Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 44

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POSSIBLE SLANDER

In wikipedia cold fusion is categorically listed as a prime example of pathological science. see wiki (pathological science) IT IS NOT.

In wikipedia cold fusion does not publish in peer reviewed journals and does not have recognition in mainstream science. Those practicing cold fusion are crackpots practicing pathological science and as such will have ruined careers. Blatently false and harmful to cold fusion researchers. EDITORIAL OPINION--Gregory Goble (talk) 11:13, 17 May 2012 (UTC) Wiki is responsible for editors actions.--Gregory Goble (talk) 11:15, 17 May 2012 (UTC) I love lawyers--Gregory Goble (talk) 11:19, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

1. First of all, "slander" refers to spoken statement - you mean "libel", which is the correct term when defamation is in print such as in Wikipedia.
2. Secondly, you may want to be a little careful with your inflammatory wording because an accusation of either libel or slander would constitute a legal threat - which is not allowed here (see WP:NLT) and will get you banned from the site quicker than you can blink. WP:NLT says "It is important to refrain from making comments that others may reasonably understand as legal threats, even if the comments are not intended in that fashion. For example, if you repeatedly assert that another editor's comments are "defamatory" or "libelous", that editor might interpret this as a threat to sue for defamation, even if this is not intended.". And if you truly believe what you just wrote, then WP:NLT says: "If you believe that you are the subject of a libelous statement on Wikipedia, please contact the information team at info-en@wikimedia.org.".
3. Thirdly, our statements are backed by reliable sources. We have no less than three references for this statement - two in this article and one more in the Pathological science article.
4. Fourthly, we don't say "Cold fusion is pathological science", we say "Cold fusion has...a reputation as a pathological science" - and that second statement is 100% true. We have totally solid references to show that cold fusion has indeed been described as "pathological science" in mainstream literature - and stating that this reputation exists is not libel (or slander).

Hence, I think you need to be far more careful about your own inflammatory statements. I suggest that you calm down, read our article more carefully and please feel free to make specific editing change recommendations - providing that you can back them up with WP:RS-quality sources and avoid making implied legal threats.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:38, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Someone has already brought things to ArbCom: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Gregory_Goble. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:42, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

That's kinda sad. Thanks for the heads up. SteveBaker (talk) 14:09, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Gregory Goble

Never will I ever sue or bring legal actions against Wikipedia or any of the Wiki editors. Seriously! Gregory Byron Goble My apologies; time constraints have tardied my response. In consultation while formulating dialog; two or three more days, Thank you so much for your patience. While following a Cold Fusion/LENR seminar I tried to find one person who had a reputation as a crackpot. I couldn't find one among the speakers or the registered attendees; anyone of recognizable importance had impecible reputations as far as I could determine,

As I suggested from day one.

To improve the article: 1) Wiki needs to view it as science. 2) Wiki needs to recognize which scientific journals are utilized and sourced by scientists in the art of this field of physics.

A preview of my response.

example A this edit suggestion of mine was not a waste of time... Room Temperature It used to read: "Cold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR), refers to the hypothesis that nuclear fusion might explain the results of a group of experiments conducted at ordinary temperatures (e.g., room temperature)." The majority of LENR experiments require temperatures well above room temperature. It now reads: Cold fusion is a proposed[1] type of nuclear reaction that would occur at relatively low temperatures compared with hot fusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gregory_Goble&oldid=473668504

example B this edit succeeded and then was reverted much later... Removed Sentence from Conferences Section (first part of sentence) By 1994, attendees offered no criticism to papers and presentations for fear of giving ammunition to external critics; thus allowing the proliferation of crackpots and hampering the conduct of serious science,[29] (second part of sentence) and by 2002, critics and skeptics stopped attending these conferences. [97]

The following is part of my Wiki discourse on this edit. Please follow the rest to see sourced chapters from the book Undead Science. It’s an obscure book. One found at USF (none S.F. library system) one S.F State, none S.F or San Mateo community college. Please read the book to make a responsible response as to whether words may have been taken out of context from an authoritative source.

Simon argues that in spite of widespread skepticism in the scientific community, there has been a continued effort to make sense of the controversial phenomenon. “Researchers in well-respected laboratories continue to produce new and rigorous work. In this manner cold fusion research continues… “ and “The survival of cold fusion {research} signals the need for a more complex understanding of the social dynamics of scientific knowledge making; the boundaries between experts, intermediaries, and the lay public; and the conceptualization of failure in the history of science and technology.” {author} Bart Simon is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. [97] Note that the author is an assistant professor of sociology not physics. To reference part of a sentence from this book may be taking the intent of the author out of context.

Conferences (after my edit removal) Cold fusion researchers were for many years unable to get papers accepted at scientific meetings, prompting the creation of their own conferences. The first International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF) was held in 1990, and has met every 12 to 18 months since.[29] With the founding[97] in 2004 of the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ISCMNS), the conference was renamed the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science—an example of the approach the cold fusion community has adopted in avoiding the term cold fusion and its negative connotations.[73][75][98] Cold fusion research is often referenced by proponents as "low-energy nuclear reactions", or LENR,[99] but according to sociologist Bart Simon the "cold fusion" label continues to serve a social function in creating a collective identity for the field.[73] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=474082175

NOW Conferences (many weeks later someone reverted my delete) Cold fusion researchers were for many years unable to get papers accepted at scientific meetings, prompting the creation of their own conferences. The first International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF) was held in 1990, and has met every 12 to 18 months since. Attendees offered no criticism to papers and presentations for fear of giving ammunition to external critics;[99] thus allowing the proliferation of crackpots and hampering the conduct of serious science.[100] Critics and skeptics stopped attending these conferences, with the notable exception of Douglas Morrison,[101] who died in 2001. With the founding[102] in 2004 of the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ISCMNS), the conference was renamed the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (the reasons are explained in the "ongoing" section).[73][75][103] Cold fusion research is often referenced by proponents as "low-energy nuclear reactions", or LENR,[104] but according to sociologist Bart Simon the "cold fusion" label continues to serve a social function in creating a collective identity for the field.[73]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gregory_Goble&oldid=473668504

Clearly Undead science is about cold fusion SCIENCE continuing after a bad start. One chapter is about how it gained this “bad reputation” while the rest is how it survives as science… (increased sophistication of instrumentation and review) hence the title ‘Undead Science” not undead pathological science. To source his book as reasons for the wiki reading public to reason that cold fusion is pathological science or bad science shows poor judgment. The author is not taking such a stance. Wiki influences the public. Care by administrators and editors should be taken to not take authors content out of context if it may cause harm. … a wiki editor or three or four… are using his words to promote a stance harmful to this art; that it is pathological science. --Gregory Goble (talk) 11:10, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment by IRWolfie- User:Gregory_Goble appears to have very severe competence issues that essentially waste the time of other editors. See some recent examples here: Talk:Cold_fusion#POSSIBLE_SLANDER, Talk:Cold_fusion#The_third_sentence_in_this_article_is_out_of_date_and_erroneous_-_Let.27s_fix_it Talk:Cold_fusion#In_Popular_Culture_-_Cold_Fusion. Most of his comments appear to be borderline incoherent with some going pretty far into the realm of craziness: User_talk:Gregory_Goble#hi. The rambling isn't a new feature: [19]. I suggest there is a very severe issue of WP:INCOMPETENCE rather than negative intent. When he accuses other editors of wikilawyering I'm not even sure he knows what he is saying. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:34, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment by SteveBaker His post: Talk:Cold_fusion#POSSIBLE_SLANDER (I think he means "libel") where he accuses us of being defamatory towards cold-fusion researchers because we use the term "pathological science". That post was followed three minutes later by an additional post. (It's easy to miss that addition inside his signature blocks.) It says "I love lawyers". I didn't notice when I made my reply - but now that I see it, this constitutes a clear WP:NLT. His threat is unjustified because we don't say that cold fusion is pathological science - we say that it has a "reputation as pathological science" - for which we have plenty of WP:RS showing mainstream scientists saying exactly that in published journals. Aside from the (many) other issues, I believe we have clear grounds for indef-blocking him under WP:NLT without further delay - which means we can take our time deciding whether some other grounds would justify heavier measures. SteveBaker (talk) 14:28, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment by POVbrigand Many of the contributions that Gregory makes on the talk page are hard to understand for me. Lately I did get the idea that some of his contributions were getting better. He seems to have a problem that cold fusion is disposed of as pseudo science. It is a widely held belief in the real world, so it is absolutely correct to incorporate that view in the wikipedia article. I do not see his latest "slander" comment as a legal threat. I think he is again trying to make the point that it is, in his eyes, unfair that cold fusion is treated the way it is. I think everyone should chill and Gregory should think if he really want to contribute constructively or not. As IRWolfie noted above, Gregory's conduct is not malicious. Involuntary mentorship could be a solution. --POVbrigand (talk) 19:09, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughts and much more--Gregory Goble (talk) 11:24, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations on an excellent and persuasive contribution to the discussion. This is by no means the only topic in which Wikipedia's failure to have an efficient and fair minded way of adjudicating dispute, which in effect sanctions highly regressive and inaccurate thinking in the service of dominating institutions and obsolete ideas, has resulted in the kind of problems your posting directs attention to. Perhaps Wikipedia can, as an institution, learn something from how this goes over the coming weeks. The Return of "Cold Fusion" appears to be destined to happen so rapidly that it is really going to expose some of the follies of our scientific institutions, not to mention reveal the importance of creativity, independent experimentalism, and a contingent view of scholarly truth, in scientific innovation. The "pathological science" crowd deserves to be knocked around (metaphorically speaking, of course) theroom a few times until they get some sense into their collective head.--BenJonson (talk) 22:29, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm willing to be wrong just as soon as cold fusion energy sources are installed and working to generate heat or electricity. Based on past announcements, your wish for imminent success is hopeful at best. Binksternet (talk) 22:43, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Widom-Larsen theory

Should there be a seperate article about Widom-Larsen theory? This article doesn't give much information about it and I came here to find how Widom-Larsen theory differs from cold fusion. This article seems to suggest they do differ: http://futureinnovation.larc.nasa.gov/view/articles/futurism/bushnell/low-energy-nuclear-reactions.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.242.147 (talk) 22:47, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

No on wikipedia we create articles only when they are notable. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:34, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah. I guess I'll look elsewhere." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.242.147 (talk) 02:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Remove name from section

I want to remove my name from this section shown below in association with "cold fusion." I perform research on the anomalous heat effect, that is a real phenominon, and is certainly not cold fusion.

Loading ratio

Michael McKubre working on deuterium gas-based cold fusion cell used by SRI International. Cold fusion researchers (McKubre since 1994,[159] Graham K. Hubler from the Naval Research Laboratory in 2007,[86] or ENEA in 2011[72]) have posited that a cell that was loaded with a deuterium/palladium ratio lower than 100% (or 1:1) would never produce excess heat.[159]

It can be changed to - Researchers working on the anomalous heat effect (McKubre since 1994,[159] Graham K. Hubler from the Naval Research Laboratory in 2007,[86] or ENEA in 2011[72]) have posited that a cell that was loaded with a deuterium/palladium ratio lower than 100% (or 1:1) would never produce excess heat.[159]

or

Cold fusion researchers (McKubre since 1994,[159] or ENEA in 2011[72]) have posited that a cell that was loaded with a deuterium/palladium ratio lower than 100% (or 1:1) would never produce excess heat.[159]

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hublerg (talk • contribs) 14:51, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I want to remove my name from this section shown below in association with "cold fusion." I perform research on the anomalous heat effect, that is a real phenominon, and is certainly not cold fusion.

Loading ratio

Michael McKubre working on deuterium gas-based cold fusion cell used by SRI International. Cold fusion researchers (McKubre since 1994,[159] Graham K. Hubler from the Naval Research Laboratory in 2007,[86] or ENEA in 2011[72]) have posited that a cell that was loaded with a deuterium/palladium ratio lower than 100% (or 1:1) would never produce excess heat.[159]

It can be changed to - Researchers working on the anomalous heat effect (McKubre since 1994,[159] Graham K. Hubler from the Naval Research Laboratory in 2007,[86] or ENEA in 2011[72]) have posited that a cell that was loaded with a deuterium/palladium ratio lower than 100% (or 1:1) would never produce excess heat.[159]

or

Cold fusion researchers (McKubre since 1994,[159] or ENEA in 2011[72]) have posited that a cell that was loaded with a deuterium/palladium ratio lower than 100% (or 1:1) would never produce excess heat.[159]

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hublerg (talk • contribs) 14:53, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I've removed it temporarily for the duration of the discussion [2]. I've also removed the corresponding claim that you are involved in Cold Fusion/LENR research as well. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:00, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

But in 2008 he gave a talk titled The Status of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (aka "Cold Fusion") in ICCFF14 and it talks about "low-energy nuclear reactions" which is another name for cold fusion..... And in 2003 he co-authored a talk in ICCFF10 Report on Several On-Going Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Projects at NRL (Naval Research Labs).

And search "Hubler" in New Times Magazine July 3, 2009 Issue #32 to see long term commitment to "LENR".

And the photo with McKubre and Hagelstein about how he helped prompt the 2004 DOE review of cold fusion[3] --Enric Naval (talk) 15:26, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion on the issue, I just thought it prudent to remove it until this is resolved because of the BLP issues. I don't have access to the particular sources used. what do they say? IRWolfie- (talk) 15:32, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Basically, he has been quite involved with CF/LENR/CNMS/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. At most, we can point out that he doesn't think that it's caused by nuclear reactions? --Enric Naval (talk) 15:54, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Do we have a source for him not thinking it's caused by nuclear reactions? Do you have access to the source to verify the current statements? IRWolfie- (talk) 20:52, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I have access [4]. He doesn't say directly that nuclear reactions are not the cause. He only says that the cause is not known:

• "A set of new materials experiments is suggested that, if performed, may help to reveal the underlying mechanism(s) responsible for the reported excess heat. (...) Less encouraging are the facts that there is still no viable physical mechanism to explain the heat effect, and triggering the heat effect is still not empirically understood. (...) The nuclear data that Fleishmann and Pons presented proved to be in error and have never been reproduced. However, there remains the possibility that their excess heat production results may have been correct."

--Enric Naval (talk) 10:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

That looks ok to me. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:30, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I think we should incline towards removing this material. WP:BLP is a concern here - and we know that association with cold fusion can have a chilling effect on the careers of physicists. SteveBaker (talk) 20:02, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Does someone want to take it to WP:BLPN or similar and see what there opinions are? IRWolfie- (talk) 09:10, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No, I don't. I agree with the removal. For example, Wired talks about him, but doesn't mention his name "two of they key organizers are scientists affiliated with the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval Research Laboratory (scientists from the latter institution having long been involved in this controversial field)." [5]. As an unintended side effect, our article now implies that no cold fusion research has ever been carried in the Naval Research Laboratory..... --Enric Naval (talk) 11:44, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

LOVE

Cold Fusion

WikiLove is a term that refers to a general spirit of collegiality and mutual understanding among wiki users. It was coined over time on the mailing lists. Because people coming from substantially different perspectives work on Wikipedia together—religious fundamentalists and secular humanists, conservatives and liberals, et al.—it is easy for discussions to degenerate into flamewars. But we are all here for one reason: we love accumulating, ordering, structuring, and making freely available what knowledge we have in the form of an encyclopedia of unprecedented size. Wikipedia is not just another discussion forum, it is a project to describe and collect what we know. If we keep this common goal, this love of knowledge, in mind, if we concentrate on achieving a neutral point of view even when it is difficult, and if we try to actually understand what the other side has to say, then we can reach the state of "WikiLove". If we fail to achieve WikiLove, this will only mean that the encyclopedia and its mission as a whole will suffer. Constant flamewars will scare contributors off, biased articles will drive readers away, and both will harm our reputation in the long term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregory Goble (talk • contribs) 09:20, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Bias by selective (and purposeful) omission seems to be still an issue

See the discussion on a rather telling detail concerning the amazingly sensitive word "NASA" - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Cold_fusion&oldid=476490280 ("All mention of NASA has been deleted from this article").

This strikes me as regrettably all too typical of the way narrow vested interests dictate wiki policy. Anyone who does not know by now that NASA is a publicly acknowledged entity that has engaged *by apparent policy* a longstanding research and theoretical interest in LENR hasn't a damn bit of interest editing an article on the topic.--BenJonson (talk) 22:19, 8 July 2012 (UTC)--BenJonson (talk) 22:19, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

As promised, I now gave this article a lower objectiveness rating and I encourage others to consider doing the same. It's a pity, as I think that overall it's a good article. Harald88 (talk) 16:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

The article does have much good information. But its current slant is still strongly in the direction of yesterday's dogma -- entire sections of it are likely to seem ridiculous in a year or two. All that old #@! about how Pons and Fleischmann couldn't measure heat accurately has been exposed for the fraud that it always was. Just my two cents. --BenJonson (talk) 22:19, 8 July 2012 (UTC)--BenJonson (talk) 22:19, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Ben, Trying to get the 'gate keepers' to bring the article up to date is a waste of time. While WIKI articles often have a statement "This article needs attention from an expert on the subject," the present attitude in this group seems to be that "If you think you are an expert, you are not, since pseudoscience can have no experts. Besides, to even claim you are one says you have a point-of-view and your introduction of anything pro-CF will be deleted sooner or later."

To 'prove' that they are neutral and allow significant contributions past 1999, they allow blogs that denigrate CF (e.g., Kean, Sam (26 July 2010), "Palladium: The Cold Fusion Fanatics Can't Get Enough of the Stuff." They prefer to delete references to papers in impact factor journals (e.g., Current Science) that give CF credence by providing a theoretical base, which CF-deniers still contend cannot exist. So much for a neutral point of view.

You could look at what references they have 'allowed' since 1999 and delete some of their trash. Aqm2241 (talk) 10:47, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

"closed" and "ongoing"

It is hard to know whether a particular research program is closed or ongoing. I propose to simply delete these section titles. Does anyone object? Olorinish (talk) 03:00, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Seen this?

Has anyone read this: [6] extra999 (talk) 04:52, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

"citation needed" and other tags

I plan to get rid of the "citation needed" and other tags in the next week or so. If you have strong opinions about any of them, please discuss them here. Here are some changes I propose:

In the introduction, change "A small community of researchers..." to "Some researchers..."

In the History section, remove "Claims to have produced ..."

remove the section title "Claims of commercial devices"

In the Publications section, remove [who?]"

In the Theoretical proposals section,

remove the first sentence

remove "[clarification needed]"

change the next-to-last sentence to "In 2006, Widom and Larsen proposed a mechanism for the production of nuclear reactions at low temperatures."

remove the last sentence

Olorinish (talk) 16:20, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Cold fusion/LERN: "The existence of the effect is no longer in doubt"

According to this paper from the European Commission, page 23:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/industrial_technologies/pdf/emerging-materials-report_en.pdf

3.4 Low Energy Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter

ENEA, SRI and NRL have been involved within review programs in the US and in Italy. The main task was to demonstrate, on the basis of signals well above the measurement uncertainties and with a cross check, the existence of the excess of heat production during electrochemical loading of deuterium in palladium cathodes. The target was achieved and the existence of the effect is no longer in doubt. The complete reproducibility of the effect and the amplitude of the signals are not yet under control since this target will require the definition of the phenomenon. Recent data, in open literature, shows that, into the condensed matter (i.e. Pd, Ti, PdO), the cross section of the deuteriumdeuterium fusion reaction, at low energy, is some orders of magnitude higher than the expected value. In this case the typical products of the reaction are observed but a new screening effect, in the order of several hundreds of eV, is observed.

ENEA = (Italian) National agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development
SRI = Stanford Research Institute
NRL = Naval Research Lab

This is quite remarkable, and it should be clearly stated in the article.--NUMB3RN7NE (talk) 05:22, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

The opinions of cold fusion researcher, and "LENR expert", Vittorio Violante (of the ENEA) are not a reliable source for such claims. —ArtifexMayhem (talk) 07:35, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Stated in a workshop: "Forward Looking Workshop on Materials for Emerging Energy Technologies".

Not an official statement: "The views expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission."

