Talk:Cold fusion

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Only a "few"?

Are you sure that it's only a "few" people who take the position that it's pseudoscience? I've followed this whole thing fairly carefully since its inception (being at the time a semi-hard science-fiction writer who, like my friend Jack Vance and other S.F. writers of my acquaintance, was blown away by the possibilities) and it seems to me that except for a few die-hards, it's long since been pretty much discredited.

But I'll certainly admit that there is a vast difference between being an advocate of a "pseudoscience" and being an advocate of an unpopular position that is somewhat outside the mainstream without being pushed by nuts and fanatics.

So maybe this is just a question of semantics in the CZ article?

My own impression of the article as at least the opening now stands is that there is not enough emphasis on the general rejection of the idea by the mainstream. But I certainly don't want to get into an ideological battle over this....

Cheers! Hayford Peirce 11:28, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

It depends on how you define pseudoscience. I would say this was bad science but not necessarily pseudoscience. Chris Day 14:33, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

That's my own feeling. So that I think it should be rewritten accordingly to say that whereas a few people think it's pseudoscience, most mainstream people simply consider it to be bad science. Hayford Peirce 15:46, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

Let us please not cite "my own feelings" for this sort of thing. Please cite some evidence in support of these claims. It is obvious that many scientists and magazines oppose cold fusion, but on the other hand I have a public opinion poll of scientists in Japan, and I have comments from the DoE panel and from readers at LENR-CANR. Based on this data, I believe that scientists are sharply divided with regard to cold fusion, but there is no overwhelming majority on either side. Based on the Japanese survey and the DoE panel, scientists are about evenly divided.

Let us not put statements into this article which are not supported by objective evidence and sources.

- Jed

Have rewritten the Intro to give a more skeptical view

I'm not an expert in this field, but I remember the initial excitement and the subsequent letdown. The Intro should reflect this actuality.

The more that I reread the initial effort here, the more I see it as a fairly unvarnished point of view that cold fusion actually exists.... Maybe it does -- but almost no reputable scientist believes that it does. Hayford Peirce 15:56, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

You wrote:

but almost no reputable scientist believes that it does.

I have a list of 4,000 reputable scientist who believe that cold fusion is real. Most of them observed it themselves. They are all reputable, or they would not be on my list. They include, for example, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin; two Nobel laureates in physics; the director of BARC (India’s premier nuclear physics laboratory) and later chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission; Bockris, Fleischmann and other authors of the leading textbooks on electrochemistry; several Distinguished Professors and Fellows of the U.S. Navy, the Electrochemical Society, NATO and other prestigious organizations; three editors of major plasma fusion and physics journals, and a retired member of the French Atomic Energy Commission.

Four thousand scientists is not "almost none."

- Jed

And by the way, you can read 500 papers, including papers by all the researchers I listed above, at http://lenr-canr.org/.

I suggest that you review this literature carefully before making statements about the research, or about the researchers themselves.

- Jed

Discussion

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What is the importance of neutrons?

I just cut the following from the background section to try and rework it here:

Nuclear reactions are normally initiated using neutrons or high-energy elemental particles. The process taking place under these conditions is well known and is the basis for the field called nuclear physics.

Reactions involving neutrons can occur because these particles do not have a charge and can pass through the barrier. However, neutrons are not observed to form under conditions that produce the cold fusion reactions and they are not known to exist as free particles in ordinary materials.

Why are neutrons important, especially the first bit relating to fission? The only relevance to fusion I can see is that plasma fusion gives off neutrons whereas cold fusion does not. Above seems to implicate them as being important for the fusion event. Is that true? And if so, it needs to be rewritten to establish why neutrons are significant. If not, then why are we discussing neutrons with respect to fission and the columb barrier? Chris Day 16:23, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I suggest we include the section you deleted, as follows:

Reactions involving neutrons can occur because these particles do not have a charge and can pass through the barrier. However, neutrons are not observed to form under conditions that produce the cold fusion reactions and they are not known to exist as free particles in ordinary materials.

The established theory is that nuclear fusion reactions cannot be initiated without the input of significant energy because the charge barrier between nuclei, called the Coulomb barrier, cannot be overcome any other way. Cold fusion generated widespread publicity since it seemed defy these theoretical considerations and represented a potentially cheap and clean source of energy.

Please do not delete it again without a discussion and careful consideration. As I said, this is not Wikipedia. You don't just clobber paragraphs here. You modify them carefully.

Neutrons are important because they are neutral, and if there were large numbers of free neutrons or other neutral particles such as muons, there would be no argument about cold fusion. But there are not. That's a key reason why cold fusion is so surprising and controversial.

The other reason is that high energy input is not needed, but if you had muons or free neutrons, you would not need it.

This may seem obvious to a scientist but it is not obvious to the general reader.

