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Journal Ranking, Naturwissenschaften

Because it has come up that people have called Naturwissenschaften a "biology journal," some evidence and analysis:

• Springer-Verlag classifies this journal in their "Biomedical and Life Sciences" department.
• Many or most of the articles are related to life sciences in some way.
• However, SV also calls it their "flagship multidisciplinary science journal."[1]
• Many (most? all?) of the life sciences articles are, in fact, cross-disciplinary. Naturwissenschaften seeks articles that cross disciplinary boundaries.
• The field in question has been Cold fusion, which is clearly a cross-disciplinary field, mixing aspects of Chemistry and Physics. For a reliable source on this, see [2], which states, on the topic of cold fusion:

The transfer of expertise across disciplinary boundaries affords great challenges, and this instance illustrates that a superficial view might label as misconduct what is basically a natural result of failing to recognize how intricately specialized are the approaches of every sort of research. Much of the fuss about cold fusion is understandable as an argument between electrochemists and physicists as to whether empirical data from electrochemical experiments is to be more believed or less believed than apparently opposing nuclear theory (Beaudette 2000). To electrochemists it may seem perverse, possibly even scientific misconduct, to rule out of the realm of possibility competently obtained results because some theory in physics pronounces them impossible. To nuclear physicists, it may seem incompetence verging on scientific misconduct for electrochemists to invoke nuclear explanations just because they cannot understand where the heat in their experiments comes from.

• Journal-ranking.com classifies Naturwissenschaften under "Multidisciplinary sciences."[3], and the rankings in this category are:

• 1 NATURE
• 2 SCIENCE
• 3 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF...
• 4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A-MATHEMATICAL P...
• 5 IBM JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
• 6 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A-...
• 7 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
• 8 NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN
• 9 JOURNAL OF RESEARCH OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF S...
• 10 ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

• Journal-ranking.com does not classify Naturwissenschaften as a biological journal.
• Springer's classification under "Life Science" must be seen, then, as a simple administrative classification.
• And the preponderance of articles connected to life sciences reflects the volume of research done in that field.
• The issue of "life science journal" was considered in a mediation at User:Cryptic C62/Cold fusion#Characterization of Naturwissenschaften, who concluded that the journal should not be characterized as a "life science journal," that this would "cause doubt."

This presentation is needed because that claim was again raised recently at [[4]] In that discussion, an editor again raised the "life sciences" issue, presenting, again, the fact of classification by Springer as if this were determining. Anyone reading that may easily conclude that I was being tendentious by arguing against such an obvious conclusion, yet, as with many other similar issues -- it can be seen in the mediation--, I'm "pushing" what is already or will become consensus, once the evidence is reviewed, because it is solidly grounded. To establish this clearly, there, would have taken the text above, and thus would have even further established my reputation for "walls of text." Catch-22. --Abd (talk) 17:02, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Just curious Abd, would you have been happier with it being refered to by its translated title, "Natural Sciences"? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:22, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I probably would have made no fuss about it, though you surely know that, for colloquial English speakers, "natural sciences" might be misinterpreted. As used here, it includes physics and chemistry, right? It's a multidisciplinary journal, covering all the "natural sciences." Hence a paper on physics/chemistry is quite within its purview. Did you read the Bauer paper on "pathological science" and cold fusion? This really says it. I only found that paper a few days ago, but it says what I've been saying for more than a year, and for saying this and stuff like it, I was banned. Or maybe I didn't say it in the right way. I haven't figured out the right way yet, and obviously nobody else was saying it, so they must not have figured out the right way either.

LSD, how about you help with Cold fusion? If you ask nicely, I can point you to reliable sources, peer-reviewed secondary sources, reviews of the field, in mainstream journals or other peer-reviewed, academically published sources, about seventeen of them since 2005. (I was astonished when I did the compilation to find that many. There are no negative recent reviews published with that level of quality, and, if one knows how to read carefully, there are no contradictory earlier reviews.)

I can point you to sources on the history of cold fusion, which is a huge topic with entire books, academically published, covering it, Huizenga called this the "scientific fiasco of the century, in 1992 and 1993, and he was right. We have deliberately tried to stuff all this into a single article, which is hopeless. I'm assuming, for the moment, that I'm allowed to discuss this here on my Talk page.

The best review, though, is the most recent, as usual, that of Storms (2010), published in Natuwissenschaften, last month. He's quite clear what is established scientifically and what is his opinion or speculation. The only more complete review is his book, The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, published by World Scientific in 2007. The recent review is narrower, more focused on the most significant evidence, but the book is deeper. The only major development since 2007 has been the neutron findings of the SPAWAR group, plus some very interesting review showing an upper limit on charged particle energy resulting from the reaction (which puts some severe constraints on theory), by Hagelstein, also published this year by Naturwissenschaften.

