Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 40

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Archive 35

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Archive 38

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wiki quality and update

This article is very biased, and assumes (even mocks) the viablity of cold-fusion. Recently there have been MANY significant advancments and experimental results, even quantum modeling of WHY the results are as they are.

This article is disappointedly neglecting all of that. --Namaste@^? 14:28, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The current article has many mentions of continuing research, including recent ACS-related activity, the 60 Minutes report, the Bushell comments, the Arata demonstration, the Storms book, the Biberian article, a picture about the Mosier-Boss work, and an entire paragraph on the Rossi work. What significant advancements do you think need to be included? Olorinish (talk) 01:10, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Without sources, the claim is unhelpful. If there have been recent advances in cold fusion technology, you have to demonstrate it through reliable sources. Given cold fusion is considered so improbable, and the field so disreputable, they should be very, very good ones. But ultimately it comes down to demonstrating, not asserting, the page is flawed, by citing reliable sources. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:09, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for demonstration. It seems like this guy has quite a story. [1]. Even If all his testimony is "hearsay", his theoretical revelation are quite amazing. peer reviewed and all.--Namaste@^? 02:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Great, please provide those peer reviewed articles and the secondary sources discussing it in a positive manner. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:03, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Esowatch has a very long article on Rossi and his alleged reactor. It seems that proof for Rossis claims is virtually nonexistent. The paragraph should be rewritten to better reflect that. Summand (talk) 19:50, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Our article already states in a perfectly NPOV way: "and there is still uncertainty about the viability of the invention". Don't forget that Esowatch's POV is more towards gathering evidence against Rossi's claim. They treat Rossi's ecat as an scientific experiment and then propose counter claims and proof why it is not a valid scientific experiment. But Rossi is just showing (like in putting up a show) his invention, for him there is no need to scientifically prove anything, he even keeps trade secrets. I really like the Esowatch article. Nevertheless, I think the current wording in our WP-article is to the point to describe the situation. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:17, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

reference flaws

Ref_flaw_1: in the introduction section it says: "A small community of researchers continues to investigate cold fusion,[9][12] claiming to replicate Fleischmann and Pons' results including nuclear reaction byproducts.[13][14] These claims are largely disbelieved in the mainstream scientific community.[15]"

1) The last line claims something that is not supported by the reference offered.
2) the reference of the last line is from 2005, whereas most of the claims are from a later date.

reference [15] is Feder, Toni (January 2005), "Cold Fusion Gets Chilly Encore", Physics Today 58: 31, Bibcode 2005PhT....58a..31F, doi:10.1063/1.1881896

That article is about the DOE report in december 2004. It does not support the line: "These claims are largely disbelieved in the mainstream scientific community."

The last line comments on "these claims" which are the claims referenced by [13] and [14]. where [13] is 'Cold fusion' rebirth? New evidence for existence of controversial energy source from March 23, 2009. and [14] is a whole set of claims: "a b c Broad 1989b, Voss 1999, Platt 1998, Goodstein 1994, Van Noorden 2007, Beaudette 2002, Feder 2005, Hutchinson 2006, Kruglinksi 2006, Adam 2005, Randy 2009"

How can an article from 2005 be used as a reference for a line that comments events from after 2005 ? And the reference does not even support the line.

The whole article is full of such flaws, it's a mess. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Ref_flaw_2: In the section that I renamed to proposed theories I found this reference flaw: Attempts at theoretical justification have either been explicitly rejected by mainstream physicists or lack independent review.[133]. Reference [133] is Schaffer 1999, p. 3, Adam 2005 - ("Extraordinary claims . . . demand extraordinary proof"), Collins & 1993 72-74, Goodstein 1994. The latest of those being Adam from March 2005. Widom-Larsen published their theory one year later "Ultra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces," Eur. Phys. J. C (2006)" in a peer reviewed journal so it doesn't lack independent review. An other proposed theory from Yeong Kim was published in 2007 "Theoretical Interpretation of Anomalous Enhancement of Nuclear Reaction Rates Observed at Low Energies with Metal Targets" in Japanese Journal of Applied Physics 46, 1656-1662 and in 2009 "Theory of Bose-Einstein condensation mechanism for deuteron-induced nuclear reactions in micro/nano-scale metal grains and particles." in Naturwissenschaften, 96, 803-811. Also peer-reviewed. And all of a later date than the provided reference. If no valid reference can be found then that line Attempts at theoretical justification have either been explicitly rejected by mainstream physicists or lack independent review.[133] must be deleted. --POVbrigand (talk) 18:40, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Ref_flaw_3: another one in the section Experiments and reported results / subsection Helium, heavy elements, and neutrons "In response to skepticism about the lack of nuclear products, cold fusion researchers have tried to capture and measure nuclear products correlated with excess heat.[106][107] Considerable attention has been given to measuring 4He production.[14] However, the reported levels are very near to the background, so contamination by trace amounts of helium which are normally present in the air cannot be ruled out. The lack of detection of gamma radiation seen in the fusion of hydrogen or deuterium to 4He has further strengthened the explanation that the helium detections are due to experimental error.[91]"

the last line contains "has further strengthened" and is referenced by a letter from 1999. However reference [14] is the summary paper that Hagelstein wrote on invitation for the 2004 DOE review and contains many, many references to experiments also from a later date than 1999. The same is probably true for references [106] and [107] but I didn't check yet. I didn't review reference [91] completely, but I have doubts it can be used to claim "has further strenghtened". It is wrong to use a reference from 1999 to comment on events after 1999. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:34, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

POVbrigand, I am curious, do you believe the line "These claims are largely disbelieved in the mainstream scientific community." is not accurate? How would you change it? Olorinish (talk) 11:38, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point, Olorinish. If you quote something written in 2005, it presumably describes a situation as of 2005. This is 2011, six years later. Things tend to change, although some things change more slowly than others. Where is a RECENT reliable source still saying that the CF field is largely disbelieved? V (talk) 15:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

@ Olorinish: I am not satisfied when I find references that do not support the line they are supposed to be a reference to. I think "Claims by cold fusion scientists are largely ignored by the mainstream scientific community." is a much better description of the status quo. We should avoid giving the impression that papers from cold fusion scientists are noticed by the mainstream scientist community and then rejected, they are just ingored. Maybe some mainstream scientists will offer a comment to a journalist for a magazine article, but mostly they just repeat the old stuff: no theory -> no observations. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:32, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Olorinish, question back, how can you be satisfied with a line "These claims are largely disbelieved in the mainstream scientific community." in connection with the DOE2004 when some of the reviewers of the DOE2004 thought the evidence for excess heat was compelling. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:45, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Here are recent references that state "exactly zero of the previous claims of successful cold fusion have proven legitimate" [2] and "Among physicists and chemists, cold fusion—nuclear fusion at close to room temperature—enjoys a reputation about on par with creationism." [3].

While Popular Science often qualifies as RS to a fair extent, in this case the writer and/or editors are not as fully informed as they ought to be, on the subject. Do recall, please, that the superior-RS journal "Physics Letters A" had an article in 2009 regarding the replication of an earlier (pressurized deuterium) experiment by Arata. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960109007877 I don't know how many replications or similar experiments are needed for them to be called "legitimate" but so far as I know, all the experiments of this class, which used palladium as the metal lattice for receiving the pressurized gas, have produced anomalous energy. V (talk) 09:22, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

"exactly zero of the previous claims of successful cold fusion have proven legitimate" is stating that cold fusion businesses have not proven legitimate. Claims from entrepreneur: "I have a working machine". Do not confuse that with scientists claiming: "I have evidence for excess heat or tritium production or 4He or neutrons". He who makes "creationism" comparisons should be left out of the discussion, or in this case invalidates as a reference to wikipedia. --POVbrigand (talk) 16:13, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

The mainstream scientists I know follow science news reports very closely, which means that many of them are exposed to recent claims of cold fusion. I would not support a statement that scientists are ignoring cold fusion claims. The fact that very few scientists pursue cold fusion experiments is very significant. Keep in mind that there are immense rewards waiting for any scientist who succeeds in producing cold fusion. About the 2004 DOE report, it seems very possible that the DOE deliberately chose some reviewers that they expected would be sympathetic to cold fusion. Does anyone know who the reviewers were and how they were chosen? Olorinish (talk) 02:37, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

it seems very possible that the DOE deliberately chose some reviewers that they expected would be sympathetic to cold fusion. That argument does not help us at all. You're opening up a whole new issue on the legitimacy of the DOE report. I could start to argue that it seems very possible that the DOE deliberately chose some anti CF reviewers .... The report is the report and we can take what is stated in the report. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:29, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Look you can't have it both ways, you can't support that mainstream scientists are following recent cold fusion news and claims, but none of them has written a rebuttal since 2004. Mainstream scientists were taught to perceive cold fusion as pathological science. Therefore it is fair to assume that mainstream scientists perceive any new claim by cold fusion scientists as "just another claim".

Scientists from the Institut für Atomare Physik und Fachdidaktik, Universiy Berlin, Institute of Physics, University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland , TRIUMF, Vancouver, Canada (Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) write in their conclusion to their peer reviewed paper: "Evidence for a host-material dependence of the n/p branching ratio of low-energy d+d reactions within metallic environments. In: The European Physical Journal A. 27, 2006" :"Our findings also provide a first independent support for the claim in cold fusion that requires a heavily alteration of the d+d reaction channels in contradiction to the results obtained for gas targets. Thus making it, together with the enhanced electron screening in metals [19], more credible although further efforts are necessary. An experiment with more sophisticated particle detection techniques is in progress in order to refine the data."

So in which category do you, Olorinish, file these scientists ? Are they mainstream scientists that found support for cold fusion and publish it in a well known peer reviewed journal. Or have they outed themselves as pro CF scientists and thus surely must have made a mistake in their experimental setup as they all do ? --POVbrigand (talk) 11:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

You are right, POVbrigand; we should take what is in the 2004 DOE report [4] to guide us in editing this article. One line in particular that should guide us is: "The preponderance of the reviewers’ evaluations indicated that Charge Element 2, the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions, is not conclusively demonstrated by the evidence presented."

Charge Element 2 was: "How are the experimental results connected to cold fusion, ie what could be a theory explaining this." The presented theory was not convincing, it could not tie the experimental results to cold fusion. So the conclusion from charge element 2 is more or less "there is no theory". I would like to note that the presented theory proposal only tried to explain D-D fusion as a cause for the experimental results. So the conclusion could also be read as "there is no theory for cold D-D fusion", however what was written was: "low energy nuclear reactions are not conclusively demonstrated", but we'll just have to work with the fact that in 2004 there was no theory that could explain anything of the experiments. I only know of two theory proposals that try to explain low energy nuclear reactions: 1) Widom-Larsen (2006) and 2) Yeoung Kim's Bose-Einstein condensate theory (2009). Those were not the ones that were presented at the DOE 2004. --POVbrigand (talk) 14:57, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

On the topic of why scientists don't write rebuttals, keep in mind that professional scientists are busy people who need to keep grant money coming in. It seems unlikely that someone would improve their grant-earning chances by writing anti-cold-fusion articles, so it is perfectly natural for there to be so few of them.

you still try to have it both ways. If, as you say, mainstream scientists are too busy getting their next project funded, why do you assume they know enough of what published about cold fusion. You making apologies for the mainstream scientists who you assume don't believe in cold fusion claim, are well up to date on the last developments, but fear they'll lose their funding if they publish a rebuttal. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:11, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

About the Huke paper's authors, I would say that that found some very indirect support for cold fusion but have not claimed that they have produced cold fusion. On the topic of whether they made a mistake, it would be relevant to know if they or someone else has followed up on that work in the intervening 5 years, possibly confirming it. Olorinish (talk) 12:20, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course they did not claim to have produced cold fusion. They claim they have evidence that what happens in a metal lattice is very different from what happens in a hot plasma. You think that is very indirect support for cold fusion ? You completely missed point. It postulates that it is very well thinkable that the reaction paths for fusion in a hot plasma do not necessarily happen in a metal lattice. May I remind you that Pd and Cu are metals ? --POVbrigand (talk) 15:11, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

This evidence invalidates some of the rebuttals from 1989. You cannot claim "there is no gamma, so there is no fusion" anymore. It implies that you cannot conclude that it isn't fusion by just comparing it with the branching pathways and ratios and subsequent evidence of known plasma fusion. In the DOE 2004 it states: "Reviewers identified two areas where additional research could address specific issues. One is the investigation of the properties of deuterated metals including possible effects of alloying and dislocations. These studies should take advantage of the modern tools for material characterization. A second area of investigation is the use of state-of-the-art apparatus and techniques to search for fusion events in thin deuterated foils. Several reviewers specifically stated that more experiments similar in nature to those that have been carried out for the past fifteen years are unlikely to advance knowledge in this area." and this study does exactly that. So how can you say it is only very indirect support. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:49, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Olorinish, this was a nice discussion, but we haven't solved the reference flaw that I found. If no valid reference can be found, we'll have to delete that last line. --POVbrigand (talk) 18:46, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Which line? Olorinish (talk) 18:37, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

"These claims are largely disbelieved in the mainstream scientific community." (Ref_flaw_1). The current reference is from 2005, whereas the claims that are supposed to be disbelieved are from 2009. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:25, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Do you know of any evidence that the opinions of mainstream scientists have changed? The Slate and Popular Science articles support that statement to some degree. Can you think of a compromise that we can both support? Maybe something like "These claims have not yet gained acceptance by mainstream scientists." Olorinish (talk) 21:31, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Nobody knows what the mainstream scientists think of cold fusion today, because we don't know how well they are informed on current findings. An indication that cold fusion is getting back to being more accepted could be that APS and ACS introduced cold fusion sessions during their meetings. Also Robert Park seems to be softening up on cold fusion lately. So one might conclude that the mainstream scientists who do know what is going on, are changing their mind or at least their willingness to listen to the claims. The rest of the mainstream scientists are just minding their own field and might as well still think everything is the way it was shortly after Fleischmann-Pons. We have to get that fact across every time we say something about what "the mainstream scientists" believe. "The mainstream scientists ..." is a weak line. The other thing is what the media reports about what they think the mainstream scientists think. Do those journalists conduct a survey to find out, or they just ask some scientists, probably asking those who have no idea what is going on other that what happened once upon a time ? Or, even worse, just blindly copy what was written 25 years ago about what the mainstream scientists think ? So yes we should be very careful and find a compromise. And finally if I would play hardball I could just say the claims were published in a peer reviewed journal and no rebuttals were published so the scientists who read the papers are not objecting. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:36, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that in 2007 Wired wrote an article sympathetic to cold fusion researchers that stated "Despite a backdrop of meager funding and career-killing derision from mainstream scientists and engineers, cold fusion is anything but a dead field of research." [5] Apparently that reporter talked to several cold fusion researchers before writing the article. Olorinish (talk) 12:57, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

maybe we can write something like: "and although most scientists continue to see the claims with scepticism some of the outspoken opponents to cold fusion are recognizing the improved quality of work and refer to it as science. Robert Park, March 27, 2009 --POVbrigand (talk) 20:45, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

That line does reflect Park's article accurately. You neglected to mention that he called cold fusion "cold," that he "doubts" that the cold fusion research discussed at the conference is "important," and that he does not state that the quality of cold fusion work has improved. You might want to be extra careful about accuracy since cold fusion is subject to discretionary sanctions. In any event, is there any significant assertion that cold fusion research is not science? Olorinish (talk) 23:34, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I meant to say "That line does not reflect Park's article accurately." My bad. Olorinish (talk) 12:11, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure you know that there have been claims in the past of it being "pseudoscience" or worse. I think a better label, today anyway, is "blue sky research". (Hmmmm...no Wikipedia article on that topic?) It's research that is seen as having a low probability of paying off, but if it did pay off, the payoff would be huge. V (talk) 07:57, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Olorinish, the Park "article" is just two lines and a title on his blog. He states "These people, at least some of them, look in ever greater detail where others have not bothered to look." I paraphrased that with "improved quality of work" as opposed to earlier rebuttals about "wrong experiment setup" or "misinterpreting measurements". In the context of that sentence "Ever greater detail" can be read as a approval of "the work quality" of some of the people whose papers were presented at the meeting.

Park continues with "They say they find great mysteries, and perhaps they do". I didn't use that bit, but it is clear that Park leaves open the possibility that something is perhaps there as opposed to Park who, in earlier times, would fully disagree with such claims. Next bit "Is it important? I doubt it." ok, maybe we can put that in as well. I think by labelling Park as an "outspoken opponent" I fully acknowledged that Park is not convinced cold fusion is the Holy Grail. The most important bit of the blog entry "But I think it's science" is that Park is crediting some of the people whose papers he saw during the meeting as scientists who did their work properly accoring to scientific method. As opposed to the "fringe science", "junk science" and "pseudoscience" labelling of the past. What interpretation do you yourself make from Park using the phrase "It's still cold" in the title of his blog ? I do not think that anyone can impose "discretionary sanctions" upon me for the way I current work here. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:50, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Cold Fusion is not listed here. And I noticed you probably wanted to say: "That line doesn't reflect Park's article accurately." instead you said: "That line does reflect Park's article accurately." --POVbrigand (talk) 10:06, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "It's still cold" means that cold fusion is not a field with a large amount of interest; in contrast with being a hot field does have a large amount of interest.

The cold fusion sanctions are mentioned on that page as part of the Abd-William M. Connolley case. Olorinish (talk) 12:37, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I misunderstood the first and second column on the sanction page. "It's still cold" is maybe reflected by "although most scientists continue to see the claims with scepticism" which was also part of my proposal. So how would you put in the "It's still cold" and "Is it important? I doubt it." and still make a nice line ? --POVbrigand (talk) 14:32, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I think the final sentence in the introduction of the current article is already nice. Olorinish (talk) 23:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

My impression is that during this whole discussion you already had your mind made up from the start ! As the current line is not supported by a valid reference, we'll have to delete it. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:46, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Surely there are lots of sources supporting that sentence. I added a couple, and you can find more at User:Enric_Naval/pathological_science. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:15, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi Enric, you didn't just revert me, but sneaked in another reference at the same time :-) . The Wired article states: "Nonetheless, a network of dedicated cold-fusionists still toils away in a vineyard that looks pretty barren to almost everyone else." Even if it is not a perfect match, it is supportive of the line, so we can keep it for now. The whole Wired article is an "20 years anniversary piece" it only talks of what happened in 1989. Only the very last line suddenly mentions "almost everyone else". I hope we can find even better and preferably more recent references that could replace the one you put in, but for now it's ok. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:49, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

(my bad, I forgot to mention the new refs in my edit summary) Feder 2005 should be usable; I still have to see a reliable source saying that the opinion of most scientists has changed (significantly) since 1989. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:07, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

"most scientists" is a weasel word. We should avoid using this weasel word in our WP-article. We cannot use press articles as reference just because they build claims around this weasel word without providing 1st source evidence. Nobody has performed an opinion poll of all scientists, so nobody can claim anything about what most scientists believe, it is all humbug. It is merely assumed or believed that most scientists believe something. It is a weasel word. This is also true for similar wordings like "mainstream scientific community". We must really be alarmed about NPOV whenever we encounter "most scientists". --POVbrigand (talk) 09:52, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

And for those who still think that "most scientists don't believe cold fusion claims" should have a prominent place in our article. I would like to counter with "for many scientists today, cold fusion is hot again." from CBSnews. And if you can tell me what the split is between "most" and "many" then maybe we can discuss Langmuir's 6th criteria again. Incidentally, as the article is from April 24, 2009 it also beats Park's blog about "it still being cold" by being younger almost a month. --POVbrigand (talk) 17:43, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

See WP:SUBSTANTIATE: "An exception is situations where a phrase such as "Most people think" can be supported by a reliable source". There are multiple sources that directly support the article's wording. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:28, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. The whole line goes: "An exception is situations where a phrase such as "Most people think" can be supported by a reliable source, such as in the reporting of a survey of opinions within the group." You weren't cherry picking, were you ? ;-) A journalist using the phrase "most scientists don't believe" certainly didn't do a survey. I am willing to believe that after 1989 "most scientists didn't believe" and I think articles stating that are probably describing the situation accurately. For instance articles written by cold fusion proponents complaining about "most scientists don't believe our claims". But it is no use citing that multiple times in the article whenever claims are discussed. And certainly not to put innuendo to claims or theory proposals from the last couple of years. As the WP-rule mentions, it should be an exception.