- Jed

I'd suggest the way it was written was not even obvious to scientists. That was why i brought it to the talk page. It was not a random deletion I was trying to encourage you to discuss it (and above you do clarify what you were trying to explain in that paragraph). Some of your edit summaries are criticising your own work? I think you starting to see attacks where none exist. Chris Day 17:03, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I tweaked it a bit, and added muons. Perhaps that will only make it more confusing to the general reader. Anyway, let us try to explain it to the reader, rather than deleting it. I am confident that physicists on both sides of the debate consider this a major issue.

- Jed

No fanfare?

Jed, you wrote in in the subject for one edit that "There was no fanfare in announcement". I'm not sure what you mean here. How normal is it to have a press conference prior to publication? Pretty rare, I'd suggest. While I agree they probably did not have trumpets, literally, it is unusual to have a press conference to announce a scientific discovery. Fanfare or similar, in that context, is quite apt. Chris Day 16:57, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I meant there was no fanfare at U. Utah. There was a great deal of fanfare elsewhere, but not accompanying the announcement itself. I base this on 3 sources:

1. A video of the announcement on YouTube. It seems quite subdued to me.

2. Mallove's book "Fire from Ice."

3. My conversations with Fleischmann, Pons and others at U. Utah. They were not thrilled to be announcing this. In fact, they dreaded it, and expected the worst. They were forced to make an announcement several years earlier than they planned to. See also Beaudette's book.

In other words, the announcement was subdued because everyone there expected to lose their jobs -- which they soon did. That's what they told Beaudette and I.

- Jed

You should probably be a Topic Informant, as an acquaintance of Pons and Fleishmann. See CZ:Policy on Topic Informants. Anyone got any opinion on this? Also, please sign your comments using the signature button in the toolbar or the "Sign your username" four tilde link in the special characters panel. --Tom Morris 17:33, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Hmmm . . . It says the Topic Informant is one who has "unique and important experience of historical events, CEOs, politicians, judges, inventors, and others who are (or were) close to the subjects written about . . ." I guess I fall in the latter category with regard to cold fusion. I know a lot about it, I have read and edited hundreds of papers and three books, and I been in several labs watching experiments and so on.

But the role of the Topic Informant is unclear to me, at least as it would apply to a technical article. Shouldn't this be based entirely on peer-reviewed papers, and other information that anyone can confirm? That's the usual standard for technical reviews. All of the statements I made can be found in the literature. (I should perhaps add some more footnotes.) Many are in papers available on line at LENR-CANR. All the papers at LENR-CANR came from the libraries at Los Alamos and Georgia Tech. I have 3,000 other papers that I do not have permission to upload, regrettably, but I do quote from them. The point is, you can go to a university library and independently confirm everything I say. (Unless I got it wrong!)

If this were a biography of Martin Fleischmann perhaps you would need a Topic Informant, but I do not see how it would apply this article . . .

Incidents in the history of cold fusion are well documented by the late E. Mallove in his book, and by C. Beaudette in his book. Beaudette has donated his source materials to the special collection on cold fusion at the University of Utah, so you can go there and view the letters and listen to the audiotape interviews. (I spent a week there in the stacks this summer. My idea of a vacation.) The incident I described above is on p. 149 of his book. And the entire book is now available right here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf

One other issue is that I am 100% convinced that cold fusion is a real nuclear effect. I don't know how you want to deal with this. I do not pretend to be undecided or neutral, because I have seen data from thousands of experimental runs, some with very high s/n ratios, which is to say compelling experimental evidence. On thing you will not find is a person who has read many papers and seen lots of data and yet who does not believe that cold fusion exists. Except for one person: Prof. Deiter Britz. Every other electrochemist and nuclear scientist I know who is familiar with the literature is totally convinced, mainly because the ones I know measured the effect themselves, repeatedly. If they did not believe their own instruments and x-ray film, they wouldn't be experimentalists, would they?

I shall now try four tildes.

Jed Rothwell 20:42, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

One thing I think should be clarified in this article is exactly what happened at the march press conference in 1989. Certainly I remember it as being a fanfare with respect to it being widely reported, stop press news in professional journals and popular media. I also remember, could be wrong, the initial reports being positive. It was only later that the more skeptical reports starting coming. What needs to be clarified is who called the press conference and under what circumstances. This seems to be an important part of the cold fusion story. Jed, from your position you seem to be saying that Fleischmann and Pons were forced to give a press conference. i find that very unusual. Who forced them, what is the back story here? Chris Day 21:04, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Certainly it made the cover of Time and all the TV shows talked about it incessantly for a while. Hayford Peirce 21:11, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

This from WP:

The grant proposal was turned over for peer review, and one of the reviewers was Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University. Jones had worked on muon-catalyzed fusion for some time, and had written an article on the topic entitled "Cold nuclear fusion" that had been published in Scientific American in July 1987. Fleischmann and Pons and co-workers met with Jones and co-workers on occasion in Utah to share research and techniques. During this time, Fleischmann and Pons described their experiments as generating considerable "excess energy", in the sense that it could not be explained by chemical reactions alone. They felt that such a discovery could bear significant commercial value and would be entitled to patent protection. Jones, however, was measuring neutron flux, which was not of commercial interest. In order to avoid problems in the future, the teams appeared to agree to simultaneously publish their results, although their accounts of their March 6 meeting differ. In mid-March, both research teams were ready to publish their findings, and Fleischmann and Jones had agreed to meet at an airport on March 24 to send their papers to Nature via FedEx. Fleischmann and Pons, however, broke their apparent agreement, submitting their paper to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry on March 11, and disclosing their work via a press conference on March 23. Jones, upset, faxed in his paper to Nature after the press conference.

