At 06:01 PM 9/9/2012, Jouni Valkonen wrote:
What comes to cold fusion, there are no
established scientific point of view, therefore
it is impossible to write a good Wikipedia
article on cold fusion that would satisfy everyone.
Actually, there is. The claim Jouni makes is one
that misunderstands both the current science and
Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not based on truth.
Editors actually are not supposed to work from
conclusions on truth, including "scientific
truth." That would be SPOV, Scientific Point of
View, and it misunderstands both science and Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is an organized compilation of what is
available in Reliable Source, at least in theory.
"Reliable" does not mean "True." It refers to a
principle that Wikipedia developed for what
knowledge to include in a publicly-edited
encyclopedia. If Wikipedia had structure that
would actually facilitate enforcement of the
guidelines (and/or ordered improvement of them),
in the presence of factional controversies where
the ad-hoc methods Wikipedia uses for fast
decision-making, the principles would be brilliant.
The principle is that independent publishers must
make notability decisions. If no independent
publisher will publish something on a topic, it
is probably not "notable." Further, independent
publishers have reputations to maintain, so they may emply fact-checkers, etc.
For science articles, the "gold standard" is
peer-reviewed and academic publications.
But that's not "truth." It is what publishers have published, that's all.
In theory, if it has been published in a Reliable
Source, it has a place in Wikipedia. *How* it is
placed is another story. Is it presented simply
as fact? Or is it attributed? Those are editorial
decisions, and are ideally made by consensus.
Where this breaks down is where factions
coordinate, knee-jerk, and neglect policy and the
seeking of consensus in favor of their point of
view. The pseudoskeptical faction was famous for
this. It's lost many times, when the matter was
successfully brought to the community's
attention. But, as well, they were able to
successfully frame efforts of people like
Pcarbonn as "Point of View Pushing," it was
purely political, and Pcarbonn was banned without
ever having violated any policy.
Cold fusion advocates have failed to market
their ideas. Instead many cold fusion advocates
(such as Krivit) took seriously that there would
be evidence for Ni>Cu transmutations, although
scientific evidence was mostly zero. If
Krivit-level experts are doing such mistakes in
basic science, how it is possible that this
field could be taken seriously by Wikipedia?
Because it is covered in Reliable Source, though
not scientific RS. It's News. Rossi and his work
are "notable." Jouni imagines that for something
to be in Wikipedia, it must be "scientifically"
established. Nope. Most content in Wikipedia is entirely non-scientific.
Tons of content also does not meet RS standards,
but that's policy violation. Basically, your
random Wikipedia article probably violates policy
somewhere. It's easy to find stuff to improve,
but it's work to actually improve it. For most
articles, it can take a long time for someone
with both the inclination and skill to show up and fix it.
Krivit is not ordinarily considered RS, though
that is debatable. What "field"? What is being
considered is an article on Rossi's E-Cat. That
is perhaps too narrow a topic, but all this is
pretty new. The E-Cat is notable, and so is Rossi.
Ni->Cu transmutation is merely a theory that has
been mentioned, by Rossi. There is no scientific
evidence for it that I know of, nothing
confirmed. Basically, as to what is publicly
known -- which is what Wikipedia must depend on
-- we have no clue. We don't even know if these
devices work for generating heat, there are only
unverified claims. People witnessed managed
demonstrations, which don't mean anything
scientifically. They do mean something, though,
for news. Where the demonstrations are reported
in RS, they are notable. Hence this information belongs in Wikipedia.
And now to something completely different.
Although Abd is saying that there is good
correlation with helium and excess heat, somehow
I find it very odd, that if correlation is good,
why it is so darn difficult to replicate?
It isn't difficult to replicate heat/helium, if
you can set up the effect. Setting up the effect,
specifically the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect, is
notoriously difficult. That's what people who have done it say.
The correlation is so difficult to understand
that even Krivit cannot understand it.
Therefore I would say that Abd is exaggerating
the quality of evidence. Quantity does not replace quality.
