On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>wrote:
> The mainstream started shifting sometime around 2005, What is your evidence for this? The fact that NW published a few papers on CF? In 2000 the J of Electroanal. Chem. stopped publishing (positive) papers on CF. It has not restarted. It has more or less the same impact factor as NW, so that looks like a wash. No mainstream nuclear physics journals publish CF papers, and that is the field that would be most affected. There has been no shift in the mainstream regarding cold fusion at all. The number of papers published is still only a few per year. And most of the experimental papers have been on doubtful, low level neutron detection, or very low power gas-loading experiments. There has been a shift at one relatively minor multidisciplinary journal. Even Josephson calls the journal obscure. > it had never been monolithic, with at least three Nobel laureates in physics supporting the possibility of cold fusion. This is a favorite claim, so let's examine it. Julian Schwinger is the most impressive case. He was a major figure in theoretical physics, and won the Nobel prize in 1965. He was in his 70s when cold fusion hit the scene, by which time he was no longer contributing significantly. He wrote several papers on cold fusion, but they were rejected by Physical Review, and few physicists took him seriously after that. Brian Josephson won the Nobel prize in 1972, at the early age of 33, for work done prior to receiving a PhD. He has advocated cold fusion in various internet forums, and on his web site, but he has not really made any significant contribution to the field himself. The only things listed on Rothwell's database related to CF are some talks dealing apparently with the sociology of the field rather than the science. This is odd, since he was at a productive age in 1989, and had valuable expertise to contribute. If he believed in CF, he must have understood the revolutionary possibilities. How could he have resisted becoming directly involved to save the world, and become one of the select few to win 2 Nobel prizes? Maybe he peaked too early, because there is not much evidence of contributions to physics after he won the Nobel prize. Most of his publications since, and practically the only things he lists on his web site are related to topics like parapsychology and mind-matter unification. To most scientists, it does not add to the credibility of cold fusion to have an endorsement from someone who also endorses telepathy and homeopathy, Nobel prize or not. The third case is presumably Carlo Rubbia. He does not appear in Rothwell's database at all, so I assume it is safe to say he has not published on CF, although he is acknowledged by some CF authors. A google search turns up a few people attributing support for CF to him, but I didn't find any direct quotes. Do you have some? In any case, I don't know how seriously one can take his alleged support for cold fusion, considering he has been actively involved in sustainable energy, but has directed his focus toward concentrated solar energy and nuclear energy using thorium and depleted uranium. So there are no laureates who have actually performed CF experiments, only one who has published on the topic, although the papers were rejected by APS journals, one who is rumored to have said positive things about it, but is actively researching competitive technologies, and one who is an advocate of cold fusion and other paranormal phenomena. That's supposed to get respect for the field, but it doesn't mean anything that virtually all other laureates dismiss the field out of hand, with explicit statements from many of the prominent ones with nuclear expertise, while still contributing to physics: Leon Lederman, Sheldon Glashow, Glenn Seaborg, Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann … > Cude has asserted that "far more researchers would have to be wrong." That is so defective a claim that we might as well call it a lie. […] It's possible that "more researchers" have negative opinions about cold fusion than have positive opinions, Possible? The vast majority of researchers have negative opinions about cold fusion. > but "researchers" in what? In nuclear physics. It doesn't matter how you spin it, nuclear reactions involve nuclear forces and nuclear physics, and the people who know the most about that are nuclear physicists. And they are pretty much unanimous that cold fusion has not been demonstrated. They'd all have to be wrong if CF were real. And so, my statement stands. Call it a lie if it helps you sleep at night, but it's the truth. > Rothwell pointing out that hundreds of researchers would have to be wrong, and by that, he meant that their *experimental results* would have to be wrong, artifact, error, or worse. There is no large body of contrary research in opposition to this, All of nuclear physics experiments are quantitatively consistent with the standard model, and cold fusion is not. I know you think there are theories consistent with standard physics that predict cold fusion, but I'm not buying it, and neither are any theorists worth their salt. Those theories are contrived to avoid obvious radiation even though nature has no problem with radiation, and they predict nothing quantitatively measured. Some try to hide the need for energy by postulating processes that require more energy, but less obviously; others suggest 