Hayford Peirce 21:11, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

You wrote:

One thing I think should be clarified in this article is exactly what happened at the march press conference in 1989. Certainly I remember it as being a fanfare with respect to it being widely reported, stop press news in professional journals and popular media.

. . .Fleischmann and Pons, however, broke their apparent agreement, submitting their paper to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry . . .

I recommend -- I STRONGLY recommend -- that you put that in another article, such as "History of cold fusion." That has nothing to do with the science of cold fusion. It cannot be verified. Frankly, it seems unimportant to me, especially compared to the physics. When you start adding stuff like this to a cold fusion article, it displaces the scientific content. There are countless fight about academic priority in other fields, such as the invention of FM radio, transistors, AIDS, cloning or bubble fusion, but encyclopedia articles do not dwell on these fights.

Jones made various claims, Fleischmann and Pons made other claims. You would have to have a time machine to sort out who did what to whom. There were misunderstandings and miscommunication. I know all three of them well, and I read their correspondence in the U. Utah library special collection. So I have some opinions about who is really at fault. But I think it is best not to let this kind of drama drown out the science. We can look up peer-reviewed papers and learn exactly how someone measured heat or tritium or neutrons, but we cannot measure emotions or academic priority or who betrayed whom, so let's keep the two s-e-p-a-r-a-t-e.

Jed Rothwell 21:26, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Sure, I agree that there might well be a separate article -- BUT, you have to remember that here at CZ we are writing for the general reader, albeit a reasonably well-educated one. I feel absolutely confident in saying that if the general reader comes to the "Cold fusion" article, he/she will want something more than just a scientific article about its specs. He/she will want to have IN ONE ARTICLE at least some of the extraordinary news events connected with it. So at least *some* mention of this stuff has a legitimate place here. Hayford Peirce 22:29, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Hayford Peirce wrote:

"Certainly it made the cover of Time and all the TV shows talked about it incessantly for a while."

Yes. We said this in the first paragraph: "The report of their results was widely publicized amidst worldwide excitement . . ." That's all you need to say here, I think. As I said, move the details to a history article, or you will end up with a confused mess.

The issue that triggered this discussion, in this section, was the assertion that the announcement itself at U. Utah was accompanied by "fanfare." It was not, in my opinion. It sure wasn't meant to be. The principals all told me they were trying to keep a lid on it, although they knew that was impossible.

Jed Rothwell 21:36, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

That press conference was a very significant event in cold fusion despite it not being about the science. If they really did scoop Jones, it is no wonder they were a sheepish at the press conference. But who called the press conference? There may not have been fanfare from the scientists involved but there was from the people that called the press conference. Presumably the university patent office. I still think fanfare is an apt description. How much science makes it to the cover of Time, someone at Utah was pushing it for all it was worth. Chris Day 21:43, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Chris Day wrote:

That press conference was a very significant event in cold fusion despite it not being about the science.

Perhaps it was significant. Although I know of dozens of other events that I consider more significant that are not mentioned here, such as the first 10 replications, or the explosion that almost killed my friend Mizuno. But my point is, the press conference is about the HISTORY of cold fusion -- the human drama, or melodrama if you will. And when people mix that drama together with a technical discussion, it invites dispute and confusion and bad feelings. Believe me, I have read dozens of review articles in English and Japanese where this press conference showed up in the middle of a discussion of neutrons or helium, where it does not belong! That kind of claim cannot be confirmed or disputed by the rules of scientific discourse. Historians and electrochemists have different standards and methods -- both are valuable, but they are different.

Why not start a history article? That solves the problem completely. It keeps this article on a strictly technical, science basis, and puts the history in an article written by the standards of history books. As you say, the history is important. There are lots of books and dozens of boxes of unpublished source material on it at U. Utah. Go for it!

Also, by the way, I don't mean to quibble but the history of cold fusion began in 1927, and the effect was observed in the 1930s and early 1980s, as Fleischmann and others have pointed out. Priority gets harder and harder to establish the closer you look and the more you know. Someone here wrote that it "began spectacularly in 1989" but strictly speaking that is not the case. If you want to make a strictly accurate article, you have to be very careful what you say. You may not want to throw in words like "began spectacularly" without first reading some cold fusion history books, especially Mallove. We can cover the "spectacular" part in another sentence, but if you want to nit-pick (and you can be sure I do -- I am a programmer, after all) then you want to take that out of the first sentence.