From the part of the article that is not written by the consulted experts and not by the workshop writer "This section contains the individual submissions from each of the attending experts", (the author is Vittorio Violante from ENEA)

--Enric Naval (talk) 07:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

So to be completely clear, you're saying that this statement comes from Vittorio Violante - it isn't backed by the European commission (even though they printed it) and isn't necessarily endorsed by the consulted experts or the workshop author? So it's basically non-peer-reviewed material? Then the existence of the effect is still in considerable doubt! SteveBaker (talk) 12:34, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I've been trying to convince editors that conference or workshop "proceedings", even if published by a normally reliable scientific organization, are solely the opinion of the authors of the respective articles, for years. It's nice to have that acknowledged in some small way here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

84.* pasted the entire subpage here: User:POVbrigand/list into this section, I've reverted it due to the BLP violations and the large amount of text that it is. I've nominated the subpage for deletion due to the BLP concerns. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:19, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

(So much research, and I still don't have my flying car my cold fusion-powered car.) --Enric Naval (talk) 14:18, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I wonder if this is simply an error in interpretation. Consider neutron generators, which use high voltage acceleration of tritium or deuterium. One gets some excess energy output, sort of kind of, but it's not equal or greater than the input effort. At lower acceleration levels, one could, at some at the upper end accelerations, get intermittent bursts of neutrons. But, this isn't the place for speculation.Wzrd1 (talk) 04:24, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

It takes a pretty generous interpretation to see 195 keV to 1 MeV input ions as being "cold", but your milage may vary.LeadSongDog come howl! 16:35, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Moved from top

Today, August 13, 2012, I posted the following in the "In Popular Culture" section:

"In the 2010 film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the Jake Moore character (played by Shia LaBeouf) attempts to find funding for an energy company that plans to utilize lasers focused on a small target, thereby releasing enormous amounts of energy, a process that bears similarity to the idea of Cold Fusion."

Twice, my editing was removed. Why? There is nothing wring with the edit. Everything I said there is accurate, the context is accurate and there is never any mention of support, one way or another, for or against Cold Fusion. So why was it deleted? And, ***No*** I am not engaging in an "editing war". I merely posted an intelligent, reasonable comment. So why was it deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pantothenic (talk • contribs) 15:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It's not sourced and looks like original research. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:55, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Aside from the fundamental problems identified by IRWolfie, it's also worth noting that the statement just isn't correct. I haven't seen the film, but the sentence you've provided describes inertial confinement fusion – an accepted and experimentally well-supported type of 'hot' fusion – not a cold fusion process. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:03, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with IRWolfie and TenOfAllTrades in that the proposed addition is wrong because it is not about cold fusion, and that it is apparently a violation of WP:NOR or WP:SYNTH; nothing cited to reliable sources. Binksternet (talk) 17:57, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

US News secondary news source on MIT, NASA, Boeing; lenrforum.eu

"LENR demonstration projects [were] recently initiated at respected places like MIT, the University of Missouri, and the University of Bologna; public presentations by executives at one of the world's largest instrument companies, National Instruments, apparently designed to attract the top LENR researchers into a project to test and quantify observed LENR effects; and a July report from the European Commission's research and development center that LENR at least has sustainable future energy technology potential. But near the top of the cold fusion research community's hit parade are musings from NASA, like the fact that the agency apparently filed two LENR-related patents last year and that a leading NASA scientist has indicated that LENR is real enough to pay attention to and study. Boeing and NASA may even be testing aircraft using LENR or other similar concepts." -- Nesbit, J. (August 8, 2012) "New Burst of Energy Could Bring Cold Fusion to Front Burner" US News

Also, it looks like many of the "Topics" listed on http://lenrforum.eu/viewforum.php?f=15 include reliable sources missing from the article, some of which are peer reviewed primary and some of which are secondary non-peer reviewed news items. There are also government sources, and things like this which was a presentation from National Instruments to the EU: http://www.22passi.it/downloads/eu_brussels_june_20_2012_concezzi.pdf 75.166.207.214 (talk) 22:56, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

We don't rely on blogs and forums etc. We don't rely on primary sources. Newspapers are unreliable for WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims, particularly so for anything within science. I've removed the link to the forum since you aren't actually linking to a list but to a forum, seems like advertising. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Official blogs run by established news sources with editorial oversight and reputations for fact checking and accuracy are reliable secondary sources per WP:NEWSBLOG. There is no indication in WP:EXCEPTIONAL that mainstream news sources are prohibited for exceptional claims, but it does say multiple mainstream sources. The US News article is specifically commenting on recent developments in the subject of the article. Please ask on WP:RSN if you disagree. Is editing others comments like that allowed per WP:TALK? As "seems like advertising" is clearly not within any of the categories listed in WP:TPO, I am replacing the link. I have no affiliation with or interest in lenrforum.eu, and only learned of it today. People often post links to e.g. vortex-l here. 75.166.207.214 (talk) 01:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Is http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Is-Cold-Fusion-Finally-Being-Accepted-by-the-Scientific-Community.html a corroborating mainstream news source for the purposes of WP:EXCEPTIONAL? See their editorial staff list (scroll down). 75.166.207.214 (talk) 02:25, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

If so, I propose that the US News excerpt above be summarized in the article. 71.215.68.200 (talk) 14:20, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

It's an unreliable source, it's a blog by someone with no relevant expertise hosted on a website which has a dubious science record. Also your proposal is incredibly vague. Start with secondary academic sources etc and work from there. Oilprice isn't reliable either.IRWolfie- (talk) 14:25, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I would like a second opinion. 71.215.68.200 (talk) 14:30, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

WP:RSN, but you are required to have suggested text. Check the archives here as well, similar issues have been discussed, but it was deemed to be undue, see WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:33, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Will do. Thank you. Could you please say why you wrote that Nesbit has "no relevant expertise"? This is his short bio from the US News site: "Jeff Nesbit was the director of public affairs for two prominent federal science agencies; a senior communications official at the White House; a national journalist with Knight-Ridder Newspapers and others; and a strategic communications adviser to science, public health, technology, and environmental non-profits and campaigns...." If he has specific expertise deficiencies that you know about I would like to learn what they are. 71.215.68.200 (talk) 14:44, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Communications officials don't need any qualifications to do what they do. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:00, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Move to "The cold fusion controversy"

Arrivisto moved this page to "The cold fusion controversy" - explaining in edit-summary: "This article is declared to be about the controversy, and not about cold fusion itself" - IRWolfie (correctly, IMHO) reverted that change on grounds that it's overly bold and needs discussion. I agree with IRWolfie's call - although I sympathize with the desire to create an article about the Fleishman-Pons controversy. I'd like to direct people's attention to a previous discussion of this kind of move here:

• Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_43#Should_we_split_this_article?

...that motion was to split the article into (broadly) a "controversy" article and an "ongoing research" article - and it was defeated on a consensus !vote. SteveBaker (talk) 14:33, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

(Also, the correct title would have been "Cold fusion controversy" - we don't need a "The" in there - see also Moon landing controversy, Gracenote licensing controversy, Umm Hajul controversy, and dozens of others...and furthermore, something to do with how the move was done wiped out the 43 pages of archived discussion here - which would be "A Bad Thing"!) SteveBaker (talk) 14:38, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I stand (in part!) corrected. Arrivisto (talk) 14:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I support IRWolfie's return to status quo. The cold fusion topic is sufficiently covered in this article; there is no other article which covers it better. Binksternet (talk) 15:38, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Long quotes in inline references

The inline quotes were not showing up (technical details: the quote parameter is not available in the harvnb template, so I moved the quotes outside the template). Now they make some of the inlines very deep in the narrow-column references layout, which makes it more difficult for the eye to travel through the references. The way we dealt with this in Gaza flotilla raid was to create a text group for inlines with extra text. I suggest we do the same here. --Mirokado (talk) 23:25, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Now done that. --Mirokado (talk) 19:21, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Is the Widom-Larsen mechanism notable?

Does anyone know of a good source describing the Widom-Larsen proposal as being notable enough to include in this article? I found this, but I don't think it is enough to justify including it [7]. Olorinish (talk) 10:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Keep in mind that notability isn't the requirement for inclusion. due weight is. Have a check over WP:FRINGE as well to get an idea of the sort of sourcing that is required; if you want to include a proposal, you should ideally have independent reliable academic sources to meet WP:EXCEPTIONAL, particularly considering that the proposer has an apparent conflict of interest (see "and could be harnessed as an energy source – something Larsen's company hopes to commercialise."). Science magazines are fine for standard material, but not exceptionally reliable. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:36, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I am a bit puzzled: is this recent (August 2012) NASA document worth to add?

From here: [8]

The name of it is:

Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research

Phase II: N+4 Advanced Concept Development

(Counted 98 repetitions of the word: LENR)

Opinions are well accepted.--Insilvis (talk) 02:04, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be any claim in the paper that LENR might work, only that, if it did, it would be revolutionary. I would lean against inclusion. It might fit in a "consequences" (of a working LENR). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:18, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed there is, but it written in a messy way IMO:

Page 84: there is a diagram representing the status of LENR research.

page 85: the diagram is so explained:

TRL 2 (a) Current

A concept for a LENR propulsion system has been generated

Basic principles of LENR are reported to have been demonstrated

(One should ask why you need to reach page 85 to read this...) --Insilvis (talk) 16:13, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

So, (paraphrasing), there's a theoretical foundation, and reports that it works. That would seem to fit around 6 (out of 5) on the infeasibility scale. For some reason, they put it at 5. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:15, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

We don't typically base article content off primary sources, particular content covered by WP:FRINGE. It's not a peer reviewed or academic document and appears to be some sort of internal report. IRWolfie- (talk) 17:34, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Millions of Degrees?

The article states under the History section that "Nuclear fusion occurs at temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees". What about the Fusors? I don't think anyone doubts their existence as being fusion devices. Shouldn't the article be changed to dispel this myth concerning high temperatures and pressures required for fusion to occur? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.216.230.72 (talk) 01:18, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Fusors work by accelerating ions to high temperatures; our Fusor article estimates the temperature of the accelerated ions at 45 million Kelvins. The cold fusion article used to have a section on other kinds of fusion, wherein Fusors were listed under "globally cold, locally hot" fusion. That section was removed from this page as folks thought it was off-topic, but its descendant survives in a section in the Nuclear Fusion article. Muon-catalyzed fusion is a better example of actual cold fusion- though it's true that a huge amount of energy is required to create muons, it's not accurate to call that input energy temperature. --Noren (talk) 12:38, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Bad science or Good science, Controlled experiments or Lack of, Peer review or Not, Criticism allowed?

Wiki cold fusion is lost to paid obfuscators. Lack of oversite is negligence. Time to sue WIKI? Cold fusion LENR is engineered science yet not recognized as good science by WIKI... go figure. Critisism of WIKI allowed or not? Not. --Gregory Goble (talk) 05:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Cold fusion is not recognized as good science by mainstream scientists, so it should not be recognized by Wiki. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:20, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Gregory, I know you probably mean well in some sort of way, but please don't say that editors are paid to obfuscate this article and hint that wikipedia should be sued. Cheers, IRWolfie- (talk) 15:31, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Referencing Style

Does anyone have a particular desire to keep the current referencing style? I was considering changing the referencing style like I did at astrology: [9]. It can reduce the article kb size (the style is more compact) a lot and makes the references easier to maintain and validate. Any objections/opinions? IRWolfie- (talk) 16:05, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

The refs certainly need some tender loving care, but I think we should retain the existing Harvard mechanisms, repair the problems, apply them consistently and use sfn in any cases where ref tags just enclose a single harvnb, rather than changing everything to use a different style. When done properly the current mechanism provides a lot of self-validation. If you are not so familiar with the current style I will volunteer (in the spirit of letting the punishment fit the crime) to do the tidying up. --Mirokado (talk) 16:58, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I can do either transformation, but I'll wait for more input as well before any changes. IRWolfie- (talk) 11:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Correcting a few obvious problems, any systematic transformation will be easier with a more correct starting point anyway. --Mirokado (talk) 23:40, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

No further responses for comfortably over a week. It looks as if it will be possible to keep the article tidy based on the current reference style. I will continue with some more rationalisation. Anyone wishing to check articles using the Harvard templates can install User:Ucucha/HarvErrors which displays red messages for several possible errors. --Mirokado (talk) 15:15, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I have updated various US DOE 1989 refs to use the {{sfn|ps=|...}} template which wraps harvnb in ref tags and consolidates identical page ranges automatically thus making it unnecessary to maintain extra named references. Other references to a single source can be similarly simplified. --Mirokado (talk) 15:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I've now updated the remaining single usages of harvnb in named refs, with the exception of Simon. As we can see from the diff, the ref names were fairly but not completely systematic and the source size is reduced by over 1kbyte. For Simon, the ref names may have been chosen to be convenient and distinct, or may imply that some of the refs can have more restricted page ranges, thus I will do those changes separately so it is easy to inspect them. --Mirokado (talk) 14:15, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

The changes to named Simon refs are in this diff. A small increase in source size this time as the same range appears inline several times. The refs for pages 180–183 and 209 (old ref names Simon180 and Simon209) look as if they need some tidying up. Please can someone have a look at those, the diff should be helpful. Thanks. --Mirokado (talk) 15:19, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I will try to take a look. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:42, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Cold Fusion LENR Technology - Licencing Through NASA Now

Holy Moly Guys,

NASA actually posted Zawodny's original video, and present it as a licenseable technology through the SBIR. It wasn't immediately apparent until I did a "polaritons" search. LENR brought it up also, but it was buried in 39 other items that didn't relate cold fusion or LENR. Producing electricity directly is the main thing, with waste heat, as he puts it, which can be used as well to heat your building or your water. The first big crack in this Black Swan's egg has appeared, and I hear it chirping. Please take the time to watch this video and consider the limitless possibilities!!

http://technologygateway.nasa.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=video

Best Regards to all, and you might want to consider selling your oil and gas stocks short.

Sent to the following on 8-27-2012 --Gregory Goble (talk) 05:09, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I have removed a list of what appears to be the names and email addresses of 48 people. Please do not post personal details like that anywhere. Johnuniq (talk) 07:36, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Could be a mistake. Could be that NASA considers the technology to be so useful, if it would work, that they're will to list it as something to investigate. I'm not going to watch a video to find out. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:23, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, I think he is telling us about an email he sent on the 27th. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:42, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Gregory, Wikipedia isn't a forum. This talk page is only for discussions about content related to the article. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:43, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Rossi E-Cat and Cold Fusion / LENR

I have been told in the E-Cat talk page Talk:Energy Catalyzer#New Wired UK_article beginning at Regarding Alanf777's 'bold' edit, I'll start by saying that this article isn't about LENR in general - that it is not permitted to talk about LENR in the E-Cat article unless and until Rossi can PROVE that the E-Cat operates by LENR. (That's an impossible aim, since nobody has yet established that Nickel-Hydrogen IS LENR, specifically because no "ashes" have yet been identified.) So I've come here. Alanf777 (talk) 23:03, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Edit 1 : Lede. "They have reported that, "under certain extreme conditions", they observe excess heat effects by interaction of hydrogen or deuterium with palladium, nickel or platinum. However, they cannot explain these observations and have not demonstrated reliable replication of the effects."

That seems to be a paraphrase of this : "In previous studies, scientists from the Naval Research Laboratory; ENEA, which is the National Energy Laboratory of Italy; and other scientific teams around the globe have reported observing excess heat effects when hydrogen or deuterium has interacted with palladium, nickel or platinum under certain extreme conditions. However, the researchers do not know how the excess heat is being created, nor can they duplicate the same, exact results on a consistent basis in some of these systems." The omission of "some of" rather distorts the original sense, no? I just added "in some cases". (I could go on to comment on the omission of duplicate the same, exact results). Alanf777 (talk) 23:15, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Given that Rossi has yet to "prove" the E-Cat operates at all, there's not much point in addressing the speculation on how. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. We can and should wait for actual results to be published and then for reviews to come out, we don't have to cover news, let alone speculate on future developments. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:00, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Edit 2 : Added "The Pod In The Barrier" to Popular Culture Alanf777 (talk) 21:26, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Edit 3 : Accepted User:Enric Naval's comment about the NEXT paragraph in the referenced article which describes a 20% success rate, which takes precedence over the imprecise "NOT in some cases" Alanf777 (talk) 21:47, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

His change-comment also said "there is not "some case" where they have achieved repliable replication". That's what ONE of the people in the REF says (albeit expressed in the negative -- that there are some cases where it has NOT) -- see Edit 1 above. The Godes/McKubre paper in ICCF-17 http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2012/ICCF17/ICCF-17-Godes-Controlled-Electron-Capture-Paper.pdf : "Abstract— We have run over 150 experiments using two different cell/calorimeter designs. Excess power has always been seen using Q pulses tuned to the resonance of palladium and nickel hydrides in pressurized vessels. Excess energies of up to 100% have been seen using this excitation method." Are ICCF papers WP:RS in this article? Alanf777 (talk) 22:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I see that there are at least four references to Wired articles. Is it OK then to summarize http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/14/cold-fusion -- particularly the paragraph about Brillouin, which links to the Godes paper? Alanf777 (talk) 23:46, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposed Edit 4 :

Wired UK http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/14/cold-fusion comments on recent results by scientists at Brillouin Energy and SRI http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2012/ICCF17/ICCF-17-Godes-Controlled-Electron-Capture-Paper.pdf In 150 experiments using palladium and nickel hydrides, excess energy was always seen, with excess energies up to 100%.

This could go either in the lede (after the 20% quote) or in the replication section. Alanf777 (talk) 01:42, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

The Wired article looks good as a reference.--Nowa (talk) 11:41, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Request for clarification on the style in this article. Does one say (as in my proposed edit 4) who is reporting, or do you just give the report and let the reader look at the REF? Alanf777 (talk) 17:29, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposed Edit 4A : Scientists at Brillouin Energy and SRI report that in 150 experiments using palladium and nickel hydrides, excess energy was always seen, with excess energies up to 100%. [REF] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/14/cold-fusion [REF] http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2012/ICCF17/ICCF-17-Godes-Controlled-Electron-Capture-Paper.pdf (The actual ref will include the authors, etc) Alanf777 (talk) 17:29, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Comment on Removal of Edit 3: My understanding on Wiki is that if there is:

A sentence describing something [REF]

Then the sentence must be an accurate summary of what is said in REF. There are two paragraphs in the REF a) "NOT replicated in SOME CASES". b) REPLICATED in 20% of cases". Replacing either of these with "have not demonstrated reliable replication" is a blatant insertion of biased opinion by the editor. Alanf777 (talk) 17:14, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually it's called synthesis WP:SYN. But you are right, it's not in accordance with Wikipedia policy.--Nowa (talk) 17:21, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

To avoid my being accused of an edit/delete war, would you care to revert it to the "20%" version ? Alanf777 (talk) 17:31, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposed Edit 4B

Scientists at Brillouin Energy and SRI report that in 150 experiments using palladium and nickel hydrides, excess energy was always seen, with excess energies up to 100%. Alanf777 (talk) 18:11, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm ... is this the WP:SYN I was complaining about? Rather than paraphrase the exact words used by Wired I quoted from the abstract of the referenced paper. Alanf777 (talk) 18:11, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Brillouin and SRI have not yet produced a product for sale, and have not yet convinced fusion experts that they can produce fusion. If they do have a recipe for producing fusion, they will soon be able to do one of those things. Until major events like that happen, we should be conservative and wait and see how things develop. Keep in mind that this is an encyclopedia; it is not a newspaper [10]. Olorinish (talk) 00:13, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The thrust of the Wired article seems to be "The field is looking less like the domain of tinkering eccentrics; increasingly it seems to be getting taken seriously as a business proposition." Perhaps something like this with bullet points from the Wired article supporting why they feel that way might be appropriate for this article. Focusing on Buillouin, however, appears to give those particular results undue weight. In terms of significance, the Wired article says "Perhaps the most notable contribution was Francesco Celani's live demonstration of an apparently working cold fusion device."--Nowa (talk) 08:52, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if Nowa's first point (tinkering eccentrics) should be used, and if so, where it should go. Alanf777 (talk) 19:12, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, have there been any studies to determine if any of these devices are acting as heat pumps?--Nowa (talk) 08:56, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I think the calorimetry is pretty robust now (though Celani's is a new design) Alanf777

(talk) 17:00, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Godes et al (referenced by Wired: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2012/ICCF17/ICCF-17-Godes-Controlled-Electron-Capture-Paper.pdf) specifically measure the parasitic heat loss when a resistor is used. For an input of 132 watts 90 watts is measured by the calorimeter and thus 42 watts escapes. Alanf777 (talk) 17:49, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Although Celani's demo is "notable", it's more news than science (but it does provide anecdotal evidence that CF can be turned on on demand). I think that Godes/McKubre's paper is more appropriate to this article, and is more significant in that it's [one of] the first to report 100% reproducability (by one experimenter). I can leave off the company name and let the reader figure it out from the article and paper. Alanf777 (talk) 17:00, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Draft 4C : (not B)

A recent paper claims that in 150 experiments using palladium and nickel hydrides, excess energy was always seen, with excess energies up to 100%. Alanf777 (talk) 17:49, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I put it in "Reproducibility" .... but maybe it should be in "Reported results". It's probably too "fresh" to go in the Lede.