4-body reactions to avoid the necessary radiation from the far more likely, but still unbelievably unlikely 2-body reactions. None of them explain how nuclear levels of energy get focused on atomic sites with chemical processes. Some are specific to D-Pd, meaning there would have to be another revolutionary theory to explain H-Ni, also radiationless, also marginal, also cockamamie. Multiply the probabilities, and fraud, incompetence, deception, and delusion look more reasonable all the time. So, yes there is a very large body of contrary research. > That is, the "negative replications" confirm the ratio: no heat, no helium. Look up "confirm". The same result would be observed if CF were wrong, so how can it be a confirmation. It may not contradict the ratio, but it doesn't confirm it. The problem is there are no credible results consistent with the ratio. Neither the heat nor the helium results are credible, so neither is the ratio. That's why Storms is forced to use 15 year-old crummy data, and unrefereed conference proceedings for the most definitive experiment in the field. > Cold fusion research long ago moved out of the pseudoscience or pathological science region, In your dreams. You just finished arguing that there was a wall of skepticism that prevents graduate students from working on cold fusion. That would contradict the idea that CF is moving into the mainstream. > by finding experimental conditions that correlated with the effect. For example, with the F-P effect, anomalous heat was correlated with current density, How does that work? Presumably, the correlation with current density is believed to be related to the loading ratio, but that doesn't explain why the excess power drops instantly when the current is turned off in McKubre's work. Heat is claimed in electrolysis experiments in the absence of input power. But in McKubre's celebrated graph, it drops immediately. Surely the deuterium does not instantly diffuse out of the Pd. > Real researchers have moved on, they are no longer looking to prove that the F-P effect is fusion. I don't believe it. They want funding, You said it yourself. They want graduate students. You said it yourself. There is no better way to get funding and legitimize graduate students than to prove that cold fusion is nuclear. Read Storms' review. He starts in the abstract trying to convince people the effect is real. Listen to the press conferences. McKubre starts by saying there is no doubt the heat is real. The whole point of the 60-minutes show was to convince people that the effect was real. And you conceded this point already when you said: "It's obvious that "many scientists" do not "accept" cold fusion. So people write to explain it. " > If Cude wants to see the work, perhaps he'll do it himself? But why should he bother? Indeed. I won't be doing investigations on perpetual motion, spoon-bending, creationism, the Loch Ness monster, or on cold fusion. When people who believe these things are real show some evidence, then I'll pay attention. > Cude has come up with deception after deception, such as claiming that Storms reviewed his own paper for Naturwissenschaften. Where. If I said that, it was unintentional. I would suspect that his being on the editorial board meant that sympathetic reviewers were used. But that's ok. Reviews are generally treated pretty kindly anyway. People who care go to the original sources. > Springer-Verlag, the second largest publisher of scientific journals in the world. The largest is Elsevier, I think, which didn't name Storms, but it's used Steve Krivit for some of their work, such as the Encyclopedia of Electrochemical Power Sources. Cold fusion is accepted by the mainstream, if by "mainstream" we mean the mainstream scientific press. No. We don't. By mainstream, we mean mainstream scientific *journals*. Springer-Verlag and Elsevier will publish what you pay them to publish. They publish on the paranormal, homeopathy, and astrology too. It's the editorial boards that make decisions as to content. NW used to be a premier journal, publishing original research from many of the people who gave us modern physics. When the language of science shifted toward English, NW became less important. Eventually it switched to English, but it is still a minor player. > What is new with Rossi is that we are clearly down to two possibilities: sophisticated and deliberate fraud, or a real and very powerful -- and useful -- effect. I still wouldn't rule out self-deception, but I really don't care. CF has always had 2 possibilities. It's real or it's not. And until credible evidence is presented, I'm betting on not real. > Tea can now be brewed, Well, in the January demo, you can brew tea after 30 minutes of consuming 1250 W of power. I can brew tea in 5 minutes with that power. So, no, there is no evidence you can brew tea with an ecat using anything other than electrical or chemical heat. > The fraud hypothesis only has support, so far, from speculation and inference from claims that Rossi was previously involved in fraud, >From the fact that the data presented so far (not counting the secret experiment) can be explained without nuclear effects. > As to the science, it's all premature, guesswork, scouring sketchy reports, looking for flaws, and, no surprise, flaws and inconsistencies can be found, proving nothing. So far.) The purpose is to show that Rossi has proved nothing so far. Which he hasn't.