Jed Rothwell 22:08, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I don't endorse "began spectacularly". I see no reason why some history cannot be covered in this article, although, i understand that complete coverage requires a more comprehensive treatment. I have not seen Britannica or equivalent version but are you saying they do not cover anything but the science? I still don't see what is controversial about mentioning that there was massive press coverage for this phenomena in 1989. It was almost unprecedented in science. Chris Day 22:27, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Not "began spectacularly" -- can you name me any scientific event since the first news reports of the first Atomic bombs in 1945 or Sputnik in 1957 that received the coverage that this did? If that isn't spectacular, I don't know what the word means. Hayford Peirce 22:33, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I think the point here is that it was not the beginning but a breakthrough. Chris Day 22:36, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Hayford Peirce wrote:

Not "began spectacularly" -- can you name me any scientific event since the first news reports of the first Atomic bombs in 1945 or Sputnik in 1957 . . .

As I mentioned below, HTSC and cloning got as much coverage as cold fusion. But my point is that it began in the 1920s with no coverage at all. Chris Day correctly points out that the 1989 announcement was a breakthrough that brought it to the attention of a much wider audience. But as Mizuno pointed out, any electrochemist knew there was fragmentary evidence for nuclear effects in deuterides.

Jed Rothwell 22:45, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Of course we should have a fairly lengthy and substantial section of the article about the coverage and ensuing public controversy. That is a legitimate and important aspect of the topic. Just as, for example the discovery of how to make stem cells without fetuses, much more recently, is a legitimate and important aspect of that topic (don't expect me to remember what the process is called). And heck...if I remember it as being a big deal, and it happened in science, then it was a big deal, because the closest I come to following science is subscribing to National Geographic and Astronomy, occasionally. --Larry Sanger 22:37, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Larry Sanger wrote:

Of course we should have a fairly lengthy and substantial section of the article about the coverage and ensuing public controversy.

I recommend you think twice about that. Perhaps that is what you do with other topics, but cold fusion is a highly emotional subject to many people, and the history is particularly emotional and disputed.

Of course it is "legitimate and important" but when you mix it in with a technical discussion, all hell breaks loose, and pretty soon people insert "historical notes" into the technical discussion that have no basis in fact and no business in a technical paper. Mention neutrons and suddenly arguments break out over whether Jones discovered them first, or whether Fleischmann measured them incorrectly (no and yes -- Mizuno discovered them before Jones, and probably people in the 1930s did before he did, and Martin definitely measured them wrong, he says). It is a can of worms!

I urge you to limit this article to assertions about physics that can be confirmed or disproved by reading electrochemistry or physics papers. Just touch on the history here, and move the discussion into the next room. Let the historians duke it out there.

Jed Rothwell 22:55, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

OK; I thought about it again. Unfortunately or not, I came up with the same result. We should have a historical section in this article. The fact that there might be abuse does not overrule the fact that the historical aspects do not belong on the page, as they would with any scientific topic. --Larry Sanger 09:22, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

Chris Day wrote:

I see no reason why some history cannot be covered in this article . . . I still don't see what is controversial about mentioning that there was massive press coverage for this phenomena in 1989.

We did mention that! It is right in the first paragraph, the first three sentences. It is the most prominent part of the article, albeit not the most detailed.

What's the problem?

I don't endorse "began spectacularly".

I don't know where that came from. Perhaps we should cut it.

It was almost unprecedented in science.

Not at all. You should have seen the circus surrounding high temperature superconductors and cloning sheep, or landing on Mars. Scientists do this kind of thing all the time. Every time they run a Tokamak they call a press conference, sometimes months before they publish a paper.

Jed Rothwell 22:45, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

For sustained coverage by the mass media over a long period of time, none of them held a candle to cold fusion. Hayford Peirce 23:05, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

That's why i said "almost". Certainly Dolly is up there along side. I don't recall super conductors getting so much press. Obviously scientist are often calling press conferences but that is not the point. Its not about calling the press conference as compared to the amount of coverage one gets after calling the press conference. My only issue was you had a problem with fanfare. I actually think that does accurately describe the reception and probably the intent of the those that called the press conference, even if not the scientists themselves. Chris Day 22:52, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

In retrospect, I guess we could write something along the lines of "much fanfare from the press"? Chris Day 22:56, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Chris Day wrote:

I guess we could write something along the lines of "much fanfare from the press . . ."

Well, why not say what we said? "The report of their results was widely publicized amidst worldwide excitement, briefly raising hopes that a cheap and abundant source of energy had been found." That seems accurate to me. (Except, of course, the hope remains very much alive -- but that's another story.)