Edit 5 : Since I was in that section I extended the Goodstein quotes to avoid "cherry-pitting". The last phrase "There is nobody out there listening." isn't essential, so I deleted it. I hadn't noticed that Goodstein is first quoted in the last sentence of the lede. Maybe his warning should be THERE? (Posts combined) Alanf777 (talk) 20:56, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposed Edit 4D : after three days of discussion in talk, where I posted several drafts (and questioned whether quoting the abstract of the paper rather than using Wired's words was OK) I added the change I proposed. It's now been deleted without discussion. I'll rewrite it with a direct paraphrase of Wired -- along the lines suggested by Nowa. Alanf777 (talk) 01:20, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Seriously, can you combine your posts. You have made about 6 posts to yourself without a response. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:52, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Sure I can -- I didn't know if that was good protocol or not. I can clean up all my proposed edits too ... what should I do with replies. There's a "collapse" command, right? Alanf777 (talk) 20:56, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Lede "20%" -- It was good enough to stand for 7 months when it had a [[WP:SYN] ... but now, because it suddenly turns out that it DIDN'T support your POV, it's "problematic". Oooh boy !!! Alanf777 (talk) 21:04, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

You can't add your own OR instead if you think there is Synth. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Did you read "Comment on Removal of Edit 3: ... " above? I replaced the pre-existing SYN (there since February) with a paraphrase of a paragraph in the REF. How is THAT OR? Alanf777 (talk) 00:46, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Part of the problem here is that 'cold fusion' and LENR are actually different things altogether. No LENR proponent that I have read thinks it is any kind of fusion, but instead some kind of neutron decay. Whatever. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.73.16.17 (talk) 02:16, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Edit 4E (renumbered) : I added the wired celani/brillouin to "Subsequent research". I put in a place-holder REF for the paper Wired links to, pending publication. Again, deleted -- despite discussion above, with some support. If something is proposed and discussed, wouldn't it be polite to say early on (what, three days ago?) that a reference by wired isn't sufficent ? Alanf777 (talk) 19:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

ICCF and Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science As a Reliable Source

I asked above whether ICCF can be regarded as a WP:RS, which says [my emphasis] :

Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable. If the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses, generally it has been vetted by one or more other scholars.

and

Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals.

The role of ICCF is specifically discussed in this article, pointing out that CF researchers have more or less been forced to create their own venues. Papers submitted to ICCF are subject to peer review (admittedly by other people who are not totally averse to CF).

I therefore claim that, since all the necessary cautions have already be made, that ICCF papers are admitted as WP:RS in THIS article.

Question : is it possible to add a FOOTNOTE to this article, to which all ICCF-related stuff can refer, warning that the item may represent the views of a particular group. Alanf777 (talk) 20:52, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

The same argument applies to Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science

Actually, the publisher is the same : http://www.iscmns.org/ -- so I'm only requesting the admission of ONE organisation, with its Journal and Annual Conference. Alanf777 (talk) 22:19, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

It is extremely rare that a source is declared de-facto reliable. It is wholly dependent on the text in question. The fact that the researchers are rejected from mainstream journals is a good sign that it's not reliable in general. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:34, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think this is a special case. Would it be more appropriate to raise the issue at the RS Noticeboard ?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RSN : there are SEVEN entries where requests have been made for specific websites. Alanf777 (talk) 22:40, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

They will tell you what I have just said. That sources aren't declared de-facto reliable and that it is dependent on the text. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:41, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

WP:RS Says :

The word "source" as used on Wikipedia has three related meanings:

the piece of work itself (the article, book),

the creator of the work (the writer, journalist),

and the publisher of the work (for example, Random House or Cambridge University Press).

Any of the three can affect reliability. Reliable sources may be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both. These qualifications should be demonstrable to other people.

I don't see the need to argue over #3 every time a paper comes up. Alanf777 (talk) 22:56, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

In a related matter : if a copy of the digital version of a paper (Particularly a PDF) is hosted on a NON-[[WP:RS] the paper itself does not become NON-WP:RS Alanf777 (talk) 23:46, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Wired Article Revisited

Draft 4F : Talk doesn't show REF's --- you can see my draft with REFS at User:Alanf777#Proposed_Draft_Edit_4F

Wired UK reports that at the 17th International Conference on Cold Fusion held in August 2012, that a number of researchers claim to have reproducible results of net energy generation and element transmutation. They are also attracting business investment. "The field is looking less like the domain of tinkering eccentrics; increasingly it seems to be getting taken seriously as a business proposition."

Justification : the paper is notable (holy grail)

The authors are experts in the field : a warning is given about ICCF being a special-interest conference : being an exceptional conclusion I used the word claims rather than the neutral report : I paraphrased only the description by Wired, not the paper itself Alanf777 (talk) 22:06, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Undue, ICCF is unreliable except for self opinion. The wired article has little weight. Your sourcing is inadequate from the claims you have added. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:16, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree that the Wired article has little weight, but let me take a stab at editing

• "Warning should come out since it is weasel words. An article on the Conference would be more appropriate. Care to take a stab at it?--Nowa (talk) 22:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

It's covered in the conferences section here. Maybe just change the REF to a wiki-link to that section. ps : They seem to have changed the name back to ICCF -- I'll look for cites on that Alanf777 (talk) 22:42, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

• unpublished reference comes out since it is (duh) unpublished.--Nowa (talk) 22:24, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
• Lastly, we remove references to specific researchers to quell coatrack and undue concerns and stick to the main point of the article.

Further edits?--Nowa (talk) 22:33, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

The authors and title are "published" in the conference program. In smaller staffless conferences preprints are often issued before they finally get the proceedings out. Not a big deal if you want to leave it out. Care to edit my draft on my page? Alanf777 (talk) 22:39, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation. I think the above captures my opinion on the Wired article. If Brillouin Energy is notable, however, I would be happy to help draft an article in your user space.--Nowa (talk) 22:46, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Go ahead -- but cut'n paste into a new version. I put up 4G

Wired UK reports that at the 17th International Conference on Cold Fusion held in August 2012, there was a live demonstration of an "apparently working" nickel-hydrogen device which produced an excess of 14W from an input of 62W. A paper was presented claiming an excess power of twice the input, and that their results are "consistently repeatable -- something of a Holy Grail" in the field. `Alanf777 (talk) 22:50, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Version 4F as shown above is still the version I support. I'm not willing to support the restatement of any of the specific results. If they are notable, then stand alone articles should be created for them. Thanks for the link, by the way, to the ICCF section in this article. That might be a good starting point for a stand alone article on the conference. --Nowa (talk) 23:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Added 4F in "Subsequent Research" : I think we've met all the requirements for Notabilty, Reliabiity, Exceptional ... etc. If anyone has any objections please don't just refer to WP:RS etc etc -- quote section and paragraph Alanf777 (talk) 19:43, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Which I've just done.--Nowa (talk) 23:56, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not seeing it -- is there a proposal cycle? Maybe it would be better to have an article on the http://www.iscmns.org/, which publishes a journal and runs the ICCF conference Alanf777 (talk) 01:40, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

You need to show notability, WP:GNG and WP:CORP. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:54, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Are you talking about ICCF or the Wired article? Seems that discussion of ICCF should be now be moved there. Alanf777 (talk) 20:50, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

The article on the conference is here International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science.--Nowa (talk) 19:15, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Alanf777 (talk) 20:38, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Added 4F in "Subsequent Research" : I think we've met all the requirements for Notabilty, Reliabiity, Exceptional ... etc. If anyone has any objections please don't just refer to WP:RS etc etc -- quote section and paragraph. See above : "Version 4F as shown above is still the version I support. I'm not willing to support the restatement of any of the specific results. If they are notable, then stand alone articles should be created for them. ... --Nowa" Alanf777 (talk) 19:47, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

You are kidding if you think a wired article meets WP:EXCEPTIONAL. Get me a paper in Nature or Science. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:06, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Stop edit warring and get consensus for your addition. (talk) 22:33, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to me that the Wired article is making exceptional claims. They are merely making the point that this subject is generating business interest. That's what I've tried to capture in version 4F above.--Nowa (talk) 23:28, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

It's been "generating business interest" for the last 20 years, so have perpetual motion machines. You effectively want to put journalistic speculation into an article. The author appears to use sources that aren't deemed reliable on wikipedia, so I'm a bit doubtful as to how reliable the articles by this author is. Binksternet has already put it better than I could here: Talk:Energy_Catalyzer#New_Wired_UK_article IRWolfie- (talk) 23:55, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Good point about "generating business interest" for the past 20 years and Binksternet's point about it being a "puff piece". I think, though, version F might be appropriate as an update to Cold_fusion#Further_reviews_and_funding_issues. --Nowa (talk) 00:06, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

According to wikipedia guidance on UNDUE WEIGHT [11], "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 impartial, but still 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." Including that much text based on the Wired UK article would be giving undue weight to self-serving statements and treating this encyclopedia like a newspaper. If cold fusion truly is "getting taken seriously as a business proposition," there will soon be other sources which are more descriptive than this vague text, and we can include them at that time. If cold fusion is not really getting taken seriously, as numerous other articles indicate, then we will have prevented a misleading section in the article. Wikipedia is not going away; we should be conservative and see how this plays out. Olorinish (talk) 02:14, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

There's a reset-the-indent command, but I can't find it. "::Stop edit warring and get consensus for your addition IRWolfie-". Ummm ... it's been discussed for a week or more, with proposed revisions A...G. I went with 4F because it was endorsed by Nowa and after yet another "exceptional claims" deletion I cut out anything even vaguely "Exceptional" That's two FER and one AGIN. Consensus will never be reached, so majority prevails. It seems to me that we're stuck between "Not notable" and "extraordinary claims". I personally think you (User:IRWolfie) are gaming the system to impose a specific POV. I know what. There's general consensus that the Wired article says SOMETHING relevant. Hows about YOU draft a summary? Alanf777 (talk) 03:06, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Based on the extremely poor reputation of cold fusion described in mainstream articles such as the Kean article and the Oullette article (in footnotes 7 and 9 of the present article), both the "advancement" claims and the "business proposition" claims are clearly exceptional. That doesn't mean they are wrong; it just means that they should be supported by more than vague statements in a news article before inclusion here. I ask Alanf777, what is so wrong with waiting for a few months to see if more descriptive articles, preferably some which include positive comments from fusion experts, appear? Olorinish (talk) 03:33, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

(I took the liberty of de-denting the last post.) I was going to withdraw my last heat-of-the-moment comment, but since there's been a response I'll let it stand. I'll respond in the morning. (No hurry, right). Took me a while to find :

Kean / Slate : http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/elements/features/2010/blogging_the_periodic_table/palladium_the_cold_fusion_fanatics_cant_get_enough_of_the_stuff.html

Oullette / Discovery : http://news.discovery.com/space/could-interstellar-starships-use-cold-fusion-propulsion-111223.html

Alanf777 (talk) 05:17, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

These don't support what you want, in fact the very opposite: " if you're hoping cold fusion will be the answer to powering an interstellar mission, you're in for a very long wait.", "Prevailing scientific opinion is still that the vast majority of cold fusion research falls under the rubric of "pathological science": the results are always on the verge of a stunning validation. Whenever said validation fails (again) to materialize, there is always a handy rationale for why it isn't really a definitive failure -- and why the naysayers are just closed-minded tools of the scientific establishment, conspiring to keep these unsung geniuses down.", "Cold fusion is also improbable" Both are highly critical of the claims of Cold Fusion proponents. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:15, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

They were referred to by Olorinish -- it took me a while to find them, so I put the links here to save other editors the hassle. Alanf777 (talk) 16:21, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure why I would draft a summary of something which is undue for the article. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:16, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

In Popular Culture

Edit 6 : Why was my entry on "The Pod in the Barrier" removed ? It's related directly to the Alvarez NYT report in the article? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&diff=513173256&oldid=513070436 Alanf777 (talk) 18:17, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I didn't understand the Wikipedia:Coatrack reference. I take it that the entire section was deleted because of one adverb. Im re-inserting it with that word deleted (or changed). Alanf777 (talk) 20:58, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

If anyone wishes to provide a different synopsis (specifically, my last sentence) as it relates to Cold Fusion, please do so without deleting the entire entry. Alanf777 (talk) 21:05, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

This link (in the collection "A Touch of Strange") yields all the text : CF is mentioned on pages 21, 23, 26, 44, 45 (disbelief), 46 (formula), 47, Alanf777 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:29, 17 September 2012 (UTC) I hid the link in a REF because it screws up the page display Alanf777 (talk) 18:46, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Removed some non-essential parts, they are not related to cold fusion technology

(Ooops -- I got the signatures confused by para breaks -- the preceding sentence is by Enric Naval) Alanf777 (talk) 01:34, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we should remove the disbelief part. There is only one person, Virginia, who can do that trick. And she does it once at the end of the story, and then she dies. I don't see any social commentary about the general public doubting that cold fusion works. It just looks like a plot artifact to make the moral that humans can't solve every everything with raw science: science can't break the barrier, so they have to resort to an unexplained psychic power, the D-field, a doubt-powered field. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:33, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Ummm ... the WHOLE PLOT centers around the disbelief. The utility monkey ALSO gets the capability, causing the CF reactor to falter, until the captain knocks him out. (ps : Virginia doesn't die, and at the end has a crucial role in preserving the monkey's belief.) Alanf777 (talk) 18:19, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

My bad, I skipped a few pages when browsing the story. -Enric Naval (talk) 10:08, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I changed the phrasing a bit, and replaced "unlike hot fusion" (not in the story) to "thermonuclear bomb" (which is). I think it's only polite to mention what the Pod and the Barrier of the title are. Alanf777 (talk) 18:31, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

It seems like you are treating the article like a coat rack to place irrelevant undue material. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

And to support your POV we should censor the plot? Alanf777 (talk) 21:06, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

If you keep up the tendentious behaviour referring to censorship etc, I will take this to arbitration enforcement. This article is under discretionary sanctions and it's clear that you have an intention to disrupt and to not abide by polices. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:09, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Go ahead. It seems to me that you objected to the "disbelief" which is the key element of the plot (initially deleting the entire entry, rather than editing it. Is that "abide by policies".) Every other entry in this section has a synopsis of the plot and its relation to CF. I have cooperated with other editors in trimming the synopsis (I can even trim it more if you still think it's too long -- though doing that would remove those other editors' ideas). FWIW: Cold Fusion is disabled by "concentrated disbelief" in the reaction "When Hydrogen One and Hydrogen Two are in the presence of Mu Mesons, they fuse into Helium Three, with an energy yield in electron volts of 5.4 times ten to the fifth power". Alanf777 (talk) 00:59, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

The text shows it's about Muon catalyzed fusion, which is a separate topic. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:49, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

The first clause of the first sentence of the lead clearly states that "Cold Fusion" is a nuclear reaction taking place at or near room temperature, which applies to P-F cold fusion, LENR (maybe weak-interaction + neutron absorption) and, yes, Muon-catalyzed fusion. The Alvarez paper and NYT's article coining the term "Cold Fusion" are ALREADY in this article under "Before the Fleischmann–Pons experiment". Are you going to take THEM out because they have their own article? Alanf777 (talk) 20:03, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

This article doesn't cover every possible way to achieve fusion at low temperatures, it only covers those ways related to F&P. Muon catalyzed fusion is not a F&P reaction, but it has to be covered because they had the same nickname, they were thought to be the same for a while, and there was a notable dispute between F&P and the discoverer of muon catalyzed fusion. Muon catalyzed fusion is not a split of cold fusion, it's a different article about a different topic, and they reference each other only because they have some common history. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:08, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Article's ABOUT header

Is this article ONLY about Pons-Fleishman -- ie D-Pd in an Electrolyte? Or does it include other variations such as DRY D-Pd, H-Pd, H-Ni and the like -- even though they have not yet been proved to be due to nuclear reactions, and to fusion in particular? Alanf777 (talk) 20:58, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Use common sense. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:35, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

So why not change the About to reflect common sense? Alanf777 (talk) 22:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

"About"? IRWolfie- (talk) 00:04, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

About|the Fleischmann–Pons claims of nuclear fusion at room temperature|the original use of the term 'cold fusion'|Muon-catalyzed fusion|all other definitions|Cold fusion (disambiguation)

– curleys removed so you can see the contents –

Top of the Lead section...

This page 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).

— Alanf777 (talk) 00:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I have NO idea why that shows in a box. Please feel free to edit spurious commands out of my post Alanf777 (talk) 00:52, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Spaces at the start of a line will cause the box oddness. When in doubt just use more colons :) — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 03:13, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Romney quote

"I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with -- with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it." - http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/992671

Hmm. AsysOmicron (talk) 22:52, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

(Tell him to start a federally-funded program when he reaches the White House....) --Enric Naval (talk) 00:52, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Superheavy element synthesis (Hofmann 2011)

Is the cold fusion of "Synthesis of superheavy elements by cold fusion" Radiochim. Acta 99, 405–428 the same as electrochemical cold fusion? AsysOmicron (talk) 07:19, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I think it's not. It's done at low temperatures, but they are accelerating particles at very high velocities to achieve the energy necessary for the nuclear fusion. The byproducts and measured energies are those predicted by conventional nuclear fusion theories. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:08, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Word choice

The lead states "proposed" but we should probably say "hypothesized". Objections why not? --Hartz (talk) 13:40, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

"proposed" is relatively neutral. One could even say "theoretical" which is somewhat loaded in the opposite direction of "hypothesized". Keep as is. Alanf777 (talk) 19:33, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

My view is that if you propose, the technology is a finished blueprint and ready to be built. I would say that for example a wind turbine can be proposed – then it is soon built according to the blueprint. Also, you can propose a marriage, and that too includes that you have to be able to deliver. Wiktionary defines the word propose: "To suggest a plan or course of action." You cannot have a course of action if the blueprint is not there and the operation not demonstrated. You cannot propose to fetch a pizza if you don't have a car. Therefore the word proposed is wrong. Theoretical is also a wrong term because cold fusion has nothing to do with a theory. --Hartz (talk) 21:25, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

The right word might be hypothetical. --Hartz (talk) 21:47, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

The right word is to omit it entirely. The sentence stands on its own without it.

Cold fusion is a type of nuclear reaction that would occur at ...

ps : google

propose (relativity OR "big bang" OR "string theory" )

and you get 3 million (estimated) results Alanf777 (talk) 00:16, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

"Proposed" seems the best of a bad lot. "Unconfirmed" seems supported by the actual sources. "Theoretical" and "hypothetical" don't seem to match the sources, either. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:42, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem starts with "Cold fusion is", when most editors contend we should accept that "Cold fusion is not". The compromise position lies somewhere around "Cold fusion would be". LeadSongDog come howl! 14:18, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

The Francesco Celani experiment needs some attention in this article.

Recent improvements to contained nickel hydrogen reactors : http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2012/08/08/francesco-celani-demos-his-lenr-device-publicly/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2qWgh7Gx4g

I'm sure someone who is an English speaker can do a better job about it than me.