I am not saying we should not use it at all, but I do think that in many cases we can much better use phrases like "controversial topic" or "regarded skeptically". The article doesn't read well if we add "yeah, but most scientists don't believe it, you know" at the end of every second sentence. It is still a weasel word and there is no survey to support it. We should avoid it and tone it down, make it NPOV. It can be easily done without destroying the overall notion that CF is a controversial topic. --POVbrigand (talk) 21:09, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Correction: "most scientists don't believe" is used a few times in the article, but far from every second sentence. In my comment above I exaggerated a bit. --POVbrigand (talk) 22:23, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

"such as" is giving an example of an acceptable source, it's not saying that surveys are the only sources acceptable, that's why I didn't need to quote it. According to sources, one of the main problems with CF (post-1989) is that most scientists don't believe it, not leaving this clear would be a disservice to readers. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:16, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

"such as" is giving an example of a reliable source that can support it and the example given is a survey, which is very reliable. There is a big difference between the reliability of a source like a survey and the reliability of a juicy piece of some journalists that doesn't provide any form of substantiation of the claim. And currently in our WP-article the claim is presented as a fact and substantiated with a reference to a juicy article that itself presents the claim as a fact, but without providing any substantiation.

But I think we are close to an agreeable form. I like your line: "According to sources, one of the main problems with CF (post-1989) is that most scientists don't believe it". We should use a similar construction, so it is not presented as a fact (of an opinion) but as an opinion (of an opinion). Think about: "And although many journalistic sources will gladly use the statement that "most scientists don't believe it" without providing reports of a survey to substantiate that statement, other journalists paint a different picture by stating for instance: "for many scientists today, cold fusion is hot again" ". Maybe that is a bit too much and could be misinterpreted as WP:OR, but is true to the situation and all easy to substantiate by using the known references. --POVbrigand (talk) 08:22, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

If you search the word "most" in User:Enric_Naval/pathological_science, you will see that it's not just an opinion by a journalist. I added more sources to the sentence in the lead.

Adding "one of the main problems with CF (post-1989) is that most scientists don't believe it" is OK, where would we be adding it? (But I'm not OK with presenting that as an opinion. The sources present it as a statement of fact, as a reality that has a direct effect on CF research.) --Enric Naval (talk) 11:59, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I have absolutely no problem with the sentence: "By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead". For me the sore point still is the statement: "These claims are largely disbelieved in the mainstream scientific community." which is commenting ongoing investigations that continue into the present day. It gives the reader the false impression that even the latest claims are being reviewed by most scientists and after careful consideration most scientists come to the conclusion that these claims cannot be believed. If we would use "Nevertheless, cold fusion is still regarded as a controversial field and claims are generally greeted with skeptisism" would sound much better to me. And even better would be (but I won't insist in putting it in the lead) if we add: "However, since a few years, there are indications (for instance the ACS's decision to hold sessions on cold fusion during their meeting) that cold fusion is slowly becoming less alienated from the mainstream scientific world"

The statement: "Subsequent claims have been almost completely ignored by the scientific mainstream, and the popular media has generally followed suit, with a few exceptions." from Labinger JA, Weininger SJ (2005) is a much better description of the situation, even if it is from 2005. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:48, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

It's more negative than that "generally greeted with skepticism". I tried to change the last sentence in the lead so it's more exhaustive.

Yes, that is the idea that I like to see there. Now we just have to use more appropriate wording to express it.

On the ACS and the APS sessions, see the statements of its organizers in Cold_fusion#Conferences. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:56, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Surely they still treat it with skepticism, but at least they pull the field a bit back into the scientific method / community. It's less alienated. --POVbrigand (talk) 14:31, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

What does that have to do with what most scientists believe? They still don't believe that CF is real, they just wanted to give the CF proponents a fair opportunity to present their research. Research that they don't believe in. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:41, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Read ACS's press release on Mosier-Boss. They (ACS) really gave me the impression that they (ACS) no longer believe CF is not real. But we have already resolved Ref_flaw_1. --POVbrigand (talk) 23:04, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Ref_flaw_2

Receiving peer-review when publishing in a journal is not the same as receiving independent review. Widow-Larson has not received review from outside the CF community. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:12, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

That's a far stretch. What is the criteria for independent review ? How can we know that a published paper in a peer reviewed journal is "also" independently reviewed. By whom ? --POVbrigand (talk) 16:20, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Independient review is papers or articles written by researchers outside the CF community. Widom-Larsen is rejected even inside the CF community[6]. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:44, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Let's take an arbitrary paper from the latest issue of Nature in the field of neuroscience:

"Neuronal basis of age-related working memory decline" (Min Wang et al / doi:10.1038/nature10243)

It lacks independent review thus according to your reasoning we can apply "Attempts at theoretical justification have either been explicitly rejected by mainstream physicists or lack independent review.[146]" to the field of neuroscience --POVbrigand (talk) 18:11, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Not the same situation, because you don't have any reliable secondary source that makes those statements about the field of neuroscience. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:38, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Disambig

Now the artist is said to be only about the Fleischmann–Pons set-up. Although the start of the history section is somewhat more general. Perhaps we should spin of the Fleischmann–Pons part to it's own article an keep this as a page about cold fusion in general. // Liftarn (talk) 14:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Gary Taubes

Hi Enric, you rely heavily on Taubes for providing references. Are you aware that he might have painted a tainted picture in his publications ? See for instance Bockris' note and letters to Taubes for the other side of the story. I think his 2007 book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" is not an indication that Taubes has detailed knowledge of calorimetry of cold fusion :-)

See also the wired article (Issue 6.11 Nov 1998) What If Cold Fusion Is Real?. And please note that Bockris was cleared from charges against him

My perception of Taubes' credibility as journalist convinces me to better not by his books on how to lose weight.

And my message also goes out to User:Olorinish for both of you edited the WP-article on Taubes' book without mentioning these rebuttals. Is it POV or ignorance ? --POVbrigand (talk) 13:13, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

About the author, please read Gary Taubes carefully.

About the book, Bad science had glowing reviews, for example the review in Science magazine. There were other reviews in Physics Today [7] and in Nature[8], but they are behind paywalls and I'm not paying $$$ to read a book review. Taube's book is cited as one of the significant books about cold fusion by Bart Simon in Undead Science and by Gyerin in Cultural boundaries of science --Enric Naval (talk) 18:44, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Science praised the book ? How surprising knowing that Science had previously published Taubes' false allegations of fraud of Bockris' work. You're putting your money too much on Taubes' credibility. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:39, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

P.D.: Hum, the point is that the allegations destroyed the credibility of his replication, not that he had actually committed fraud or not. I'll tweak that now. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:45, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

P.D.: Anyways, I always try to source stuff from more than one source. Taubes, Close and Huizenga are the most complete books and are mentioned by all books that mention lists of CF books. Other books get mentioned along them, but they are different books every time. I will go back to those books when I am finished with these three ones. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:08, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Look, Gary Taubes is not a scientists, he is a science writer. He falsely accused Bockris of fraud, got a juicy piece published in Science and wrote a book about it. In our article the book is currently quoted over 20 times ! And only today we added the (hidden) comment that Taubes got it all wrong. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:48, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I started the wikipedia article on the book "Bad Science" by Taubes and linked this article to it because it describes the general cold fusion field; the Bockris episode is only a small part of that book. I am aware of the rebuttals and the result of the university investigation. If I had been emphasizing the Bockris episode I would have mentioned them, but since I wasn't I didn't think it was important enough to describe them. On the topic of whether Taubes got it wrong, I haven't noticed any recent reports of tritium in cold fusion experiments. Can anybody identify any? Olorinish (talk) 01:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't have the book, so I can't tell how small the Bockris part is. What I do know is that the book was based on the Science article. On the topic whether Taubes got it wrong, it's quite simple and we don't need recent tritium reports for that. Taubes accused Bockris of spiking tritium in his results, Bockris was cleared of the charges, thus Taubes got it wrong. Does emphasizing some parts but purposefully not emphasizing others contribute to POV ? --POVbrigand (talk) 10:43, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

(this comittee was in 1994 for a different allegation. Cold fusion had a review panel in 1990, it was not a committee and they explicitly said that it was not a fraud investigation. In my earlier edit I was writing from memory, and, apparently, I was thinking of Rusi_Taleyarkhan when I wrote "fraud investigation". My mistake.)

The book is in chronological order, meaning that Bockris only appears in the last half of the book. Discounting the footnotes and index there are about 440 pages of hard text, and less than 20 pages dedicated to Bockris' role. What makes you think that the book was based on the Science article? --Enric Naval (talk) 15:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I only read the Wired 6.11 article it paints negative picture on Taubes:

"We thought Taubes was genuine at first," Bockris told me recently, speaking in a clipped, precise British accent that he acquired before he moved to the United States in 1953. "We exposed our lab books to him, and told him our results. But then he said to Packham, my grad student, 'I've turned off the tape, now you can tell me - it's a fraud, isn't it? If you confess to me now, I won't be hard on you, you'll be able to pursue your career.'"

(Taubes has been shown Bockris's statement. He prefers not to comment.)

According to Bockris, "A postdoctoral student named Kainthla, and a technician named Velev, both detected tritium and heat after we took Packham off the work because of the controversy. Since then, numerous people have obtained comparable results. In 1994, I counted 140 papers reporting tritium in low-temperature fusion experiments. One of them was by Fritz Will, the president of The Electrochemical Society, who has an impeccable reputation."

Still, Taubes's report in the June 1990 Science magazine clearly suggested that Packham might have added tritium to fake his results. This reassured many people that cold fusion had been bogus all along. Packham received his PhD, but only on condition that all references to cold fusion be removed from the body of his thesis. Today he works for NASA, developing astronaut life-support systems. "I don't know why Gary Taubes wrote what he did," he says. "Certainly I did not add any tritium in my experiment."

John Bockris sighs as he remembers the impact on his own career. He was investigated by his university, which found no evidence of incompetence or fraud. He was investigated again in 1992, and exonerated again; but his ordeal still wasn't over. As he recalls: "The people in the chemistry department created their own ad hoc committee for the investigation of professor Bockris. For 11 months I was under investigation by them, without ever knowing what the investigation was." He had to appeal to the American Association of University Professors before the harassment stopped.

@Olorinish, regarding your question of tritium. The Wired article mentions Fritz Will, the president of The Electrochemical Society, who has an impeccable reputation. Will published several peer reviewed papers on tritium see this publication and the references mentioned there.

@ Enric, regarding what makes me think the book was based on the article. In Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion it states "The book was based on the initial account of the controversy that Taubes wrote for Science." You were editing that article !?

@ Enric, regarding 1994 investigation. I thought it was connected to Taubes' allegations. I will check. --POVbrigand (talk) 18:58, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I checked. It is only somehow connected, but indeed a different allegation. I found this gem: Aggie Alchemy by Brian Wallstin in the Houston Press (April 7th, 1994) tells the whole story. So Bockris was "under attack" twice (or more?) for his work on cold fusion and for all cases the allegations were proven false. --POVbrigand (talk) 08:20, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Please note a) wikipedia articles are not reliable sources and you should take them with a grain of salt, you need to read the sources to verify their content before you can believe it b) just because I added some stuff to an article it doesn't mean that I checked 100% of its content for full accuracy c) that sentence is probably based on the Am. J Phys. review [9], which costs $30 to read d) the book obviously doesn't revolve around Bockris and it's the first time I hear this, I suspect that some meaning from from the review was "lost in translation" when Pncap wrote that sentence. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:49, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

a) I am already aware of that. b) I accept. c)d) I think I also read somewhere regarding the Science article something like: "that Taubes later wrote a book about it", so that confirmed what was in the WP-article for me. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:42, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Taubes writes: "As Bigeleisen told Science, the absence of neutrons suggested to him that the tritium had not been created in the cell but had entered through some type of contamination." and "He had four data points," says Bigeleisen, "to which they drew this hysteresis curve. I said, 'Well, your data do not uniquely define that curve. I could equally well draw the following kind of graph through your data--go flat across at zero, until a point around 6 hours, go straight up with a step function and go flat across again.' At that point Kevin Wolf said, 'Jake, are you implying that someone spiked that sample?' And I said, 'Kevin, you said that. I would never say such a thing.'". Bigeleisen, who also served on the DOE 1989 panel, cannot accept tritium creation, because no neutrons were observed. So he (as we have seen many times) also rejects measurement results because of perceived theoretical impossibilities and searches for other explanations, even if it means fraud allegations. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:35, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

What most mainstream scientists believe

This article in physorg states:

Is this possible? Researchers from Stanford and Purdue University believe it is. But their explanation of how it happens opens the door to yet another mystery.
"It's an effect that no one yet understands," agreed Sturrock. "Theorists are starting to say, 'What's going on?' But that's what the evidence points to. It's a challenge for the physicists..."
"...It would have to be something we don't know about...and that would be even more remarkable"
But there's one rather large question left unanswered.
"Everyone thought it must be due to experimental mistakes, because we're all brought up to believe ..."

Read that article and then explain what you think "most mainstream scientists believe" about the topic of the article. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:51, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an internet forum for discussion of the topic, talk pages are for discussing changes to the articles.... That article is not even about cold fusion. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:43, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I know. First of all thanks for taking the time to read it. I think it is relevant to our cold fusion WP-article. Not from a technical point of view, but from an article / reporting point of view. What strikes me is the resemblance of this article with some cold fusion articles. The only thing that is missing is an introduction stating "in 1989 Fleischmann-Pons ..." and a closing sentence stating "most scientists don't believe it". I don't want to discuss this article, because it has nothing to do with cold fusion (or has it?). I offer it as an example how an unproven, theoretically not possible, experimental finding can get reported in a perfect NPOV way as long as it doesn't have the stigma of being controversial stuck to it. All the journalists that write a piece on CF findings attach the "most scientists ..." line BECAUSE it is cold fusion. I have said before that the "most scientists ..." is a weak line, it's a standard "cover my ass" disclaimer. And in our WP-article that line gets a prominent well defended role to prove how cold fusion is controversial and not true BECAUSE most scientists don't believe it. To understand why most authors add the line "most scientists don't believe it" line to a CF-article one should ask the question: why DIDN'T the author attach the "most scientists don't believe it" line to the linked article. There is nothing I can (or should) do about this situation, because that is how WP works and those WP-rules are generally right and useful. I just want to raise awareness by offering the linked article as comparison. --POVbrigand (talk) 08:22, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

your link doesn't point to the article. you need to find a permalink for it. Kevin Baas^talk 14:34, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

http://www.physorg.com/news201795438.html is the permalink --POVbrigand (talk) 16:11, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

so solar flares, i thought you were refering to a c.f. related article. my bad. Kevin Baas^talk 17:33, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

i see the similiarities to cold fusion. this phenomena would be a relationship that we haven't investigated. to my knowledge nobody has ever examined second-order (e.g. "enzyme"-like) relationships in particle or quantum physics. i don't think we have anywhere the technology to investigate something like that, so it would make sense that any knowledge of that would come to us through astrophysical observations; the universe can afford much more expensive scientific equipment and do experiments on scales that would never make it through congressional review. Kevin Baas^talk 17:38, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

There is absolutely no evidence on what most scientists think about cold fusion, it's all hearsay:" [*CORRECTION 29/05/08: It has been brought to my attention that part of this last sentence appears to be unsubstantiated. After searching through past articles I have to admit that, despite it being written frequently, I can find no factual basis that “most scientists” think cold fusion is bad science (although public scepticism is evidently rife). However, there have been surveys to suggest that scientific opinion is more likely divided. According to a 2004 report by the DOE, which you can read here, ten out of 18 scientists thought that the hitherto results of cold-fusion experiments warranted further investigation.] - John Cartwright - Physics world [10] --84.56.82.178 (talk) 21:56, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Energy Catalyzer is Cold Fusion?

This article says "In January 2011 researchers from the University of Bologna, Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi, claimed to have successfully demonstrated commercially viable cold fusion. The apparatus, built by themselves, is called an Energy Catalyzer."

However, Energy Catalyzer says "Although the patent cites previous works on cold fusion, one statement by Rossi asserted that it is not cold fusion, but rather LENR, Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction."

Although this may seem to be splitting hairs, ideally it would be good if the articles were made more consistent in this respect. If Rossi actually says it's not cold fusion, then it seems this article shouldn't say that they "claimed to have successfully demonstrated commercially viable cold fusion". 86.183.129.83 (talk) 22:13, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Very good point. What is Cold Fusion ?

Depending on who you ask, you might get very different answers:

* The "greater" cold fusion including Pyroelectric fusion, muon catalyzed fusion, bubble fusion (sonofusion)

* Any table top - generally cold - fusion experiment

* The field that opponents label pathological science

* The field that most scientists don't believe in

* The Fleischmann-Pons experiments

* The actual nuclear process of D-D fusion at table top temperatures

* Any nuclear process - not necessarily fusion but maybe beta decay or neutron capture - at table top temperatures

* The sociological phenomenon

* The claimed functioning energy generating apparatuses announced by several entrepreneurs over many years

--POVbrigand (talk) 07:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Wiley publication

About this addition:

In the "Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia" (August 2011) from publishing company Wiley, LENR is presented along with conventional nuclear fission and fusion technologies.

This book is authored by Steven Krivit, the webmaster of CF website www.newenergytimes.com. He is in charge of writing that book since last year or so, and he has included a chapter on CF. Extrapolating that "It is a clear indication that perception of LENR is changing" seems to be original research (OR).

The dangers of OR can be seen when you read the first paragraphs of the actual chapter [11], which talk about the perception of CF. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:59, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I added only the fact:

In the "Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia" (August 2011) from publishing company Wiley, LENR is presented along with conventional nuclear fission and fusion technologies.

How is my comment original research, how ?

It is an observation that in an book titled "Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia" published by a global publishing company (that "specializing in academic publishing and markets its products to professionals and consumers, students and instructors in higher education, and researchers and practitioners in scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly fields.") all current forms of nuclear energy technologies are presented alongside the "pathological science" field on LENR. And you ask me why that is noteworthy ?

Here is the Table of contents(PDF) and here is the index(PDF)

Steve Krivit is a science writer similar to Gary Taubes.

I call for a neutral referee to judge whether my edit is WP:OR. Enric , please arrange that.

Enric and Olorinish combined you violated the WP:3RR !

--POVbrigand (talk) 15:35, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

POVbrigand, in Wikipedia we are allowed hardly any leeway in interpreting source material. Just about everything has to be traceable to a previously published source. So, you can mention that CF stuff is included in that Wiley book, but you can't interpret that inclusion. Now, if some other publication interprets that inclusion the way you did, then you could copy that to Wikipedia, using that other publication as a reference. OK? V (talk) 19:58, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

There is no interpretation is the edit I made:

In the "Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia" (August 2011) from publishing company Wiley, LENR is presented along with conventional nuclear fission and fusion technologies.

I did not edit "It is a clear indication that perception of LENR is changing" into the article, that was just a comment. That would have been WP:OR, I fully agree, but I did not edit that. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:45, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Your edit is asserting that the perception of CF by mainstream has improved. You even say it yourself in one of the edit summaries. You need a source that actually says that the perception has changed. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:43, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Maybe that is your interpretation, because I wrote that in the edit summary. You should not judge my edit on what I write in the edit summary. Maybe it is your interpretation, because Krivit is an editor for the book. Look, we have been discussing a lot on how the mainstream scientists perceive cold fusion. We noticed that we do not have surveys that clearly show one way or the other and that "most scientists" is a weasel word. In the introduction we clearly state in that cold fusion is pathological science and that most scientists ignore it. Why are you so paranoid that this little fact that a book was published that talks about LENR together with regular fission and fusion will have a massive impact of the article ? Maybe the publishers just thought it is hilarious that an obviously misguided science writer adds a few chapters about his crackpot theory in an otherwise completely sane encyclopedia. Maybe the publishers thought it would be just as funny as the cold fusion sessions on the ACS and APS "we give them a chance to say there stuff, so it makes them happy".

My edit is not WP:OR nor WP:POV. It is a simple fact that this book was published. I did not insinuate anything with my edit. If you perceive an assertion because of this fact then that is your POV. --POVbrigand (talk) 22:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

If it's a simple fact with no further significance, then it's just cruft and doesn't belong in the article. If it has significance, then you should show a source that says so. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:25, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't know about cruft, therefore I found your comment a bit disrespectful.--POVbrigand (talk) 08:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

To me that sounds like circular reasoning and a carte blanche to refuse any fact from being edited into the article. The WP rules were not meant for that. We must have a WP:third opinion on this. --POVbrigand (talk) 22:38, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Enric, I did not examine the actual article edits before writing my previous post above. If POVbrigand didn't edit the article to include an interpretation of what the edited text meant, then you have no business using his description of the edit against the edit. Now, if the LOCATION of the edit was inappropriate (perhaps it belongs in a different place in the article), that could be a valid reason to take it out. But you are saying things to the effect that there is no place in the article for the relevant fact that a Major Reliable Source Book Publisher has indeed very recently published a book that includes CF stuff alongside hot-fusion stuff. (I might interpret that as meaning that POVbrigand's edit belongs at the tail end of a section of the article devoted to the history of the overall controversy, but what if there is no such section?) I formally ask you to explain your reasoning! (And, by the way, isn't Krivit on record as saying he thinks something OTHER than fusion is happening in those experiments? IS he especially biased in favor of CF-involving-fusion? But even if not, he is stuck with the label "cold fusion" because that's what everyone on both sides of the controversy calls this category of experimentation!) V (talk) 04:21, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

In order to insert an idea into the article you don't need to explicitly mention it in the text, you can simply add unwarranted sources at certain points in the article in order to imply stuff. Which was exactly what POVbrigand was doing.

