not elevated their status. Are there other rejections to justify the plural. There are certainly a lot of rejections of CF papers, the most recent visible one being the rejection of an entire proceedings by the APS. > 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. By my count last December, from Britz's CF bibliography, since 2004, there have been maybe 20 - 25 peer-reviewed papers reasonably closely related to the subject (excluding reviews, comments, and papers on hydrinos). Of those, 5 can be considered negative, and maybe 9 are theory papers. I identified 9 experimental claims of positive results in 6 years, or less than 2 per year. And of those, 5 are from the Mosier-Boss group on dubious claim of tracks in CR-39, and two or three are on sub-watt level gas-loading. So I'd say there are fewer positive, experimental, primary papers than reviews. That's a sign of a dying field. Those reviews? Obituaries! > There are no negative reviews. People don't write reviews of dying fields. What would be the point? > 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. Which journals? NW, with an impact factor of 2 and change? I'm sure they're sweating. > Surely if a negative review can be written, of all this research and review that is appearing under peer review, it would be! Why? The believers have demonstrated stubborn resistance to reason. And the vast majority of mainstream science already ignores it. Pouring salt on the wounds of CF advocates would be seen as not only a waste of time, but unnecessarily impolite. > whereas correlation between otherwise independent variables is the strongest possible indication of common cause. It can cut through enormous amounts of noise. But can't get published under peer-review. > 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. Storms was selective in his calculation of a correlation. > 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. Right. Cherry-picking. > But that's not the point: the point is that heat and helium are well-correlated. Disagree. Miles has the only peer-reviewed data claiming a quantitative correlation, and the correlation numbers vary by factors of 10. That's not well correlated. Gozzi did not observe definitive correlation. And McKubre couldn't get his results published. > But the existing results are quite good enough to be very, very confident about common cause, You mean they meet your standard. The DOE panel, and most of the rest of the world are very very confident there is nothing to see here. >> 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. Sad.