Regards P. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.101.79.82 (talk) 04:39, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

We have FIVE recent articles relating to Cold Fusion and/or LENR and its possible move towards commercialization (I list them in order of the events they are describing, rather than the date of publication):

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/andrea-rossis-black-box

Featherstone, S., Can Andrea Rossi’s Infinite-Energy Black Box Power The World–Or Just Scam It?, in Popular Science. 2012. This describes a visit with Rossi, and another with Celani and with skeptics such as Bardi.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/14/cold-fusion

Hambling, D., Cold fusion: smoke and mirrors, or raising a head of steam?, in wired.co.uk. 2012, which covers Rossi’s recent claims, ICCF17, Celani’s recent claims and demonstrations, Toyota, Brillouin Energy

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at-the-edge/2012/08/08/new-burst-of-energy-could-bring-cold-fusion-to-front-burner

New Burst of Energy Could Bring Cold Fusion to Front Burner

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/10/20/cold-fusion-gets-a-little-more-real/

Gibbs, M., Cold Fusion Gets a Little More Real [Updated], in Forbes. 2012. A report on the visit to Defkalion by M. Nelson of NASA. Nelson’s visit was supposed to be confidential, but it was revealed in leaked documents discussed in this article, and also by eCat News, “Defkalion Self-Leaks Catalyst.”

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/nov/27-big-idea-bring-back-the-cold-fusion-dream

Anderson, M., Big Idea: Bring Back the “Cold Fusion” Dream, in Discover Magazine. 2012. This is about the Widom-Larsen theory.

But IRWolfie insists that : "You are kidding if you think a wired article meets WP:EXCEPTIONAL. Get me a paper in Nature or Science." (The EXCEPTIONAL relates to papers and reports that Excess heat can be produced reliably, can be turned on and off on demand, is approaching commercial levels of power etc) Alanf777 (talk) 18:23, 25 October 2012 (UTC) Alanf777 (talk) 18:50, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

The sources provided are not reporting "that Excess heat can be produced reliably...turned on and off on demand...approaching commercial levels of power etc". They are reporting on the some old claims made by the usual suspects. Nothing new (and M. Nelson does not represent NASA). — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 19:07, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Still more third-rate sources. Bring real, independent experts writing secondary sources. Otherwise, we're not ready to throw out the standard model just yet.LeadSongDog come howl! 19:22, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Agree, just the same old stuff. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:05, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I find it interesting that a 14 year old Wired article is an acceptable reference, as long as it is not pro CF (Platt, Charles, 1998, "What if Cold Fusion is Real?", Wired Magazine (6.11), retrieved 2008-05-25). However, the magazine is 'not allowed' when it is pro CF.

1. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-02/27/rossi-roundup

2. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/14/cold-fusion

3. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/28/cold-fusion

4. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/06/e-cat-cold-fusion

5. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success

This whole thing is bogus. The WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim pertains to the discovery of CF itself, not to the reporting of news events. Wired is a legitimate public magazine of technical import. Certainly, better informed in its recent articles than a note in a 2-decade-old book. Yet to counter new information, the anti-CF WIKI Lawyers find a 3rd edition textbook that pans CF with a story that goes back to the original 1993 edition (Chemistry Principles and Practice by Daniel L. Reger, 2009). Voila! they have fresh evidence from an authoritative source that CF is dead. "The fight against a pseudo science is still active." Desperate times my friends!

The idea that CF is 'WP:FRINGE' must also be dropped. CF is clearly active in the news and has a significant research group providing technical expertise and peer review. Ignoring contemporary news sources such as Wired, US New and World Report, and Forbes, is pure hypocrisy. Just as Wikipedia should not tolerate "Unwarranted promotion of fringe theories," neither should it tolerate "unwarranted denigration of fringe, or any, theories." The offensive suppression of modern secondary and tertiary sources, in an attempt to maintain the fiction of CF being 'fringe science', is unconscionable. Provide as much valid, up-to-date, anti-CF information as you wish, just do not block legitimate news on the subject. If you cannot be neutral and fair, please 'be gone.'

This article is not on Fusion. The CF field does not say that hot fusion is wrong. That would be an 'extraordinary' claim. It presents data that cannot be explained by contemporary physics. It will suggest that there are areas that contemporary physics does not yet accept. The extraordinary claim is from nuclear physics that might say these observed data are wrong and that present physics is complete and correct. Such claims would fit under the 'fringe science' banner and should require extraordinary documentation. The claims on non-reproducibility are ancient history. To deny presentation of the published reports and public demonstrations of the ability to reproducibly turn the effect on and off is based on an extraordinary claim and is an act of pure hubris. We all know where the 'fringe' is. Aqm2241 (talk) 07:18, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Reports of "cold fusion" may be notable. It is false to say that "claims (of) non-reproducibiity" are unjustified, or, to be precise about what is relevant here, said to be unjustified in reliable sources. As for Wired, as noted in the talk page of the EC article, the Wired articles on Rossi were reporting the facts (that Rossi claimed to produce energy, but no independent observers have confirmed it, and no observers have confirmed that the equipment didn't draw enough power to produce the reported energy production.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 13:40, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that people are deliberately 'missing' the point. CF is no longer fringe. Even if it were to be 'wrong', it is no longer fringe. You are maintaining a label that no longer applies. In terms of reliable sources most of the anti-CF references are no longer reliable or even relevant (other than historically) as per the Wiki definition of reliable.

″Many Wikipedia articles rely on scholarly material. When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. However, some scholarly material may be outdated, in competition with alternative theories, or controversial within the relevant field. Try to cite present scholarly consensus when available, recognizing that this is often absent. Reliable non-academic sources may also be used in articles about scholarly issues, particularly material from high-quality mainstream publications. Deciding which sources are appropriate depends on context. Material should be attributed in-text where sources disagree.″

Is anyone able to provide a 'reliable' source to support the pre-2000 publications that are the only references that the anti-CF group is able to come up with? Since the claim is that Forbes, Wired, and US News&World Report are not reliable, it seems that, per definition, Science and Nature are the only references 'allowed'. Would someone care to justify that? References to Impact Factor journals (refereed) have been removed from this article because they had pro-CF information. Such action appears to automatically discount them from the list of reliable sources (until they produce anti-CF comments that are then notable and quotable). If we define CF as non-'fringe' then much of the anti-CF actions are unarguably POV and must be discounted. Would someone care to raise the issue to 'prove' CF to be fringe science today?Aqm2241 (talk) 09:34, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

You've got that backwards, WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims such as yours require exceptional evidence. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:17, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Aqm2241 said, "Is anyone able to provide a 'reliable' source to support the pre-2000 publications that are the only references that the anti-CF group is able to come up with?" The current article reference numbers 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 all point to post-2000 articles which support the conclusion that cold fusion is still considered fringe. Olorinish (talk) 12:39, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Wolfie, you and Olorinish are out of date. You have made, and are trying to maintain, the exceptional claim that CF is 'fringe'. Please support that exceptional claim with exceptional evidence from this century. Olorinish has tried to do this and claims references 7-11 meet this criterion. I note and respond.

Ref 7 (1993 - 2010)- A quick read of the 2007 sub-ref (online, Chemistry World) finds a single negative comment based on a quote from an "avowed critic" Frank Close, a retired particle physicist of the University of Oxford, UK. Basically, it is an article about CF coming out of the closet. The 2010 online article (www.slate.com), while basically negative, gives a scientific reason for why CF is interesting. It definitely does not support the 'CF is fringe' POV.

Ref 8 (New York Times, 2004)- basically a positive announcement of upcoming DOE review. New results presented and quick review of 'old' criticism. No new criticism.

Ref 9 (2011) http://science.howstuffworks.com/starships-use-cold-fusion-propulsion.htm The single statement supporting the anti-CF contingent is "Prevailing scientific opinion is still that the vast majority of cold fusion research falls under the rubric of 'pathological science'..." The next most damning statement is definitely not putting a 'fringe' on CF - "... So, while physicists are willing to concede there might be something of marginal interest going on, most remain unconvinced that this is bona fide cold fusion. Hardly anyone holds out any hope of it becoming a viable energy source in the foreseeable future." http://twistedphysics.typepad.com/cocktail_party_physics/2007/08/genie-in-a-bott.html

Ref 10 (2005) essentially says that results of the 2nd DOE review was not that different from the 1st.

Ref 11 (http://discovermagazine.com, 2006; Chemistry World 2007 = ref 7; Wired, 2009;) Negative statements are taken from net-neutral articles.

Of Olorinish's 5 21st-Century references, only Ref.9 is non-net-neutral, or even positive. None of the others would indicate CF as fringe science. All have both positive and negative statements (mostly historical). However, if I were to try to use one of the positive statements or quotations from any of the references, they would be discounted. For example, in Ref 8 (NY Times, 2004), the statement "Still, Dr. Hagelstein added, I definitely think it has potential for commercial energy production." would not be allowed in this article.

Ref.9, the only negative reference, is in an online 'howstuffworks' article. This is exceptional 'evidence'? Nevertheless, the author, in an earlier article in 'Cocktail Physics' showed that she was a well-read critic and I would welcome her comments and opinion.

Please guys, you can do better than that. If you can't, then you should concede that CF is not 'fringe' and you should treat it with respect, not your derision. That respect includes permitting more 21st Century 'news' and research to be included in the article.Aqm2241 (talk) 04:34, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

This is crazy. What you need is a reliable source which explicitly states it is not fringe. None has so far been provided. The NASA energy survey essentially said that, even if it might work, it is improbable that a working prototype could be created in 30 years, but it still may be worth studying. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:15, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Arthur, you are right, this is crazy. Can you find a reliable source saying that hot fusion is "not" fringe? You cannot find a reliable source in this decade to say that CF is crazy. You are attempting to argue that the anti-CF group is a 'reliable' source and no one else is. You are not going to change with the available data; but to not allow it to be presented in the Wiki article, by claiming all such sources are not reliable, is to maintain what might once have been a valid stance in the face of too much real evidence. If the CF article were started today, the term 'fringe' would be laughed about. There is no longer any excuse to consider it as such. Just because you don't yet believe it does not make it fringe.

Any time, I would produce a source saying that CF is reproducibly capable of producing more energy than is put in, you would say it is a primary source, is POV, or is not a reliable source. Nevertheless, you would be able to use the same pro-CF source as acceptable to say that "last century, CF was considered by science to be fringe." Your POV allows you to say that CF is still fringe, based on that 'recent' claim. In the very references used to make recent anti-CF claims there will be statements that CF will be commercial within the decade. That certainly does not seem fringe to me. Aqm2241 (talk) 11:07, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

"impossible" is a statement of fact about physical reality, "fringe" is a sociological description of the perception by certain social groups. Replacing that word alters the quote into a new text that didn't come from any reliable source.

Cold fusion#Conferences details the ACS and APS sessions in annual meetings, the organizers even explain their reasons. None of the reasons has anything to see with increased acceptance of CF among scientists. That's why it's not in the lead. I tried to compile sources that linked increased acceptance of CF to the creation of these sessions, but they all had caveats.

I just checked for new sources.[12] Turns out that any ACS member can make a talk without any peer review, there are talks about perpetual motion and similar.[13] (You can find Jed Rothwell in the comments section, the blog is written by James Riordon, he is listed as journalist and "Head of Media Relations" in the APS Physics Press Room [14])

For the 2009 meeting. BBC suggests that ACS organizes the meetings because "the field would otherwise have no suitable forum for debate."[15]. Now that's something that could be quoted.

For the 2010 meeting. There is an ACS press release[16] that has a lot of positive statements, but they are all quotes from Jan Marwan, the organizer of the cold fusion symposium and owner of a company that researches CF among other things[17]. phys.org also warns that it's quoting Marwan "That's the conclusion of the organizer of one of the largest scientific sessions on the topic (...)" [18] The only neutral-voice statement is from frigging Popular Science[19]

Caveats, statements from people who have a conflict of interest, regurgitation of self-congratulating press releases, optimist headlines that sell newspapers and are toned down in the body of the text, catchy headlines like "cold fusion is hot again" that get repeated every couple of years .... those are the problems I encounter.

A freelance reporter in a 2010 Nature blog describes how the ACS sessions have become less "hidden" and have gained more attendees [20]. I think that this is the nearest I have come to a reliable source. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

There is a Nature article about the reaction to the first session in 2007 "After an 18-year hiatus, the American Chemical Society (ACS) seems to be warming to cold fusion. (...) Some say the move shows that researchers are re-opening their eyes to work in this field. Others maintain that there is still no evidence for cold fusion and see the session only as a curiosity."[21]

(With apologies for the interpolation disconnecting the comment of 27 October.) You haven't produced a source which (a) isn't clearly fringe and (b) states something other than "it is reported that CF is reproducibly capable ..." or occassionaly "a machine claimed to be CF is claimed reproducibly produces....". I've read some of the references you've supplied. The best of them states something like if CF works, it might be commercially feasible within 30 years. (And Wired probably is not reliable in regard CF; both in their denial last century and their apparently credulous review recently. They aren't CF experts or fraud experts, or a general news agency; one of the first would be required for them to be independently reliable as experts, and the the latter would be required for an article outside their field of expertise to be considered reliable.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:06, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Dear Arthur, have you stopped beating your wife? There is no non-negative answer to the question, because the question is flawed. Your requirement to 'prove' CF is non-fringe on your terms is equally flawed. Since those terms define any expert in the field to be fringe, there is no acceptable support for CF. All reports that are positive are rejected as being by non-experts. The fact that no negative-CF reports have ever been written by experts seems to have escaped your notice (Shanahan might be an exception). Since expert testimony is not acceptable, you next eliminated all publications that have non-negative CF comments as 'not notable.' You argue against Wired, even tho you can use negative-CF comments from it. You eliminate all non-US sources as non-notable. Science and Nature seem to be acceptable (because they have shown a clear history of anti-CF bias). Would you care to identify the 'line'. The article in Forbes makes some strong statements. I quote:

"On October 18, Defkalion published two documents: An executive summary and an extensive report of tests of their system. ... This is potentially huge! An independent witness asserting that the system may be outputting three times the input energy! The question was, who was the independent witness? ... the executive summary was written by Michael A. Nelson, a NASA employee of some thirty years standing."

The Forbes 'contributor' interviewed Nelson so that he was not just referring to a 'fringe' report. Oh! I forgot, the Wiki anti-CF crowd does not allow NASA's involvement in LENR (2 patents applied for) to be mentioned.

How would Science or Nature report on such an event, even if they did not have an anti-CF editorial stance? How does Forbes stand up in your list of notable references? It would certainly be acceptable, if I were to extract an anti-CF comment from the same article. Under your conditions, anti-CF does not require 'exceptional'; pro-CF does. And, the anti-CF crowd gets to chose what is exceptional.

It seems to me that the anti-CF folk are playing a 'mind-control' game and using it as a form of censorship. It's time to grow up kids!Aqm2241 (talk) 03:49, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I suppose that we could compile a list of recent sources, from 2011 and first half of 2012, saying that CF is fringe or unfounded or a chimera or a false claim or an unfulfilled dream or wishful thinking or not replicated or that proponents of the theory have crossed the line from unreason to reason or disproved or the erroneous product of incompetent experimenters or hidden from mainstream science. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

If you can do that, why are all of the post-2000 anti-CF references in the article referring to pre-2000 statements? Why, if CF is fringe, can you get nearly 6 Million hits on Google for a search on "cold fusion"? The only thing 'fringe' about CF today is the anti-CF crowd's claim that it is. If they drop the claim, then all of the 'ordinary' pro-CF publications with actual data, which they have suppressed - claiming "fringe requires exceptional" - become valid references. Welcome to the 21st Century. Aqm2241 (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Errr, there are multiple post-2000 refs that use post-2000 information? And they say that CF is fringe? How about DOE 2004? Feder 2005? Adam 2005? Labinger 2005? Choi 2005? Brumfiel 2005? Kenan 2010?

Sanderson 2007 even says that the ACS meetings could represent a small improvement in attitude towards CF. But it's packed with "some say" and stuff like "But most are for the moment skeptical that low-energy nuclear reactions are the way forward." or "Miles is also careful to avoid using the words 'cold fusion'. 'There are code names you can use,' he says. In 2004 Miles and colleagues were granted a US patent for a palladium material doped with boron for use in low-energy nuclear reactions, but if the patent application contained the CF words it would never have been granted, Miles says. 'We kind of disguised what we did.'"

And Wired has a few articles that we are not using. "The E-Cat is the latest incarnation of cold fusion, an area long shunned by respectable scientists." Wired 2011, "This technology, also known as Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR), had been consigned to the deepest cellar of fringe science. Now it's hammering on the cellar door, and Nasa, MIT, Darpa and Cern are among those peering through the keyhole, wondering if it should be allowed back in with respectable science."Wired 2012

--Enric Naval (talk) 11:10, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Dear Enric, A sampling of your choice of 'most recent' references makes my point very clearly. The anti-CFers pick statements from the 'history' of the CF controversy in an article and ignore the conclusion of the argument that the authors are trying to make. For example, the anti-CFers, to benefit from his 2010 date, quote from a description of CF's past history in Kean's 2010 article in Slate. But they then conveniently ignore his punch-line that he was building to:

"... And now, a generation later, the idea of cold fusion has taken hold in people's imaginations once again. The American Chemical Society, the world's largest professional organization of scientists, sponsored multiple sessions on cold fusion at their annual meeting last spring. This drew predictable jeers from the few mainstream scientists still bothering to debunk claims for cold fusion, but the number of such sessions has quadrupled since 2007."

This last sentence, mentioning the dramatic increase in mainline technical sessions and papers, blasts the main argument that the anti-CFers use to label CF as fringe. I doubt that quote would be allowed in the present article. Kean goes on to say:

"It's a mug's game in science to start declaring things impossible — there's no better way to make yourself look like an ass to posterity. ..." Change the word 'impossible' to 'fringe' and we see the problem with the editing in this Wiki article.

Your own quotation from the Wired article states the anti-fringe argument very well: "... (LENR), had been consigned to the deepest cellar of fringe science. Now it's hammering on the cellar door, and Nasa, MIT, Darpa and Cern are among those peering through the keyhole, wondering if it should be allowed back in with respectable science." Yet here is the 'evidence' that is used to try and maintain the image of 'fringe' for CF against the 6 million hits on Google alone and the fact that multiple research organizations are exploring and funding the topic.

Please reread the lead paragraphs in Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Undue_weight#Due_and_undue_weight , and consider the fact that "nuclear fusion" only has slightly more than 3 million Google hits. Consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view . What are you trying to prove? Aqm2241 (talk) 09:17, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's keep this about adding the experiment mr Celani did to the main article. It was witnessed and inspected by quite a few people , mr Celani was also open and clear about what was done.

Regards P. 83.101.79.37 (talk) 04:58, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Please read and understand wp:REDFLAG. A gee-whiz-wouldn't-it-be-nifty-if-this-worked article in Popular Science or Wired is not anything like the exceptionally high quality source needed, it is their regular stock in trade. Also, please consider creating an account rather than hopping between various IP addresses. It improves your privacy while permitting other editors to have discussions with you.LeadSongDog come howl! 18:42, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Please understand I am not interested in making any accounts on wikipedia. I value the albeit quite limited amount of anonymity a countrywide pool of variable ip's grants me. And am quite content not having a private conversation with you sir. This talk page will do just fine. I'm quite certain that , if the Celani experiment has any value , bit by bit more credible sources will dare publish. In the meantime , this corner of wikipedia will be adequate for some preliminary discussions concerning it. Having said that , Anyone interested should take a look at this article concerning the Celani replication project. http://www.lenr-coldfusion.com/2012/10/06/celani-replication-project/ . I for one am hoping for some interesting conclusions from that replication , however limited the credibility and whichever direction results will point. 83.101.79.177 (talk) 01:28, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

If you actually read those sources, they say that it would be wonderful if it turns out to be real. They also express doubts and problems with the product. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:04, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

"If you actually read" .. You are trolling sir.. On a talk page on wiki . Get a life.83.101.79.67 (talk) 22:28, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad, that didn't go out well, let me rephrase that. "If you read the sources in detail, looking for evaluations of the chances that Rossi's invention works and is ready to be commercialized". --Enric Naval (talk) 00:37, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Now that Cold Fusion is recognized as not 'fringe', it is time to stop treating it as such and actively put CF into the alternative theory category, thereby developing it into a proper article. Wiki's definition of the proper category (from [WP:FRINGE]):

4. Alternative theoretical formulations: Alternative theoretical formulations from within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process. Such theoretical formulations may fail to explain some aspect of reality, but, should they succeed in doing so, will usually be rapidly accepted. ...