"Fanfare" means blowing trumpets loudly to attract attention to an announcement. Actual or figurative trumpets -- I have heard some actual ones in trade shows. It is what the people making the announcement do. I don't mean to quibble, but when other people make a fuss, that's not fanfare, that's wide publicity or excitement.

Jed Rothwell 23:02, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Should be moved

...to cold fusion.

Behave, now, folks. :-) --Larry Sanger 18:16, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Surely you mean Cold fusion? Hayford Peirce 18:54, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Both cold fusion and Cold fusion link to the same page, which is different from Cold Fusion. --Larry Sanger 18:56, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

The deed is done. Hayford Peirce 19:14, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

But what was the net difference in heat caused by your fusing them? Howard C. Berkowitz 19:32, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

When Mr. Klein returned home from a visit to his friend Teitelbaum, in the psychiatric ward, Mrs. Klein bombarded him with questions.

"Poor Teitelbaum," sighed Mr. Klein. "Sick in the head. He rants, he raves, he talks mishegas"

"So how could you even talk to him?"

"I tried to bring him down to earth. I talked of simple, everyday things: the weather; did he need warm clothes; the ten dollars he owes us....

"Aha! Did he remember?"

"That meshuge he isn't," said Klein

"Oedipus schmedipus, as long as a boy loves his mother." Howard C. Berkowitz 19:54, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Jed, please sign your comments correctly

Jed, PLEASE sign your comments by simply writing ~~~~. That will sign your full user name, leave a link to your Talk page and it will also date and time stamp your comments. Thanks, Milton Beychok 20:48, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

What is this reference?

What is "Browne 1989, para. 1." Please provide the name of the journal and author's first initial.

Jed Rothwell 13:53, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

Cancel. The ref. was incorrectly formatted in the text. It now shows up.

Jed Rothwell 14:20, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

How do you point to the same ref. number in two places?

How, how?

Jed Rothwell 16:46, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

For first case use: <ref name="blah blah"> ref details here, cite and links</ref>

For repeat examples use the following short hand notation. <ref name="blah blah"/>

Chris Day 16:54, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

You want history, you got it

Okay, I added some bare-bones history of the aftermath of the Fleischmann and Pons announcement. It isn't pretty. I expect my version will enrage any skeptic, but I do not think a person in my position could be more objective, given the outrageous treatment hundreds of my friends and colleagues have been subjected to, for nigh on 20 years. I know too many people whose careers, marriages and lives have been ruined by this constant drumbeat of "skeptical" accusations in the mass media. This is somewhat like asking a black person to write an objective, cool-headed history of the KKK.

In any case, I am a man More sinn'd against than sinning.

So, go to it, skeptics! Tear it apart. Add in whatever pops into your head. But remember: words have consequences. When you spread rumors over the Internet that Prof. X. has committed fraud, or Prof. Y.'s research is nonsense -- even though you haven't bothered to read it -- you may be causing terrible harm, and ruining people's lives, and preventing the introduction of a discovery that may save hundreds of thousands of lives every week, and prevent global warming. That goes double when you do these things and you happen to be the editor of the Scientific American, who once told me that he has read nothing about cold fusion because reading papers is "not his job," but he is certain it is wrong. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#SciAmSlam

Jed Rothwell 16:44, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

Hi Jed, I think you don't quite have the spirit of CZ:Neutrality Policy mastered. If you can say, "I expect my version will enrage any skeptic," that is as good as declaring that you are unwilling to follow the policy. For that you can be removed from the project. However, I don't at all think that was your intention; I think you just didn't understand. When we speak of neutrality, we don't mean a situation where you tolerate someone else correcting your bias. We mean a situation in which you correct your own bias. If you avowedly aren't capable of writing such prose on a given topic, it is important that you not write about that topic here. But I think that anyone who can honestly recognize and own up to his own bias in this way is a good candidate for a person who can properly balance it out. --Larry Sanger 01:37, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Larry Sanger wrote:

Jed, I think you don't quite have the spirit of CZ:Neutrality Policy mastered. If you can say, "I expect my version will enrage any skeptic," that is as good as declaring that you are unwilling to follow the policy.

No, that is not what I meant. To be frank, I think that Storms and I have bent over backwards to be fair to the skeptics, and that no one familiar with the literature could be more even handed toward them. We describe their point of view here, for example: "the many failures and the serious errors found in the Fleischmann and Pons paper fueled a growing doubt about the original claims. Too many people had spent too much time to get so little."

However, I expect that my description will enrage skeptics because in my opinion they are angry and irrational people prone to rage. They are convinced that everyone associated with cold fusion is a lunatic or a criminal, or someone who believes in UFOs and creationism. That is what they say in the pages of the Washington Post and the New Scientist. That is what they have told me, Fleischmann and many others in person. I am sure they sincerely believe it.

Many skeptics have told me that all that all cold fusion results are invented to scam the government out of research money. (Some have accused me of inventing all the papers LENR-CANR.org.) a person who believes that cannot possibly think that my descriptions of the experiments is accurate or balanced or fair.