The burden of proof is in the editor adding information, the only reason provided by POVbrigand was that "the perception of CF by mainstream has improved", and the source doesn't support it.

There are plenty of books saying negative things about CF that I have not included in neither the text or the bibliography, because they weren't needed to explain the field and its history. Listing positive sources as if they prove wider acceptance is original research and it gives an unrealistic view of the field. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:41, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the burden of proof is upon the editor. However, you seem to be confusing "proof that the Source supports what an edit actually states" and "proof that the Source supports the reason for including the edit. They are two different things, and I am not aware of any Rule in Wikipedia that requires the second sort of proof! V (talk) 17:41, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

In fact, in light of the WP:BB policy, I'd say there cannot be any requirement for that second sort of proof! V (talk) 18:05, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Enric, can you point me to the WP rule that explains "In order to insert an idea into the article you don't need to explicitly mention it in the text, you can simply add unwarranted sources at certain points in the article in order to imply stuff.". I read some rules about adding facts and primary source and secondary source, but I found nothing that compares to your circular reasoning. Thanks --POVbrigand (talk) 12:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Interesting: [12] CBSnews TV "Online With Terry Jeffrey: Editor of Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia Discusses Japan Events". talks to Dr. Jay Lehr (the series editor). I do not know if LENR also gets mentioned. --POVbrigand (talk) 14:48, 3 August 2011 (UTC) misleading title, it has nothing to do with the book. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:24, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

The reason for including the text was "It is a clear indication that perception of LENR is changing. You can use less weight if you like." [13], but this is his original research, unsupported by the Wiley book and unsupported by any secondary source. That this is done by implication instead of explicitly doesn't make it less wrong. That section is not an exhaustive listing of sources, and POVbrigand still has to state a reason for citing Wiley's book, apart from pushing that view.

If POVbrigand wants to use that book as a significant indication of a new perception of the field, then he needs to provide a source that supports that it is indeed a significant indication. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:53, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

What you think of my edit comment is completely irrelevant. The edit comment itself is completely irrelevant. The edit as such was not WP:OR. What is the WP-rule ? Give me a rule ! You know one that goes [[WP:xxx]]. Not one you had to make up yourself to save the day. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:34, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Please see secondary sources, wp:SYNTH and wp:UNDUE. The characterization "is presented along with" would need a secondary source to not be wp:UNDUE and thus wp:SYNTH. Is this a PITA? Yes. Is it necessary? Also yes. It's the only way we know to square "anyone can edit" with "verifiable". LeadSongDog come howl! 20:44, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks LeadSongDog, maybe I am beginning to see the light. If I just write: "LENR is mentioned in the the Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia" or "5 chapters in the Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia are about LENR" would your reservations still count ? --POVbrigand (talk) 21:45, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

If anything, I would simply say that Krivit & Lehr have entitled Part VI of their book "Low Enery Nuclear Reactions". But it is hardly a revelation that Krivit edits on the topic, so one wonders just why or how one more publication brings additional credence or is more worthy of note. Certainly the tone of the sample (chapter 1) does not inspire me with great confidence in the rest of the book. Are there any independent reviewers that tell us the book is reliable? LeadSongDog come howl! 22:53, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

From reading Wikipedia:What_SYNTH_is_not i get this: "If there's something bugging you about an edit, but you're not sure what, why not use SYNTH? After all, everything under the sun can be shoehorned into a broad-enough reading of SYNTH. Well, because it isn't SYNTH. It's shoehorning. To claim SYNTH, you should be able to explain what new claim was made, and what sort of additional research a source would have to do in order to support the claim." and "It's part of a policy: no original research. If a putative SYNTH doesn't constitute original research, then it doesn't constitute SYNTH. The section points out that synthesis can and often does constitute original research. It does not follow that all synthesis constitutes original research." (is there a contradiction in that last line. I am a bit confused now)

So wp:synth cannot follow out of wp:undue. It can only be wp:synth if it is wp:or, which the edit is not. So only wp:undue itself stays as a usable rule for this case. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

LENR vs cold fusion

In section "Ongoing scientific work", after the line "...one of the reasons being to avoid the negative connotations associated with the original name.[64][66]", I want to add something like this line: "However some in the field don't regard it as just an alternative naming of the same field, but make a clear distinction between cold fusion and low energy nuclear reactions to such extend that they believe the reported effects cannot be explained by cold fusion but can be explained with lenr"

Any suggestions ? Help me with the references ? --POVbrigand (talk) 11:00, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

More like, "(...) they believe the reported effects cannot be explained by nuclear fusion but can be explained other types of nuclear reactions happening at lower energies." Simon 2002 might have covered this. Maaaybe Labinger 2005. There should be a mainstream magazine article explaining this. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Enric, this LENR vs. cold fusion thing is important for our article. Joe Zawodny (from NASA) has this presentation from page 11 he talks about LENR, on page 14 he states "LENR is not cold fusion". Currently in our article the explanation for the name LENR is "they use a different name to avoid the negative connotations". But how do we want to present this additional reason in our article ? --POVbrigand (talk) 18:05, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The edit you made reads good and it's well placed. Congrats. I moved the sources back to the sentences they were sourcing, added another reason, and tried to remove some repetition. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:52, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I believe that LENR and in particular the E-Cat is associated with weak interactions rather than cold fusion, probably misunderstood as it is not fission and is reported to happen at relatively low temperatures (see the references on the Energy Catalyzer page) XJonneh (talk) 23:42, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

News articles are not always a reliable source

Randy, Alfred (2009-03-23), "March 23, 1989: Cold Fusion Gets Cold Shoulder", Wired.

What is that news article telling us ? Nothing new ! It is a 20 years "anniversary" piece. It is fully editorial and it is definitely not reporting anything new ! It is just cruft.

Wikipedia:NEWSORG#News_organizations "News sources often contain both reporting content and editorial content. Mainstream news reporting is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact, though even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors. Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces are reliable for attributed statements as to the opinion of the author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact"

Furthermore, because the media themselves plays an important role in cold fusion history, it is the editors responsibility to extra carefully review if the news article is reliable and adds anything new to the article. A mere repetition of old stuff at newer date does not make it new facts, but that is what is implied in our article again and again.

There is a strong indication that the editing of this article is biased towards being very, very careful on excepting supporting CF facts and being totally uncritical with adding anything that somehow advances the anti CF notion.

for clarity: I am not complaning that the article is too biased. I am not worried about being careful when adding CF supporting facts, but I am worried about the almost carte blanche to propagate the other side.

--POVbrigand (talk) 09:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Laser experiments

A cold fusion experiment usually includes:

a metal, such as palladium or nickel, in bulk, thin films or powder;
deuterium and/or hydrogen, in the form of water, gas or plasma; and
an excitation in the form of electricity, magnetism, temperature, pressure, laser beam(s), or of acoustic waves.[105]

In other experiments where laser beams or deuteron beams were used as excitation the reaction rates of D-D fusion were shown to increase. [127] In a paper from similar experiments the researchers conclude that their "findings also provide a first independent support for the claim in cold fusion ..." [128]

There didn't seem to be a problem with including these experiments in earlier versions: "Supporters of cold fusion point, for example, to astrophysics experiments where bombarding metals with multi-keV deuteron beams greatly increases reaction rates via electron screening.[139]"

But I guess that wording matched your POV so perfectly that you didn't notice what it was about. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:40, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Please be civil; I am attempting to bring this article closer to NPOV, not my POV. I don't like being accused of damaging wikipedia.

As I hinted in my edit summary, the objection I have to these sentences is the amount of weight they give to experiments which are not attempting to produce cold fusion. However, it is a close call. Maybe we can figure out a single sentence which can point to both 127 and 128. Olorinish (talk) 12:51, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi Olorinish, if my guess in the last line of my comment above is wrong then let us discuss, I am civil. I am currently thinking very much about the WEIGHT policy and how it is used here for cold fusion. The article cold fusion is about a controversial topic. In light of the article the proponents of cold fusion are not a tiny minority they are a signification minority. The opinion of this significant minority as opposed to the opinion of "most scientists" is the sole reason why this article exists. If we apply the WEIGHT policy again and again in order to delete content ([14] [15] [16]) it will eventually very effectively mute the signification minority. You don't correct weight by deleting content, you correct weight by adding the opposite view. --POVbrigand (talk) 14:00, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that even after my recent minor deletions, the majority of the article text is about activities of cold fusion supporters, even though they are a small minority of working scientists. A very large amount of deletion would be required to mute that minority in this article. To keep the length of the article short enough that it is easy to read, we should emphasize the main points of the different sides, and not load the article up with minor topics, such as the high energy experiments. If, in the future, information gained in those experiments is described as guiding cold fusion experiments toward success, then they would be more relevant for this article. If they don't, that is an indication that maybe they don't belong in the wikipedia article. Keep in mind also that wikipedia is intended as an encylopedia for general users; it is not intended as a collection of information to help the progress of people working in a certain field. Olorinish (talk) 01:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Here is relevant text from NPOV [17]:

"An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and neutral, but still be disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially in relation to recent events that may be in the news. Note that undue weight can be given in several ways, including, but not limited to, depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, and juxtaposition of statements."

we discussed the laser experiments before [18]. I AGF, but we are a bit dragging the discussion. If the scientists say it is relevant to cold fusion, if they say it is "the first independent support", then you cannot judge otherwise. Trying to find reasons like "maybe they made a mistake" or "that's not relevant for cold fusion" or "that's not cold fusion" or "that's adding WEIGHT" or "that's a minor topic" is not ok. I agree that the article should not become a list or collection of the multitude of experiments. I agree that some of your recent deletions (for WEIGHT) were minor, but if they are minor how come they were too much WEIGHT to keep :-) ? --POVbrigand (talk) 08:38, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

If you are deleting for WP:WEIGHT you should not rephrase that to WP:SIZE when being held accountable for your deletion. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:19, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

According to the wikipedia policy above, we as editors are instructed to ensure articles do not give undue weight to any aspects of a subject. Therefore we are required to judge what is relevant and what is not. We are also warned to guard against disproportionate discussion of isolated events, criticisms, and news reports. I am simply saying that the high energy experiments are isolated and should not be given much weight in an article about cold fusion. Olorinish (talk) 12:32, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

You have a high confidence on your ability to judge. Why do you believe they are isolated and not an integral part of research in the field of LENR ? --POVbrigand (talk) 12:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

They seem different from most cold fusion reports, and I can't think of anyone commenting on the importance of those articles or continuing that research. Does anyone know of any? Olorinish (talk) 12:53, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Why don't you just investigate the sources ? Search for laser or ion beam. You are completely ignorant of what is going on in the field and yet you are self confident that you are able to judge. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

You ask why I don't investigate that list of sources. One reason for not doing so is that it is a very long list. Can you identify any that support discussing sources like 127 and 128 above in this article? Olorinish (talk) 02:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

You are evading. I did my best to show you why laser experiments are normal business in the cold fusion field. There is no policy to delete the mentioning. I suggest you drop the stick --POVbrigand (talk) 08:04, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I am curious, what do other people think? Olorinish (talk) 01:57, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Haarv errors, etc.

I noticed the following harv errors in this article -- shortened footnotes with the broken links which should point to a full citation:

Goodstein 2004
Park 2000
Close 1993
Storms 1993

(all fixed except Storms 1993, because I can't find the relevant paper. The year is probably wrong. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC))

I deleted Storms 1993, maybe it was (Fusion Technol., 1993. 23: p. 230. ), but we have enough references there already --POVbrigand (talk) 13:20, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Also, the following entries in the bibliography section don't have any shortened footnotes pointing to them; perhaps these should be in a Further reading section:

Anderson, Mark (August 2007),
Bockris, John (2000)
Brooks, Michael (2008)
Britz, Dieter (2008)
Cartwright, Jon (2009-03-23)
Charles, Dan (1992)
Fleischmann, Martin; Pons, Stanley (1992)
Fleischmann, Martin (2003)
Iwamura, Yasuhiro; Sakano, Mitsuru; Itoh, Takehiko (2002)
Kozima, Hideo (2006)
Krivit, Steven B. (10 April 2008)
Lewenstein, Bruce V. (1992)
McKubre, M.C.H; Crouch-baker, S.; Rocha-filho, R.C.; Smedley, S.I.; Tanzella, F.L.; Passell, T.O.; Santucci, J. (1994),
Park, Robert L (2000) -- that one seems to match one of the harv errors
Seife, Charles (10 December 2004)
Shkedi, Zvi (1996-10-26)
Szpak, S.; Mossier-Boss, P.A. (1996)
Storms, Edmund (2006)
Storms, Edmund (October 2010)

Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:01, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

NASA research deleted with WP:WEIGHT

An approved quotation of Dennis Bushnell from evworld was reverted for WEIGHT.[19]

NASA's research in 1996 verifiable by a Technical Memorandum was deleted for WEIGHT.[20]

The edit comments:

"This edit gives far too much weight to the opinion of one person who has little expertise in nuclear reactions." (emphasis mine)

"This sentence gives too much weight to a minor event, an internal NASA report that is 15 years old."

I object to these reverts: NASA has done research evident by a technical memorandum and a chief scientist states in an interview that it is "THE most interesting and promising..."

The mere fact that NASA states something positive does not mean it can be "censored" (for whatever convenient reason). Had NASA concluded that "we did some tests, but they didn't work so we think it is not worth it" That would surely have been used extensively to put WEIGHT to the notion that "it doesn't work".

I still don't understand where the hordes of "most scientists" are hiding, but certainly not at NASA, or MIT, or SPAWAR, or numerous other research centers.

I am really sorry for the skeptics that "most scientists" have not produced recent evidence that "it doesn't work" and that scientists at renown research center provide evidence that it does. Why can't they stop with producing evidence, it makes the work for skeptical WP-editor so hard.

The opinion that we get force fed is that the "most scientists" have their fingers in their ears while shouting "we're not listening, we're not listening". Based on 18+ year old books from John R. Huizenga, Frank Close and Gary Taubes.

Let's look at experimental evidence from reliable sources which is perfectly verifiable and then discuss were the WEIGHT currently is in this article ! --POVbrigand (talk) 10:52, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

NASA has not endorsed cold fusion. Those are all statements and reports made by individual scientists who work at NASA. I don't see secondary sources saying that they have had a significant effect. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:12, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

What policy are you refering to ? --POVbrigand (talk) 11:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

It could be noted that there is another NASA memorandum (its link was archived perhaps a year or even longer ago) which describes the equivalent of a pressurized-deuterium-gas experiment (if I recall correctly, the date on that memorandum was even before Arata began making claims about this variety of CF experiment). AND that experiment ALSO detected excess heat production. If I recall right, the reason that memorandum was rejected was because NASA memorandums don't qualify as a "reliable source" publication. Tsk, tsk. As if that somehow made the data invalid! V (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I found the original NASA technical memorandum: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900008108_1990008108.pdf

In the process of looking for it, I found a couple other things: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/IPP-Palladium-Fralick.pdf --this one looks more like some sort of Official NASA Release than a mere technical memorandum.

And, http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BiberianJPexcessheatc.pdf --we probably need to find out where this one was originally published, since this link/document-copy is at That Most Hated Site of CF detractors.

You don't see secondary sources because you're not looking hard enough: 2006, Xing Journal of Fusion Energy Volume 25, Numbers 3-4, 175-180, DOI: 10.1007/s10894-006-9023-8 free download available.

And there is no need to provide a second source if I just want to add a fact without adding any interpretation. WP:PRIMARY: "primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation." --POVbrigand (talk) 14:06, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Enric, maybe I was a bit harsh, you were not the one reverting that NASA stuff. But I am a bit agitated regarding the fairytale policy of the need of a secondary source when adding uninterpreted primary sourced facts. --POVbrigand (talk) 14:57, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

what fairy tale? It's in the first paragraph of WP:SECONDARY, which is part of the "No Original Research" policy, I suggest you re-read it: articles should not be based on primary sources, articles should be based on secondary sources and at most tertiary sources, primary sources are only permitted if they are used carefully, and conclusions must come from secondary sources and not from the editor's own interpretation of primary sources.

It is referred to in the Reliable Sources guideline, in the Verifiability policy, in the Biographies of Living People policy and in the Fringe Theories guideline. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:21, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Enric, let's both re-read it :-). Primary sources should be used carefully. We both read that correctly. You must be careful because you cannot make conclusions or interpretation when you use primary sources, because that would be WP:OR unless of course if you can provide a secondary source that makes the same conclusions. --POVbrigand (talk) 17:41, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Man, you are doing it backwards. First you read the best secondary third-party published sources in the subject and then you report what those sources say. You don't first make your own conclusions from primary sources and then fish for any source that supports your conclusions, regardless of it being primary or secondary, regardless of it being actually published or not, regardless of it being written by someone who is a party to the dispute, regardless of its relative weight when compared to the best secondary sources, and regardless of the contradictions with the conclusions that most of the best secondary sources make. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

How I do my thinking, backwards, sideways or any other way is irrelevant. What is going on in my head is irrelevant. The only thing what counts is what I actually add to the article and that is the only thing that we can discuss here. What you are proposing is a very good and decent way to contribute to WP, congratulations ! Unfortunately nothing of what you say is stated in a WP-policy. So what you say above is very valuable as advice, but utterly worthless when it comes to discussing actual content edits. When it comes to discussing edits we look at the WP-policies. And if we look at WP:PRIMARY it states: "primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia". What I am thinking before, during or after an edit is irrelevant. What I had for supper is irrelevant. The WP-policy is relevant and my edit is relevant. The policy states: "primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia". --POVbrigand (talk) 23:31, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Only if used carefully. You are not using them carefully. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:09, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I do not want to insinuate anything, I just want to mention them. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:13, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The main problem is that the alleged "best" secondary sources on the subject are from 1992-1993 (Huizenga, Close, Taubes) and the DOE report from 2004 (which only commented based on the articles that were reviewed). They won't tell you anything about what happened ever since.

The more recent secondary sources are journalistic articles from newspapers or magazines that mostly only comment on one particular publication or event.

In the last years 3 source books have been published:

Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, American Chemical Society, 2008, ISBN 0-8412-6966-1
Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions and New Energy Technologies Sourcebook Volume 2, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 0-8412-2454-4
Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia, Wiley, 2011, ISBN 978-0470894392

But we are are not allowed to use these sourcebooks, even the mentioning of them is WEIGHT.

Things are not the same as they were back in the early 1990's. The "best" secondary sources on the subject today are not the best secondary sources of years past.

Those who complain that I am "doing it backwards" should really meditate on their backward views instead. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:59, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

You still have to address LeadSong's comments in Talk:Cold_fusion#Wiley_publication. And the first two sources are sourcebooks, they are selections of primary papers. And see WP:NPOV#Balance, those sources don't have nowhere near as much prominence as all the sources that you want to contradict. And from the same link, all of them are written by proponents of the field, they are not "secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint.". --Enric Naval (talk) 10:39, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

A thesis for a University Master's degree would satisfy: [21] "Where available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources,", wouldn't it ? --POVbrigand (talk) 12:50, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Master thesis don't rate very high in the scale of source quality.... They might rate even lower than conference papers. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:56, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

But they rate higher than an average news article, because those are mostly opinion of the author. We have no current secondary sources that support the 1992-1993 CF-debunking sources. We have no primary source about the opinion of most scientists [22]. We have flimsy news reports that do nothing more that reiterate the early 1990's [23].

Except for a few pathological deniers and some WP-editors the CF-debunking looks pretty barren to almost everyone else. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:24, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

We have secondary and tertiary sources for the opinion of most scientists, which is enough for wikipedia. If you want to publish your own conclusions from primary sources, wikipedia is not the place for that. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:28, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

No, we do not have secondary sources for the opinion of most scientists. We have secondary sources for the assumptions of the opinion of most scientists. You are selling opinion for fact. That's a big no go in WP. You can't have a secondary source without a primary source. And there is a reliable secondary source admitting there is no primary source. --POVbrigand (talk) 16:45, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

The sources say that this is the opinion of most scientists, not that they are assuming that it is. Your own interpretation of primary sources is original research. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:12, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I repeat myself, but it is not my original research:

"[*CORRECTION 29/05/08: It has been brought to my attention that part of this last sentence appears to be unsubstantiated. After searching through past articles I have to admit that, despite it being written frequently, I can find no factual basis that “most scientists” think cold fusion is bad science (although public scepticism is evidently rife). However, there have been surveys to suggest that scientific opinion is more likely divided. According to a 2004 report by the DOE, which you can read here, ten out of 18 scientists thought that the hitherto results of cold-fusion experiments warranted further investigation.] - Posted by Jon Cartwright on May 23, 2008 3:05 PM - physicsworld.com.