To determine whether something falls into the category of pseudoscience or merely an alternative theoretical formulation, consider this: Alternative theoretical formulations generally tweak things on the frontiers of science, or deal with strong, puzzling evidence—which is difficult to explain away—in an effort to create a model that better explains reality. Pseudoscience generally proposes changes in the basic laws of nature in order to allow some phenomenon which the supporters want to believe occurs, but lack the strong scientific evidence that would justify such major changes. Pseudoscience usually relies on attacking mainstream scientific theories and methodology ..., relies on weak evidence such as anecdotal evidence or weak statistical evidence ..., or indulges a suspect theoretical premise...

With almost 6 million hits on Google, cold fusion is notable. With hundreds of scientists (including Nobel Laureates in physics) having worked and published in the field, with a scientific journal devoted to the subject, with an annual international convention and several annual and biannual 'workshops' world-wide at which to report experimental and theoretical work in the subject, with hundreds of published reports of measurements of 'excess heat', nuclear radiation, and transmutation, and with world-wide public demonstrations of the effect, CF is clearly in the class of 'alternative' science, if not science, and not pseudoscience. As such, WP:REDFLAG no longer applies to the topic. Reports of experimental success and of new models to try and properly explain the phenomenon are now standard fare. The inexcusable deletion of scientific papers from this article must stop. A section devoted to the theories proposed to account for the subject and arguments for and against them would be appropriate and should be welcomed. There are even excellent pre-1995 reviews on that subject and a lot of new work is being published today. This reporting on active work is not undue emphasis. The undue emphasis on denigrating CF is the main problem with the article today.

For the record, I was present at and watched Celani's demonstration of excess heat generation in Korea last August, one week after the same successful demonstration in Texas. I watched the recording of temperature during the start-up and after the internal heater was turned off. I watched the temperature rise as the excess heat built up over several hours after the heater was turned off. I saw the record of the high temperatures maintained for several days, the temperature stability over 2 nights, and their minor fluctuations during the day, when people were around stirring up air currents that altered the heat flow to the outside world. As an experimental physicist with a PhD in Nuclear Physics and with experience in building up, utilizing, and directing a solar cell measurement and radiation effects lab for calibration and long-term environmental degradation studies, I have some credentials in the measurement area. I did not take apart the source (visible in, I believe, a Pyrex or quartz tube), but I did check that all of the leads were being monitored. Again, I did not test each piece of monitoring equipment, the connections and calibrations. I felt that the National Instruments (NI) technical support personnel that were there, actually running and monitoring the experiment, were more familiar with the particular equipment being used. They were showcasing their equipment while demonstrating the effect. They weren't going to allow any problem, with more that 100 scientists looking over their shoulder. This same demonstration could be moved to and operated in an office at USPTO. This may be planned; however, it would not be cost effective for NI to provide the support personnel for a small group of patent attorneys, clerks, and a couple of consultants. Unfortunately, without that support, the USPTO might 'break' some of the equipment during the obligatory post-demonstration inspection and then vitiate the test as not reproducible. Aqm2241 (talk) 03:44, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Just ask Celani to publish his findings in an actual peer-reviewed journal so that other independent scientists can replicate, or not, those findings and publish their results in a reputable journal. Real science is done under the harsh light of day. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 14:18, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Actual peer-reviewed research article in J. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sci., Vol. 6 (2012), 24–33 "Development of a High Temperature Hybrid CMNS Reactor," Francesco Celani∗, O.M. Calamai, A. Spallone, A. Nuvoli, V. Andreassi, B. Ortenzi, F.Piastra, E. Righi, G. Trenta and E. Marano, National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Frascati National Laboratories, (Rome),Italy

Here is infinite Energy's report on the National Instruments Annual Exposition that publicly highlighted Celani's demonstration - not in paper publication, but in active real-time demonstration. http://www.infinite-energy.com/resources/niweek.html

When was the last time you were able to go into CERN and see a run trying to find evidence of the Higgs Boson? The Celani demonstration is beyond science; it is active semi-mobile technology that confirms the science. It is only the latest of about 1/2 dozen such public demonstrations by different groups over the world. All were using different variations on the same theme - CF. Can any of the CERN research group be considered independent? Is there outside confirmation for any of their results? Be real. Celani has offered/presented more and updated detail outside of the reviewed publication. He isn't hiding anything and is willing to help anyone who wishes to replicate his work. Aqm2241 (talk) 16:14, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The "Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science" is published, edited and directed by ISCMNS, an advocacy society founded and composed by cold fusion advocates to support the research of cold fusion. The editorial board is composed exclusively by cold fusion advocates. The journal was formed because the papers were rejected by the peer-review process of other journals. The second hit in google shows an article by the journal's editor in chief, defending the legitimacy of biological transmutation and saying that nuclear reactions could be occurring by biological means inside our bodies and that this could help explain cold fusionJean-Paul Biberian, "Biological Transmutations: Historical Perspective", page 11. I have serious problems with the reliability of the peer-review process in this journal. --Enric Naval (talk) 05:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Upcoming Conferences

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=520787073 LeadSongDog (talk | contribs)‎ . . (124,846 bytes) (-713)‎ . . (→‎Conferences: rm wp:CRYSTAL)

WP:CRYSTAL : Individual scheduled or expected future events should be included only if the event is notable and almost certain to take place.

Notable that Mainstream organisations are officially sponsoring CF-related conferences/sessions and almost certain to take place, since both are regularly recurring conferences. ICCF-18 -- American Nuclear Society -- I'm not sure how many they've had. Alanf777 (talk) 20:28, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

This isn't a directory. We include content of encyclopedic value only. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:48, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

You do understand that "Notable" is wikipedia shorthand for "we can verify that a reliable publication already took note of it"? The chair of a planned conference is clearly not an impartial, let alone peer-reviewed, reliable source on the significance or validity of any science being presented at the conference. This is especially so in advance of its presentation. His job at this point is to promote the event. But more to the point, it simply isn't encyclopedic material to include. Wikipedia is not a directory, nor datebook nor webhost, nor many other things. If however there are independent high-quality sources that can verify statements about the conference sessions, (I'm having some difficulty imagining this) we can look at what those sources have to say. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:54, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Dear Wolfie and LSD, would you not consider the official MIT website to be a reliable publication? Would not the information expressed on it (non-credit course listing and details to be taught) be more than just a listing of an event? Try: http://student.mit.edu/searchiap/iap-BD6D0CF8E170B284E0400312852F4A61.html Aqm2241 (talk) 04:03, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Nope. We discussed this last year, see that talk archive. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 14:26, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

That was when you guys were still able to maintain the CF was fringe science. That is no longer a tenable position and the 'rules' change. Time to come up to speed. Aqm2241 (talk) 15:24, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Mitsubishi replicates Toyota LENR experiment and CERN looking into LENR

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/CERN-Could-be-About-to-Start-Researching-LENR-Following-Recent-Colloquium.html http://ecatnews.com/?p=2179 The pathoskeptics here are ruining Wiki as a reliable source. These guys will be denying LENR even while working in a bulding heated by it ten years from now. The verdict is in but Einsteins on Wiki are still playing hide the mole. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.91.70.120 (talk) 21:26, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

More pseudo-reliable sources. "oilprice.com" is possible, but "... Could be" means it's speculation, and the "original article" at newenergyandfuel.com is not at all reliable unless the authors are experts who have published papers in reviewed reliable sources. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

To quote the "about" page at newenergyandfuel.com: "The site’s mission is to inform, stimulate, amuse and abuse the news and views across the emerging field of energy and fuels in our future." (emphasis added.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:53, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Take it easy 198.91.70.120 ("pathoskeptics here")! By necessity, physicists dominate as editors in physics topics in Wikipedia, and from some physicist culture outside they've gotten a sceptic negativity culture, only to be balanced by physicist-sceptics on Wikipedia. There are bysantinized sciences today too, (no scientific development, everybody only defending their academic territory), but it is currently likely the bysantinization will be broken up. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 08:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

That makes even less sense than 198.91.70.120's comments. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:11, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

The Francesco Celani Replication project.

For those interested , this is a day by day account of a group of enthusiasts replicating the Celani experiment. Day by Day progress since October This contains a very detailed day by day account of what is taking place. All experiments that are in a running state have live data output that can be followed online. It has to be said this replication is done by a 3rd party of albeit enthusiasts. Nobody is claiming this is something more than that. It is however, in the very least worthy of some discussion. Please refrain from commenting before actually reading up on it. 83.101.79.97 (talk) 03:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, actually, Wikipedia is not a forum, so except if there is a specific change to the article that you are proposing, there is absolutely nothing to discuss here.--McSly (talk) 04:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes , let's make sure any talks about this subject get removed . We should start a club. Let's call it "The Everything I don't understand doesn't exist Club" Or the "Stuff I don't understand scares me Club" . This is not a forum , no. This also isn't Bible Camp. 49.50.248.2 (talk) 05:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

It is relevant to the progress of finding independent 3rd party sources to make adding Celani's work to the main article possible. It also creates a context for people that are unaware of today's changes in cold fusion research. We are past the "heavy water" era of the nineties. Discussing the possibility of adding a new aspect of cold fusion to the main article before doing so is the right thing to do. 83.101.79.97 (talk) 05:46, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

It might be relevant to editing the article. If the group is successful, and their success is commented on by reliable sources, it might provide information for the article. However, their blog/log is not relevant to editing the article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:03, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Let's just say it's relevant enough for a talk page. Their effort warrants some light. An argument some parties keep having is that all cold fusion experimentation takes place is closed environments , and nobody has access to details or results , just vague fantastical claims. This replication project is proof that it isn't always so and can be used as a reference to that. 83.101.79.97 (talk) 06:19, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Fleischmann and Pons did not assert

no edit here, just talk
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Statements in the article saying that Fleischmann and Pons "asserted (the anomalous heat) would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes" and "never retracted their claims, but moved their research program to France after the controversy erupted" imply that they were asserting the reality of cold fusion, but as this KSLTV Interview makes plain, they were much more measured and merely raised it as a possibility. The anomalous heat itself was probably an objective fact, and is perhaps explainable by Widom-Larsen theory. Silent Key (talk) 08:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC) I don't think you'll see much agreement on "was probably an objective fact" as applied to "anomalous heat". Substitute "observation" or "measurement" for "fact" and you might get agreement. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:46, 18 February 2013 (UTC) Well, they claimed it very clearly in a 1990 paper: "The total specific energy output during the bursts as well as the total specific energy output of fully charged electrodes subjected to prolonged polarization (5–50 MJ cm−3) is 102–103 times larger than the enthalpy of reaction of chemical processes. (...) The magnitude of the excess enthalpy was so large (...) that it is not possible to ascribe this enthalpy release to any chemical process. [1,3] The most surprising feature of these results (apart from the fact that nuclear processes can be induced at all in this way!) is that the enthalpy release is not due to either of the well established fusion reactions (...) speculations. The preliminary note was to have been published under the title “Electrochemically Induced Fusion of Deuterium?” but the all important question mark was omitted. It is our view that there can be little doubt that one must invoke nuclear processes to account for the magnitudes of the enthalpy releases, although the nature of these processes is an open question at this stage. It is hardly tenable that (..) nor that tritium generation can be accounted for by any but nuclear processes. It should be apparent to unbiased readers that, contrary to what has been stated frequently, we did not in fact make any specific suggestions on this score in our first publication. Certainly, we suggested that these processes must be due to highly compressed deuterons and that these might be located at multiply occupied octahedral sites in the lattice. Palladium has a relatively low cohesive strength so that these sites will distort to allow such multiple occupancy at high deuteron activities (...) We note finally that the deuterons in the lattice are similar to low ion temperature plasmas (~ 1 eV) and that fusion of low energy deuterons was already observed [27,28] in (ND4)2SO4 targets at the time of the discovery of the major nuclear reaction paths of deuterium [4] (called diplogen at that time). It appears that this fact has been forgotten by the scientific community as has been the evident induction of fusion in high density, low ion temperature quiescent deuterium gas plasmas generated and maintained in magnetic mirror devices by means of electron cyclotron resonance [29]. Deuterons in the Pd host lattice clearly can be regarded as an example of very high density low ion temperature plasmas; the fate of the nuclear reaction(s) in this case is evidently markedly modified by the presence of the host lattice. "[22] (you can google the title to get the full text) They say that they didn't make the nuclear claim in their first publication[23], which is correctly true since they said "In view of the very high compression and mobility of the dissolved species there must therefore be a significant number of close collisions and one can pose the question: would nuclear fusion of D+ such as (...) and (...) be feasible under these conditions?". But I personally find this to be deceiving and self-serving since: a) their first publication was titled "Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium", and b) they had clearly and repeatedly made the claim in their original press conference: "(Pons) basically we’ve established a sustained nuclear fusion reaction by means – by means which are considerably simpler than conventional techniques. (...) Deuterium, which is a component of heavy water is driven into a metal rod similar (...) to such an extent that fusion between these components, these deuterons in heavy water, are fused to from a single new atom. (...) (Fleischmann) and under those circumstances we have found the conditions where fusion takes place and can be sustained indefinitely. (...) (Pons) the heat that we then measure can only be accounted for by – nuclear reactions. The – the heat is so intense that it cannot be explained by any chemical process that – is known. The other evidence is of course that we – have direct measurements of neutrons by measuring the – gamma radiation (...) Well we’ve been concerned primarily with the effect – the observation of the – fusion event. I would think that it would be reasonable within a short number of years to build a fully operational device (...) . I mean this might be a small scale application – the big fusion – the big tokamaks might be the – the answer for the large scale generation. (audience member) could you tell why there is such a difference – the basic theory behind why we have to use million of degrees in order to have fusion reactions is to overcome the highly repulsive forces between nuclei – what is the difference in the case of the experiments that you are doing? (Fleischmann) you achieve a very high compression (...) and it is that, we believe, which is the crucial factor in achieving fusion at room temperature. (Pons) Well, it’s well known that the original nuclear fusion reactions are generated by the neutron going into the water solution that was cooling the cell and reacting with a hydrogen, attached to a water, and that reaction – gives up a deuterium and – (...) (Peterson) that’s one atmosphere to the 27th power, then fusion occurs, out of that comes one or two new elements of less mass (Fleischmann) the generation – rate of generation of tritium and the rate of generation of helium-3 is only one-billionth of what you would expect if the fusion reactions were those experienced in high energy physics. (Hawkins) What we have here is an experimental setup for the fusion reactor that had been discussed earlier today. (...) and here on this side we have three of our electrochemical cells where the fusion is taking place. (...) a temperature bath where we [inaudible] fusion processes (...) and hence how much is generated due to the fusion source. (...) The electrochemical cells that are doing our fusion process reaction inside is thermal chemistry. (...) –and then calculate how much fusion is going on.." press conference transcript. They also insist that neutrons and gamma rays are proof that some sort of nuclear fusion is going on, it's just a different type if nuclear fusion. To his credit, Fleischmann did add caveats in the press conference, pity that it was followed by more promises that the experiment was going to give results in a short time, like: "I would emphasize that it is absolutely essential to establish a science base, as widely as possible, as correctly as possible, to challenge our findings, to extend our findings. Having established that, you have to, of course, consider all the engineering implications. But it does seem that there is here a possibility of realizing sustained fusion in a relatively inexpensive – with a relatively inexpensive device, which could be – brought to some sort of successful conclusion fairly early on." And, of course, they never issued any retraction. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC) @ LeadSongDog: I'd get enough agreement. @ Enric Naval: You seem to have misunderstood. Nobody denies that they "asserted (the anomalous heat) would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes". I'm objecting to the fact that this statement is packaged with the later statement "never retracted their claims...", with both these statements being placed in an article titled "cold fusion", the implication being that they should have retracted an assertion about cold fusion. "Nuclear processes" is not a synonym of "cold fusion". Their formal statements in the academic literature were properly cautious, and mention of fusion was suggestive not assertive, so there was nothing to retract there. And in the press conference they were informally stating their personal opinion in response to questions, so no retraction was necessary there either, just as Michio Kaku isn't expected to issue retractions for his constant speculations. Silent Key (talk) 14:06, 21 February 2013 (UTC) Not clear. That Anderson article says nothing about excess heat being a fact. Indeed it says: "Yet a nagging question persisted: If the contraptions really were putting out more energy than they took in, what could be responsible?" (my emphasis). LeadSongDog come howl! 14:30, 21 February 2013 (UTC) And without your emprhases it was: "Yet a nagging question persisted: If the contraptions really were putting out more energy than they took in, what could be responsible?" 84.106.26.81 (talk) 14:59, 21 February 2013 (UTC) Exactly. So where's the support in that article for "was probably an objective fact"? LeadSongDog come howl! 16:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC) The support in that article is the words. That's because the words tell you that a new theory of physics - Widom-Larsen Theory - predicts that an experimental set-up of the kind that Fleischmann and Pons used could indeed produce heat by a nuclear process, and that there is experimental support for this theory in observations of neutrons from thunderstorms. The words also tell you that the theory has motivated a NASA-CERN tie-in to research it. So Fleischmann's and Pons's claim that the heat was an objective fact, though still far from proven, is no longer improbable. Ergo, it's probable. Silent Key (talk) 15:12, 22 February 2013 (UTC) The Widow-Larsen theory makes a few assumptions about atom behaviour that contradict current experimental results (the processes described by the theory have never been observed outside the walled garden of cold fusion experiments, and inside it they never happened in a reliably replicable way). This is what the NASA University of Missouri project is trying to achieve: a validation of an untested theory. If it gets validated, then a lot of experiments will have to be re-tested. We'll have to find an explanation for why the Widom-Larsen theory was never observed in all these decades. Heck, the structure of electrons, protons and neutrons will have to be examined because there is no way it can happen with our current understanding of them, see P. Thierberger "The transition from Cold Fusion to Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) - Out of the frying pan into the fire". The whole thing is based on a series of assumptions that don't fit current behaviour of experiments. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:26, 22 February 2013 (UTC) Perhaps SK is using a novel definition of "objective fact", but to most people the term means something that can be observed, measured, and reliably quantified in a way that is independent of theoretical models, religious ideologies, or other systems of thought. So the only "objective fact" that is based in the words is that the words exist. Even if we took the words as being reliable and accurate, they would only establish that the W-L theory exists, not that the theory correctly reflects the behavior of physical systems observed in real-world experiments designed to test the theory. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:47, 22 February 2013 (UTC) @ LeadSongDog: With respect, I'll try to get this into your cranium again. From the outset I've used important qualifier words - "probably", "probable", "perhaps", "could", "claim", "far from proven" - to show that it was NOT the same as a straightforward, uncontroversial case of “objective fact”. But you insist on ignoring those qualifiers each and every time I use them. That's how you're arriving at a "novel definition". @ Enric Naval: But that's just it - there ARE scientists who've been saying for a quarter of a century that they HAVE observed it, even without the thunderstorm neutrons evidence that you strangely passed over. That's why W&L felt it necessary to theorise about it, and why NASA (yes, that really is NASA, as this NASA presentation proves) and CERN scientists are testing it. The article you cite contains the statement: "Any new theory is verified or falsified by predicting new results. If the new results are actually observed then we in fact have a valid theory. If not, it is back to the drawing board." The thunderstorm neutrons ARE the new results, so you're just making my point for me. Silent Key (talk) 19:02, 23 February 2013 (UTC) No, that's not NASA. That's Zawodny, a scientist who works at NASA. He had to explain that the video didn't represent NASA's opinion and he didn't think that cold fusion was proven. This was covered in Forbes for example. He does think that Widom-Larsen is "likely correct", but he doesn't say that it's proven. This sort if misrepresentation keeps happening in this topic. Advocates distort the original sources to fit their purposes, and good faith people are led to believe that wikipedia is being unfair. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:34, 24 February 2013 (UTC) SK, my cranium is not having any difficulty understanding your error. You have made your own assessment that "The anomalous heat itself was probably an objective fact, and is perhaps explainable by Widom-Larsen theory" but you have offered no source that actually backs up your assessment, either as to probability or objective factuality. That is what we refer to as wp:Original research. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:07, 25 February 2013 (UTC) O.K., take me to arbitration. We will see if the administrators share your opinion that I've broken the rules of Wikipedia by saying on a talk page, "The anomalous heat itself was probably an objective fact, and is perhaps explainable by Widom-Larsen theory". Silent Key (talk) 14:28, 25 February 2013 (UTC) Silly me. I thought that you were proposing an edit to articlespace, rather than just talking. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:39, 25 February 2013 (UTC) Walk your talk: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee. Silent Key (talk) 01:46, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of NASA

I believe these are both new over the past two weeks:

• "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, the Realism and the Outlook" by Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center. NASA Future Innovation (date??)
• "The nuclear reactor in your basement" By Bob Silberg, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA Global Climate Change (February 13, 2013)

Observer Sem (talk) 09:02, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, some scientists at NASA think that cold fusion is worth researching. Some scientists managed to hide some research inside research programs that were focused in something else (someone posted in this page NASA's research budget, and one of the programs had a bullet with a description that fitted cold fusion, maybe a program for space propulsion) The problem is, NASA is not allocating any funding for any dedicated program. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:52, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Scratch that. The Langley Research Center (not "NASA" in general, just this center) has had a "LENR" program going on for 3.5 years[24], and it needs to be added under Cold_fusion#Subsequent_research. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:03, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

What the hell are you talking about? They have not "managed to hide some research inside research programs that were focused in something else", it's not "just this center", and it's not "3.5 years".