Also, many skeptics believe, for example, "so-called excess energy produced is nearly always approximately the experimental error, and repeated experiments with better instrumentation . . ." as David Volk wrote. This is completely incorrect and it is at odds with the experimental literature. But it has often been repeated by the editors of the Scientific American, and others. As I mentioned, the editors told me they have not read a single paper on cold fusion because they are certain it is all nonsense and reading papers is "not their job." So they do not realize that their statements are incorrect. They become very upset when I provide them with accurate, peer-reviewed information and they accuse me of fabricating it. That is what I mean when I say they will be infuriated. I know these people well.

Robert Park also boasts that he has never bothered to read a paper in cold fusion. It is readily apparent that he has not read anything. I told him I think this is a highly unscientific attitude, but he disagrees.

Jed Rothwell 09:42, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

?? Who ever mentioned fraud? Again, you are projecting your expectation onto us. Chris Day 16:57, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

The skeptics have frequently accused cold fusion researchers of fraud in the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New Scientist, Time magazine, the Yomiuri, the Nikkei, and countless other other mainstream media.

I am not "projecting" anything. I am quoting people who oppose cold fusion. I am quite familiar with their accusations.

Jed Rothwell 09:42, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

We have something of a victim mentality developing here. Do you seriously think that those skeptical of cold fusion are somehow equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan? Seriously? The "science is persecuting me!" meme is getting tired quickly: the intelligent design advocates are claiming it, as are many other fields: often subscription to some wackaloon belief can be grounds of "They are persecuting me!" claims when the person doesn't get promotion, tenure or something else they want. I'm doubtful as to whether this kind of thing should be in the article unless we have some references for it. The current reference cited:

Affidavit by Darla J. Mize, Administrative assistant to the Head of Nuclear Engineering, Purdue University, February 2008

does not give me enough information to allow me to follow it up. --Tom Morris 17:14, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

You wrote:

We have something of a victim mentality developing here. Do you seriously think that those skeptical of cold fusion are somehow equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan? Seriously?

Yup, they are. The real KKK seldom hurt anyone -- at least not in the 1930s in New York when my grandfather dealt with them. They were going after Jewish people, not blacks -- there were no black people in Long Island back then. They harassed people, bullied them, threatened their children, vandalized their houses, drove them out their jobs and made their lives miserable until they finally moved away. All of which has happened in spades to the cold fusion researchers.

(My grandfather caught them setting up to burn a cross in the neighbor's front yard, and beat the crap out of them with a baseball bat.)

The "science is persecuting me!" meme is getting tired quickly: the intelligent design advocates are claiming it, as are many other fields

If it is true, it is true. Do you think Schwinger made it up? Anyway, it isn't "science" it is Robert Park and a Congressman and handful of other people who think they should enforce their views by ruining people's lives. I do not think that people who advocate intelligent design should have their lives torn apart either. No one is less inclined to believe intelligent design than I am, but I think ideas should be debated on their merits, rather than having Robert Park falsely accuse people of crimes in the Washington Post. Do you have any idea what happens to someone who is accused of a crime in national media?

Affidavit by Darla J. Mize, Administrative assistant to the Head of Nuclear Engineering, Purdue University, February 2008

does not give me enough information to allow me to follow it up.

The article is hyperlinked. I can put plenty more links in, including to the Congressman.

Jed Rothwell 20:32, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

Rusi Taleyarkhan red herring has no place here

Why is this Rusi Taleyarkhan red herring in the article at all? As the article says, he is NOT involved with cold fusion. So why should he be mentioned except to further an agenda about "persecuted" scientists? If you feel strongly about his case, then why not a separate article about him? In any case, this entire reference to him should be removed. If you can find some *other* case about a cold-fusion scientist who is being persecuted, then please put his/her case into the article. Hayford Peirce 18:05, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

The upshot of the "persecution" of Rusi: "On September 10, 2007, Purdue reported that its internal committee had determined that 'several matters merit further investigation' and that they were re-opening formal proceedings.

"This board judged him guilty of 'research misconduct' for 'falsification of the research record in July, 2008 and on August 27, 2008 he was stripped of his named Arden Bement Jr. Professorship, and forbidden to serve as a major professor for graduate students."

Since he was involved with "bubble fusion" and not "cold fusion", I will remove the reference to him unless you can make a significant case for retaining it. Hayford Peirce 19:10, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

Taleyarkhan and I communicate frequently, and I post news of his travails here:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/News.htm

Everyone thinks he is doing cold fusion, and that is why they have it in for him. You can find dozens of news articles referring to his research as cold fusion. Actually, it is plasma fusion in microscopic domains. It is similar to cold fusion in that the experiment is simple and cheap, compared to a Tokamak.