Jon Cartwright is a freelance journalist based in Bristol, UK. He specializes in science and has reported on everything from the smallest breakthroughs in nanotechnology to the greatest questions in cosmology. His work has appeared in The Observer, New Scientist, Nature, Science, Prospect, the Times Higher Education, Venue, Sky at Night, Physics World and Chemistry World. Recent investigations include the militarization of space, the lost science of cold fusion and accountability for AIDS denialists.

I know your reply is: "I'm not listening! La-la-la!", but just bring a factual basis. --POVbrigand (talk) 22:54, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that there are lots of sources that say otherwise. Please see WP:WEIGHT. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:29, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and there are a lot of sources that say other-otherwise. You are blindly accepting the CF-debunking stuff, and blindly but vividely refusing the CF-supporting stuff. May I remind you of your desperate attempt to read something significant out of the word should in this blog : "Blog from Discover magazine A Tentative New Hope for Discredited Cold Fusion "Cold fusion is the dream that won’t die for some nuclear physicists. (...) Work on cold fusion has been relegated to the margins of science since a much-hyped experiment 20 years ago was discredited, but now a new team of researchers says they’ve conducted experiments that should reinstate the field. (...) However, the team didn’t prove conclusively that the neutrons were the product of fusion, and other researchers say the subatomic particles could have been created in some other, unknown nuclear reaction. For now, the debate over cold fusion will continue." --Enric Naval (talk) 12:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC)" here: [24]

The fact that you named your private project "Enric_Naval/pathological science" says it all. You have lost the ability to objectively weigh sources, and assess reliability of sources. WP:COMMON --POVbrigand (talk) 12:35, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

It only has my name because it's hosted in my userspace. The userspace is where editors can dump material that they will use later in articles, so I dumped that list there. The userspace is all pages starting with "/User:name_of_user" or "/User_talk:name_of_user", and they are all automatically assigned the username in the title. It's called "pathological science" because it started as a list of sources that called CF a pathological science. If you have a suggestion for a better name.... Next time, remember to assume good faith when assessing the actions other editors. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:32, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Enric, I assume good faith and I appreciate your work here. I know userspace, I used your "pathological science" naming as an example to make a point. The point is that my impression is that you are happy and uncritical with sources that claim CF is "not believed", but for sources that claim otherwise you are happy to dig through the WP-policies in order to find a reason why that source is not valid to use. There are indeed many secondary sources that claim "most scientists don't believe" as fact, but I think it would have been more correct if they had claimed "it is assumed that most scientists don't believe". The first one is claiming a fact, the second one is claiming an opinion. In a normal text there isn't a big difference, but here in WP too much weight is put in analysis and we go beserk over the smallest indications. I have a rock solid source (Jon Cartwright) admitting it is not a fact, but an opinion. But I only use this whole "most scientists" stuff to get my point across. My point is that I believe that your work in WP will be even more valuable if you manage to step back from "fighting the crackpots" and start listening. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:01, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Just compare the article by Randy Alfred: "March 23, 1989: Cold Fusion Gets Cold Shoulder"[25] with the article from Jon Cartwright: "Cold fusion: The ghost of free energy"[26]. Both were published on 23 Mar 2009, one in Wired magazine the other one in Groundreport. Just compare the quality of journalistic work. --POVbrigand (talk) 12:23, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I want to know why Bettencourt 2009 states that cold fusion is a classical example of pathological science. If it was no longer the case, I would have expected him to say so.

Man.... That 2009 article by Cartwright says again that most scientists dismiss CF, and this time he doesn't include any disclaimer.... --Enric Naval (talk) 19:13, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the label "pathological science" is attached to cold fusion. I have complained that the label is used 5 times in the article where IMHO 2 times would suffice. I have moved one statement that peeved me to another place for other reasons and there is one statement left that still annoys me, but I never intented to delete all mentioning of pathological science from the article. Attaching the label "Pathological science" to a subject is within the eyes of the beholder, maybe it says more about the one using the label, than about the subject being labelled.

I fully agree with Cartwright, he says: "Indeed most mainstream scientists perceive cold fusion today as nothing but the vestiges of a defeated uprising, a cultish band of researchers who have an unyielding belief in their work.". I couldn't have found better words. For me there is a huge difference between the general perception of the credibilty of a field in total, based on the events of 20+ years ago on one side and on the other side the appendix "most scientists don't believe those claims" being attached to any CF-evidence.

The "pathological science" label and the notion that mainstream science is not paying attention does not justify WP-editors to waive through any dimwitted source that utters something anti-CF and dismiss CF-supporting sources solely on the fact that they are supportive.

btw, have you read the quotations of Goodstein and Park ? Goodstein admits that all scientific arguments levelled at [cold fusion] have been rebutted. That is nowhere mentioned in our article. What should we do now ? Should we redefine Goodstein as a CF-supporter now, so that we can happily dismiss his opinion ? --POVbrigand (talk) 20:42, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Rather than "have you read the quotations", it is usually helpful to cite the specific quotation you'd like someone to read. It eliminates confusing guesswork. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:46, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Park quote: he replies that they are the “most interesting” ones he has seen. “I don’t know what’s producing [the pits] and it would be worth following up,” he says. “But there are a lot of more worthwhile things to look into.”

Goodstein quote: “Scaramuzzi believes in it, and I believe in him,” says Goodstein. “So I have a counterweight.” Goodstein speaks guardedly about his own opinions on cold fusion, but admits that all scientific arguments levelled at it have been rebutted (see “Killers” list below). He does not know of anyone whose opinion has changed. “That’s one thing that is characteristic of this field,” he adds. “Everybody’s first opinion is his last opinion. Yes, people should be more aware of it so they can make more accurate judgements. But they’re not.” --POVbrigand (talk) 22:21, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

chemical environment

Enric, your edit "In general, pressure and chemical environment only cause small changes to fusion ratios." reliably sourced by Huizenga is in direct contradiction (on the chemical part) with these guys saying: "So far, nuclear reactions have been regarded as isolated processes. Impact from the environment has been seen as negligible or as a trifling disturbance. However, several measurements show that the environmental influence can be significant on radioactive decays as well as on nuclear reactions. The investigations of the members of this institute yield that solid matter can modify the order, scale, and products of nuclear reactions in a massive manner.".

What shall we do ? --POVbrigand (talk) 19:02, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Tell them to get back to us when their new theory is accepted as a mainstream physics theory?

Well, jokes apart, Huizenga says in page 113 "All previous experimental evidence supports the position that the effect of the chemical environment on nuclear reactions is essentially negligible except for very small effects associated with reactions involving the atomic electrons. Pressure and chemical effects of of very small magnitude have been observed for electron capture and isomeric-transition processes. For example, the half-life of the electron capturing isotope ⁷Be decreases by about 0.6 percent under a pressure of 270,000 atmospheres [Hensley et al., Science 181 1164 (1973)]. These effects, however, are understood quantitatively. Extremely minor changes (...) may result from the Oppenheimer-Phillips process (...). Any major modification, however, of the known branching ratios for the D+D reaction in a metallic lattice environment represents a second miracle." So, I ask, since 1993, has anyone achieved higher changes in nuclear reactions by applying only pressure and changes to chemical environment? Is there any review work covering those experiments? --Enric Naval (talk) 20:10, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if it is schoolbook science yet and I won't be able to find out because I don't have access to a university library. I read it also in a (I think) NASA paper, I will try to find that one. For me it would be sufficient if we present it as "status of research". I would think something like "other more recent experiments suggest that the environment can have a significant impact ...". Even Cartwright 2009 in the very last paragraph "it's impossible" indicates that it has become accepted knowledge that the "theoretical impossibility" has been rebutted and Goodstein backs it up. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Goodstein said in his 1994 article "Is it plausible that the nuclear reaction might be altered radically when it takes place among the atoms in a metal, rather than in a rarefied atmosphere? The answer, quite simply, is no. [because the nucleus are too far from each other and the metallic environment has not enough time to react to those nuclear reactions]" He republished the article in his 2010 book On fact and fraud, changing only the title to "The Cold Fusion Chronicles".

The "It's imposible" section in Cartwright is pure rethoric. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:31, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, there are nuclear reactions (like the chain reaction in a fission bomb), and then there are other nuclear reactions. Consider the data about the sun's Proton-proton cycle (from that article): "In the Sun, deuterium-producing events are rare enough (the vast majority of these events produces a diproton instead) that a complete conversion of its hydrogen would take more than 10^10 (ten billion) years at the prevailing conditions of its core." Fast fusion reactions can only happen between deuterium-deuterium pairs, or between deuterium-tritium pairs (which is one of several reasons why they use lithium-6 deuteride to make H-bombs; a neutron from the fission-trigger chain can kick a tritium out of Li6; other reasons include the fact that LiD is much denser than pure hydrogen (the bomb can be smaller), and that Li6 is stable while tritium is radioactive --a bomb can still work right after long-term storage). Nevertheless, remember muon-catalyzed fusion? Individual fusions happen at a slow rate, even in pure liquid deuterium, but they are still nuclear reactions. So, do not assume that in CF experiments, if fusion actually happens, there must be fast reactions! V (talk) 14:24, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, that section is about how the claimed reaction rate is too high. If F&P were claiming just 1 Watt of power via nuclear reactions, then they were claiming a lot of reactions per second. Even if the Sun's fusion rate is low, the total amount of reactions is high because it contains a lot more hydrogen than a CF cell. The mainstream view is that, if you had a palladium rod big enough to store as much deuterium as the mass of the Sun, you would still only get 1 fusion per year (if I understood it correctly, it's pages 9-10 in Huizenga). --Enric Naval (talk) 15:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Enric. Still, there is the fundamental CF question, "IF fusion is happening, HOW is it happening?" (Does that reference you are using make any mention at all of muon catalysis?) If the CF mechanism involves some other sort of catalysis, then the reaction rate could indeed be as high as claimed. It just depends on how much deuterium is in there, and the quantity of catalyst. For example, there is an "electron catalysis" proposal that incorporates loose "conduction band" electrons, of which there are rather greater numbers than any amount of deuterium likely to have permeated into solid metal. So, per that hypothesis, quite a high fusion reaction rate could be possible, because any catalytic electron that is "too slow" to assist a second reaction can be ignored if other electrons are available to assist that second fusion reaction, see? V (talk) 20:18, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, that was written by a computer programmer while playing with unorthodox ideas. Literally. His "electron catalysis" paper is linked from his "Mad science" page here. He even posted his theory in the "Half baked ideas" page, and promoted it in Rothwell's Cold Fusion Knol, note the weasely "Recently a hypothesis was published" when he had written and self-published that hypothesis himself. Or maybe you are talking about Horace Heffner's theory, which has been published only in his personal website[27] under "Some Fringe Thinking Regarding Cold Fusion", accompanied by other far-fetched hypothesis like partial orbit hypothesis, atomic expansion hypohesis or dual catalyzed electron hypothesis. I don't think this is usable for the article.

Anyone with a bit of knowledge can make an hypothesis. That the hypothesis is valid or even viable is a different thing. Even Nobel Laurate Julian Schwinger made a hypothesis, and it wasn't even backed by any experimental results (again from Huizenga, pages 136-137, 196-198, Schwinger's theory postulated the production of ³He with all gamma rays becoming heat inside the lattice, H+D->³He+energy, with the H coming from contamination of light water in the heavy water, but no ³He was found in any experiment) --Enric Naval (talk) 23:43, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I agree that we can't use the hypothesis I mentioned, because although it was published and it is even available at WikiSource ( http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cold_Fusion_Hypothesis ), its publication didn't qualify as a "reliable source". But I didn't mention it to talk about it, other than to point out that just because somebody claims that nuclear fusion reactions happen at a rate faster than other things can keep up with it, that doesn't mean the person making that claim is correct with respect to all circumstances! If nothing else, the facts about muon-catalyzed fusion should prove that person to be only partially right. V (talk) 02:36, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Only that the person making the claim (Huizenga) does mention muon-catalyzed fusion and does explain why it has an increased rate and does mention that it doesn't really apply to F&P's experiment. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, muon catalysis certainly is not a part of modern CF experiments. The point remains, however, that fusion can be catalyzed. Whether or not some other catalyst exists, associated with a metal lattice, remains to be determined. Which seems doubtful of happening so long as CF detractors continue to insist that nothing of interest --certainly not fusion!-- is happening in those experiments.... V (talk) 18:03, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

No it's not pure rhetoric, but as you are still digging deeper into Huizenga, I can understand that you see it that way. What Goodstein said in the 1994 article about not enough time to react is understandable, but it is not a killer argument why it can't happen. Because that argument doesn't take into consideration that in (or on the edge of) a metal lattice the order, scale, and products of nuclear reactions are modified in a massive manner and that is a killer argument why it _can_ happen. I don't have a good source yet for this part of the story. So until I do you can happily continue copy-pasting Huizenga into the article, because that seems to be the only source you have. Just be aware that it might already be very outdated. --POVbrigand (talk) 12:50, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

The current mainstream view, as reflected in current textbooks, is that it has no effect, for example, General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry, H. Stephen Stoker, Cengage Learning, 2009, page 316.

Chemical reaction	Nuclear reaction
Reaction rates are influenced by temperature, pressure, catalysts, and reactant concentrations.	Reactions rates are independent of temperature, pressure, catalysts, and reactant concentrations.

Per WP:FRINGE#Quotations, claims to the contrary can be included, but they should be attributed properly as a non-mainstream view. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:35, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Tsk, tsk, what "mainstream" are you talking about? Why does Wikipedia have the Muon-catalyzed fusion article, if nuclear reactions can't be affected by a catalyst? Yes, I know full well that this particular catalyst is very special, that most catalysts are chemical compounds and so indeed cannot affect nuclear reactions. Nevertheless, if the table specifies "catalysts" without being precise, then the table is in-essence wrong. --Not to mention that muons aren't the only particle known to be able to catalyze fusion reactions: http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/95253-EpF93N/webviewable/95253.pdf (this catalyst is even more energy-expensive to make than a muon, alas!). V (talk) 02:49, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

(1836 times more massive than electron? Wow, muon is only 207 times more massive....) It's not wrong, it's simplified. The exceptional cases will appear in more specialized books. Huizenga himself cites one case where very high pressures (270,000 atmospheres) will change the fusion rate of a certain reaction by 0.006 orders of magnitude (by 6%). Now, deuterium in palladium only has 10,000-20,000 atmospheres and needs to increase the fusion rate by 50 orders of magnitude (by 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000%) And then, if CF really follows the third pathway, the branching ratios still have to be modified by a few orders of magnitude..... --Enric Naval (talk) 04:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm talking about the table you actually presented. Why did you pick that one, if you knew that fusion can be affected by a catalyst, and if you knew that other tables might be out there that actually specified it? Was it simple laziness/carelessness, or did you want to distort this discussion or the article? Whatever the case, this is why people like me need to speak up, when such faulty data is introduced! V (talk) 18:03, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

It's not faulty, it's simplified for teaching. Muon-catalyzed, pressures on the order of hundreds of thousands of atmospheres, etc, are exceptional cases that appear in more specialized books. Exceptional cases. If one such case applies to CF then we need a source that says so. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:43, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

This is supposed to be an "encyclopedia", and there are many articles here which cover various fine details of their subjects. Simplifications like that, which could allow someone seeing the article for the first time to say, "fusion can't be catalyzed", are not acceptable! In fact, to insist that an article include such data, simplified-to-the-point-of-inaccuracy, is tantamount to POV-pushing, which also is totally unacceptable. V (talk) 22:03, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Our article doesn't say that fusion can't be catalyzed. (because we are using specialized books that mention the muon-catalysis topic in relation with cold fusion, which means that they consider it relevant to this topic, even if it's only to explain why it doesn't apply) --Enric Naval (talk) 22:17, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

It is a critical fact that fusion can be catalyzed at all, so there shouldn't be even a hint in the article that fusion might not be catalyze-able, and this is part of why I so strongly object to that table you brought to this Talk page, worded the way it is, as if you somehow intend to use it in the article. Readers should not be subjected to the opinion that just because no known sort of catalyst can explain CF results, there is nothing else that might also do the trick (and "therefore cold fusion is impossible"). You know full well that despite the lack of mainstream-convincing evidence supporting the claim that fusion happens in CF experiments, a lot of hypotheses were developed, and regardless of whether those hypotheses were formed by Nobel winners or by crackpots, they seem to have in common the notion that fusion can be catalyzed by something other than a muon (or antiproton). The article, of course, has to wait for secondary sources describing either hypotheses or experimental results, but it need not be bound by the views of those who claimed, after the Pons & Fleischmann announcement, in essence, "I cannot imagine how fusion might be happening in those experiments; therefore fusion cannot be happening in those experiments." V (talk) 00:34, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for looking that up. I am fine with including it as a non-textbook science view and we can put it in a bit vague wording. As long as it acts as a "disclaimer" to the Huizenga view (only regarding the chemical environment). I still have no clear picture if the sources are saying in true cold fusion sense: "it's D-D fusion, but with different probability and branching" or if they are saying in true LENR sense "something is happening and it is not compatible to D-D fusion in probability and branching as known from plasma experiments." --POVbrigand (talk) 19:54, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

A common and important example of nuclear catalysis that does not involve exotic particles is the CNO cycle. About 1.7% of the fusion in the Sun is thought to proceed by this mechanism, so this has a real impact on daily life. On the other hand, this is obviously not cold fusion, and is not about the chemical environment, so I don't think it has a place in this article. --Noren (talk) 18:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

"... perceive the field as the remains of the controversy of the early 1990's"

I can't find support for this phrasing at the end of the introduction. Can someone point it out to me? Thanks. Olorinish (talk) 12:28, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

This is supported by Cartwright, it was introduced in this change.[28]. I have restored part of the old text, please take a look. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:08, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I want to see something along the line: "it is rarely published in (top) peer reviewed journals, therefore mainstream scientists don't notice what's going on and therefore they still think the status of cold fusion is like it was in the early 1990's" The paragraphs of Cartwright that I want to use are: "Indeed most mainstream scientists perceive..." and "Few mainstream scientists appear to be aware of such developments in cold fusion, ...". We can combine it with the "scrutiny" bit, but I think there is a difference between scrutinizing scientific work and merely being aware of it. --POVbrigand (talk) 08:28, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

(It is rarely published in all journals, not just in top journals?)

Apart from that point, I agree with the general idea. I made an edit to try and convey this idea --Enric Naval (talk) 13:25, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Proponent's theories

I tried to clean up the "proposed theories" section. [29].

Here were some issues:

Theoretical predictions of palladium loading indeed predict a closer spacing of hydrogen atoms (the reference to nuclei is not neutral since there is no indication from the energetics that any nuclei are separated from electrons), but the distance is not "greatly" reduced.
The article claims that there is somehow a "lower potential barrier" in this situation. Screening might allow for that, but the lower barrier is not explained. I checked the articles cited and they do not indicate that the potential barrier is lowered.
Some proponents still claim fusion is happening. That, as much we all agree upon. However, the "new proposals" are all over the map and don't really stand-up to the kind of scrutiny that we would expect. Most cold fusion researchers, in fact, judiciously avoid discussing theoretical mechanisms because they think empiricism is more important than theoretical explanation. The last real novel theoretical explanation that was offered by a serious scientist was Schwinger's proposal, and that was essentially dismissed out-of-hand by the community and only gets passing mention in Wikipedia, I see. Including buzz words like "surface effects" or "Bose-Einstein condensate" is more-or-less name-dropping and doesn't seem to be a real proposal. In any case, there was a tag since May on the statement, so removing the buzz words seemed appropriate. I think we can say that there are a lot of "novel" ideas floating around in the community, but none of them have the consistent backing nor the support of more than the single person advocating them. To that end, they probably don't belong being advertised here.

140.252.83.220 (talk) 03:28, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the reason that most CF researchers are focusing on data-gathering is, for the mainstream community to accept the notion that something odd is happening in those experiments, whether fusion or something else, irrefutable repeatable experimental evidence is needed. Theories would, afterward, then naturally be sought avidly, to explain the "something". I'm aware of one class of CF experiments, barely mentioned so far in the article here, that may offer the necessary "irrefutable repeatable experimental results". So far as I know, all experiments of this class have produced anomalous energy. A Reliable (but, alas, "primary") Source link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960109007877 V (talk) 05:27, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

It's also something of an accident of the way the story developed. The people making the claim most strongly were the experimentalists (Fleishman and Pons) while the theorist (Storms) for perhaps both professional and political reasons crapped out. Storms is now really making an ass of himself with his outlandish 9/11 conspiracy theories, so that's not so good. Yeah, this isn't something to be derided, but it's simply a fact on the ground that the theories offered are either all over the map or widely discredited. If the cold fusioneers would invent the cold fusion battery already, I'm sure the theoretical physicists would sit up and notice, but as it is the feeling that most get is the same one gotten from over-unity devices, electrogravitics, etc. That's the problem with the fringe, you can't tell the goose shit from the golden egg. Fortunately, the scientific method has a self-correcting mechanism. Anyway... this is off-topic. 140.252.83.220 (talk) 08:56, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

(I was going to remove the comment about Storms as an unsubstantiated personal attack, but I then I saw [30], which falls under 9/11_conspiracies#Foreknowledge.) --Enric Naval (talk) 11:53, 26 August 2011 (UTC))

I think this is absurd,...