The neutron results, which appear to show neutrons with an energy of ~13 MeV, at very low levels, probably from rare branching or secondary reactions (they suggest D-T fusion for them), happen to be what I'm working on replicating, since the only replication I've seen is weak. (The findings of the U.S. Navy group are quite convincing, but, you know. There is always somethin'. We don't really know for sure -- if we ever know anything for sure -- when there is some substantial replication or confirmation.)

Heat/helium, though, is conclusive, replicated, confirmed, with no real contrary evidence. The early negative findings, where they also looked for helium -- and they did -- actually confirm this (No heat, no helium!). This involves two things: a difficult experiment (setting up the conditions to get excess heat a reasonable percentage of the time, this was famously tough, and then having the resources to measure helium, which is generally expensive. So the vast bulk of work has not checked or reported on both heat and helium. Enough have, however (Storms reports twelve research groups), that I'm not pussy-footing around on "cold fusion" vs. "low energy nuclear reactions," any more, and, I notice, neither are the reviewers at Naturwissenschaften, by the title of the recent review. For years, everyone avoided the name of "cold fusion." But this evidence does prove that it's fusion of some kind, and the only dissidents, now, are the Widom-Larsen crew, which includes Krivit -- Krivit insists on it, and attacks most of the scientists in the field as biased -- who claim the formation of ultra-low-momentum neutrons, which, if they formed, could indeed cause nuclear transmutations. I and just about everyone in the field rejects this as essentially preposterous, for lots of reasons, not the least of which is practically zero experimental confirmation that doesn't suggest other possibilities much more strongly.

I think this is really fun. Something where we do not know what is going on. Definitely not boring. Except that I can now defintely say, based on reliable secondary source, confirming many other reliable secondary sources, it is what Fleischmann actually ended up calling it, in publication. An "unknown nuclear reaction."

A physicist, in a nice review of Storms (2007) called it an "unclear reaction," a very nice pun. It's unknown -- or at least very controversial -- in "mechanism," not in result. The result is fusion of deuterium into helium. And all the early critics were right in their arguments -- it was almost their only argument! -- that this could not be deuterium-deuterium (two-body) fusion. It isn't, for all the reasons that they most adequately presented and which our article also boringly leans on, imagining that the topic depends on this reaction, an old mistake.

Tea? Coffee? Cream? Take your time. I have a nice library on the topic here, take a look.... Huizenga, Taubes, Hoffman, and, of course, a few others! --Abd (talk) 18:00, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm otherwise engaged on less argument-prone topics such as Alternative medicine and Abortion. I raised the question simply because I've been stubbing many articles for Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals and I was involved in the original application of that description of Naturwissenschaften, taken from their website, into the article about that journal. Stubbing such articles is a bit formulaic, but still productive. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:54, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

As I wrote, it's not wrong, but it's probably better to use the full description from Springer-Verlag. I did a little work on the Naturwissenschaften page myself. We ended up with "Natural science, interdisciplinary." That's fine. What was a problem, really, was this "life sciences" thing, and it's obvious that it was being used to impeach the source, as the mediator indicated. If it were purely a life sciences journal, publishing a paper that has (almost) nothing to do with life sciences, that would be appropriate, if, indeed, the source were usable at all.

But while you are here, one momentary comment. There are some papers that could eventually result, if confirmed, in some cross-disciplinary stuff, having to do with cold fusion and certain microorganisms. There are papers published by Vyosotski -- under peer review -- where he shows some awfully good evidence that, say, deinococcus radiodurans, one very interesting little bug, can transmute Molybdenum-53 into Iron-57, apparently using trace deuterium present normally. It is, to me, a mystery that there are no reported attempts to confirm this. Note that if cold fusion is impossible, this would also be impossible. But if cold fusion is possible -- and I'm now convinced that it is -- then it would not be terribly surprising that a bacterium could pull off the trick, perhaps to gain a needed trace element. This would work better if it is radiation-hardy, as DR is. It could survive short-range radiation coming from a few reactions internally.

Had I not decided to focus on the SPAWAR replication -- which should theoretically be in reach of someone like me -- I'd be scrounging around for access to a Mossbauer spectrograph. I worked with Mossbauer spectroscopy at Cal Tech. Way cool, I thought then and now.