People who are opposed to new ideas and academic freedom make no distinctions between bubble fusion and cold fusion or anything else they disagree with. I doubt that Park or these others are even aware of the difference. Robert Park hears about it, calls someone at the Post and the next thing the professor knows, there are stories all over town that he cheated on his research, or he used federal funding without permission, or what have you, with a subpoena from Congressman Miller to follow. As Park once told me: "we are going to track down every single one of you people in the federal government and every university, and we are going to see to it that you NEVER work as a scientist again." And the next thing you know, Dr. X is selling computers for a living. That's how they play the game in Washington.

And by the way, you don't need to take my word for any of this. Ask Park. He brags about how many cold fusion kooks and scammers he has "brought down." He once gave that line about "tracking 'em down" in a speech at the APS. The crowd roared! And you can read the Sci. Am. editors letter to me anytime. They don't keep their views secret and neither do I. You can see from the tone of the APS spokesman's article what they think of us.

This is not a conspiracy or anything like that. It is just bad actors in Washington doing what they do -- ruthlessly bullying people to get their way.

Jed Rothwell 20:51, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

But after due consideration I think you are right, and this paragraph should be removed.

Jed Rothwell 08:52, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

experimental errors

This article needs some explanation as to why there are so many expert skeptics. Basically, extraordinary claims are being made so extraordinary data are needed for validation. However, the so-called excess energy produced is nearly always approximately the experimental error, and repeated expertiments with better instrumentation, by the same authors, makes the excess energy diminish or disappear. So, the whole controversy comes down to measuring very small energies derived from the addition/substraction of many energy sources, each of which must be carefully calibrated.

The skeptics are being good scientists asking for solid verification, repeatability of methods in multiple labs, clearer descriptions of the calibration methods used, and so on.

As for fanfare, it was definitely an exciting anouncement. I was a first year grad student when the announcement came out and many chemists were talking about the subject. Why, after nearly 20 years, isn't an energy giant, like BP for example, producing energy with this method? They have the cash and a working method would create great wealth.

As for the reference sited, CANF or whatever it was called, seems a lot like a UFO group's website proving UFO's exist because they can't find an explaination for some observation. It also contains a tutorial which cites possitive results and intentionally fails to mention contradictory results. The fact that the chemists/physicists can't figure out exactly how the energy is produced, after 20 years, much less get the same exact amount of energy being produced with a given set of conditions, suggests that the sloppy science explaination best fits the evidence to date. Considering the difficulty of the electrode production and reproducability, measurements and calibrations, sloppy is really too rough of a phrase for the people doing this research. Pseudoscience is a completely incorrect term.

So far, CF reminds me of teaching quantitative analysis chemistry labs. Many of the students produced excess "pick a chemical name to your liking".

Finally, none of us can prove it does not exist, but we can point out the weak parts, and for this subject, we certainly should. Having said that, I am also wondering this: If the effect is real, is it related to dark matter or dark energy some how? That would be cool! David E. Volk 03:02, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Regarding the lack of explaination of the phenomena for some of the cases with huge excess energy, consider the case of a penny at the top of a large skyscraper. A very small amound of energy, used to slide the penny over the edge, would produce a large amount of kinetic energy, because the system was set up with excess potential energy. The same may be true of the Pd/D (and similar) electrodes, where the difficult-to-produce electrodes may be in a meta-stable, high energy state, (thus hard to produce) which releases the energy under the experimental conditions used. That is why a good mechanistic model must be derived to fit all of the data. David E. Volk 03:23, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

David Volk wrote:

This article needs some explanation as to why there are so many expert skeptics.

I suggest you read the papers and books written by skeptics, and then summarize their views. There are only a handful of peer-reviewed papers by skeptics. Here is the best known one:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

Basically, extraordinary claims are being made so extraordinary data are needed for validation.

That's Sagan's dictum. I disagree. I think that ordinary instruments should be used with textbook methods to confirm the effect, and these confirmations should be published in peer-reviewed journals. That is what has been done.

However, the so-called excess energy produced is nearly always approximately the experimental error, and repeated expertiments with better instrumentation, by the same authors, makes the excess energy diminish or disappear.

That is incorrect. The excess heat (power) has been measured at very high s/n ratios, sometimes hundreds of times above the level of experimental error. The excess energy (integrated power) often exceeds the limits of chemical energy by a factor of 100, and in some cases by a factor of 10,000. In all cases, no trace of chemical fuel or chemical ash has been found even at the milligram level.

Please do not make assertions which are not in evidence in the technical literature.

So, the whole controversy comes down to measuring very small energies derived from the addition/substraction of many energy sources, each of which must be carefully calibrated.

That is completely incorrect. The power (not energy) is very high in many cases ranging from 1 to 100 Watts. This is easy to measure. In many cases there is no input power, such as with gas loading and heat after death.

The skeptics are being good scientists asking for solid verification, repeatability of methods in multiple labs, clearer descriptions of the calibration methods used, and so on.