Krivit is not a scientist and has demonstrated
that he doesn't understand certain scientific
issues. He's a reporter, specifically an
investigative reporter, and he's done a lot of
work to bring out certain things.
The correlation is not at all difficult to
understand. First of all, you need to understand
the scientific usage of correlation. Correlation
is one thing, and the *value* of the correlation
is another. What is controversial is the *value.*
Storms gives 25 +/-5 MeV/He-4. Krivit thinks that
this is biased by a belief that the reaction is
"d-d fusion," but heat/helium correlation must
first be understood as a general principle, that
the heat produced is proportional to the helium
produced. More heat, more helium. No heat, no helium.
Measuring helium accurately is quite difficult,
it's far easier to measure heat accurately.
Helium can hide out in the cathode, it can leak
out of the cell. Helium is not soluble in
palladium, though it appears that it can be
"pushed" to the surface by deuterium flushing.
The heat/helium work, compared to what could
possibly be done, is primitive. Researchers in
the field are not highly motivated to do more
heat/helium work because they really already know
most of what they need to know about it. Knowing
the amount of helium does not help them to
accomplish what is commercially more important:
making the reaction stronger and more reliable.
Jouni, what is known about heat/helium
establishes that the ash for PdD work is helium.
When Miles announced his heat/helium findings in
the early 1990s, Huizenga noticed it, and called
it an astounding result. Then he went on to say
that probably it would not be confirmed "because
there were no gamma rays." Huizenga was obviously operating on two assumptions:
1. If helium is produced, the reaction must be
D+D -> He-4. It's a rare branch, normally, so
that's why Huizenga found it an amazing finding.
2. D+D -> He-4 must always produce a gamma ray.
It's required by conservation of momentum.
Neither of this is a scientific fact. They are
both failures of imagination. There are other
possible reactions that could produce He-4 from
deuterium, or, more accurately, reactions that we
do not know are impossible. And there always
could be something we simply don't think of.
The bottom line is that we don't know what is
happening. From the helium evidence, in the FPHE,
deuterium is being converted, *by an unknown
mechanism*, to helium. That will produce a
characteristic energy of 23.8 MeV/He-4.
If helium is not being produced from deuterium,
that all the evidence found (twelve research
groups around the world) is consistent with the
23.8 figure, given experimental conditions, is
highly unlikely to be coincidence. That is why
the peer reviewers at Naturwissenschaften allowed
Storms to claim, right in the abstract, that the
evidence shows that "deuterons" are being
converted to helium. I tried to convince Storms
to write "deuterium," because it is one of the
possibilities that cold fusion is *molecular
fusion,* i.e., 2 D2 -> Be-8 -> 2 He-4, but it
wasn't done that way. (This would be the first
known case of molecular fusion, which might be
taking place through the formation of a
Bose-Einstein Condensate or some kind of
condensation. The electrons are included and
important, because they are part of the mechanism
that would bypass the Coulomb barrier.)
Krivit is pursuing Widom-Larsen theory, which, in
my view, is a highly misleading proposal. It
should be understood that helium is *by far* the
only anomalous product from the FPHE. Tritium is
found, but maybe a million times less. Other
transmutations are found, but, again, at even
lower levels. Neutrons are very rare, and have
not been correlated with heat. W-L theory would
predict a intermediate products that would be at
greater levels than helium. Not found. And Widom
and Larsen not only have not addressed the
serious issues with the theory, they have
actually attacked any questioning of the theory.
I wish that Krivit would do his job on this, and,
in fact, I plan to ask him. It is about time that
the questions be asked and answered.
The helium evidence is strong. It would be better
if the ratio could be measured more accurately,
but it is not far off from 23.8, if it is off at
all. Helium is produced when there is heat, and
if there is no heat, there is no helium. This is
a very clear and powerful result. If one wants to
know more about it, and after reading the Storms
review, which covers the issue well, one might
read Miles and the debate over this.