Here's another document: LENR at GRC - NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

The document makes reference to Fleischmann and Pons, and states that way back in 1989 NASA successfully replicated their deuterium-palladium experiment:

"Previous NASA D-Pd experiment (Fralick, et al.; 1989) looked for neutrons (saw none) – but saw anomalous heating"

,,,and mentions some other places where the research has taken place:

"After 1989, Cold Fusion research evolved into research in “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” (LENR), primarily at U.S. Navy, DARPA & various Universities"

...mentions current NASA research:

"2009: NASA IPP-sponsored effort to: –Repeat the initial tests to investigate this anomalous heat"

...and shows a graph of the anomalous heat:

"the calculated thermal power in/out is given with the net anomalous heating ".

...It states that one hypothesis to explain the anomalous heat is:

"Ultra Low Momentum Neutrons (Widom & Larsen)"

...And shows a photo, schematics and technical data of experimental engines based on the effect:

"Stirling Laboratory Research Engine at Cleveland State University - LENR Energy to Rotational Power Research Facility "

NASA has been researching Fleischmann and Pons' anomalous heat since 1989. Silent Key (talk) 18:40, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

It sounds more like:

• NASA participated in the 1989 cold fusion initial craze, involving many NASA scientists and centers. The theory was based only on F&P vague explanations. Around 1989-1990 all research was stopped.
• NASA's Lewis Research Center tested two cells provided by BlackLight Power (then know as Hydrocatalysis Power Corporation). The theory is based on "hydrinos". They found that the energy output was much smaller than claimed by the company, and it could be caused by recombination. The test had many limitations of time and resources and it doesn't appear to have any follow-up studies.
• NASA started a "LENR" program in 2009 that is still active. It seems to be carried by Zawodny and based on Widom-Larsen's theory. He says that "While I personally find sufficient demonstration that LENR effects warrant further investigation, I remain skeptical." (from the Forbes article, which is quoting from his blog) He's researching to see if cold fusion really works or not, and his budget is approved by NASA headquarters (as opposed to other research efforts, where scientists were paying material out of their own pockets because they couldn't get funding).

So, please find a reliable source for "NASA has been researching Fleischmann and Pons' anomalous heat since 1989" (and a listing of how and when this research happened), because at first sight it appears to be inaccurate. It looks more like 3 separate efforts separated by years of no research. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

"It sounds more like..." + "It looks more like..."

- Your claims, your burden of proof. Silent Key (talk) 03:13, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey, you were the one claiming that "NASA has been researching Fleischmann and Pons' anomalous heat since 1989". If you want that claim inserted in the article, you will have to find a reliable source for it. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:21, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/TM-107167.pdf is from 1996 at NASA Lewis Research Center. 67.41.203.4 (talk) 22:54, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900008108_1990008108.pdf is the TM-102430 from 1989. --134.191.221.72 (talk) 12:48, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I've put these good URLs in a new NASA section and NASA External links. They also help correct the misrepresentation of F&P I tried to point out in the previous (sabotaged) thread. Silent Key (talk) 16:54, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

The URLs are good (except for the last sentence in the text before I edited it this morning), but I question the conclusions drawn from them in the text. I agree with Enric as to to the status of research, and I question whether "heat of adsorption" has been eliminated by any of the test protocols. (That's my original research, but "heat of adsorption" had been given, by reliable sources, as an explanation of the anomalous heat in the F&P research.) We can say that (some) NASA projects have been researching cold fusion, but we need to be careful about the conclusions... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:38, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

And sources say by 1990 research had stopped in all major US labs except a few places which are named by name. This information should be at least in Huizenga 1993. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:05, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

And the 1989 paper is irrelevant, since it's part of the craze of research back in 1989. I don't recall any source saying that this particular technical memorandum was any more relevant than any of all the hundreds of papers published in peer-reviewed journals during that time. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:16, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

The added sentence that it was replicated with "light water" indicates that, whatever the anomalous heat is, it isn't cold fusion. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:25, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

There are several dozen light water reports, many of which are summarized in [25] which suggests that metal transmutation reactions are involved. 71.215.95.197 (talk) 22:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

No answer to 71.215.95.197's evidence of transmutations? Then why delete my work because I referenced light water? Silent Key (talk) 19:35, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

"Evidence"? And isn't Pt past the break-even point; Pt + H → Au requires energy. If someone is going to propose metal transmutation, at least propose one that is exothermic. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:19, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Err, I still think that Zawodny's research should be under Cold_fusion#Subsequent_research. Or maybe under Cold_fusion#Further_reviews_and_funding_issues because it's a funding thing and it still has to publish research. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:34, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

@ Arthur Rubin:

Widom-Larsen Theory

(ultra-low momentum neutron catalysis & beta decay):

1. E + e^- → ẽ^-

2a. ẽ^- + p⁺ → n_ULM + ν_e

2b. ẽ^- + D⁺ → 2n_ULM + ν_e

3. n_ULM + (Z, A) → (Z, A + 1)

4. (Z, A + 1) → (Z + 1, A + 1) + e^- + ν_e

Silent Key (talk) 01:58, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Silent Key, that is not a light water reaction. Enric Naval, Zawodny has published a patent application which is presently being examined. Arthur Rubin, the most frequent unexpected element reported from palladium in light water is iron, but the results with the most unexpected isotopes involve nickel, e.g. [26]. My opinion is that LENR is not usually "fusion" per se, but sometimes might as well be in terms of reaction products, and that Widom-Larsen theory doesn't begin to explain the variety of transmutation results reported in what I think would be considered reliable sources if they weren't on a controversial topic. What kind of sources do you guys need to make LENR a separate article? There are several literature review sections in peer reviewed mainstream physics articles which go over the light water transmutations. Is that enough to break LENR out into a separate article? Observer Sem (talk) 23:10, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

(A patent application doesn't qualify as "published research"...)

A few researchers have claimed observations of excess heat in light water cells. However, the claim is considered unlikely even by cold fusion proponents.... A 2001 book described it as "A new mania took hold among some of the wilder-eyed enthusiasts: the light-water cells had been reported in some hands to generate more heat, therefore more fusion, than the heavy-water cells, for which they were designed to provide a zero-fusion baseline."[27] Other sources don't mention these experiments. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:50, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Which proponents? [28] shows dozens of light water results, with maybe a third in mainstream academic physics journals. I've never seen any criticism of these specific results which didn't claim the entire field was bunk. Again, for these results which clearly aren't even "fusion" even in appearance, LENR should be a distinct article. Observer Sem (talk) 17:07, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Zawodny's work has been discussed here before (he's not certain even himself that the phenomen exists). What is being discussed here that is actually new? IRWolfie- (talk) 18:22, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Are you referring to this quote? "it is my professional opinion that the production of excess energy has been demonstrated.... I did not say, reliable, useful, commercially viable, or controllable."[29] I did not know that Zawodny has ever stated that he doubts the phenomenon exists, so if I am mistaken then please let me know what specific source you're referring to.

What is new (although I can't believe this hasn't come up before) is that I am suggesting that the LENR/low energy nuclear reaction article be de-coupled from Cold fusion so that effects which are obviously not fusion even in appearance can be accommodated. Observer Sem (talk) 04:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Are there any reliable sources for the "excess energy" claims? Are there any that support "LENR" as being anything other than a renaming of cold fusion by proponents? Zawodny and the ICCF are not WP:RS on these topics. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 11:04, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

@ ArtifexMayhem: There were plenty of reliable sources until you moronically deleted them, calling them "WP:OR and general BS" (11.55, 1 March 2013).

@ Observer Sem, one possible source of the proton in my step 2a. above is light water (for heavy water, the deuteron in 2b. applies), but I tend to agree with you about the need to fork the article. However, that leaves the problem of the existence of the falsehoods in this rotten article, and the fact that activist editors will simply move to the new article and suppress it. Silent Key (talk) 11:36, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Get a high quality source, otherwise there is nothing to discuss. Multiple sources mention LENR as being a renaming of Cold Fusion. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

A renaming of cold fusion BECAUSE IT WORKS. And what source on Earth is higher than the NASA sources I put in? (http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/research.htm NASA GRC Physical Sensors Instrumentation Research):

"Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center and elsewhere consistently show evidence of anomalous heat during gaseous loading and unloading of deuterium into and out of 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 was applied to improve the diagnostics for investigating the anomalous heat in LENR."

Silent Key (talk) 13:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

There is no shortage of WP:RS on excess energy, even if you don't like J Fusion Technol, as well as on transmutations and light water reactions: the Biberian (2007) literature review in Int J Nuc Energy Sci Tech or Storms (2010) in Naturwissenschaften, for example. What is missing is anything which purports to explain the iron in palladium electrode experiments, or any explanation of transmutation to lower atomic numbers in general. Widom-Larsen theory is utterly unable to explain transmutations to lower atomic numbers. Observer Sem (talk) 14:11, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Being "Editor in Chief" of the fringe Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science makes Biberian useless as a source. Same goes for ISCMNS executive board member and cold fusion researcher Storms and the web page maintained by a cold fusion proponent (even if it is hosted on a NASA server).
Silent Key: 1) There is absolutely no scientific evidence that "it works". 2) Calling other editors morons is not productive (I'm pretty sure you wouldn't enjoy being called a fuck-wit). — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 16:07, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, at least when I was at JPL (1976&ndsah;1982), fringe research was done, with the knowledge that it was fringe, and sometimes with the knowledge that the chief experimenter was a true believer. I assume that would still be the case, today. I would say that even if there were official NASA publications, they might not meet our criteria for reliabiity. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:40, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Do the reliability standards for journal review articles involve anything about whether the authors are affiliated with sources which aren't considered as reliable as the articles' source? Observer Sem (talk) 22:03, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

First sentence is simply a lie

It should be: Cold fusion is a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature, compared with temperatures in the millions of degrees that is required for hypothetical "hot" fusion.

Because we have for both the same evidence. We measure neutron radiation on both and on both we have evidence for converting an element to another. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.152.200.121 (talk) 04:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

No. Hot fusion has a theory behind it. Cold fusion does not. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:39, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

On the contrary, there are many theories. The reason why your article compares hot fusion with cold fusion is that it was a very popular media talking point, the news media kept repeating that for 20 years.84.106.26.81 (talk) 06:13, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there are many theories for cold fusion. But:

a) supporters can't agree on which theory is the "correct" one

b) all theories contradict one or more fundamental points of conventional theories

c) the theories have no experimental proof: it can't be replicated by others, or it can't be replicated reliably, or the original proponent can't replicate the effect a second time, or the results are small enough that they can be caused by experimental error

d) no successful predictions have been made

In the other hand, hot fusion supporters agree in the theories behind the phenomena, the theories are compatible with conventional theories, they keep being verified, and they keep making successful predictions.

And the Sun is a huge hot fusion reactor, which is a pretty good demonstration that hot fusion exists. And hot fusion in labs has been verified to the satisfaction of the scientific community. It's just that they can't sustain it for a long time. The hypothetical part is the "man-made self-sustainable hot fusion reactor and source of energy". And they already know that it would work if we could build it. The problem is: can we make a container hard enough to keep the reaction in check? There is no comparison with cold fusion. --[[User:|Enric Naval]] (talk) 09:50, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

• "No. Hot fusion has a theory behind it. Cold fusion does not." — Arthur Rubin
• "Yes, there are many theories for cold fusion." - Enric Naval — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.106.26.81 (talk • contribs)

84.* I'm not sure if you noticed, but I'll highlight something. Arthur Rubin refers to "a theory" singular. Cold fusion, as Enric points out, has many hypotheses (as they "have no experimental proof"), but no actual scientific theory (which would require evidence). If you want to argue the semantics of using the common parlance of the word theories instead of using the word hypotheses, be my guest, IRWolfie- (talk) 10:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

context of researchers

Perhaps it would help if we would describe the topic in the context of the individual researchers. That way we can eliminate any bias we might have about the topic in general.

Extended content

LENR researchers in Italy Sergio Focardi, published at least 3 peer reviewed papers in Il Nuovo Cimento, collaborated with Andrea Rossi on the Energy Catalyzer Francesco Piantelli, published together with Sergio Focardi Francesco Scaramuzzi, ENEA, Frascati, Italy Antonella De Ninno, ENEA, Frascati, Italy Giuliano Preparata Francesco Celani, INFN, Frascati, Italy it:Fulvio Frisone LENR researchers from India Padmanabha Krishnagopala Iyengar, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) India Mahadeva Srinivasan, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) India Japanese LENR researchers Yoshiaki Arata, Osaka University, has published numerous peer reviewed papers on his gas loading experiments together with co-author Yue Chang Zhang. Yue Chang Zhang, has published numerous peer reviewed papers together with Yoshiaki Arata Hideo Kozima, Professor Emeritus at Shizuoka University, then at Portland State University, has published numerous papers on cold fusion, author of the book "The Science of the Cold Fusion Phenomenon (Elsevier, 2006)" Tadahiko Mizuno, Department of Nuclear Engineering Hokkaido National University, Japan. Author of the book "Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion" Yasuhiro Iwamura, Advanced Technology Research Center, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, co-editor of the "Proceedings of the 12th international conference on cold fusion (World Scientific 2006)" Akito Takahashi, Nuclear Instrumentation Group at Osaka University, has published numerous papers of cold fusion co-editor of the "Proceedings of the 12th international conference on cold fusion (World Scientific 2006)" Akira Kitamura[30], Department of Nuclear Engineering, Kobe University of Mercantile Marine, Research Kobe University - has replicated Arata experiment LENR researchers from China Xing Zhong Li, Professor Emeritus, Tsinghua University, Beijing , China. President, International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ISCMNS) Li, XingZhong - Department of Physics - Tsinghua University LENR researchers in the United States Martin Fleischmann Stanley Pons references see Martin Fleischmann Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at Stanford Research Institute F. L. Tanzella, Stanford Research Institute John Bockris, former professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University Eugene Mallove, author of the Book "Fire from Ice (J. Wiley & Sons 1991)", editor of Infinite Energy magazine. Julian Schwinger Peter L. Hagelstein, co-editor of the "Proceedings of the 10th international conference on cold fusion (World Scientific 2006)" Edmund Storms, retired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, author of several books on CF/LENR "The science of low energy nuclear reaction (World scientific, 2007)" Tom Claytor, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) George H. Miley, Professor Emeritus Nuclear & Electrical Engineering University of Illinois Mitchell Swartz, JET Energy, Inc. Richard OrianiChemical Engineering and Materials Science - University of Minnesota John Dash, Portland State University Yeong E. KimProfessor of Physics, Group Leader Nuclear and Many-Body Theory Group, Purdue University Charles G. Beaudette, author of the book "Excess heat: why cold fusion research prevailed" Ludwik Kowalski Professor Emeritus Montclair State University US Navy & affiliated LENR researchers Pamela Mosier-Boss, SPAWAR Stanislaw Szpak, SPAWAR Frank E. Gordon, SPAWAR Lawrence P. G. Forsley, JWK International Corp, has published together with SPAWAR team David J. Nagel, Naval research lab Washington DC and Research Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, George Washington University, Washington DC. Melvin H. Miles, Chemistry Division, Research Department Naval Weapons Center, China Lake and Department of Chemistry, University of La Verne, California Scott R. Chubb, Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, co-editor of the "Proceedings of the 10th international conference on cold fusion (World Scientific 2006)" Talbot A. Chubb, retired from Naval Research Laboratory in Washington Michael E. Melich, Physics Department Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California , associate editor of the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science Graham K. HublerNaval Research Laboratory, was one of the proposers of the 2004 DOE Cold Fusion review together with Randall J. Hekman (Hekman Industries, LLC, Grand Rapids, Mich.), Michael C. H. McKubre (SRI International, Menlo Park, Calif.), Peter L. Hagelstein (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.), David J. Nagel (The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.) and Graham Hubler, (Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.) Russia Andrei Lipson [31] Nataliya Famina, Irina Savvatimova, Yury Bazhutov, Alexander Karabut Yan Kucherov [32] Notable entrepreneurs and inventors Randell L. Mills, Blacklight Power Andrea Rossi inventor of the Energy Catalyzer James Patterson CETI Patterson Power Cell Irving Dardik Energetics Technologies, Israel. Energetics Technologies is currently set up at the University of Missouri Business Incubator. Robert E. Godes inventor of the Brillouin boiler Les Case, Catalytic fusion cell other LENR researchers Jean-Paul Bibérian, Physics Dept., University of Aix-Marseille, France, editor in chief of the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, has published several papers on cold fusion Editor of the "Proceedings of the 11th international conference on cold fusion (World Scientific 2006)" Jan Marwan organizer of the '09 '10 '11 ACS New Energy Technology Symposium K. Czerski [33] A. Huke [34] [35] Other Jacques Dufour, CNAM Laboratoire des Sciences Nucléaires, Paris, France , currently working on "Experimental Verification of the Pico-Chemistry Hypothesis". J. Kasagi, Laboratory of Nuclear Science, Tohoku University, Japan has presented several papers on the ICCF. Together with Y. Iwamura he authored the "Country History of Japanese Work on Cold Fusion" paper presented on the ICCF-14. Allan Widom Larsen Yogendra N. Srivastava Eiichi. Yamaguchi and T. Nishioka, "Cold nuclear fusion induced by controlled out-diffusion of deuterons in palladium", Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Part 2 (April 1990) Vol.29, No.4, p. L666-669. Quinton Bowles, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Missouri in Kansas City W.-S. Zhang, Low Energy Nuclear Laboratory, Portland State University, Portland, U.S.A. J. Dash, Low Energy Nuclear Laboratory, Portland State University, Portland, U.S.A. Michael E. Melich Otto Reifenschweiler, Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands . put on the list ?? Steven E. Jones, this guy is not cold fusion Mark W. Anderson Frederick J. Mayer John R. Reitz John S. King Steven P. Kneizys S.N. Nakamura Giuseppe Agelao Spallone A. Pace, S. Polichetti, B. Saggese, A. Liberatori, L. Di Stefano, V. Marini, P Hideo Ikegami, director of a Japanese research project in nuclear fusion in 1989 steven cowley, of Culham Centre for Fusion Energy Rusi Taleyarkhan, sonoluminescence.

It's better to use reliable independent sources that are external from the field..... By trying to summarize so many primary sources you risk falling into the trap of making new research from primary sources instead of summarizing secondary sources that have already performed that research. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:16, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Nothing found in Japan until 2008

I'm sure you'll be pleased to learn that the article already includes that last cite. It also includes the 1997 followup article in the NYT, wherein Hideo Ikegami reports the end of that project:

"We couldn't achieve what was first claimed in terms of cold fusion," said Dr. Hideo Ikegami, a retired professor at the National Institute for Fusion Science in Nagoya. "We can't find any reason to propose more money for the coming year or for the future."