The article starts out by acting like it is going to give you the definition of "Cold Fusion". But then ends up telling you it's history, as if someone was trying to brag about being "smart".

I see this WAY too often on Wikipedia.

The very first section should be a short, concise definition of the topic/entry, NOT an hour long article that never really gives you the information about the topic itself, just the history of it.

The history should be included, but it should be included deeper in the article, not at the VERY start of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.160.197.141 (talk) 05:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

As long as many folks think that this research field is mistaken, Wikipedia editors will not be able to agree about "what it is". The result is the compromise you see. V (talk) 15:05, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

mainstream respectability

What I have claimed all along, but die-hard uninformed pseudo skeptic non-believers won't (can't) accept.

[31]: Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center in 1989 and elsewhere consistently showed evidence of anomalous heat during loading and unloading deuterium into bulk palladium. At one time called “cold fusion,” now called “low-energy nuclear reactions” (LENR), such effects are now published in peer-reviewed journals and are gaining attention and mainstream respectability. The instrumentation expertise of NASA GRC is applied to improve the diagnostics for investigating the anomalous heat in LENR.

Relevant Presentation: + Download presentation given at a LENR Workshop at NASA GRC in 2011 [available soon].

Of course from a true pseudo skeptic point of view NASA is absolutely nobody and only Science (journal) and Nature (journal) approve what is respectable science.

intentional provocative wording ;-) --POVbrigand (talk) 08:28, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I do think I've already posted stuff on this Talk page to the effect that, so far as I know, every pressurized-deuterium-gas experiment, involving palladium, has produced anomalous heat. So there is no reason to mess with electrolysis and room-pressure deuterium, and all the uncertainties of that class of experiments.... :) V (talk) 05:21, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

DTRA report accepts LENR as real

Per freedom of information act, Steve Krivit has received this DTRA report from a meeting in 2006: [32]

Advisory Board Findings and Recommendations for LENR

- There is good evidence of excess heat and transmutation.
- New theory by Widom[-Larsen] shows promise; collective surface effects, not fusion
- Low-energy implantation of ions

--POVbrigand (talk) 06:58, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

link to Vortex-l forum

USER:One Night In Hackney deleted the link to the VORTEX-L mailing list from the warning on the top of the page. I think that providing the link has a positive effect to this talk page, because many discussions will be started elsewhere which makes it easier to keep this talk page dedicated to improving the article. I also do not understand the edit comment "rm spam link".

I personally found the link a very subtle and polite way of saying "don't bring you rumours, OR, speculation etc. to this talk page".

notice of general sanctions

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Energy_Catalyzer article discussion page contains a banner stating "This article and its editors are subject to Wikipedia general sanctions". That banner is there because the E-Cat is considered cold fusion related. There is no such banner on the cold fusion discussion page. Should there be? DavesPlanet (talk) 12:20, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Since no objections, I'll add the banner back to this discussion page. If it gets removed again please keep related cold fusion articles consistent. DavesPlanet (talk) 12:12, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Does http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:Real-Time_Updates_on_the_October_6,_2011_E-Cat_Test change anything? 67.6.156.58 (talk) 06:01, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you are trying to communicate? The e-cat has had many successful demonstrations that lead me to watch it closely, as I do the Polywell fusion article. Successful testing would not seem to automatically remove or invalidate a Wikipedia sanction. If you want to continue this perhaps we should move it to the e-cat discussion? DavesPlanet (talk) 12:28, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

what is the scope?

I think it is important to note this article use to exist only because of the media coverage, if the topic didn't get this much media attention the article would have been deleted long ago. Now I believe this is no longer the case, the article today also exists because of the ongoing work the proponents claim to be doing. The difference is that popular culture articles may (should) use media references, and science articles should avoid opinions from journalists as much as possible. Not that the media circus around cold fusion wasn't note worthy, it obviously is. Regardless of what it should be considered to be: it is now floating between those two very different formats which is a bit strange. I think it would be best if we tried to go for a science version with a folk mythology section rather than the other way around. Previous versions of the article use to start with "Cold fusion, sometimes called low energy nuclear reactions (LENR) or condensed matter nuclear science." The redirects are still in place: Low_energy_nuclear_reactions. Without pointing fingers at Eric Naval there seems to be an active conspiracy going on to narrow down the scope of the LENR/cold fusion article down to cover something that it claims not to exist. I think we should focus more on the part that does exist. ehm? But more importantly, what is the article about now? The content is still there some what down the page: :"A small but committed group of cold fusion researchers has continued to conduct experiments using Fleischmann and Pons electrolysis set-ups in spite of the rejection by the mainstream community.[10][69] Often they prefer to name their field "Low Energy Nuclear Reaction" (LENR) or "Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reaction" (CANR),[70] also "Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reaction" (LANR) and "Condensed Matter Nuclear Science" (CMNS), one of the reasons being to avoid the negative connotations associated with the original name." Articles are suppose to start with other uses of the term (in italic) followed by "foobar - also called foo-bar". Hiding this information in the section "Ongoing scientific work" is wrong. The reader has no idea what the article is about now. "Low energy nuclear reaction" was moved to "Condensed matter nuclear science" where it was deleted as a POV fork of "cold fusion". Meanwhile by some the e-cat is considered not cold fusion, but Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction. My point is obvious, we failed to keep our lies consistent between the different pages. Someone should do something. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:42, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware of this situation. But, as far as I understood, within the field there is also some disagreement about whether "cold fusion" is fusion or just some weak force nuclear reaction. Is H + Ni -> Cu still fusion.

I think that due to the limitations of WP we will not be able (yet) to write a LENR science article. Mainly because Huizenga, Close and Taubes have written secondary sources that state nothing more than that cold fusion is crackpot and delusion. And anyone else that utters something otherwise is thus a deluded crackpot. I am pretty tired of all this WP:FRINGE, WP:OR, WP:WEIGHT, WP:SYNTH waving. Lately we have "ACS LENR sourcebook vol 1 and vol 2" and we have "Wileys Nuclear energy encyclopedia" with several chapters dedicated to LENR. But, oh no, it's edited by Steve Krivit and he is an "adherent of cold fusion". You have read Enric's comment up here stating that only opinions outside of the field will be valid. Those books are published by ACS and Wiley, for crying out loud. The DTRA has a report in which they state "There is good evidence of excess heat and transmutation.", but try to use that source and I bet you'll get reverted because the way WP rules are interpreted here is that using a primary source is considered OR if there is no secondary source mentioning it. Let me add that I do appreciate Enric's work here and that with my comments I am no way trying to discredit him. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:16, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Oriani

Regarding Oriani's rejection at Nature.

It's Beauddette's book that is self-published, not Oriani's paper.

Oriani's rejection is not pointed out as a significant event in any other source. Only Beaudette, a self-published book, points this as a crucial point that could have changed the course of the field.

The experiment stopped working after changing the calorimeter. In Huizenga's book: "Since reworking its calorimeter in late 1989, Oriani's group has not had any experimental runs over the many subsequent months where an excess amount of heat was observed". --Enric Naval (talk) 15:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Enric, does Huizenga mention Oriani's paper at all ? If not why ? --POVbrigand (talk) 16:04, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't have my books here now :( Not until weekend. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:28, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Issues section

The issues section deals almost exclusively with the Fleischmann-Pons era (ie early 1990s). Only in the theories subsection there is some stuff from later date. I am not sure if moving the issues section up to after "response and fall out" is a good idea, but we should make clear that the issues mentioned are very much tied to (or stem from) the early 1990s. Also we could rename the section maybe from "issues" to "issues of dispute" or something similar. --POVbrigand (talk) 19:38, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

POV edits

I WP:AGF for the edits [35] from User:Richard.decal, but there are factual errors in it and there are some other problems with the edit.

1) hypothetical is POV. We can discuss pages full on whether cold fusion is in fact fusion or something else.
2) "which was proposed by ..." the term cold fusion was used earlier, please read further down in the article "The term "cold fusion" was used as early as 1956 "
3) "but every attempt returned negative or false positive results. " that statement is false. There were claims of successful replication by research groups that were not retracted nor rebutted. The previous wording was correct.

I think there are also some parts of the edit that can be used, but I propose to revert to the version before Richard.decal so that he can edit in the parts that are not factual incorrect.

--POVbrigand (talk) 14:23, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

1) hypothetical because it has not happened (yet?) in any replicated experiment with proper controls and scrutiny.

2) The part about 1956 is original research and I am nuking it, the article uses "cold Fusion of Hydrogen Atoms", which a descriptive name. It was Palmer in 1986 who used "cold fusion" as a proper name with nothing attached. Jones and Palmer didn't adopt the name "cold fusion", they chose some other name instead, that's why they aren't counted as direct antecedents. And I think that it was Fleischmann in the press conference who described it as "[a sort of] cold fusion" (you need to look at a transcript of the press conference). Then the journalists took the name and ran with it, and it stuck. I don't have my books here to check it. I'm not sure if our article explains this clearly, or at all.

3) all positive results were eventually discredited, or had fatal flaws, or couldn't be repeated, or were never heard of again after one public declaration. As reported by secondary RS, and explained in Cold_fusion#Response_and_fallout. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Enric, don't be silly. That word "all" is untrue, and you know it, even if you've neglected to remember an experiment or two. Here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960109007877 --a Reliable Source replication of a previous experiment. If you want to say "all" then you need to need to be more specific, and only talk about the CF experiments that involve electrolysis (which even today are unreliable). Because, as I've mentioned before, to the best of my knowledge, all the pressurized-deuterium-gas-into-palladium experiments have reliably produced anomalous energy. We're just waiting for a Reliable Secondary Source to say as much, before getting it into the article here. V (talk) 15:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Enric, there exists no rebuttal for "Oriani, R. A. et al., Calorimetric measurements of excess power output during the cathodic charging of deuterium into palladium. Fusion Technol., 1990, 18, 652-658."

The original wording was perfect. Richard.decal walks in, changes something and now we are back discussion basic stuff ? come on ! --POVbrigand (talk) 17:17, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Remember the discussions about papers being primary sources, specially when published by the researchers that are making the claim? And about needing secondary sources outside the fringe field that acknowledge a significant experiment that has been replicated by other researchers, in a manner accepted outside the fringe field? Any secondary reliable source? --Enric Naval (talk) 18:16, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Read "What If Cold Fusion Is Real? " by Charles Platt or "Cold Fusion: The Ghost of Free Energy" by Jon Cartwright again and recite from them instead from Huizenga, Taubes and Close. Enric, were have you been ? Have you visited an anti-CF training camp lately ? ;-) --POVbrigand (talk) 19:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Platt, Cartwright, (and Goodstein) are reporting that people inside the field are not being believed outside the field, and complaining about it. Now, of course the article should say that these claims exist.

But the scientific consensus is that there are no convincing experiments/replications, and our article should reflect that. See, for example, WP:FRINGE#Unwarranted_promotion_of_fringe_theories (claims made only by adherents of the fringe theory), or WP:FRINGE#Evaluating_claims (distinguishing mainstream science from fringe claims). --Enric Naval (talk) 10:26, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

There is no scientific consensus. The article already reflects the mainstream pov: "Hopes fell with the big number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts.[5] By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead" - all perfectly RS and no WP-editor is contesting that wording.

Your reasoning is flawed: Anyone producing positive results immediately becomes an "adherent of fringe", therefore following your logic there will never be an independent replication by non-adherents.

Your reading of WP:FRINGE is influenced by your point of view. This article happens to be about a "fringe" topic. There is no way WP can have an article about a "fringe" topic without somehow explaining the "fringe" point of view. The "fringe" point of view is that there were some positive replications. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

secondary sources that acknowledge successful experiments

During the past nine years this work has yielded a huge body of evidence, while remaining virtually unknown - because most academic journals adamantly refuse to publish papers on it. - Charles Platt
The bottom line, though, was that since most labs couldn't replicate the effect, most physicists sincerely believed that cold fusion didn't exist. - Charles Platt
In Italy, Giuliano Preparata claimed he had replicated the original experiment successfully. So did a Frenchman named Lonchampt, with support from the French Atomic Energy Commission. - Charles Platt
Some reports claimed unequivocal success: In August 1994, in document TR-104195, regarding project 3170-01, EPRI concluded: "Small but definite evidence of nuclear reactions have been detected at levels some 40 orders of magnitude greater than predicted by conventional nuclear theory." NASA Technical Memorandum 107167, dated February 1996, concluded that "Replication of experiments claiming to demonstrate excess heat production in light water-Ni-K2CO3 electrolytic cells was found to produce an apparent excess heat of 11 W maximum, for 60 W electrical power into the cell." - Charles Platt
Initially, he was a skeptic. "We ran some experiments," he says, "and didn't get any results. Then we got some results three months later, but we didn't believe the results. Then we replicated them, and I realized there was something here. I think we spent about $300,000, mostly on labor - not a lot by Los Alamos standards." - Charles Platt
There must have been 50 attempts to reproduce the effect."Only three succeeded. One was Claytor's, another was by Howard Menlove, a world expert in neutron detection, and the third was by Storms. - Charles Platt
We ran 250 experiments, taking one whole year, and I think 13 made excess tritium. - Charles Platt
But when I speak to Michael McKubre, he's as fatalistic as Ed Storms. "I doubt that any single result is going to change everyone's minds," he says. After all, skeptics have been unimpressed by other evidence of cold fusion. Why should they be convinced now? - Charles Platt
Although positive results drifted in from some labs, major facilities, including the California Institute of Technology (better known as Caltech) and Harwell in the UK, failed to reproduce the phenomenon. - Jon Cartwright
The US Department of Energy initially encouraged his research into cold fusion but withdrew funding after a year even though he had begun to register positive results. - Jon Cartwright
Oriani finds when he places CR-39 inside active cells it records a stippled pattern of pits, whereas in control cells it records next to nothing. He knows that the pits cannot come from any radioactive contamination because the undersides are pitted too, which means the particles must have been of particularly high energy. He knows that they cannot come from so-called cosmic rays because those tend to produce tracks in the shape of rosettes. Indeed, Oriani has tried everything to explain away his results but can only conclude that the particles originate from some kind of nuclear reaction within the cells. - Jon Cartwright
Doug Morrison, a physicist at the European lab CERN, showed in a 1992 lecture that the number of experiments finding nothing was initially far greater than the number finding evidence of cold fusion. - Jon Cartwright
After reportedly having their work rejected by three journals without peer review, it was finally peer reviewed and accepted for publication in the German journal Naturwissenschaften. Since then the results have been corroborated at several labs including the University of California at Berkeley. - Jon Cartwright
Goodstein speaks guardedly about his own opinions on cold fusion, but admits that all scientific arguments levelled at it have been rebutted - Jon Cartwright
In 2004, half of a panel of scientists hired by the US Department of Energy to review cold fusion agreed that evidence for excess heat was “compelling”. - Jon Cartwright
In the course of their experiments, they often detected nothing at all, but on a couple of occasions, their detector indicated very substantial bursts of neutrons. - David Goodstein
However, this experiment, like their own earlier work and many others blossoming around the world, produced positive results, but only sporadically. - David Goodstein
In 1992 and 1993, these experiments, too, gave positive results. The cell would produce very substantial amounts of heat (a few watts) for periods of tens of hours at a time. - David Goodstein
Both the American and Japanese groups showed data indicating there is a sharp threshold at x=0.85. Below that value (which can only be reached with great difficulty and under favorable circumstances) excess heat is never observed. But, once x gets above that value, excess heat is essentially always observed, according to the reports presented at Maui, and recounted by Franco Scaramuzzi in his seminar at the University of Rome. - David Goodstein
However, I have looked at their cells, and looked at their data, and it's all pretty impressive. The Japanese experiment showing that heat nearly always results when x is greater than 0.85 looks even more impressive on paper. - David Goodstein

Please note that none of these supports the "but every attempt returned negative or false positive results." line.

In fact they contradict it.

--POVbrigand (talk) 08:43, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I kinda liked User:Richard.decal's edits, calling it "hypothesis" is the same thing as "a proposed nuclear fusion process offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results", "hypothesis" sounds perfectly science while "a proposed nuclear fusion process offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results" sounds like weaseling debunker language. Anyway, no new bias was introduced. The bias was very much already on the page. "The results received media attention" is much better than "The media reported that nuclear fusion was happening inside the electrolysis cells"; which OMG LOL sounds like a child wrote the article. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 06:40, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Can we agree that "The results received media attention" is a better wording, and edit it into the article? --Enric Naval (talk) 15:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for it --POVbrigand (talk) 16:16, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe "hypothetical" is not completely wrong to describe "cold fusion", but it isn't completely right either. It depends on what aspect of "cold fusion" we are aiming at. Depending who you talk to "cold fusion" is a name given to a multitude of aspects: The Fleischman-Pons experiment, the Fleischman-Pons claim, the Fleischman-Pons debacle, the field that investigates low energy nuclear reactions, the field of condensed matter nuclear science, pathological science, the entrepreneurs claiming working machines, the investigations that renowned institutions are conducting, the proposed nuclear reaction pathway of D-D, or H-H, or H-Ni, or D-Pd, or other, the ignorance and denial of "mainstream" scientists. Calling it hypothetical means picking one of these aspects, but not others. And as there are claims and proof that there is some truth behind the whole idea, hypothetical is just not the right word to use.

And yes there were good corrections made by Richard.decal's edit too as I have stated here. I also agree with you that the article is still a bad piece to read, even if we have improved readability over the last months. So please, feel free to add back in what you think was an improvement. My main disagreement was with "hypothetical" and "but every attempt returned negative or false positive results." which I have now explained in length.

btw I think I don't revert other editors very often, I personally dislike it. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:52, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

It is very important to distinguish between Hypothesis and Theory; many people don't understand the difference that is used in Science. For example, the Theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are called that because they have a great deal of supporting evidence. Meanwhile, "Cold Fusion" is an explanation for which there is as yet insufficient evidence to call it "Theory", and therefore it must be called "Hypothesis" (a guess, that is). A similar example is to be found in biology, where Evolution is a Theory, but Creationism is just a Hypothesis. It might be noted that very probably the usage in Science derives from Mathematics, where a "Theorem" is something that usually gets absolutely proved (and anything else is just a "Conjecture"). It is difficult to Science to absolutely prove some things, so "Theory" is the word that gets used --but only when enough supporting evidence is found. V (talk) 13:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I sometimes read the logs of this article just for the comedy value of the hysterical bias. On the web people can say things that in real life are just impossible to pronounce with a straight face. Like 2008 version that use to say: "Small groups of scattered researchers have continued to investigate cold fusion. These advocates have reported what they describe as "additional evidence" at some conferences and in journal papers and books, but most scientists have met these reports with skepticism." O haha! Shouldn't that have been "most conferences"? Wait don't answer that or we will be banned.

I think Richard.decal also improved this section:

"These reports prompted the scientific community to to confirm the discovery by replicating the experiment, but every attempt returned negative or false positive results. Flaws in the experimental design as well as experimental errors in the original experiment were uncovered, and it was discovered that Fleischmann and Pons did not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts."

While still perfectly untrue and completely inconsistent with the sources this is better than the original in that it is free from emotional byproducts:

"and these reports raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy.^[1] Many scientists tried to replicate the experiment with the few details available, some to prove it wrong, but most because they wanted to be part of this new exciting discovery. Hopes fell with the big number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts."

ehm... "...they wanted to be part of this new exciting discovery"?? oh, but then "Hopes fell"?? Maybe, lets try to remove all descriptions of peoples emotional state and write an article about cold fusion? I even think "false positive results" should not be mentioned. I think everyone vaguely familiar with the topic already knows: "most initial attempts returned negative results". What would false positives have to do with this?

"These reports prompted the scientific community to to confirm the discovery by replicating the experiment, initial attempts returned negative results. Flaws in the experimental design as well as experimental errors in the original experiment were uncovered, and it was discovered that Fleischmann and Pons did not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts."

Perhaps someone could explain what the difference is between "Flaws in the design" and "Errors in the experiment"? Then, is "not detecting nuclear byproducts" a separate discovery beyond flaws and errors? Are we not saying the same thing 3 times in a row while at the same time repeating the same thing 3 times? I'm reading referenced article right now, it looks like a note worthy bit of history. The most remarkable thing it tells us is that those hundreds of replication attempts had little to work with beyond a picture of the cell. Is it not perhaps fair or even interesting to share that with the Wikipedia reader? Hundreds of replications based on a picture while using Pons hand as the only scale reference.

