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Cold fusion

[edit]

A lot of work has been done recently on this article, to remove POV and bring it to FAC status. Feedback is welcome on the following point:

  • does it cover all what a "regular reader" might want to know about cold fusion. Is there any unanswered question ?
  • quality of the prose, typos

Additional review of the content by experts in related subjects is also welcome Pcarbonn 10:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The controversy over the credibility of the experimental data and which paper is peer reviewed and is OK and if a expert says he wants further research he believes cold fusion is real or not, makes everything complicated. The article it self is OK, but without the controversy it would be much better.--Stone 09:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I do no get your first sentence. Pls clarify. Pcarbonn 10:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The whole first paragraph is awkward and leaves out a basic definition of cold fusion.
Thanks. Most of it is done now. Reducing the lead section is a big challenge though. Pcarbonn 11:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • A nice article about an important an interesting subject. Looks good, but I have a few comments:
    • "The special ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized in the nineteenth century." By who? Maybe a reference or footnote.
    • "In 1926, two German scientists, F. Paneth and K. Peters, reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen is absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature." From the next sentence it sounds like hydrogen wasn't transformed into helium, but this first sentence makes it sound like it was.
    • Three paragraphs in the history section begin with "In 19xx" could a few sentences be reworded to be less repititious?
    • "This was due not only to the competing results and counterclaims, but also to the limited attention span of modern media." Is this sentence necessary? It seems like a cheap shot.
    • "and was held out as a prime example of pseudoscience." Really? I'll believe it, but it seems to me like there is a difference between pseudoscience and fraud/error. Is there a cite for this?
    • "In March 2006, the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion in Baltimore" This sentence seems out of place. Can more be said about what occured at that meeting? Could it be removed? Maybe a better transition...
    • "In 1995, Clean Energy Technology, Inc (CETI) demonstrated a 1-kilowatt cold fusion reactor at the Power-Gen '95 Americas power industry trade show in Anaheim, CA. They obtained several patents from the USPTO." Demonstrated? What exactly did they do?
    • "and a skeptic who knows little about them may wonder whether they are being used correctly" I don't know, but this has the ring of conspiracy theory to it. Can't someone who knows a lot wonder this too? Could this sentence be reworded?
    • "Yet, the 1989 DOE panel said: "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. (...) Any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons" " What? As I read this it says "anyone who fails to reproduce a controversial result must have screwed up". Is that really what they intended?
    • "Hal Plotkin hypothesizes that the mainstream physics community and the fossil fuel industry had no interest in accepting the possibility of cold fusion." ... as I'm sure do many other people. Why is Plotkin's opinion particularly relevant? Does he present unique arguments or evidence? Is he qualified in any way?
    • Footnotes and punctuation are used inconsistently. Sometimes the footnote is inside the punctuation other times outside.
  • I know that's a lot, but most of it is simple. I enjoyed reading the article and learned some more about this important moment in the history of science. Thanks! --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 01:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's nice to see all these details on the topic. I only really had negative impressions of the first sentence. I have the strong impression that it is misleading to a nonscientific reader. It makes the categorical statement that "Cold fusion IS a nuclear fusion reaction that takes place at or near room temperature..." (my emphasis) This give the implicit but strong impression that it is real, confirmed, and uderstood to actually be nuclear fusion. Not just an interesting topic to investigate. It's like writing "Planet X is a planet beyond Pluto", "UFOs are alien spacecraft", "Tachyons are particles that travel faster than light", "Fortune telling is predicting the future", etc. After the first two paragraphs, it becomes clear what the deal is, but first impresions last.... Deuar 21:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The first sentence is really a definition only. Cold fusion has been achieved in muon-catalyzed fusion, so the definition holds. I think the problem comes later when we present condensed matter nuclear science as (real) cold fusion. How to rewrite this is debated on Talk:cold fusion Pcarbonn 20:27, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • [I also inserted this in the talk page earlier today, before realizing that peer review comments belong here] I have reviewed this article, and, I agree with Deuar: the introduction to this article fails badly. It does not spell out the reason why the hypothesis that fusion reactions explain the reported measurements of excess heat generations remains unaccepted as an explanation by most physicists. According to our theoretical understanding of fusion, release of excess heat should be accompanied by release of well-determined quantities of energetic particles including fast neutrons and gamma rays. None of the experiments reported to release excess heat have also released energetic particles in the quantities predicted. In the absence of a convincing theoretical argument why the purported fusion reactions should not behave like all others that we have measured, the clear conclusion is that something else, most likely measurement error or poor experimental design, yields the reported results. (These opinions concur with the DOE review panel 2004 that is extensively discussed in the article; as well as the Physics Today article covering that report, both of which represent the mainstream of physics opinion). Mordecai-Mark Mac Low 22:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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