Strangely, though you listed his initial, optimistic statement to the NYT in 1992, you seem to have omitted this followup in your list. Also, if I might make a suggestion, it would be helpful if you labeled your tables more clearly, so that it's clear that your list includes scientists who have clearly indicated that they could not replicate the claims, and who feel that there is no reason to fund any more research in cold fusion. As it is, there's a danger that some readers might make the error of thinking that the names on your list were of people who actually supported the claims of cold fusion. --Noren (talk) 01:18, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a swing. The list has minimal sources or it doesn't fit on this page. Just enough to suggest Ikegami was indeed involved.

Section: "Subsequent research", the part: "2006–2007", doesn't sit in the correct spot on the timeline of the section. The rest of the section is sorted by year. If you would be so kind to put it a bit lower in the section then the Japanese context is also restored. Because the text continues....

In 1999 the Japan C-F Research Society was established to promote the independent research into cold fusion that continued in Japan.[83] The society holds annual meetings; the 12th meeting took place on December 17–18, 2011 at Kobe University.[84]

Still nothing convincing....

In May 2008 Japanese researcher Yoshiaki Arata (Osaka University) demonstrated an experiment that produced heat when deuterium gas was introduced into a cell containing a mixture of palladium and zirconium oxide.[text 5] In an August 2009 peer-reviewed paper Akira Kitamura (Kobe University) et al. reported replication of this experiment.[85] Replication of earlier work by Arata had been claimed by McKubre at SRI.[86]

You see? Before 2008 nothing convincing was produced. But after 2008 we've been stuck with things like:

• Arata was involved in a "hypothetical type of nuclear reaction"
• Arata's work "has been rejected by the mainstream scientific community"

These falsehoods are without sources. You can use almost any kind of source for things before 2008, but after 2008 any refutations has to be peer reviewed. You may still quote other note worthy sources but you have to attribute them to their source and you may not derive new and original results that contradict Arata. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 01:15, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

suggested modification

The article is locked,

Section "Subsequent research" with improved chronology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&diff=545608432&oldid=545608374

The research efforts now appear in the same order in which they appeared. I havent edited any of the paragraphs.

84.106.26.81 (talk) 05:41, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

split "Pons and Fleischmann" from main article

What I see is a huge article about P&F with a little cold fusion section in the middle. We've pushed wikipedians to the limit and beyond trying to fit their contributions into this weird scope. Editors are made to go though a lot of effort to get a single sentence mention of something other than Pons and Fleischman. Many got banned in this process.

IMHO the project should not aim to endlessly rewrite history, we can have a stable static article about Pons and Fleischmann's press release. When that article is finished there is no more battle ground. At the same time it would be a terrific idea to write a cold fusion/lenr article citing the peer reviewed literature.

The accomplishment will be that new editors may show up and actually understand what they are suppose to do. This is very different from the current climate where no one seems to get the scope and many get banned. To give an idea how complex it is: Here is an example where naval is writing about P&F while ArtifexMayhem is wrting about cold fusion:[36] I initially thought naval was right.... go figure.

I'm not confused why the puzzle is so hard. I think it perfectly reasonable to have the article about cold fusion require peer reviewed sources and to have the static history article about P&F.

So I read: Wikipedia:Summary_style#Avoiding_unnecessary_splits

• Does the new article meet the general notability criterion? - Yes it does.
• editors are encouraged to work on further developing the main article first, locating coverage that applies to both the main topic and the subtopic. Through this process, it may become evident that subtopics or groups of subtopics can demonstrate their own notability, and thus can be split off into their own article. - Yes it does.
• Do not put undue weight into one part of an article at the cost of other parts. In shorter articles, if one subtopic has much more text than another subtopic, that may be an indication that that subtopic should have its own page, with only a summary presented on the main page. - Yes it does.
• If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list. - Yes it qualifies
• The idea is to summarize and distribute information across related articles in a way that can serve readers who want varying amounts of details, thus giving readers the ability to zoom to the level of details they need and not exhausting those who need a primer on a whole topic. Breakout methods should anticipate the various details levels that typical readers will look for. - The typical reader is looking for a description of the field of research, the spectrum of experiments, how these experiments work, an overview of research efforts and a tiny bit of history.

I'm sure the archives of this article contain much more P&F content.

I also see: Wikipedia:Splitting, which may provide further suggestions.

84.106.26.81 (talk) 02:43, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

vote

• Agreed 84.106.26.81 (talk) 02:43, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
• Disagree per WP:POVFORK --Noren (talk) 12:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC) -- I wanted to add that such a forking in order to focus on very recent events also runs afoul of a bias of excessive WP:Recentism.--Noren (talk) 13:15, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• Hello, I think it most specifically described here: Article spinouts:""Even if the subject of the new article is controversial, this does not automatically make the new article a POV fork."
• The split is not an attempt to focus on new material. It is an attempt to create a sub article our of excessive coverage in the main article.

Does my proposal make more sense now? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 09:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree, this is another POV attempt to whitewash "LENR". It's the usual claim that "LENR" is not a continuation of F&P's experiments. The article has several sources who say LENR is just a new name for the old thing, and that the current field is a continuation of the old one. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:46, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

You seem confused Enric, I'm proposing to split Pons and Fleischmann from the cold fusion article.

To answer your question anyway: Cold Fusion (the anomalous heat effect) is part of the Low Energy Nuclear ReactionS and a subject of the research field Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. Only when we have to much coverage would there be a need to split it from the main article. We barely have a sentence so you can safely forget about this.

My point is that we have excessive coverage of just 2 researchers in the main article. 2 out of many. After the split we would simply have 2 articles about the topic. Pretty much the same sources and citations currently found in the cold fusion article will also be found in the P&F article. Contradictions shouldn't exist.

Article spinouts:"Sometimes, when an article gets long (see Wikipedia:Article size), a section of the article is made into its own article, and the handling of the subject in the main article is condensed to a brief summary. This is completely normal Wikipedia procedure."

"Completely normal" seems obvious enough? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 09:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The first step in your whitewash is to remove mention of P&F (which is also the content with most WP:WEIGHT). Then comes the re-branding exercise. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The guideline says no such things. It instructs considerable coverage in the main article. With a link to the sub article.

Article spinouts: "Summary style articles, with sub-articles giving greater detail, are not POV forking, provided that all the sub-articles, and the summary, conform to Neutral Point of View. Essentially, it is generally acceptable to have different levels of detail of a subject on different pages, provided that each provides a balanced view of the subject matter. This can happen when a particular controversial incident gets a lot of attention from editors representing different points of view, expanding until every item of evidence is included and referenced. This kind of detailed examination of a single incident in a general article will usually be considered to give Undue Weight to the incident so it is more appropriate to break that section out as a separate section and just have a summary in the main article. However, it is possible for article spinouts to become POV forks. If a statement is inadmissible for content policy reasons at an article XYZ, then it is also inadmissible at a spinout Criticism of XYZ. Spinouts are intended to improve readability and navigation, not to evade Wikipedia's content policies."

84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:59, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Please don't bold again the first word in my comment. I purposefully left it unbolded because of Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion, article content is decided by strength of argument, not by counting votes in polls.

You are avoiding the most important argument: the reliable sources say that it's still the same field. And wikipedia is based on reliable sources. If you don't address that argument, then you are posting your own personal opinions (And here is my own personal opinion: sources say that CF, LENR and CNMS are the same because the last two haven't achieved their own breakthroughs. For example, a replicable experiment that requires a new theory. I think that sources will keep saying the same until this happens. But this is only my personal opinion) --Enric Naval (talk) 11:22, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree In response to (* Does the new article meet the general notability criterion? - Yes it does.), keep in mind that it has not been shown that Pons and Fleishmann have any notability other than their work with cold fusion. In response to (What I see is a huge article about P&F with a little cold fusion section in the middle.), keep in mind that the article has many sections that have zero or almost zero mention of Pons and Fleishmann. It covers both their episode and other issues. Olorinish (talk) 01:40, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

You say the article has many sections that have zero or almost zero mention of Pons and Fleischmann. This is an understandable mistake. Combined with the Wikipedia:Notability issues you raise I can be 100% sure you haven't looked at the sources close enough. No offense intended. You are in no way obligated to look. If you do you will see that most of the article is sourced on old things that only talk about P&F. On the Pons and Fleischmann article these old references would look very neat. But where the article tries to apply 1989 journalism to 2008 reviewed science, then you are making a terrible mess of the wikipedia.

Let me pick a random source:[37] "Frank Close, a leading physicist and talented popular science writer, reveals the true story of the cold fusion controversy". Thats not bad at all for 1991. Finally the truth? If we now look at reference numbers: 19, 41, 44, 61, 68, 100, 130, 133, 141, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 156 and 157 Then we see this book mentioned, again and again. If a book is published in 1991 it can only talk about P&F. Lets try one more?:[38] Published in 1989, it can only talk about P&F. Or do you see other possibilities? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

There are several recent sources right here in our article. A 2006 Discover magazine article[39] The 2009 sources when Mossier-Boss announced his new results (several sources). The 2009 paper that compared CF publications against the publications in other fields[40] A 2010 paper by Hagelstein talking about"recent Fleischmann–Pons experiments carried out by different groups"[41].

And you can find many recent sources in User:Enric_Naval/pathological_science#sources_added_later. They all speak of cold fusion as a single continuous field spanning from 1989 to the present. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:23, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree POV fork and whitewash attempt. I also note that 84. has been canvassing: [42]. This has already been discussed before. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:15, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Is Current Science a peer reviewed journal? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

No. I doubt the quality of its peer review. It's a small journal that has printed pseudoscientific nonsense. If you are in Europe or America, and can only get your stuff printed in a random small indian journal with a reputation for lax peer review, it's a good sign that it's rubbish. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:25, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose as POVFORK. Binksternet (talk) 16:32, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not making it obvious enough?

This part is the cold fusion article:

    1 History
        1.3 Subsequent research 
        1.4 Publications
        1.5 Conferences
        1.6 Further reviews and funding issues
    2 Reported results
    4 Patents
    5 Cultural references
    8 References
    9 Bibliography
    10 External links

And this part is the Pons and Fleischmann coverage:

    1 History
        1.1 Before the Fleischmann–Pons experiment         about pons and fleischmann
        1.2 Fleischmann–Pons experiment                   also about pons and fleischmann
            1.2.1 Events preceding announcement           also about pons and fleischmann
            1.2.2 Announcement                            also about pons and fleischmann
            1.2.3 Response and fallout                    also about pons and fleischmann
    2 Reported results                                    also about pons and fleischmann
        2.1 Excess heat and energy production       (In experiments such as those run by Fleischmann and Pons...)
        2.2 Helium, heavy elements, and neutrons    (....Fleischmann and Pons reported....)
        2.3 Proposed mechanisms                     (Many years after the 1989 experiment...)
    3 Criticism                                           also about pons and fleischmann
        3.1 Incompatibilities with conventional fusion     also about pons and fleischmann
            3.1.1 Repulsion forces                        also about pons and fleischmann
            3.1.2 Lack of expected reaction products       also about pons and fleischmann
        3.2 Setup of experiments                          also about pons and fleischmann
            3.2.1 Reproducibility                         also about pons and fleischmann
                3.2.1.1 Loading ratio                      also about pons and fleischmann
            3.2.2 Misinterpretation of data                also about pons and fleischmann
            3.2.3 Calorimetry errors                       also about pons and fleischmann
            3.2.4 Initial lack of control experiments      also about pons and fleischmann
    6 See also                                            also about pons and fleischmann
    7 Notes                                               only about pons and fleischmann

Compare that with this coverage:

In May 2008 Japanese researcher Yoshiaki Arata (Osaka University) demonstrated an experiment that produced heat when deuterium gas was introduced into a cell containing a mixture of palladium and zirconium oxide.[text 5] In an August 2009 peer-reviewed paper Akira Kitamura (Kobe University) et al. reported replication of this experiment.[85] Replication of earlier work by Arata had been claimed by McKubre at SRI.[86]

Thats the whole thing. This is our peer reviewed cold fusion coverage. Unworthy of a section in the P&F dominated article.

84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the first list:

• "subsequent" and "further" sections don't include the original events by definition
• "Publications" tells the whole story from the response to F&P to the current state. The most recent reliable sources (Simon 2002, Labinger & Weininger 2005, Adderman 2006, Bettencourt 2009) treated the volume of publication as a continuum inside the single field of cold fusion
• "Reported results" includes the first replications of F&P's original experiment
• "Patents" starts with the original patents made by F&P and the Utah university
• "Cultural references" doesn't distinguish references influenced directly by F&P's experiment from later influences
• "Conferences" starts with the 1990 conference that was made to promote F&P's experiment, and explains how the situation evolved since then

Regarding the second list:

• "Incompatibilities with conventional fusion" and "Setup of experiments" and its subsections. They span both the original experiment and later experiments and theories.
• "Reported results", see above, it spans all reported results since the first replications of F&P's original experiment.

--Enric Naval (talk) 14:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Use cite_journal to reformat in 7 seconds not 15-27

There is a long-term plan to upgrade to a faster Lua version of Template:Citation, which has been used to format the footnotes in "Cold fusion". However, due to further delays of another week or more, I propose to change the citations to the current 6x-faster Template:Cite_journal (with option "ref=harv") to connect the author/year links. I have run some partial tests which confirm that clicking on the author/name footnotes will still link to the related book/journal citations. The expected edit-preview time will drop to about 7 seconds, rather than the current 15-27 seconds of the old version of {citation}. By default, the footnote parameters will be separated by dots, but option "separator=," can be used to retain the comma format. If there are no objections, I will streamline the article later tonight using {cite_journal}, to allow edit-preview with the 7-second reformat. Also, new citations can be added with either {citation} or {cite_journal} mixed, or any related templates. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Only if someone else tests it, first. You have a reputation (at least partially deserved) for making "improvements" without adequate checks. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:11, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, we don't have a comma format, we just let templates use their default separator. The less parameter cruft, the better. If nobody objects, I'll nuke all "separator=" and "postscript=" stuff. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:17, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

That's not the only difference between Wikid77's templates and the existing templates. I agree that that difference is not important, though. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:50, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I think some people will prefer the comma separators (rather than dots "."), so there might be debates on that issue. -Wikid77 01:46, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if if my reply is a bit harsh. "some people" and "there might be debates" are way too imprecise and vague.... As far as I know, commas were used only because it was the default for the template. We use a new template, the template has a new default, everybody keeps not caring. It's still the same citations and the extra parameters add weight and complication to an already heavy and complicated article. (weight in kilobytes of text) I don't see anyone actually complaining here. Certainly, I don't see any of the regular contributors complaining about switching to dots in citations to reduce length of citations. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

• DONE. I have changed the 127 uses of Template:Citation to use Template:Cite_journal, to quicken the average reformat as 7.5 seconds from 15-27. I also fixed some clerical errors, such as the phrase "the their". Sorry I was only 99.9% correct with prior pages, while also fixing numerous typos. I will try to do better next time. Please feel free to re-test the results. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:46, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

  When making unnecessary automated changes, 99.9% is not adequate. Just ask Rich. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:58, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

NASA

I had always heard that cold fusion (AKA LENR) was rather fringe, but now it looks like some people at NASA are actually taking the idea seriously: http://climate.nasa.gov/news/864 Anybody know more about this? I would think there should probably be some discussion in the article. -Helvetica (talk) 06:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

This is very old news (also note the comment "I'm interested in understanding whether the phenomenon is real, what it's all about", also check his blog). Check the archives for the discussion about it. US agencies like NASA do have a history of trying highly speculative and implausible research, it's discussed in the archives too. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:00, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

This isn't an issue I've been following closely. My interest is more in proven technology like fission, but I saw a link someone had posted. Might be worth a quick mention in the article... -Helvetica (talk) 16:06, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it has lasting importance, and would be highlighting something just because it's recent, see WP:RECENTISM. Let it trickle down to the most reliable sources, if it's actually significant. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

@IRWolfie - I'm a bit confused here as you say that "this is very old news" and then refer to WP:RECENTISM. Since the concept of cold fusion is relatively new, something which is "old news" hardly strikes me as recent. Like I said, fusion energy is not my focus, as I see fission as much more viable - at least in the short to medium term, but I think it would make sense to note NASA's involvement and discuss what this means. And as far as reliable sources go, I'd say it doesn't get much more official than NASA's own website. I did find a number of other sources though which cover this: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149090-nasas-cold-fusion-tech-could-put-a-nuclear-reactor-in-every-home-car-and-plane http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-02/27/rossi-roundup http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2013/04/nasas-cold-fusion-folly.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Helvetica (talk • contribs) 02:09, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

It came out about six or seven months ago, that's what I mean by old. It's not "news". There's also nothing encyclopedic here. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:06, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

European Physical Journal articles on the topic

Could someone make a list of articles appeared in the mentioned journal concerning the topic ? It seems that there are at least two mentioned in some archive of this talk page.--82.137.14.123 (talk) 09:09, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Stresses in the Palladium

I don't see this in the article, maybe I missed it.

The story I heard years ago was, the Pons and Fleischmann experiment used faulty Palladium electrodes. They were not properly annealed and thus had internal stresses. These stresses were released during electrolysis, yielding energy.

Can someone comment on that? Jokem (talk) 22:42, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Rossi

There is now presumably independent confirmation of Rossi's ECat producing surplus heat: [43] I don't know how reliable the authors are (most don't have a single other arxiv article, FWIW), should this be added to the article? --Roentgenium111 (talk) 14:00, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

This is being hashed out in the Energy Catalyzer article. I'd suggest waiting until the dust settles, and then add a sentence to the Rossi paragraph at the end of "Subsequent Research". Alanf777 (talk) 23:22, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

@Roentgenium111, I do not think it should be added here: the authors write about a possible new source of energy of unknown origin and they do not even state that this energy is from nuclear origin.--Insilvis (talk) 03:21, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

This article already states that Rossi "claimed to have successfully demonstrated commercially viable cold fusion in a device called an Energy Catalyzer", making a clear connection to the subject IMO. (But see below.)--Roentgenium111 (talk) 22:34, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Using that arxiv would violate WP:CIRCULAR. It's also WP:RECENTISM, and undue. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:40, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The arxiv article has been quoted in other "non-circular" sources, but I tend to agree not to include it here unless reported more widely. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 22:34, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Kozima as source

Hideo Kozima's book about cold fusion could be cited. Feeedback?--5.15.200.209 (talk) 20:08, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

You mean 2006 Elsevier's The Science of the Cold Fusion Phenomenon? I haven't seen any review that doesn't come from other proponents (which means that it's difficult to establish if has a reputation for fact checking, good reporting, etc, since there are no independent reviews ffrom outside the field). Kozima is an emeritus professor of physics, but almost his whole career seems to spin around CF?? (see list of papers, every single paper is related to CF?). With only these indications, I would expect his writing to be very biased in favor of CF, and his fact reporting would be of unknown reliability. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:45, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Not his whole career. See this list of papers. He did work with plasmas and solid states over three decades before going down the CF rabbit hole circa 1997. Still, since then, it does seem to be all CF all the time. Of course that is rather the point of academic tenure - allowing the outrageous to be considered. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:13, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science

FYI, AfD: International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (2nd_nomination). — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 17:03, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

New Sources

Star in a jar - Cosmo Garvin http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/star-in-a-jar/content?oid=35071 Cold fusion reactor independently verified, has 10,000 times the energy density of gas - Sebastian Anthony http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/156393-cold-fusion-reactor-independently-verified-has-10000-times-the-energy-density-of-gas — Preceding unsigned comment added by FrankRadioSpecial (talk • contribs) 19:21, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

No offense, but is either of those sources potentially reliable? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:45, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I take that back. The first is potentially reliable, but, if there's no followup, it belongs in free energy suppression, rather than here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:49, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The first cite is a 2005 claim of bubble fusion and should be discussed in that article. I think it would be a good addition, as I don't see that Tessien's work is discussed there as yet.--Noren (talk) 13:43, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Bubble fusion is an attempt at "hot" fusion, so is irrelevant to the article [[44]] Bhny (talk) 15:43, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I think this should probably be included on this page (EU commission report): http://ec.europa.eu/research/industrial_technologies/pdf/emerging-materials-report_en.pdf. Section 3.4 gives a brief overview of Pd/D reactions urging the need of funding future research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.157.15.91 (talk) 22:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's be careful about workshops dedicated to speculative research. This report arises from the "Forward Looking Workshop on Materials for Emerging Energy Technologies". This is not dedicated to hard facts, but to proof-free speculations about possibilities and possible potentials.