"Warning Signs of Bogus Skepticism" is also a fun read, not sure if we can use that. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:05, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

We should not remove the few emotional wordings. There were high hopes, the press pushed the story of limitless energy further, there was a "feeding frenzy" amongst the scientists (D. Goodstein). "they wanted to be part of the exciting discovery" depicts the state of mind perfectly for me. --POVbrigand (talk) 12:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi everyone, I stumbled into this talk page and noticed you are all talking about me :-). When I found this article, it had major problems with clarity, flow, concision, and especially NPOV. Most of what I know about cold fusion I was taught by my ex-roommate (a particle physicist), so I refrained from editing the actual content of the article and just tried to improve readability.

This article used to be featured, and now it is a mess. Why don't we compare it with the featured revision? (link)

I am not familiar with the CF literature so I can't comment on the "pro-CF" results which have been successfully replicated. In any case, be wary of Wikipedia:UNDUE#Due_and_undue_weight. Richard☺Decal (talk) 14:43, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Richard, no problem. I assumed good faith for your edits. Interesting that you mention that most of what you know was taught to you by a particle physicist and that you are not familiar with the CF literature and yet you believe this article in NPOV :-) But don't worry, that happens often around here, you are not alone.

I do agree with you that this article has problems with clarity, flow, concision. But believe me that it is very difficult to clean this up when every step has to be perfect or it will be reverted. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:34, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

2006 good article

"Good article" nominee from 5 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=57340784

2004 "Featured article"

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=5255762

84.106.26.81 (talk) 15:41, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

GroundReport

I do not think we should be using GroundReport as a reference in this article. It seems to be a wiki-like thing that anyone can edit. (We don't use ourselves as a reference either.) Cardamon (talk) 00:15, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree.

GroundReport is not "wiki-like" in the sense you a probably thinking.

Jon Cartwright is a freelance journalist, according to his website his work has appeared in The Observer, New Scientist, Nature, Science, Prospect, the Times Higher Education, Venue, Sky at Night, Physics World and Chemistry World.

I did my own assessment a while ago and I am confident that articles on GroundReport are acceptable for Wikipedia. On GroundReport's "about page" ist says:"From journalism students to nonprofits, our reporters submit articles, photos or videos of news events to GroundReport, which are vetted by our Editorial Staff prior to publication. Content Partners with Verified status bypass the submission queue, publishing instantly to an audience of millions through our site and syndication partners."

To me, the quality of the article is a clear indication that is has been written with great journalistic care, furthermore Jon Cartwright is a accepted science journalist.

I will put the references back in. I hope my explanation was clear and you can agree with that. If you still have doubt, please bring this up at WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Thanks --POVbrigand (talk) 08:08, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Our article says that GroundReport didn't have editorial control until May 2009, and that source was published in March 2009, two months before. The author's bio says "He went freelance at the start of 2009 to branch out into more controversial research and topics outside the normal boundaries of science journalism.". --Enric Naval (talk) 12:52, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know. But Jon Cartwright published other "cold fusion" articles for reputable magazines around the same time. I really _honestly_ cannot see how this source is unreliable. It is a well done piece of journalism. Of course you could raise your concern at RS/N but I personally don't think there is much to argue other than the technicalities and the letter of the policy. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:21, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Your evidence that GroundReport is a reliable source is only what they say about themselves, such as that they have a vetting process of some sort. However, as Enric Naval pointed out, this process was probably not in place when the Cartwright article was written. So, the Cartwright article was essentially self-published.

I would suggest that the reason the Cartwright article looks to you like a well-done piece of journalism is that it is written in a good prose style (except in a couple of spots where it isn't), and that you find it pleasing. But it has some spin, in many cases I can't quite figure out when and where and to whom the quotes were said, and it sometimes states things as facts without attribution (such as the bit about 90% loading being necessary, which you used). Also, some of it, such as the several paragraphs devoted to Arthur C. Clarke, is fluff. Overall, it reads partly as an opinion piece, rather than as just straight reporting. Cardamon (talk) 19:00, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Then as I said before please bring it up at RS/N, thanks --POVbrigand (talk) 19:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

There is no procedural requirement to discuss an unreliable reference at wp:Reliable sources/Noticeboard before removing it. Cardamon (talk) 20:07, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

No, but endlessly deleting and reverting won't help us either. So let's discuss.

1) you think it is self-published -> Wikipedia:RS#Self-published_sources_.28online_and_paper.29 says that "Some news outlets host interactive columns they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists ..." and "Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.". So self-published is not always a no-go.

2) you think it is a opinion piece -> Wikipedia:RS#Statements_of_opinion states that "...that publish in a "blog" style format for some or all of its content may be as reliable as if published in a more "traditional" 20th-century format."

There is more in favour for RS of this source. I understand your concern, but I also thought about it and I couldn't find a hard no-go in the policy. Let's work it out in the next couple of days. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm busy - my actual reply will have to wait a few more hours. Meanwhile, what do others think? Cardamon (talk) 23:51, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

POVbrigand wants to include these claims:

1) "many scientists aren't even aware that there is new research."

2) "Mainstream scientists perceive the field as the remains of the controversy of the early 1990s."

3) "Around 1993 scientists found out that the effect had a very low probability of occurrence when the loading of deuterium into the palladium was below 90%. The experiments performed by the Caltech lab that debunked the Fleischmann and Pons’s results only had had a maximum loading of 80%."

I would like to see all three claims removed. The first two because I don't see evidence in the Cartwright article that either Cartwright or Storms are experts on what scientists think, and because the article is not published in a traditional periodical. Regarding the third, the wording implies that the chance of cold fusion is higher if the loading is higher than 90%. However, this has not been demonstrated. If researchers had discovered real evidence of cold fusion through hydrogen or deuterium loading, someone would have been able to convince mainstream nuclear reaction experts by now. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is not going away; when better evidence for cold fusion is available, this article can be changed accordingly. Until then we should be conservative and wait. Olorinish (talk) 03:06, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Olorinish, remember the pressurized-deuterium-gas experiments. They are practically guaranteed to exceed 90% loading, while ordinary electrolysis CF experiments have to wait for weeks, hoping for that much loading. And the evidence, so far as I know, is that all the pressurized-gas experiments yield anomalous energy. Here's a Primary Reliable Source regarding replication of earlier results: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960109007877 --I don't know of any articles talking about failed pressurized-gas CF experiments. Do you? V (talk) 07:12, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

regarding the third: Goodstein also says it. --POVbrigand (talk) 06:14, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

It is easy to believe that pressurized gas experiments produce anomalous energy, but this is an article about nuclear reactions. Until there is a change in the mainstream view of the nuclear reaction success, this article should be very cautious about wording that hints that fusion has been produced. We should continue the current approach, which is to provide links to the best pro-CF and anti-CF discussions, and describe what they say in a neutral way. Olorinish (talk) 11:46, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Olorinish, no, this article is about the claims that nuclear reactions are responsible for --are the source of-- the anomalous energy. The whole controversy about whether or not CF is happening has clouded the more-fundamental claims that anomalous energy gets produced in the first place, when (enough) deuterium gets into palladium. So, the article I linked doesn't mention CF, which means that scientists can focus on the more-fundamental claim without being distracted by the CF hypothesis. You have no basis to exclude the pressurized-gas experiments from this article, when the fundamental claim it makes is so relevant to this article --and all the article needs is a slight modification at its start, pointing out that the original P&F announcement consisted of two claims that most people lump together without considering them individually. Even the first sentence of our article does that lump-together thing(!): "Cold fusion refers to a proposed nuclear fusion process offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results of fusion at unexpectedly low temperatures" --and I'll be boldly editing it right after saving this post. V (talk) 20:14, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

@POVBrigand This is a reply to your post of 20:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC). I don't think any of your policy quotes from wp:RS get the Cartwright article off the hook of being self-published, because none of them apply.

*Some news outlets host interactive columns they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists or are professionals in the field on which they write and the blog is subject to the news outlet's full editorial control. From this article in Businessweek, it looks like GroundReport did not implement its vetting system until May 2009. So, whether or not it now exerts "full editorial control", it did not do so in March 2009 when this article was written. So this does not apply.

*Yes, Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Let's accept for the sake of the argument that Cartwright is a science journalist. There is no evidence that he is a scientific expert, and it would generally be a mistake to confuse a science journalist with an expert on science. So this doesn't apply either.

*’’Note that otherwise reliable news sources—for example, the website of a major news organization—that publish in a "blog" style format for some or all of its content may be as reliable as if published in a more "traditional" 20th-century format.’’ This does not apply unless one has a reliable news source. For reasons stated above, I do not agree that GroundReport was a reliable news source in March 2009. So this too does not apply.

By the way, I didn't say it was an opinion piece; just that it read somewhat like one. Cardamon (talk) 07:16, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I think we are discussing the technicalities of the policy and that we are argueing by abiding by the letter of a policy or guideline while violating its spirit or underlying principles. I am not blaiming Cardamon and I do not want to discredit anyone. It is my observation that 1) the Cartwright piece is RS and that 2) depending on how one reads the policy, it might or might not be RS. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:47, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the question to ask which is not clearly answered in the policy is: "When an established science journalist, who has been published in reliable media writes a self published piece on a subject for which he has also been published in reliable sources. Is that self published article then reliable source ? --POVbrigand (talk) 08:10, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

[outdent] >>When an established science journalist, who has been published in reliable media writes a self published piece on a subject for which he has also been published in reliable sources. Is that self published article then reliable source ?<<

I would say no, especially in this case. First, I find the idea of making a science journalist into an arbiter of scientific truth to be a particularly bad one. (We currently doing that for the claim about 80% versus 90% maximum loading, since Cartwright's article does not make it completely clear where this supposed information is from.)

Second, if someone is a world-class expert on something, we might use a blog posting of theirs on a subject close to their center of expertise, if no better source can be found. From his website, Jon Cartwright has a Master's degree in physics and has written some news articles, including two on cold fusion for semi-popular magazines. This is not enough for us to take things that he says on his own (self-publishes) about cold fusion as reliably sourced.

Third, if a statement is controversial, the need for it to be well sourced increases. Cardamon (talk) 09:29, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

We can surely come to a compromise on the loading issue. Please be aware that the loading issue is also used by Goodstein.

I do not want to present the >90% loading as a hard fact with WP voice. I want to present the fact that scientists "found this out" by analyzing the experiment protocols of previous failing experiments which all were assess to have <80% loading and that they present this as "new evidence". This issue was used by two impartial reliable sources: Cartwright and Goodstein.

So I agree that Cartwright is NOT an expert who can assert that the 90% loading issue is hard proof, but he is a reliable source for noticing this is "proposed evidence" which came out of the field.

Feel free to tweak the lines to reflect what you think would better fit in WP, but please read Goodstein first. And if you really want to tweak it into perfect NPOV, then I suggest you invest some time to skim though these proceedings from the "ICCF-14 International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. 2008. Washington, DC.":

"Cravens, D. and D. Letts. The Enabling Criteria Of Electrochemical Heat: Beyond Reasonable Doubt."

"One hundred sixty seven papers from 1989 to 2007 concerning the generation of heat from electrochemical cells were collected, listed, and digitally posted to a CD for reference, review and study. A review showed four criteria that were required for successful experiments attempting replication of the Fleischmann-Pons effect. All published negative results can be traced to researchers not fulfilling one or more of these criteria. Statistical and Bayesian studies show that observation of the Fleischmann-Pons effect is correlated with the criteria and that production of “excess heat” is a real physical effect “beyond a reasonable doubt.” [36]

However, most fringe fighting WP-editors won't go through the trouble of actually reading something else than the completely outdated prose from Huizenga, Close and Taubes.

It is easy to dismiss all claims of evidence once one has acquired the idée fixe that it is all crackpot and humbug and that therefore there cannot be any evidence. Circular reasoning in the name of WP fringe fighting. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:35, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Second, if someone is a world-class expert on something: How about Fellow-APS, Fellow-ANS, Fellow-IEEE, Fellow-NASA George H. Miley who writes this: "early experiments were done in haste without even measuring the loading obtained, so it is not surprising to see variable results without any clues about why this may have happened." here --POVbrigand (talk) 10:58, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you know the APS ? In the proceedings from their annual march meeting (2009) you will find in the abstract of this paper: "Recent research has developed a technique for imbedding ultra-high density deuterium "clusters" (50 to 100 atoms per cluster) in various metals such as Palladium (Pd), Beryllium (Be) and Lithium (Li). It was found the thermally dehydrogenated PdHx retained the clusters and exhibited up to 12 percent lower resistance compared to the virginal Pd samples\footnote{A. G. Lipson, et al. Phys. Solid State. 39 (1997) 1891}. SQUID measurements showed that in Pd these condensed matter clusters approach metallic conditions, exhibiting superconducting properties\footnote{A. Lipson, et al. Phys. Rev. B 72, 212507 (2005}\footnote{A. G. Lipson, et al. Phys. Lett. A 339, (2005) 414-423}. If the fabrication methods under study are successful, a large packing fraction of nuclear reactive clusters can be developed in the electrodes by electrolyte or high pressure gas loading. This will provide a much higher low-energy-nuclear- reaction (LENR) rate than achieved with earlier electrode\footnote{Castano, C.H., et al. Proc. ICCF-9, Beijing, China 19-24 May, 2002.}." --POVbrigand (talk) 12:18, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Yet another reliable secondary source that found it interesting enough to mention what researchers have found out regarding the loading issue [37]

"Cold fusion proponents, however, say they do consistently observe the fusion reaction when the ratio of hydrogen to metal atoms is greater than or equal to one. In other words, when the hydrogen atoms are really dense, and there's more than one of them for every palladium atom (or nickel or some other metal, as the case may be), cold fusion always sets in. Or so the cold fusion researchers say; since there's no peer-review process in the field, no one is sure what to believe."

I am fine if we use the "voice" of this article. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:39, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Research Laboratory of Electronics - progress report 2010 nr 152 [38]

"Perhaps the best way to understand why things didn't work is to examine the conditions under which positive results were obtained. This was done over many years in the case of experiments at SRI, where it was noticed that positive results were obtained only when the cathode D/Pd loading exceeded 0.95 at some point during the several week long loading cycle prior to excess heat bursts (high D/Pd loading is difficult to obtain because the Tafel leak rate is exponential in the loading above 0.60 near room temperature). When seen, the excess heat was proportional to the square of the D/Pd loading above a threshold which was typically near 0.85 in those experiments. Additionally, a delay of 2-4 weeks seemed to be required prior to the observation of the first excess heat burst, as discussed by McKubre recently at ICCF15." --POVbrigand (talk) 13:45, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I think I've shown that the Cartwright article is not a good source. Here are some quick reactions to the sources you suggested about loading:

-Goodstein. Do you have an exact reference?

-abstracts of presentations at APS sessions. Probably not. A presentation is less than a paper, and its abstract is less than the presentation. Also, APS presentations (whether talks or posters) are typically not peer reviewed.

-www.lifeslittlemysteries.com . Is this any more than a (well-written) website?

-Energy Production and Conversion Group reports(s) by Hagelstein and others including McKubre. Maybe! These show what some leading cold-fusioneers believe. Using self published sources to show what the people who wrote them say can be okay.

>>Feel free to tweak the lines to reflect what you think would better fit in WP<< (Almost) everyone is free to tweak wording. What's needed is more than a tweak though.Cardamon (talk) 07:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time.

Goodstein link [39]

APS and ACS proceedings, I am aware that there might be issues with using them in an article as reference, but here I only wanted to use them on the talk page to show the developments in the field. Many WP-editors are completely unaware of these developments and believe that reciting from 20 year old books is a way to improve the article.

www.lifeslittlemysteries.com is a well written media outlet with editorial team and staff writers and is part of techmedianetwork.com. It is a RS, so it can be used in the article.

"These show what some leading cold-fusioneers believe. Using self published sources to show what the people who wrote them say can be okay." -> yes, thanks for correctly assessing this source.

As long as "more than a tweak" does not mean deleting it completely, I am all for it.

--POVbrigand (talk) 08:47, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

dating

I don't like how the dates are missing from statements. For example:

Issues > Small quantities of reaction products The detected reaction products are barely above background levels. The levels of 4He could have already been in the surrounding air instead of being created by any nuclear process. Detected neutrons and tritium were often barely above background level.[121]

It might still be correct, it is from a book published in 2000? Refuting the statement might be hard to source etc. I wouldn't know. The only thing important is that the reader doesn't know it comes from a book published in 2000. At the time it was probably a really good book on the topic, we shouldn't pretend it is any authors current opinion. Or should we? The book describes the last 10 years of cold fusion research not the next 10 years. lol It is bad to mis represent the source like this but I have no idea how to fix it. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 19:34, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

That is a good catch, are there any more recent sources on this topic? And possibly a proffesional/person knowledgable enough to rewrite if possible?Beefcake6412 (talk) 19:36, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

MIT progress report

The 2010 MIT progress report commenting on other labs' replication results. I don't think that is the same kind of self publishing which is meant in the WP-rules.

Is this information verifiable - yes, is it attributed - yes, is MIT a renown research institution - yes, are they self promoting their results in this quotation - no.

What do other editors think ?

--POVbrigand (talk) 22:37, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

There are plenty of cold-fusion-related sources in peer-reviewed journals and major periodicals. We should be very careful about using self-published reports; what is so important about this one? Olorinish (talk) 23:18, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The replication section currently only talks about the replications of the early 1990s. The reader will get the impression that there have never been claims of replications after that. What is good about this quote is that it mentions several claimed replications of the last years.

Regarding self-published, that argument is moot. The inclusion is in line with "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." It is a progress report by a well respected research institution. The quote is verifiable and correctly attributed.

Please also be careful of "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source, not whether it is true."

I will put it back in.

what do other editors think ? --POVbrigand (talk) 07:11, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you are being impatient. I've been waiting more than 2 years for some RS second-or-third-party source to talk about the successes of the pressurized-deuterium experiments. The one's I've seen seem to be focused on the claims of that Rossi fellow, when there are more experiments out there than just his. V (talk) 08:32, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I also searched for that, so I know your "pain", but you are confusing the other editors. They know nothing about gas loading experiments by Arata & Zhang and the successful replications by Kitamura et al. and others. They don't know the difference between electrolysis and gas loading, they don't know about loading issues and that the loading issues were the reason for most replication attempts in 1989 to fail. For most WP-editors Cold fusion is a dark room and they want to keep the door firmly shut and stay far away from it like some phobia. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Remember to include NASA on your list of experimenters. Because http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900008108_1990008108.pdf indicates that they may have been first.

Research at NASA is mentioned in the "ongoing scientific work" section. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

My bold edit got reverted [40] with the request to first get consensus. This reason for revert is moot. Editors are not obliged to get consensus first.

I invite User:IRWolfie- to come up with a plausible reason for his revert here.

The original section title was "The experiments can not be reproduced" a few weeks back when this section was part of "Explanations given by cold fusion opponents" that was then a good accurate title for the section. There was also another section titled "Reports of reproductions" within the section "Explanations given by cold fusion proponents". Then almost two weeks ago Enric Naval put both sections (opponents and proponents) together [41], which was a very wise edit, because it increased readibility. Now that the section holds both "The experiments can not be reproduced" and "Reports of reproductions" content I am sure that a change of title to simply "Reproductions" is a good thing. Also because the section title one level up has changed to "issues".

I just noticed that I possibly misunderstood the revert by IRWolfie. He was objecting to the addition of the MIT progress report about the reproductions.

@IRWolfie-, please see Cardamon's assessment of using the MIT progress report -> Talk:Cold_fusion#GroundReport.

--POVbrigand (talk) 05:39, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Please note that wp:BRD is not wp:BRRD, nor wp:BRRRRD, nor wp:BRRRRRRD. The first revert demonstrates lack of consensus. Discussion should be the next step, not counterreversion. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:39, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

It is very complicated to reach consensus on this article, because editors believe they are obliged to defend the truth, but as you know wikipedia is not about truth, it is about verifiability. I think many editors mistakenly think that the topic of the article should be verified, instead of just the sources.

If every editor would abide by the wp policies and the wp spirit that would certainly make it much nicer around here. But when an editor reverts for "weight" and "self-publish" and both arguments are moot, then I think a counterrevert is allowable. You see, some editors revert for weight so often that it really shows they are just POV-pushing by deleting out the edits which are not conforming to their view. It is very annoying, reverting for weight means more or less "shut up about it, I don't want to hear your arguments". It is wrong that important content is deleted for weight just because the other side has nothing more to say on the topic.

We happen to have the difficult situation that the scientific discussion stopped a few months after it began. One side continued to produce sources, the other side refused to look at it because it was denounced as "pathological science".

Wikipedia policies were certainly not made to precisely fit this difficult situation, but I am very sure that, as long as it is clear from the article that CF is a controversial topic, the spirit of wikipedia allows for much more prose on the pro side of cold fusion than is currently the case in the article. --POVbrigand (talk) 16:26, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I try to make small edits, that way, if they get reverted at least we know what the issue is. In stead of objecting to being reverted you could just continue to make slight improvements. There is much to do.