The position that the results could be due to
leakage from ambient is actually preposterous, it
could not survive peer review at this late date.
If we require that a "scientific point of view"
be an informed one, not merely the opinion of,
say, physicists who have no familiarity at all
with the experimental work, it is clear that the
presence scientific view is that cold fusion is
real and is due to an unknown nuclear reaction.
The name "cold fusion" is here a name for the
FPHE. But the presence of heat at the level
predicted by a deuterium to helium hypothesis is
strong evidence that the reaction is *some kind of deuterium fusion.*
But what about NiH/
I hope that Celani could produce first ever
clear and replicable cold fusion cell that
produces, not quantity, but high quality data.
I have no idea of a reason why Celani's cell
would produce high quality data over PdD
approaches, and the reaction is, almost
certainly, different. We don't expect to see
much, if any, helium from these cells. We don't know what the ash is.
That is what we need. There is needed only one
convincing demonstration, that can be replicated
at independent laboratory, and then the amount
of skeptical scientist is exactly zero.
That's totally naive. There have long been
experimental designs, reproduced in laboratories
around the world, that demonstrate the FPHE, and
experiments that use one of the design approaches
to both demonstrate the effect and measure the
produced helium have been performed by
independent groups, far more than once. By the
normal standards of science, then, this was all
over as soon as Miles was confirmed, which was in the 1990s.
But the physics community, dependent upon large
subsidies for hot fusion research, did not
operate, here, by the normal standards of
science. They, instead, demanded that nature
comply with their expectations, that cold fusion
researchers produce what many observers have said
could take a Manhaattan-scale project. And, of
course, without the project results in hand, they
would oppose any funding. Go suck eggs, chemists. That pie is ours.
Here is the problem. The FPHE takes place under
the extremely complex and sometimes chaotic
conditions at the surface of a palladium cathode
under electrolysis. The electrolysis generates
deuterium which is readily absorbed by the
palladium, and this causes the palladium to
expand and crack. The cracks affect the ability
of the palladium to hold deuterium. Too much
cracking, deuterium loading declines. The FPHE is
know to require a loading of over about 90% or so.
(The early negative replicators did not have this
information and often did not even measure
loading. However, before Pons and Fleischmann, it
was generally considered impossible to get
loading over 70%. This needs to be understood:
the Fleischmann-Pons experiment was *not simple.*)
Pure palladium *did not work.* What worked for
many workers was palladium that had been
conditions by long electrolysis. Storms is
proposing that this causes cracks to form, and
that the reaction takes place in those cracks.
Regardless, it is a *known characteristic* of the
FPHE that cells will show no excess heat for long
periods, then will show it, then will stop
showing it. Under the crack hypothesis, when the
cracks reach a certain common size, the reaction
is enabled. When they become too large, it disappears.
This obviously suggests experimental approaches,
and it may take some years for results to appear.
The physicists have long demanded a simple
experiment that they can just go in and run,
preferably taking no more than a few days. They
want heat on demand. That might *never* be
possible with the FPHE. And that means *nothing*
as far as the science is concerned.
Therefore it is sad that Celani is refusing
independent replication of his cell. How could
we the scientists take him seriously if he is
refusing the independent replication?
It is totally optional whether we accept or
reject Celani's results. If Celani has some trade
secrets involved, he has no obligation to reveal
them. However, if that is so, it means that his
work is not what we'd ordinarily call "science."
Rossi, Defkalion, Brillouin, at this point, are
not "science." We can make no scientific
conclusions from them. We can speculate like
crazy. We can be "convinced" or "skeptical." But
we cannot apply the scientific method, because we
can't run controlled experiments, nor do we have
results from independent workers who have run them.
Rossi actually rejected the idea of controls. He
wrote, more or less, why bother? I already know what will happen. Nothing.
Rossi is not a scientist, at all. He might be an
engineer, but as an engineer I would want to
calibrate my equipment. That is done with controls.