All of these things have been provided. Repeatability is now roughly 80% for excess heat, and 100% for transmutations and other nuclear effects. The calibration methods and so on have been described in detail by China Lake, SRI, the Italian national nuclear laboratories and other major laboratories involved in this research.

As for fanfare, it was definitely an exciting anouncement.

Yes but it was not meant to be exaggerated or promoted.

As for the reference sited, CANF or whatever it was called, seems a lot like a UFO group's website proving UFO's exist because they can't find an explaination for some observation.

Please note that all the papers LENR-CANR.org, and all the scientific papers referenced in this article are copied from the library at Los Alamos and Georgia Tech, with permission. (The conference proceedings were acquired directly, but they are available at many university libraries.) We have no original information. I trust you do not think that Los Alamos and Georgia Tech are on the level of a UFO group's website.

It also contains a tutorial which cites possitive results and intentionally fails to mention contradictory results.

That is incorrect. Negative results are mentioned, and we have several papers devoted to errors in methodology. The term "contradictory" does not apply to experimental results but only theoretical results and predictions. No doubt some of the experimental results are wrong, but the fact that they appear to contradict one another is not a valid reason to reject them.

The fact that the chemists/physicists can't figure out exactly how the energy is produced, after 20 years, much less get the same exact amount of energy being produced with a given set of conditions, suggests that the sloppy science explaination best fits the evidence to date.

That is incorrect. In many experiments, the calorimetry and mass spectroscopy is the best, and most modern, most precise that has ever been done. The instruments cost between $1 and $20 million and they are constructed by Mitsubishi, ENEA and other expert corporations and national laboratories. These experiments have passed rigorous peer review at Los Alamos and at leading journals of electrochemistry and nuclear physics. Skeptics and critics have not published papers showing significant errors in the instruments or techniques. Furthermore, if we were to apply this logic to other fields, we would dismiss high-temperature superconducting in all other open questions as "sloppy science."

Experts at the NRL point out that similar problems in surface catalysis and materials have required up between $300 and $600 million to solve, in projects such as solid-state radar systems. It seems likely that cold fusion would require this much funding to resolve the outstanding technical questions. Considering how little money has been invested, cold fusion researchers feel that remarkable progress has been made.

Considering the difficulty of the electrode production and reproducability, measurements and calibrations, sloppy is really too rough of a phrase for the people doing this research.

That is true. Millions of dollars have been spent improving cathode fabrication, and rapid progress is being made especially at the ENEA and in Israel.

Jed Rothwell 09:21, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

I wrote:

Please do not make assertions which are not in evidence in the technical literature.

I mean, you can make 'em, but please do not add them to the article! You should not add assertions which are not supported by the the experimental literature. One of the worst problems with this field is that there are thousands of articles on the Internet and in magazines and newspapers about cold fusion with statements which are not in evidence. They are filled with rumors instead of facts. Every assertion must be carefully checked against peer-reviewed sources.

I will grant, it is complicated. Take this sentence:

So, the whole controversy comes down to measuring very small energies derived from the addition/substraction of many energy sources . . .

That is true of some experiments, at some labs. But it is untrue of other experiments where excess heat exceeded 1 W. (That is easy to measure with modern instruments.) And it is ludicrous to say that about heat after death where excess heat exceeded 100 W and there was no input. Therefore the "whole controversy" does not come down to this, but only some results from some labs.

The reasons why these results vary over such a wide range are well understood. For one thing, the cathodes that produced ~100 W were typically 10 to 100 times larger than the ones that produced only a fraction of a watt, and they were run at high temperatures with laser or ultrasound stimulation (which can be turned off once the reaction begins).

To determine whether cold fusion exists or not, I think you should put aside the low signal-to-noise results and consider only the high signal-to-noise ratio results, which I would guess are available from the top 50 to 100 labs.

Many of the low signal-to-noise ratio results are valuable for various reasons, but they are not the most convincing proof that the effect is real.

Jed Rothwell 11:13, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Sources for skeptical points of view

I mentioned that there have only been about a dozen peer-reviewed skeptical papers that attempt to find errors in cold fusion instruments and methodology. As I said, here is the best known one:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

I encourage everyone to read it carefully. I have uploaded two or three other skeptical papers but the other authors have not given me permission.

LENR-CANR.org is the world's largest source of anti-cold fusion papers.

There have also been a few non-peer reviewed books by skeptics such as Huizenga and Park, which I listed in the article, of course. Again, I encourage anyone who is interested in this field to read these books.

There have been thousands of skeptical newspaper & magazine articles, blogs and so on, but they have little or no technical information.

I have read all skeptical books and probably all peer-reviewed papers, in English and Japanese. (I may have missed a few.) I summarized the main points they make, here:

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/293wikipedia.html

You might consider copying some of this content to the article. I think it is unscientific and does not merit inclusion, but you may disagree. As always, I included copious footnotes so you can read original sources if you doubt that I have correctly summarized the skeptic's point of view.

Jed Rothwell 10:01, 17 September 2008 (CDT)