I removed that long and authoritative-sounding quote but kept the link to the self-published document. The article already has lots of pro-CF text which happens to have better sourcing. Keeping the quote in shifted the article away from NPOV by giving too much weight the view that cold fusion has a positive reputation among scientists, which is not the case. When quotes like that are made by fusion experts, this article will change to reflect that. Until then, we should be conservative and wait. The present version is more useful to a typical wikipedia reader. Olorinish (talk) 03:22, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

While I completely disagree with you reasoning. The solution is ok for now, I will add one line. Keep in mind that somewhere else in the article, probably "ongoing scientific work" we still must mention that research in ongoing at MIT [42] and UIUC [43] otherwise we are giving too much weight the view that cold fusion research by renowed research institutions is not happening as we speak.

You want experts ? Heinrich Hora [44] is a laser fusion expert, his research interests: Theory of laser-plasma interaction, relativistic and quantum effects, optical properties of plasmas, nonlinear (ponderomotive) forces, nonlinear principles, correspondence principle of electromagnetic interaction, inertial fusion energy, laser acceleration of ions and (relativistic) of electrons, electron beam pumped lasers (GaAs, diamond), low energy nuclear reactions of protons in metals, magic numbers and nuclear shell model, quarks and nuclear binding energy, theory of photoemission and multivalley band model.

By all means this guy a mainstream scientist. So here is your expert, now this article will change to reflect that. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:34, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

News Flash

Today (Oct 28) Rossi is supposedly doing a public demonstration of a 1-megawatt CF reactor. On this page: http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/10/october-28th-e-cat-test-pre-game-thread-gather-here-for-news-and-discussion/ there is a post by Rossi that claims it is working well. If I recall correctly, his reactor uses pressurized deuterium and Element 28, nickel (lots cheaper than palladium!). I'm aware that Rossi thinks that the CF reaction in his device combines the two to make copper. From what I know of nuclear physics, this is rather less likely than the idea that more-ordinary deuterium-deuterium fusion occurs. To be determined, of course! Because when the test is over, there ought to be some significantly detectable reaction products, of one sort or another, if the test-reactor actually does generate 1MW for a decent period of time. And, even if CF of any sort isn't actually happening, this seems to be more evidence that something scientifically interesting can happen in pressurized-deuterium experiments (releasing anomalous energy). V (talk) 16:34, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Rossi isn't doing any science. He is selling something. Science is done in daylight. ArtifexMayhem (talk) 14:29, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Rossi is selling a product and keeps his secrets. But cold fusion research is done in broad daylight, yet noone seems willing to take note. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

If he has a working product, then it doesn't matter if Rossi isn't publishing details. Eventually someone will buy a unit and dissect it, looking for reaction products --and publish. All we have to do is wait. V (talk) 15:41, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I with you V. Rossi might have something but it is obvious he doesn't understand the mechanism. If the mystery client is legit they'll be taking the thing apart post haste. We wait. ArtifexMayhem (talk) 16:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Congrats to Blimpguy and Enric for updating the "claims of commercialization" section. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

available in the market

"working machine available in the market" Rossi is not taking any order from customers. You can only buy an E-Cat by contacting Rossi directly and negotiating a custom contract. Heck, he still has to sell (and deliver successfully and test that it works!) any unit to anyone in any market whatsoever. There is no unit "available in the market", independently tested or not. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:44, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I fully agree with Enric. We can rediscuss the "availability in the market" when Rossi has delivered a handful of devices to preferably several known customers. Until then, there is no need to change the wording, also because the status of the Rossi device is described in sufficient detail immediately following this sentence. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:24, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

It occurs to me that in my "news" post above I neglected to think about the overall "reliability" issue associated with CF experiments. I know I've stated in several posts over several months that the pressurized-deuterium experiments seem to have had zero failures to produce anomalous energy (and so far nobody here has pointed out a case where such an experiment has failed). Rossi is obviously boldly assuming that his design is reliable enough to sell --which I'm sure is a primary reason the CF detractors have suspected him of being a charlatan. But if he is actually succeeding... then probably something about the reliability of the pressurized-deuterium experiments should be put somewhere in the article here. I know I'm still waiting for some relevant second- or third-party source to talk about this, so that the normal/formal rules here can be followed, but if Rossi is making Genuine News, then doesn't that open a relatively standard alternate route, for getting certain things into Wikipedia? V (talk) 15:45, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Heres a CNN report (an "ireport", less formal than most CNN reports): http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-696792 --it says that the Associated Press has a world exclusive on the formal news report. So far, though, I don't see such news at the AP website (conspiracy theorists, start your engines!). V (talk) 18:20, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Like most ireports, that one has not been vetted. The author, Joe Shea, has a long history of reporting fringe topics in less-than credible publications. This will do nothing to improve the article. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:08, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Try reading what I actually wrote, instead of what you think I wrote! Why doesn't "less formal" equate with "not vetted"? The report we need is the Associated Press report. But where is it??? V (talk) 04:43, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Not disagreeing with you. See Talk:Blacklight_Power/Archive_4#Joe_Shea_socks...probably. and the subsequent section re ireports.LeadSongDog come howl! 14:27, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

A quick Google search for "Associated Press" and "Andrea Rossi" yields a number of hits to sites that are talking about (as I write this) how 4 days have passed and the Associated Press either is sitting on the story, or has killed it. So, either of two Questions seems ask-able: "What do they know that we don't, which makes that story not-newsworthy?" or "Is AP under the influence of some organazation that wants to keep positive CF results quiet?" --In the meantime, we editors here get to feel a bit like the mythological Tantalus.... V (talk) 22:29, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

e-cat not room temperature

Some one suggested the cf article says LENR happens at room temperature being inconsistent with the e-cat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Energy_Catalyzer#Cold_fusion_link_is_inappropriate

84.106.26.81 (talk) 20:47, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know a lot about the e-cat. At what temperature does it start to produce energy? I'm sure the temperature can be expected to go up if the reaction does indeed produce energy, but that doesn't have anything to do with the initial temperature. V (talk) 07:11, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

IT requires preheating. The only problem the article has is that it isn't room temperature.84.107.153.57 (talk) 20:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

"At what temperature does it start to produce energy?" Nobody even knows if it produces energy. Until it is tested by qualified independent observers under properly-controlled conditions, there is no reason to think that it is anything than a figment of Rossi's imagination. Don't believe the hype... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:36, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Obviously you failed to read all of what I wrote. I'm quite aware that the claims of energy production are not independently verified. But I'm also aware that even a charlatan needs to make claims that are not self-contradictory. I said I didn't know, and it usually doesn't hurt to ask. Now, as to LENR and "room temperature", it happens that the e-cat isn't the only thing out there claiming to involve LENR. This is the first I've heard that any of them need to be warmed up first. Well, the article actually specifies "ordinary temperatures", and has "room temperature inside parentheses. We could prepand an "e.g." to the "room temperature" which would make it merely an example. After all, aren't "ordinary" temperatures found ranging from that inside the typical household freezer to that inside the typical household oven? If the e-cat operates somewhere in that range, then the slight modification just mentioned might be adequate. V (talk) 06:46, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I suggest you watch this video before doing any further editing. http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1150242

The cold fusion article primarily describes the P&F experiment which is inconsistent with the description of the Energy Catalyzer. It doesn't operate at room temperature but requires preheating, there is no deuterium or palladium but nickel and light hydrogen. Are we going to fix this or should we restart the LENR article? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 08:37, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

This article describes many cold fusion experiments, including the Rossi devices. It puts greater weight on the electrolysis/palladium/deuterium approaches because that is what is emphasized in the literature.Olorinish (talk) 13:35, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Trying to broaden the topic would do harm to the explanation of the original experiment. The topic is already confusing enough. Trying to split LERN into a new article would require some serious work.84.106.26.81 (talk) 19:32, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

So far the Rossi approach has had only a sprinkle of discussions in major news outlets, so it only has a paragraph in the current version. As the number and importance of the published discussions increase, this article will be changed to reflect that. Regarding the temperature of the Rossi device, its temperature of operation is much, much closer to room temperature than to typical fusion temperatures of around 1,000,000 degrees, so it is still accurate to call it cold fusion. Olorinish (talk) 13:35, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

This is not correct, there are 40 000 news articles[45] 84.106.26.81 (talk) 19:32, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

And there are even more on Andrew Smith [46]. Have you ever pondered on the idea that more people might go by the name of Andrea Rossi ? --POVbrigand (talk) 12:17, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Why are we even discussing the e-cat thing here? There is a separate article: Energy Catalyzer all about it - and we have a statement at the top of this article that says: "This article is about the Fleischmann–Pons claims of nuclear fusion at room temperature. For the original use of the term 'cold fusion', see Muon-catalyzed fusion. For all other definitions, see Cold fusion (disambiguation).". SteveBaker (talk) 15:16, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

ignorance of physicist

Brian Josephson appealed at the meeting of the Nobel Laureates July 2004 against the ignorance of physicist to the phenomenon of cold fusion.

we should mention this.

Here is the peer reviewed source:

Supporting the Josephson Interpretation of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions and Stabilization of Nuclear Waste F. Osman, H. Hora, X.Z. Li, G.H. Miley and J.C. Kelly [47]

--POVbrigand (talk) 13:32, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

He deserves mention but we shouldn't go into the endless insults to far. ~~I've used the source already as: <ref name=pseudoskept/> but it lacks formatting. (just so that you know)~~ 84.106.26.81 (talk) 15:26, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Describe modern meaning of "cold fusion" under "Before the Fleischmann–Pons experiment"

The current text:

The term "cold fusion" was used as early as 1956 in a New York Times article about Luis W. Alvarez's work on muon-catalyzed fusion.^[2] E. Paul Palmer of Brigham Young University also used the term "cold fusion" in 1986 in an investigation of "geo-fusion", the possible existence of fusion in a planetary core.^[3]

I tried to add this to that:

"Then the term was used strictly to refer to the Pons and Fleischmann experiment, today "cold fusion" is also used to refer to Low Energy Nuclear Reactions in general."

On my talk page User:MelbourneStar objected to this:[48]

I explained:

The cold fusion article describes a broad scope of low energy nuclear reactions. Historic use of the term should include the most recent change. Rossi for example doesn't consider his findings cold fusion but everyone else does. This is common knowledge to anyone who looked into the topic but the reader doesn't know this. His device also doesnt use paladium and requires just enough preheating to make the term "room temperature" dubious (see: #e-cat_not_room_temperature above). Changing the article as a whole to reflect this is never going to be accepted just like that so we have to do it one step at a time.

DVdm then came to my talk page to basically repeat the original statement about un-sourced material:[49] He says I need talk page consensus for the contribution.

Then SteveBaker came to my talk page as well to repeated the same thing for a 3rd time:[50] I need a reliable source and consensus on the talk page. I then moved the discussion to this article talk page and provided a source, because that is what this discussion is really about "the article". DVdm then told me this isn't allowed[51] and removed it.[52] He send me to the talk page guidelines where I found no such statement but ok...

If you would all PLEASE be so kind to discuss the article on the talk page we would of course have resolved this issue in 1 minute.

I was going to add this source: [53]

Does anyone object to explaining the historic meaning of "cold fusion" like this? It can probably be worded better than I did but I feel it should be made clear what the term means. Not just the first change but also the second.

84.106.26.81 (talk) 16:34, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

If indeed that source backs the statement you want to add, then by all means go ahead. But make sure the statement is not something that you synthesise from the text, and do specify the exact page on which the statement is backed. - DVdm (talk) 16:40, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the naming Cold fusion vs LENR, I suggest you read this first [54].

To me it is a difficult topic to get right, as there are many possible rights. --POVbrigand (talk) 17:54, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! And... Well actually no, it should be perfectly acceptable to have a seperate LENR article. Just like we have a Krusty Krab AND a Sponge Bob article. Just like we have a Quackwatch and a Stephen Barrett article. This guy has a wikipedia article for his website and the scientists of the world shouldn't be allowed to have a LENR article? We should force all scientists to point people to the cold fusion article when they are talking about LENR? The whole thing smells like Wikipedia amateurism.

Lets propose merging muon fusion into this article to! Surely that wont further complicate explaining the P&F controversy?

Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR),

Could have it's own article.

Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions (CANR),

Not sure, it probably means the same thing?

Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reactions (LANR),

This describes a specific set of experiments?

Cold Nuclear Transmutations,

I haven't seen this one before, it seems to suggest to require transmutation products so it would technically be a whole different topic? A much more specific term?

Cold Fusion Nuclear Reactions

I haven't seen CFNR either.

New Hydrogen Energy

I can imagine the deletion debate for an article named like that. To much crusaders for alt energy fascism to even consider it. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 13:49, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Cold Fusion and LENR are basically the same thing. The different naming reflects the different understanding or different possible explanation of the observed effects. To me LENR, CANR and LANR are definitely 100% synonyms of each other. The name LENR was used because it was thought to be more appropriate for the observed effect. But as long as the theory of how this effect happens is not clear, we cannot decide which naming is the best. To me it's all the same. The infighting about "it's cold fusion"- "it's not cold fusion, it's LENR" is plain silly and very confusion for the casual reader. I don't think splitting up the article is such a great idea. I wouldn't be able to tell was goes to "cold fusion" and what goes to "LENR". --POVbrigand (talk) 14:02, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The Cold fusion article should describe half baked science by press release with scientists failing to replicate the device from a photograph, without loading the palladium, then claiming it debunks the idea. This article will use all those silly media references, describe the abuse and the drama. It involves palladium, electrolysis and heavy watter and it occurs at room temperature.

The LENR article should be focused on the science. All the other energy producing chemical reactions. The Energy Catalyzer uses nickel and requires preheating. By what stretch of imagination is it the same experiment? Should we merge everything into Electrolysis perhaps? A LENR article will include debunkers who actually refer to LENR.

Debunking references from the 90's are perfectly valid reference material for the Cold fusion article. When applied to LENR they look completely silly, potentially offensive. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 14:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Look into the reason why the old LENR article was deleted for being a fringe-fork. Do you think we can argue this time that it makes sense. I think before we can do that we should imporve the cold fusion article "ongoing scientific work" section. Because if I understand you correctly the LENR article should be about the current scientific work right ? --POVbrigand (talk) 20:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

A 2010 Storms article

"Status of cold fusion" http://www.springerlink.com/content/9522x473v80352w9/fulltext.pdf The publication info is: Naturwissenschaften, 2010, Volume 97, Number 10, Pages 861-881. This article qualifies as secondary-source, not primary-source, and part of it describes some of the pressurized-deuterium experiments. V (talk) 06:17, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

As I hinted on your talk page, I think this peer reviewed reliably published secondary source can be used to add a mentioning of replication of Arata's experiment in the Cold_fusion#Ongoing_scientific_work section. I was actually looking for a secondary source saying that Kitamura (and Kidwell) had replicated Arata like is mentioned here [55] --POVbrigand (talk) 13:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Edmund Storms

I cant start articles. Storms has so many refs on wikipedia now. Isn't it time for him to get an article?84.106.26.81 (talk) 13:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

How does he stack up in terms of general notability? For example: I (personally) have about the same number of mentions within Wikipedia articles as Storms does - but there is no article about me because I'm not sufficiently notable. Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia:Notability (people) both have to be addressed before we can write about a living person. Is this guy an academic? If so, then Wikipedia:Notability (academics) applies. Generally, we try to err on the side of NOT creating articles for living persons if there is doubt. SteveBaker (talk) 14:28, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree, you are not notable. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 15:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

non-fusion nuclear reactions

The current version has this sentence: "However some in the field don't regard it as just an alternative naming of the same field but as a more accurate description of a completely different phenomena, since they believe the reported effects cannot be explained by nuclear fusion but by other non-fusion nuclear reactions happening at lower energies.^[4]" I don't have that book; can someone tell me what it says about non-fusion nuclear reactions? If it doesn't say much we should probably remove discussion of non-fusion nuclear reactions. Olorinish (talk) 12:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

You can go here and do some snippet searches. It's not much —you get these tiny windows on the text— but perhaps it can do the job. The sentence does indeed sound a bit like wp:or or wp:synthesis. - DVdm (talk) 12:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

We should be happy to have this. Basically the journalists are calling everything fusion now. lol 84.106.26.81 (talk) 13:27, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

If you read about the proposed theory from Widom-Larsen which was published in peer review journal and is also included in the newly published Wiley encyclopedia of nuclear energy: [56] than you will see the sentence is not or nor synth. Storms (2007) in his book discusses several proposed theories. The peer reviewed paper by Storms (2010)[57] also gives enough info to support the line in question. see also [58] --POVbrigand (talk) 13:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone know which researchers believe that non-fusion reactions are responsible? Maybe that reference could be placed near this quote. Olorinish (talk) 01:47, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I do and I have already given you a hint in my previous comment. You could also read neutron capture, proton capture, beta decay.

"We (NASA) now understand this theory"

Stanislaw Szpak, Pamela A. Mosier-Boss and Frank E. Gordon, SPAWAR

Terminology explained on the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science website:"As time passed during the 1990s, processes other than fusion of two deuterons were reported. These transmutation reactions involved and produced isotopes of nuclei with moderate and high atomic weights, that is, they are nuclear reactions not involving only two light nuclei, such as fusion."

peer reviewed paper stating the same

-- POVbrigand (talk) 12:20, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Please try to actually cite papers, it does help to keep discussions clear. The latest paper you refer to was:

Steven B. Krivit and Jan Marwan (2009). "A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction research". J. Environ. Monit. 11: 1731–1746. doi:10.1039/B915458M.

Despite the obscure choice of journal, it has had published responses:

Kirk L. Shanahan (2010). "Comments on "A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction research"". Journal of Environmental Monitoring. 12 (9): 1756. doi:10.1039/c001299h.
J. Marwan, M. C. H. McKubre, F. L. Tanzella, P. L. Hagelstein, M. H. Miles, M. R. Swartz, Edmund Storms, Y. Iwamura, P. A. Mosier-Boss and L. P. G. Forsley (2010). "A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research: a response to Shanahan". Journal of Environmental Monitoring. 12 (9): 1765. doi:10.1039/c0em00267d.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

LeadSongDog come howl! 14:38, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Goodstein's paragraph has been quoted out of context

Hi Olorinish, this is just to follow up on your reversion of an edit I made recently in an attempt to provide additional context to a paragraph that I felt was being quoted out of context. The paragraph currently suggests that David Goodstein felt that the cold fusion community had no experimental basis for a quixotic quest that it was pursuing and that the people involved in cold fusion research were simply delusional. I think the point he was making here was that that's how they are currently perceived, and that the negative attention they've garnered has served to obscure the experimental phenomena they're pursuing. Towards the end of the same essay he goes into some impressive experimental results and then writes:

What all these experiments really need is critical examination by accomplished rivals intent on proving them wrong. That is part of the normal functioning of science. Unfortunately, in this area, science is not functioning normally. There is nobody out there listening.

In other words, there's neither corroboration nor refutation of the new experimental findings -- the results that are being reported are simply not being examined in an adequate way. An important point here is that the lack of mainstream scientific scrutiny is hampering an understanding of the results. Earlier Goodstein says he doesn't believe that cold fusion is possible. But he goes to the effort to describe what would be needed to show that something was going on here, and the essay strongly suggests that, while he's skeptical of the whole endeavor, he allows for the possibility that something surprising could turn up.

In short, I think the edit was just fine as it was, and without some additional context, Goodstein's paragraph incorrectly implies that he's less sympathetic to the work of his friend and others than he really is. modify 23:30, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Modify, would the point be made if the introduction line were changed to something like this? "In 1994, David Goodstein, a professor of physics at Caltech, advocated for increased attention from mainstream researchers and described cold fusion as:" Olorinish (talk) 03:05, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that would do the trick. modify 03:25, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

issues section

Most of the issues section is indeed about the ealy 1990s and most (if not all) of these issues have been resolved and debunked. But to understand "cold fusion" and why it was debunked this is valuable information.

When I started editing here early this year I found numerous references from early 1990s used to make debunking comments on experiment from 2006. And some editors thought that was ok. The whole article is a mess and garbles together old stuff and new experiments. Deleting useful information won't solve it though.

The whole "current scientific work" section is desperately underdeveloped and in no way reflects the magnitude of the actual ongoing work. See this list (still in work, so feel free to add something to it) --POVbrigand (talk) 13:37, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I really did think about fixing it, as a section about the P&F effect it does seem to address the valid questions raised 20 or so years ago. Today however, in the context of lern the section is pure disinformation. So it should be deleted.

If you wrote the section today, it would be deleted immediately.

Or let me push it like this: Until the cold fusion troll parade on Wikipedia argrees there should be a seperate LENR article there should not be any intentional misinformation in the cold fusion article.