Cold fusion was dogged, from the early days, by
behaviors resulting from the imagined enormous
possible wealth to be gained by developing a
successful approach. This led, from the very
beginning, to withholding of results and
techniques, and it was all compounded by the
decision of the USPTO to consider cold fusion as
being like perpetual motion, impossible, and
therefore to reject any patent application unless
there was a working model. Many ideas are
patented, routinely, without a working model.
Then it becomes possible to attract venture
capital to develop a model, and, with a patent
granted, information can be shared. That's why patents exist.
By shutting down normal patent process, following
a judgment apparently derived from the
conclusions of physicists -- the early negative
replications have been said to have led to the
decision -- the USPTO then caused would-be
developers to rely on trade secrets, they must
develop their product secretly, since it could
take years to bring the product to the point
where a reliable working model could be presented.
It's a huge mess. We cannot rely upon the
commercial developers to break this open. They
might, in fact. If any of them can sell a product
that uses LENR to generate heat, for example,
it's over, because anyone can then verify the
effect. However, we do not yet know the
mechanism! Without knowing the mechanism,
predicting the behavior of systems is quite
difficult. Any developer might get lucky, and find an approach that works.
But it's also, rather obviously, possible that
they will find something that works *for a
while*, then shuts down. Are they going to tell
us that? Of course not! They will need to raise
capital, and disclosing their problems, publicly,
will repress attention. So they pretend to have a
truly great product, and only disclose the
problems to serious investors. Or they don't
disclose them at all, running the risk of fraud charges.
My suggestion to those who would be political
activists in this field, at this time, is to
ignore Rossi et al. If they succeed, they will
need no help to turn the situation around.
Rather, look at the political situations that
have damaged and inhibited cold fusion research.
Both U.S. DoE reviews recommended further
research. Some of that research has been done
(though not with DoE support, which was always
trashed by the physics lobby), but much remains
to be done. For example, nailing down the
heat/helium ratio would be scientifically nifty,
it would indicate -- or rule -- other
simultaneous reactions. There is a lot of work to
be done investigating the known FPHE.
And if you are a legitimate skeptic, say a
physicist who thinks cold fusion is impossible,
surely, if you care about science, you would want
to know the truth. I.e., in the FPHE, is heat
correlated with helium, and at what value?
If cold fusion is real, there is a lot of work to
be done by theoretical physicists to figure out
what is happening. The situation is really funny,
when we step back and look at it. Chemists
discovered an effect that, from their expertise,
they said could not be chemistry. They said that,
from the magnitude of the heat, compared to any
known chemical reaction, it must be nuclear. The
helium evidence confirms "nuclear." The early
skeptics demanded that "nuclear" mean "tritium
and neutrons." But helium is a nuclear product,
if produced de novo. Nuclear reactions that
produce no other major products than helium are
not impossible, they were merely considered quite unlikely.
In any case, some physicists, including at least
one Nobel Prize winner, did attempt to develop a
theory of how cold fusion could work. So far, no
cigar. Most physicists refused to accept the
judgment of the chemists. After all what do
chemists know about nuclear physics?
(Not necessarily much. But Pons and Fleischmann
knew very well that accepted physics predicted no
measurable reaction. They decided to test the
matter anyway. That's called "science." Indeed,
they did not understand what they found. So?)
So, the paradox. Journals often rejected cold
fusion papers because they included no
"explanatory theory." Yet without the
experimental evidence, who is going to develop
explanatory theory? And if the experiments are
chemistry, why expect the experimentalists to
come up with theory. Their job, in fact, is to
carefully measure and report what actually happened.
The field will be transformed when physicists
start to realize that there is a major mystery here.
The FPHE is almost exclusively of scientific
interest. If NiH works, the FPHE is, for purposes
of energy generation, totally obsolete. It takes
expensive materials, it is erratic, chaotic.
However, we know far more about the FPHE than we
do about NiH, at this point. So research into the
FPHE is definitely called for, and should be politically supported.