And the recommendation in section 3.4 is only from the presenter of that specific paper. The joint recommendations are in chapter 8: they are very general, and they don't mention any specific technology.

And in the legal notice: "The views expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission." This is doesn't sound like an official EU report. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:12, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

EU's 'Directorate-General for Research and Innovation' asks several experts to give their views on recent developments in certain areas, which they do, and this is written in this report. How is this different from the 2004 DOE report on Cold Fusion, which is mentioned in the article? US 'Department of Energy' asks several experts to give their opinion on developments in the area in 2004. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.157.15.91 (talk) 22:14, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this particular document on its own doesn't contain much information, let alone a specific plan.

What MIGHT be more appropriate is a section (title to be agreed) relating to "major" ongoing support for, or formal investigations, of Cold Fusion in Government (Italy, ENAE: USA, NRL? : European Parliament, recent presentation by SKINR, NRL, NI..), Highly qualified commercial organisations (SRI,NI). and Universities where CF is supported at the Department (SKINR) or Group (eg Purdue Nuclear and Many-Body Theory Group Group) level. Not necessarily endorsing CF, but an indication of high-level interest. A lot of work by individual researchers, eg MIT's Hagelstein, would NOT fall under this heading. NASA's "forward looking" plans (Bushnel) might qualify. Alanf777 (talk) 20:43, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's talk about WP:NOTNEWS and the bias of WP:RECENTISM.

Between 1992 and 1997 the Japanese government spent $20 million and got no results. Toyota spent $40 millions with Fleischmann and Pons, also with no results. Now a private millionaire has donated $5.5 million, and we claim victory before it has had time to obtain any result?

And NRL uses an undetermined budget. And NASA's Zawodny seems to be doing some undeterminated stuff based in Widom-Larsen's theory, using a smallish budget. As for ENEA, in 2006-2007 the Italian government allocated some funding, but since then all ENEA experiments seem to be carried only in the Frascati center of ENEA, with unknown funding.

As far as I know, there is no "major" ongoing support, or formal investigations, beyond the SKINR program. And in past years there were greater efforts, which obtained no results. How is the SKINR program different from previous programs? --Enric Naval (talk) 21:49, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

The presentation on Cold Fusion to the European Parliament in June 2013 was noted (in advance) by Hambling/Wired http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/24/cold-fusion-research : photos of the slides were leaked to an unreliable source (Passi22 blog), but have now been published officially : http://www.enea.it/it/Ufficio-Bruxelles/news/new-advancements-on-the-fleischmann-pons-effect-paving-the-way-for-a-potential-new-clean-renewable-energy-source --- this self-qualifies as a reliable source, so I plan to write a summary. As far as sponsorship goes, we have the OFFICIAL ENEA/NRL project, in which SRI and more recently SKINR participate. This work is supported in the US by DARPA, DTRA, Electric Power Research Institute, Office of Naval Research and in Italy by government funding at the research institute level (ENEA).

How is SKINR (etc) different : The slides (linked from the above) indicate (1) improved reproducability (cathodes which worked at ENEA and NRL worked at SKINR), (2) COP with a PEAK of 40X, 30X continuous for 960 hours (3) Direct detection of He4 3He (and Tritium? "t" ??) from injecting D+ ions into Pd+"Catalysts" at room temperature (4) Much quicker loading in Electrolytic (F&P) experiments (5) Irrefutable calorimetry plus checks for RF Alanf777 (talk) 16:03, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Sounds great, go for it.84.106.26.81 (talk) 17:10, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

(and please stop mentioning support from DARPA. That was discussed here. There is a program at the 2009 budget that looks like someone slipped cold fusion research by using misleading wording [45]. DARPA gives funding to SRI, and SRI makes some cold fusion research, but DARPA has never given direct funding for cold fusion, beyond this one program? If DARPA was really supporting cold fusion, would it be hiding it under the rug in misleading descriptions. It looks more like DARPA refuses to fund cold fusion, and SRI can only get money by disguising his real goals and hoping nobody notices....) --Enric Naval (talk) 21:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Better tell McKubre to update his bio (eg) http://research.missouri.edu/vcr_seminar/may09_speakers.htm " In the last decade and a half as Director of the Energy Research Center, Dr. McKubre has applied himself to the discovery and application of potential new energy sources, specifically those associated with the deuterium/palladium system. He is recognized internationally in this field as an expert in the areas of PdH and PdD electrochemistry and calorimetry and has directed research and undertaken consulting in this area for the Electric Power research Institute (EPRI), the Japanese Ministry of Industry and Technology Innovation (MITI), the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA), the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Office of Naval Research (ONR), and Italian National Energy Agency (ENEA). "" Alanf777 (talk) 23:18, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

That's not a "presentation (...) to the European Parliament". That's a meeting with one member of EU parlament, in room 6Q1 of the Jozsef Antall building. Concretely, they met with Italian politician Amalia Sartori, chair of the Industry, Research and Energy committee. So, the Italian ENEA has arranged a meeting with an Italian member of the European Parlament. There is no endorsement from the European Parliament. 'Signature copied by AF to delineate sections Enric Naval 21:12, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Sure looks like a "presentation" to me : http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sMj4xRCysxA/Ua4Z2cWSxMI/AAAAAAAAJjE/A5vdAYzMJ6A/s1600/P1070365.jpg Alanf777 (talk) 21:12, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

And it's just one more event in Brussels (search for "03 giugno 2013") and it's the only event with no link for further information......

So, I'll ask again. How is the $5.5 mill funding for the SKINR program more important than the failed fundings of $40 mill from Toyota, $20 mill from the Japanese government, the unknown amount from Italian government, the unknown amount from the Indian government, etc? --Enric Naval (talk) 21:12, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

(It would be helpful if you'd sign individual sections) "So, the Italian ENEA has arranged a meeting with an Italian member of the European Parlament. There is no endorsement from the European Parliament." I never said there was. But the presentation was introduced (and concluded by) Edit Herczog, MEP, Member ITRE Committee (from Hungary), and a presentation was made by Herbert Von Bose, European Commission, DG RTD, Director Industrial Technologies (eg)http://ec.europa.eu/nanotechnology/pdf/swedish-presidency-event/von_bose.pdf (German, not Italian either). Alanf777 (talk) 22:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

"So, I'll ask again. How is the $5.5 mill funding for the SKINR program more important than the failed fundings of $40 mill from Toyota.." There never was a report on WHY it was terminated. "Leaked" information indicates that it was progressing technically -- but I obviously don't have reliable information on that. This is the last paper that came out of IMRI : http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RouletteTresultsofi.pdf Alanf777 (talk) 22:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Believe it or not, but a lot has been learned since then. In particular, the "enabling criteria" such as D-loading, required currents and a final "stimulus". See Craven & Letts for details. Second, the search for the "Nuclear active sites" has progressed from the bulk, to the surface, to sub-micron features in Pd/Ni and the requirement for "catalysts" at the ppm level. ENEA and NRL have made significant progress in making cathodes that work. So far SKINR has just replicated their own earlier work, and now have replicated the results of ENEA and NRL. The ENAE/NRL project is by a formal International Agreement. That's not under-the-radar funding. Exactly how DARPA contributes is not clear, but McKubre clearly implies that THIS work is supported by them. It's NOT just for general supplies and toilet paper. Alanf777 (talk) 22:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Pons could claim whatever he wanted (and that would be a conference presentation, not a published paper), but Toyota didn't report any success, and no reproducible experiment was ever achieved. Robert Park said "Technova had finally given up on cold fusion. Stanley Pons was let go and is reportedly living in near seclusion on a farm in the South of France. In ten years, he had done little but repeat the flawed experiments that were done at the University of Utah."[46] A 1997 ACS book says that cold fusion was still forgotten, even at the height of the Japanese private funding, when it looked like they were going to get results [47]. Toyota ended his support in 1998, and a 2005 book says that cold fusion remained a pariah science, even after the Toyota funding, the Naval Research Laboratory publications, the Japanese government funding, and the research in China and Italy [48]. There you have it, a sourced secondary conclusion that the funding programs have not changed the status of cold fusion.

So, again, what makes the SKINR fundings different from all the previous failed fundings? --Enric Naval (talk) 17:54, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

(Following Hyman Kaplan : ) *R*E*P*L*I*C*A*T*I*O*N* (Of their own prior work, and by using ENEA/NRL cathodes in their own environment). What part of COP=30 for 960 hours don't YOU understand ? Alanf777 (talk) 03:12, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

And since you apparently didn't look at the last IMRI paper (see above),by T. Roulette, J, Roulette, and S. Pons, reporting on a particular calorimeter, made 7 runs, of which 4 failed, 1 had variable power, one had 150% excess power over 30 days, and one had 250% excess power over 70 days. wrt Toyota, the main internal sponsor, Minoru Toyoda, died (I can't find an exact date) : http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion_pr.html I asked why his lab in the south of France had lost its funding. "Minoru Toyoda was a great man," said Fleischmann. "Not the kind of man you find very often, who is willing to say, 'This is what I am going to do, and I don't care if you think I am mad.' After he died -" Fleischmann grimaced. "What you have to ask yourself is, who wants this discovery?" Alanf777 (talk) 03:35, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia works with reliable sources. A conference paper from the IICF is not usually considered a reliable source. I provided several reliable sources saying that past funding efforts didn't change the status of cold fusion. You have provided no reliable source that suggests otherwise. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:23, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

A pseudoscientist has claimed to have replicated their OWN WORK?!?!? Well I guess that proves it then! It seems our naive concepts of logic, reason, the scientific method, and rational thought were just quaint notions that could never compete with your “outrageous claims” based system of knowledge. Well, there’s no sense delaying the “energy revolution” any longer. Why don’t you start rewriting the article to tell the English speaking world that cold fusion is real Alanf777? And while you’re doing that I’ll write to the pope to ask him to canonize Martin Fleischmann. 68.74.163.157 (talk) 04:33, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Ah well .. a fly-by anonymous poster. Alanf777 (talk) 04:44, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was just flying by when I noticed that your insult to Enric Naval (“What part of COP=30 for 960 hours don't YOU understand ?”) was in flagrant violation of WP:DICK. So why don’t you explain to me why a cold fusion proponent CLAIMING that they replicated their own CLAIMED success is significant? 68.74.163.157 (talk) 05:32, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. Alan777 is scraping at the very bottom of the barrel. It's farcical to think that self-relplicated tests are of any significance, and it borders on trolling. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 10:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

It's Enric Naval doing the trolling ("So again ..." ... "So again ..." ), refusing to accept even the concept that $5.5M in 2103 can achieve something that $20M or $40M failed to do in the 1990's (if you count 250% excess for 70 days as failure), because of advances in the field. SKINR's first replication was resuming and confirming a 1991 experiment (Pelas), which had been terminated due to loss of funding. Now they are reporting (admittedly in a slide, not yet in a paper) that they replicated work by OTHER institutions, namely NRL and ENEA. That's not SELF replication. To claim that The University of Missouri, SKINR, NRL and ENEA are "pseudoscientists" is preposterous. Alanf777 (talk) 16:42, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

When truly independent replication and confirmation gets published in an authentic peer-reviewed journal, come back and tell us all about it. Until then, it's not worth even considering as far as WP is concerned, and you're wasting your time, and ours. and that's what trolling is all about. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 16:55, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

At least one DRIP of DE money was spent on CF : "Burke Ritchie / Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science 11 (2013) 101–122 ... This work was performed under the auspices of the Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, (LLNS) under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344." (See http://www.llnsllc.com/contract/docs/AppendB_mod53_012209.pdf) -- and THEY don't seem to have a problem publishing the work in JCMNS (the journal related to ICCF/ICMNS) Alanf777 (talk) 22:12, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

And you might look at his letter to ACS concerning peer review : http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201211/letters.cfm -- clearly a pseudoscientist : http://books.google.com/books/about/Numerical_Solution_of_the_Time_dependent.html?id=z4HytgAACAAJ[ Alanf777 (talk) 22:21, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

The first is a fringe journal by an non-notable fringe organization. You should remember I voted to delete our article on it. Remember the rectums? ( sig copied for para break Dominus Vobisdu )

Who except proctologists review proctology papers? I was pointing out that some CF work at Lawrence Livermore was funded by the DoE, and that LL has no problem publishing it in JCMNS Alanf777 (talk) 01:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Letters are never peer-reviewed. ( sig copied for para break Dominus Vobisdu )

Follow the links, Luke. Peer Review Stifles Originality

The gathering clouds on print v. open access (APS News, October 2012) may presage a publishing Roe v. Wade war in which the printers seem to fear that established science might become tainted by a surfeit of free thought, some of which may actually be correct. My personal experience with peer review is that every paper which I would rather not be out there now, every paper which was trivial or even wrong, sailed through peer review with flying colors. On the other hand the papers of which I am proudest and believe to be the most substantial were the most at risk for being rejected. My paper on chiral-molecule photoelectron angular distributions, published in Physical Review A in 1976, would have been rejected had not an editor sent it to my former postdoctoral advisor, who gave it to a current postdoctoral fellow to check the mathematics. How rare an event do you think this is, which would not have happened had I been ten years or more beyond my degree and absolutely would not have happened today? Single-blind peer review is manifestly flawed. It is a kind of chat room, in which participation requires that you be on topic and say things that everyone else will agree with. This is not hard for most, given the homogeneity of the education system. The peer-review and publishing system persuades you to stay close to the work of your advisors, to be gathered to your fathers (to use an archaic expression), which may be close to the mark because indeed the system stifles independence and creativity. And then there is the emergence of an odd duck of an editor called an "administrative editor," who seems to be a sort of journal commissar to ensure that the journal's impact factor is maintained or improved. This is a misguided journal orientation which will surely filter out most or all original work. Burke Ritchie Livermore, CA Alanf777 (talk) 01:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Can't view the third one, but dollars to doughnuts, it's irrelevant. ( sig copied for para break Dominus Vobisdu )

Numerical Solution of the Time-dependent Schrodinger Equation for Continuum States -- Burke Ritchie, Charles A. Weatherford, Army High Performance Computing Research Center, University of Minnesota Alanf777 (talk) 01:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Don't you have even the slightest clue what peer-reviewed means? Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:34, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Rest assured. If there ever is a real breakthrough in cold fusion, it will be published in one of the top physics journals. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:43, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Since we're in chat mode, I suspect not. Since CF researchers have been locked out (by specific policy) from, eg, Nature ... I think they'll shun them and continue to use JCMNS/ICCF -- or the few who have accepted CF papers, such as Naturwissenschaften Alanf777 (talk) 01:13, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Let get this straight. You are arguing that because pseudoscientists have been shunned by proper scientists the pseudoscientists will probably publish their results in journals which cater to pseudoscientific hogwash so we at Wikipedia should accept disreputable journals as sources in case the pseudoscientists should happen to be right?

Yeah, that sounds like some right sound logic you got going on there. 68.74.163.157 (talk) 01:36, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Please WP:AGF. That being said, I don't doubt that there is some good science being kept out by peer-review because it's implausible, though correct. However, ...

They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. — Carl Sagan

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

...And they laughed at Fleischmann and Pons, right? Except that the man who told them to laugh - Prof. Steven E. Jones (http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/StevenEJones/JonesVote.shtml) - would himself be laughed at when he revealed his true colors as a 9/11 pseudoscientist (http://www.wtc7.net/articles/stevenjones_b7_051122.html "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" Steven E. Jones, (2006)). Silent Key (talk) 03:56, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

As for Fleischmann and Pons, we all know that the original paper published over their names was not their idea; they didn't think it was ready for publication. It appears they were correct. I don't think we should laugh at them, merely note they weren't done with their research. (Furthermore, using "New Energy Times" as a source for anything is something to be laughed at.) Just because Jones is a 9/11 pseudoscientist doesn't necessarily mean he's a fusion pseudoscientist. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:10, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

On top of his amateur structural engineering, Steven Jones also has another scientific theory:

"Behold My Hands: Evidence for Christ's Visit in Ancient America"  :

"The Book of Mormon makes the bold statement that Jesus Christ, shortly following His resurrection, visited people in the New World and invited them to "feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am...the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world. ... Ye are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice..." (3 Nephi 11:14, 15:21). The Bible states that Jesus "showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days" and that this witness of Christ would be "unto the uttermost part of the earth." (Acts 1:3-8) and that Jesus would indeed visit "other sheep" (John 10:16)."

"Several years ago, an idea popped into my head: Would people in the New World who also saw Jesus Christ leave memorials of this supernal experience by showing marked hands of Deity in their artwork? So I began a search with the following hypothesis-to be tested: Ancient artwork portraying a deity with deliberate markings on his hands will be found somewhere in the Americas. A crazy idea, maybe - but wait till you see the artwork of the ancient Maya!"

Silent Key (talk) 23:58, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Silent Key,

Were you aware that the purpose of Wikipedia talk pages is to give malcontents with a grudge against reality a platform from which they can launch hypocritical attacks against Steven Jones ? Oh wait….that’s not the purpose of Wikipedia talk pages at all. 68.74.163.157 (talk) 01:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

<redacted> statement about who has "a grudge against reality". The only one I'm sure of is Stephen Jones. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:29, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Arthur,

Jones is certainly ridiculous, but to suggest that Pons and Fleischmann must be right because Jones said they were wrong is far more ridiculous. 68.74.163.157 (talk) 02:56, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think I said that. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:53, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Arthur, you know perfectly well that Silent Key’s attack on Jones is both ad hominem (Jones is a conspiracy theorist therefore everything he’s ever said must be wrong) and either or fallacy (either Jones is right about 9/11 or Fleischmann is right about CF, Jones is wrong, therefore Fleischmann must be right). I can’t imagine why you’d be backing him up. 68.74.163.157 (talk) 06:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

My intention isn't to attack Jones. But every time Alanf777, 84.106.26.81 and the others try to present the facts about LENR, they get attacked by a tag-team of WP:RANDYs calling them defenders of pseudoscientists. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of that position. Silent Key (talk) 07:24, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think Pons and Fleischmann were (at least, initially) pseudoscientists, although they were clearly mistaken. I do think that if someone is published in New Energy Times, it is more likely than not that he/she is either a pseudoscientist or a fraud. And I don't think what Alanf777, et. al., are trying to present are actual facts. They may think they are facts, but are usually published in New Energy Times, in press releases, or as (I'm sure there's a nickname for this) projects where success is improbable, but a success would have extraordinary consequences.

I'm used to defending the indefensible. Remember, I fought for a mention of 9/11 conspiracy theories in the main 9/11 attacks article — not that I think there is any truth to them, but they are notable. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:50, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Silent Key, “try to present the facts about LENR” sure sounds a whole lot like “try to present the WP:TRUTH about LENR”, and that sounds a whole lot like a violation of WP:ADVOCACY. 68.74.163.157 (talk) 11:41, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Err...it only "sounds a whole lot like" that if you're having some kind of ranting inner dialogue with yourself. And indeed when we test that hypothesis with a quick look at your previous contribution (Talk:Gustave Whitehead), we find:

" If you don’t like my opinion then that’s tough crap. It is only my edits TO ARTICLES which Wikipedia says should be neutral. Now stop violating WP:FORUM. 68.74.163.157 (talk) 11:29, 18 June 2013 (UTC) "

Yep. Silent Key (talk) 21:59, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

There's a difference between "neutral" and "accurate". I agree with 68.* that your posts don't need to be neutral, but they do need to be accurate or they should be ignored. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:02, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Silent Key,

Taking my quotes out of context only makes you look desperate and foolhardy. If you had read the conversation you would have realized that I was admonishing a user who attacked me for scrutinizing a source. 68.74.163.157 (talk) 00:28, 19 June 2013 (UTC)