You cant have it both ways.84.106.26.81 (talk) 22:26, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

If there were lots of mentions of LENR proposals that were separate from cold fusion proposals, then a separate article would be a good idea. So far that does not seem to be the case. Am I missing something? Olorinish (talk) 00:22, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Thats the whole problem in a nut shell, there are lots of LENR reactions (actual effects) and they aren't covered in this article the way they should.

However, if we try to do that the pons and fleischmann coverage is going to vanish. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 11:11, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Let me once more point everyone to the header at the top of this article. It says:

"This article is about the Fleischmann–Pons claims of nuclear fusion at room temperature. For the original use of the term 'cold fusion', see Muon-catalyzed fusion. For all other definitions, see Cold fusion (disambiguation)."

This is intended to be about the original 'cold fusion' debacle. It's essentially a historical document. If the field of LENR and all that stuff is burgeoning - then we should certainly start another article. But this one is about the Fleischmann–Pons claims - that is a significant and notable scientific event because it beautifully illustrates the self-correcting nature of scientific research. Someone makes a wild claim, it gets published and peer-reviewed - then a bunch of people try to replicate it and fail - then that work gets peer reviewed - people try to understand why there might be this discrepancy and they try to find the flaw in the original experiment - more papers are written. Eventually we understand where the excess heat came from and nobody believes in the original work. Thus science moves on. That story is of huge importance - and needs to be portrayed in an undiluted, clear-cut manner. The fringe physics that spun off from it (which even has a new name) is a footnote and needs to be discussed someplace else. Article(s) about that new work need to stand or fall on their own merits and not screw up this article. SteveBaker (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Steve, it's not as easy as you think. At the same time that the debunkers won their victory in the media in 1989, other scientists successfully replicated the excess heat. It is indeed a story of huge importance, but not in the way you are led to believe. "The fringe science that spun off from it" - sorry, but it is a completely different story.

"then a bunch of people try to replicate it and fail" and then in the eyes of mainstream science the claims were dead and they never looked back. "then that work gets peer reviewed" - that never happened, at least not in the mainstream science world. After the original debunking in 1989 everything else was labeled "pathological" and avoided. Read the sources and be amazed.

"people try to understand why there might be this discrepancy and they try to find the flaw in the original experiment " - on the contrary: the failed replications were analyzed and they found flaws in them explaining why those replication never could have worked. --POVbrigand (talk) 19:45, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

And you have sources that explain all of this, right? ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:01, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Plenty

Artifex, you are a self-proclaimed skeptic. You can't be skeptic and prejudiced at the same time. Turn your skeptic eye at the cold fusion detractors. What do they really have to show that they are right ? The preponderance of evidence is not on their side, even if they thought so back in 1989. --POVbrigand (talk) 21:57, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

We are suppose to write an article for other people to get an idea what is going on. Whatever it says, we shouldn't trust any article ourselves. I can easily write an article that would completely convince 99% cold fusion is fake, I could also write an article that would convince 99% it is real. It is as simple as it is sad: All you have to do is marginalize one side of the story. We cant blame Wikipedia for being a bit reluctant to change controversies into facts. This is a very good mechanism to have.

But consider this: The DOE said it was all not real 2 times but a "small" group of scientists claim to have replicated the experiment successfully. As of 2009, the "small group" includes U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center. It might be interesting to figure out when exactly the corps started twitching again but for now the zombie science is alive and kicking.84.106.26.81 (talk) 12:30, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

DOE

I propose we pass around the hat and collect enough money for the US DOE to be able to build their own table top cold fusion device. Until they do we shouldn't pretend their "review" has any factual meaning. The report is just that far below DOE standards we shouldn't pretend it is real research. Any of the hundreds of failed experiments is more credible than the committee and we cant list all of those either. Does everyone on this page agree science by committee is just as bad as by press release?

There are successful replications and there are many unsuccessful research efforts. At the time the DOE report was valuable but today the committee has no weight in this. On top of that the other statements are all combined from many sources.

I understand from the pons and Fleischman perspective this was an important historical bit but in the more general sense it doesn't tell us anything we need.84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:01, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

ehmmm hahah? I just noticed the source of the "some scientists" who claim to have successfully replicated the experiment seems to include the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems? The DOE report has no weight against that. I'm changing it into: "In 1989, and in 2004, the US Department of Energy (DOE) considered a special program." It is important that the DOE science didn't actually happen, they didn't contradict SPAWAR. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:39, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

84.106, your view on the DOE is not correct. Your edit makes it look like the SPAWAR experiments are directly linked to the DOE 2004 verdict. Maybe that is true, but we do not know this for sure, it is OR to imply it the way you do now. --POVbrigand (talk) 12:21, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The US government may be considered a single entity in many ways. The DOE report is from 2004, the navy research was from 2009. I don't see a conflict. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 12:32, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

List of LENR researchers was "List of cold fusion researchers"

Is this perhaps a good idea to create some transparency? Like we have a List of Ufologists a List of cryptozoologists and a List of cognitive neuroscientists. I've seen people suggest the E-Cat should be merged into Cold fusion, seems the article failed to give it's readers an idea what is going on. We definitely don't want a section on each researcher in the article. How many are there anyway? I hear mention of 200, most wouldn't have article of their own so a list would be nice to have. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 13:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

That is a great idea

How many ? Rothwell gives a good indication [59] --POVbrigand (talk) 13:35, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

He lists 350 authors. Could you make the article? I think this would be good enough for a start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&oldid=459801767

84.106.26.81 (talk) 14:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:BLP, inclusion in such a list would certainly require either reliable self-identification by the researcher, or a clear statement in a reliable and competent source. Rothwell's self-published list does not qualify. Indeed, even if he were reliable, the methodology seems to be to include all authors of a paper tentatively connected to CF research. That's not useful - not all authors of a paper will contribute to all parts. Maybe someone asked a statistician for an analysis of data, or a physical chemist to help set up the calorimetry for an experiment. That does not make either of these people a "cold fusion researcher". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

insert: I only now realized you thought I was just going to turn the list into an article and be done with it. You need not worry, the documentation provided by Rothwell is a valuable resource for the raw names. Every entry should have sources. Both note-worthyness and activity in the field.84.106.26.81 (talk) 02:39, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Stephan. The subject of cold fusion is a strong negative for most scientists and that (rightly or wrongly) has a strong impact on whether someone gets a job/grant/tenure/Nobel Prize or not. Labeling someone as a "cold fusion researcher" who isn't active in that field of research is the kind of thing that might well provoke such a person into suing Wikipedia for defamation. Since it's not unreasonable to assume that a potential job interviewer would do a quick Wikipedia search on a candidate for a job - that's actually a very significant risk. This list could easily wreck someones' career and get Wikipedia into deep trouble. So we would have to be super-mega-careful only to include people who wrote positively about research that they personally undertook in the actual field itself. I certainly couldn't support just dumping that list of 200 names into such a list without having individually justified the selection of every single one of them from sources other than Rothwell's list. I'm nervous about this proposal and will be forced to strongly oppose it if these issues are not comprehensively dealt with. SteveBaker (talk) 14:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I have to firmly endorse both Steves' comments above. As SteveBaker cautions, there are very serious potential BLP issues here. As Stephan Schulz notes, the methodology – listing all coauthors of 'cold fusion' papers? – is badly flawed. My own work is pretty multidisciplinary and involves some diverse collaborations, but a reasonable approximation would be to say that my research is in the field of biochemistry. If one were to look at my publication history (especially the middle-author stuff and first-author publications from my undergrad and grad-school days) I'm not entirely sure how many different areas of research a creative reader might link me to using Rothwell's methods. I believe my most recently-published paper (middle author) actually deals with numerical methods, but anyone drawing thereby a conclusion that I was a mathematician would be sorely disappointed. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:11, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that researchers who publish cold fusion papers in peer reviewed journals or who present their work on the annual "International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science" would oppose to being on a list of cold fusion researchers. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:47, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It is obvious this is a kind of clarity some people wouldn't want to see. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 15:57, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, the above sent me looking at List of Ufologists, and as suspected, it is a BLP disaster area. Let's not make matters worse by using it as an example. Any such list would need crystal clear criteria for inclusion and referencing. Unless we can justify adding the statement "X identifies himself and is acknowledged by Y as a UFOlogist/cold fusion researcher/homeopath/etc." (with suitable citations) to the lede of the person's bio, we shouldn't be putting them in a list or category that so imputes. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:00, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Here is Rotwell's original list back when it included 4500 names.[60] We obviously don't have to "offend" everyone by mentioning their "shameful" cold fusion research.

BTW, most researchers are over 50 and have a full time occupation. They note: Young researchers would do best to ignore the field because of negative skeptical bias.[61] Further BLP violations are unlikely. The idea association with cold fusion would be offensive is frankly idiotic. Please make up something more silly while you don't help creating this list. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 16:39, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

We can make "a rule" that only presenters at the "International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science" and writers of papers for peer reviewed journals are included. So instead of "list of cold fusion researchers" it would be "list of researchers that are clearly active in the cold fusion field". --POVbrigand (talk) 16:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I see no reason to exclude note worthy dead people, like I said it is a field full of elderly scientists who have nothing to loose. But before we get to the questionable inclusions we should probably start by listing the most note worthy persona.

I've started something on Talk:List_of_cold_fusion_researchers, lets discuss while working on the list. We don't even know what it will look like at this stage, it might prove silly trying to source it, I have no idea. I would have to look first before making conclusions. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 17:21, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Note. I had tagged the talk page for orphan-SD. See also User talk:DVdm#list of cold fusion researchers. Further comments please overhere as opposed to overthere? Thanks. - DVdm (talk) 18:00, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

THE PAGE GOT DELETED. THANK YOU FOR SAVING WP WITH YOUR TAGGING THE PAGE. THE DELETING EDITOR DIDN'T EVEN READ THE EXPLANATION. STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The list should be named "List of LENR researchers" or "List of CMNS researchers" because that is how the field calls themselves nowadays
Criteria for inclusion:
- Has published a peer reviewed paper clearly on cold fusion / LENR
  - Co-authors should not be included automatically, but can be if they have consistently co-authored similar papers by the author, ie are in his research group.
  - Rossi's blog obviously doesn't count as peer reviewed
- or has submitted papers/presentations for the annual "International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science" visible in the proceedings
- or has authored a book clearly propagation the CF/LENR science.

--POVbrigand (talk) 20:01, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Please have a look at the current status of the list User:POVbrigand/list#List_of_LENR_researchers (only the first bit, the rest is just a working sheet) and let me know what you think. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:02, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

The Journal of Nuclear Physics

I've been wondering what disqualifies the Journal. It not just publishes papers but they are actually reviewed by university professors. Not that I'm against your agenda of erasing all mention of cold fusion/lern from wikipedia. I just want to hear a valid excuse for it.

Something like: "All those university professors are not to be trusted because ........"

Is there any doubt the professors listed are actually reviewing papers? This weird claim it is a personal diary doesn't have any sources does it? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 23:43, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

"University professor" is a very stretchable term, especially in Italy, which suffers from an inflation of academic titles. I've checked a few of the people listed, none seems to have left a reasonable trace in the literature. The journal is not recognized or indexed by any major (or, as far as I can tell, minor) science citation service. And if you look at e.g. this "paper", it's obvious that the so-called "peer review" does not even notice glaring grammatical errors. A blog does not become a proper journal because you list a couple of your bodies as "scientific advisors". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:16, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that,

You claim to have checked some of the people listed. That seems reasonable enough. Lets see, you provided an example to. Traces in literature is important, we do of course check beyond that.

Dott. Giuliano Bettini Retired.
Earlier: Selenia SpA, Rome and IDS SpA, Pisa
Also Adjunct Professor at the University of Pisa
Adjunct Professor at Naval Academy, Leghorn (Italian Navy)

Find a copy of the resume.[62] ... I'm not seeing what you promised.

Chatzichristos Aris, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Athens, Greece.

He might not be that impressive it does seem a good school?

Christos Stremmenos

"a retired Professor of the Department of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry of the Faculty of Industrial Chemistry in the University of Bologna. He has served as Ambassador of Greece in Italy (1982-1987), and has been awarded the title of “Cavaliere di Gran Croce al Merito” of the Italian Republic. In the University of Bologna, as well as in the Polytechnic of Athens (National Technical University of Athens) he has taught Molecular Spectroscopy, Applied Spectroscopy and Photochemistry."[63]

hahaha, I'm sure his mum would be proud Stephan Schulz. He got deep into all the cold fusion back in the days. Exactly the kind of scientists we want to hear about the topic. He has good credentials and did research himself. He knows more about the topic than all the NYT journalists combined and those of fox news. lol The hands-off opinion journalism is getting old fast.

But the actual review panel would matter most I suppose.

Prof. Sergio Focardi, while Arthur Rubin hates him he seems to be doing fine?
Prof. Michael Melich, nothing wrong here[64]
Prof. Alberto Carnera, nothing wrong here either, publications are listed. [65]
Prof. Pierluca Rossi (University of Bologna – Italy)
Prof. Luciana Malferrari (University of Bologna – Italy)
Prof. George Kelly (University of New Hampshire – USA)
Prof. Stremmenos Christos (Nomenclature – Italy)
Richard Noceti, Ph.D. (LTI-global.com)

If those are your science bubbies you should definitely start a journal together. It doesn't say professor of skepticism at the James Randi Educational foundation University of Bologna and University of New Hampshire are genuine universities.

I fear we are left with an argument that tries to disqualify the professors because of the topic they are addressing. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:59, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

You did read Bettini's CV? The man is a veterinarian, not a physicist, much less a specialist in nuclear reactions. Focardi has reasonable resume, but he is nearly 80. Melich is also likely 80 or over (his B.S. was 60 years ago), and his publications are on reverse engineering of software. Pierluca Rossi may or may not be Pier Luca Rossi, a medical doctor. The only notable George Kelly I can find has been dead for 40 years. Noceti works for Rossi... and so on. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:15, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello again,

In his resume we see Pierluca Rossi, is a medical physicist specialized in radiation protection.
It is well known there are no young people in the field because if you don't have tenure the oppressors will destroy your career.
This is also why the journal exists, because no one else dares to publish this stuff. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 23:04, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

So we agree that Pierluca Rossi has no competence to review papers on nuclear physics? You do know that there are tenured professors in their 30s, and plenty more in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, right? You don't need a conspiracy theory with "oppressors" to explain why it's hard to find a real journal that would publish [66] - it's badly written, lazily edited, and without any scientific merit even if you buy the premise. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:51, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Regardless how Rossi names his blog it is not a journal in the same sense how WP refers to peer-reviewed journals. One simple question, who is the publisher of this "journal". You will see that all the other "real" journals have a reliable scientific publisher who publishes them.

I must add to this that the authors of the published papers on Rossi's journal seem to be perfectly credible scientist (see for instance de:Yeong E. Kim). So I think those authors use this as a sort of preprint publishing, like Arxiv. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:04, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

First, make that "some of the authors". Wladimir Guglinski, e.g., is definitely not "a perfectly credible scientist". I notice that Kim does not list his Rossi-publications among his papers.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:29, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, some or many, but certainly not all. From Yeong E. Kim's website: Selected Publications: Y. E. Kim, “Generalized Theory of Bose-Einstein Condensation Nuclear Fusion for Hydrogen-Metal System”, Purdue Nuclear and Many Body Theory Group (PNMBTG) Preprint PNMBTG-6-2011 (June 2011). Word-for-word identical with the rossi published paper. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:52, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

So he stands by the paper, but thinks it's more prestigious as a preprint than a blog post. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:53, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

I now think the site would have to have bibliographies for the review panel. Without those it is indistinguishable from a news website. 84.107.147.121 (talk) 23:02, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

US patent on LENR by NASA

See here — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.240.125.210 (talk) 20:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

That would be a patent appliction for a "Method for Producing Heavy Electrons" by Joseph Zawodny listing the assignee as NASA. Applications don't cout for much as they can change many times over the two, three, ten years before award/final rejection. ArtifexMayhem (talk) 02:51, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Patents in general don't count for much either. The patent office spends an average of just a few minutes per patent in order to decide whether to accept it or not. They have almost no time to seriously consider whether something is patentable or not. Wikipedia doesn't accept patents as reliable sources for anything other than their own existence or that their author actually did claim what the patent claims. SteveBaker (talk) 04:38, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Italian source

According to this edit [67], the Italian agency expresses believe in the existence of cold fusion. POVbrigand, could you provide a translation that indicates that the agency is expressing that, not just the authors of that article, and how strongly it supports it? Also, what are the other research institutions you are describing? Here is the Wikipedia guidance on this [68].Olorinish (talk) 01:35, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure, in the section Cold_fusion#Ongoing_scientific_work there is the link to the 2009 book by ENEA on the history of cold fusion in Italy. The book is in English. In the foreword the President of ENEA states that the "cold fusion phenomenon is proved". So that would be the rock solid indication that ENEA as an institute believes that cold fusion is real.

I agree with you that there is room for improvement as the current sentence does not 100% do right to the situation, maybe my original line was better (but much longer). There is a tradeoff between brevity and accuracy. Other research institutions would be SRI international or NASA Langley or University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign but with various degree of evidence.

I have tried to rewrite. Please note that "at some research institutions the view is different" is verifiable. I also detached the ENEA endorsement as an institution from the rest of the institutions, because arguably apart from NASA Langley, those do not support those claims as an institution. --POVbrigand (talk) 08:08, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

ENEA does seem to support CF research, in the 2011 May-June issue of their divulgation magazine Energia Ambiente e Innovazione [69]translation "Specific funding has been allocated in Italy by the Ministry of Economic Development (2006-2007) (...) The project, called "Generation Excess Power in deuterated metals" ended in 2006-2007 with the achievement of all objectives and the achievement of a production of excess power up to 500%. (...) ENEA in 2009 organized the fifteenth edition of the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science."

Note that ENEA claims full success with 500% excess power, but then it says "Of course, there is still a real controlled reproducibility: for example you still working on the control of the start-up phenomenon, which to date has not been able to start on command. They were, however, create the preconditions for, within a specified time, the phenomenon manifests itself with a certain probability. In short, the situation of a major improvement and "transfer" of reproducibility, totally absent at the beginning of research in 1989." (emphasis added) which means that they think they are in the right path and progressing, but it's still not reliably reproduced.

We can also reuse this source for CF researchers saying that you need a certain concentration before the effect starts: "The California Institute SRI International and the IMRA Japan observed that it was a phenomenon of "threshold", ie the excess power is triggered only if there is a level of deuterium concentration (ie the number of atoms deuterium) within the lattice of palladium not less than a certain value (about 0.9 in atomic fraction) [90% concentration?]."

Also reuse as another reason for making the 2004 DOE review: "To change the cards on the table was the scientific event in August 2003, the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science was held in Boston. During the conference some institutes, including ENEA, presented positive results obtained with the right material developed at the ENEA Frascati Center. This apparent condition of "reproducibility transferred" led some American academics [Hagelstein?] to re-submit the matter to the DOE, for him to serve new checks." --Enric Naval (talk) 12:28, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Enric, thanks for highlighting --POVbrigand (talk) 16:02, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Widom-Larsen Process

NASA Langley Chief Scientists Dennis Bushnell who is cited in this article, has stated he believes that LENR is a form of "Widom-Larsen" nuclear process. The Wikipedia does not have any article on this process, I propose that one should be added. Charles (talk)

Dear POVBrigand, Greetings , thanks for removing my citation on Cold Fusion with a reference to PESN saying it is not RS. Please help me understand which sources are RS and which are not. For example, in this google search I have found 155,000 alternative references to Bushnell citing Widom-Larsen as the energy behind eCat. Which if any of these would you say is a "RS"? Thanks.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=cpsugrstla&cp=21&gs_id=2a&xhr=t&q=bushnell+widom+larsen&tok=pHip_hYJPWvTKdEmzWxjPA&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&site=&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=bushnell+widom+larsen&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=7a815af5c44e7640&biw=1146&bih=622

--Charles (talk) 01:44, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

objections

Enric Naval didn't agree with any of my contributions, the edit summary reads: "undo all the POV pushing by 84.xxx still considered pathological, still pursued only by small groups, Jones' experiment is was not "similar", *they* said that it could only be explained by nuclear reactions"

He also warned me on my talk page.[70] It seems a bit premature but he did disagree with all of them so I suppose it was appropriate from his perspective. I would much rather just debate the suggested changes. I did try to make sepperate changes in order to make it easier to revert those that require more discussion.84.106.26.81 (talk) 14:36, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I welcome your enthusiasm, but I also think that some of your changes are a bit too pushy. Take it a bit slower and stay within the consensus. Thank you for taking the time to present each change here so we can comment them one by one. Why don't you get an account ? POVbrigand (talk)

^ Browne 1989, para. 1
^ Laurence 1956
^ Kowalski 2004, II.A2
^ Storms 2007

[Browne_1989_para1-1] Browne 1989, para. 1

[2] Laurence 1956

[Kowalski_2004_IIA2-3] Kowalski 2004, II.A2

[4] Storms 2007

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]