As to "otherwise engaged," this is on wiki time. Have some tea or coffee, or whatever else you prefer. No obligation, of course, but declining is rude, don't you think? Feel welcome to drop by, any time. --Abd (talk) 19:23, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement request - violation of interaction ban

An arbitration enforcement request involving a violation of your interaction ban with WMC has been filed. The discussion is located at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Abd. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:18, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

January 2011

To enforce an arbitration decision, you have been blocked from editing for a period of 48 hours for See the AE request. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you believe this block is unjustified, please read the guide to appealing arbitration enforcement blocks and follow the instructions there to appeal your block.  Sandstein  21:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

---

Notice to administrators: In a March 2010 decision, the Committee held that "Administrators are prohibited from reversing or overturning (explicitly or in substance) any action taken by another administrator pursuant to the terms of an active arbitration remedy, and explicitly noted as being taken to enforce said remedy, except: (a) with the written authorization of the Committee, or (b) following a clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors at a community discussion noticeboard (such as WP:AN or WP:ANI). If consensus in such discussions is hard to judge or unclear, the parties should submit a request for clarification on the proper page. Any administrator that overturns an enforcement action outside of these circumstances shall be subject to appropriate sanctions, up to and including desysopping, at the discretion of the Committee."

Thanks Sandstein. This could be very useful for me, but I do fail to see how this improves the project. Good luck. --Abd (talk) 22:27, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

hi

I see you are not working on the cold fusion article? If you are looking for a fun topic maybe you can do some reading and make an article about Bruce dePalma. There are over 9000 book references, scholar articles and news publications. The N-machine very obviously works but the article doesn't necessarily have to prove it. Just as long as there is some sort of article for this awesome scientific effort it would be a leap forwards for science, wikipedia and humankind :D 84.107.147.147 (talk) 06:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Look, Wikipedia is impossible. Highly notable material is excluded by MPOV-pushers. So what is this thing here: I find, right away [5]. Physicist Bruce DePalma has a 100 kilowatt generator, which he invented, sitting in his garage. It could power his whole house, but if he turns it on, the government may confiscate it.

Right. Like the government monitors his power usage and will raid his house if power usage goes down? Wow! Things are worse than I thought. Okay, okay, so maybe Depalma isn't responsible for that hysterical fluff.

[6] has some better information.

If someone wants to start a resource on Wikiversity, covering DePalma's work or any other fringe science topic, they are welcome. It won't be summarily deleted there, and can develop coverage of this; Wikiversity has a neutrality policy, like Wikipedia, but neutrality is achieved there through inclusion, not through exclusion. Personally, I don't have the patience to go through DePalma's theories, apparently others did that long ago.

I'm a firm believer in the importance of experimental science. Cold fusion began, not as an elaborate theory, but as an idea to test what had been assumed, that approximating condensed matter nuclear interactions by using 2-body quantum mechanics produced adequate predictions. Experiment showed otherwise. There is still no theory of mechanism adequate to explain what's known, now, about "cold fusion." The fuel, for what Pons and Fleischmann discovered, is deuterium, and the ash is helium, and the right energy is produced from that combination, with no significant radiation. But how this is accomplished is unknown. It is almost certainly not "d-d" fusion.

Given the fragility of the effect (it's not small, but it's chaotic), and given our ignorance about the mechanism, developing applications is very difficult, which is why most scientists in the field are now hoping that the theoretical physicists, who mostly abandoned the field twenty years ago, will look at the experimental evidence that has accrued and start to work on theory. There are already some physicists with expertise in standard hot fusion, working and publishing on cold fusion, but this could turn out to be one of the most difficult theoretical problems of this century. The math is horrific, for starters.

Someone like DePalma appears to have started from a theory, and then built a machine or machines. Well? Did they work? That's experiment. It's possible to get what appear to be small amounts of "excess energy" from various devices, but actually confirming that the excess is real, and not something like drawing down on the energy stored in permanent magnets, for example, or getting extra energy out of batteries by various devices, is more difficult. Someone pursuing a theory, without experiment behind it, can fool themselves for a long time, with this or that tantalizing result.

There is a current flap about claimed low-energy nuclear reactions in a device by Rossi, recently "demonstrated" in Italy. Because palladium deuteride cold fusion is real, an obvious inference is that other kinds of nuclear reactions might be possible, so people interested in CF don't knee-jerk reject something like Rossi's claims (which involve ordinary hydrogen and nickel as catalyst, though Rossi's secretive about what he's actually using). Rather, they will sensibly defer judgment; Rossi's promising a 1 MW generator by the end of the year. As has been pointed out, if he comes up with 10 KW, it would be amazing.... So we'll see. Rossi's been covered, I believe, in mainstream media, it might be notable. And I'm not going to touch it with a 10-foot pole, not here! Meanwhile, watch your wallet. --Abd (talk) 17:58, 14 February 2011 (UTC)