One of Val Kilmer’s less stellar roles was as Simon Templar in 1997’s The Saint. Templar is a master thief and master of disguise who takes on assumed names associated with Catholic Saints. (Simon Templar was, apparently, the patron saint of magic.) Eventually, he’s hired by a Russian industrialist (always evil characters) to steal a formula for cold fusion from a pretty young female scientist, thereby having access to the secret of heating millions of homes with a few gallons of water. This being Hollywood, he falls in love with her instead, and together they bring limitless energy to the world at large, using nothing but electrodes in a jar of heavy water. Ain’t love grand?
The film’s scientific premise is right up there with the presentation of sonoluminescence as a powerful energy source in Chain Reaction. The main difference is that sonoluminescence — while nowhere near the stage of development depicted onscreen — is nonetheless a well-respected, well-funded field of study, whereas cold fusion has pretty much languished along the edges of the lunatic fringe since its alleged "discovery" almost 20 years ago. It has a handful of supporters among scientists, but the field boasts a far greater number of crackpots who inevitably undermine the rare occasions when a bona fide result is obtained in such experiments. Prevailing opinion is 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, and whenever said validation fails (again) to materialize, there is always a handy rationale for why it isn’t really a definitive failure.
As recently as 2000, TIME magazine listed cold fusion as one of the "worst ideas" of the 20th century. You’ might never know that if your introduction to cold fusion was last week’s short article in Wired by Mark Anderson, reporting on a recent small convocation of diehard cold fusion advocates. Chances are, you’d come away feeling that these plucky, anti-establishment rebel scientists are thisclose (as close as Kilmer and his co-star in the still shot at right, generating their own form of heat) 
to achieving a cheap, plentiful supply of energy based on simple high school chemistry — if only that stodgy, closed-minded, mean scientific establishment would stop making fun of them and provide sufficient funding resources.
It’s admittedly a compelling narrative — everyone loves seeing an underdog prevail — it just isn’t true. The real story of cold fusion is every bit as fascinating and provocative, even tragic in places, but not nearly as black and white. It’s less about scientific villainy, and more about all-too-human foibles. That’s why there have been several full-length books written on the subject. Like a great deal of science, cold fusion doesn’t lend itself to the broad strokes and sound bite syntax of most popular science reporting. That doesn’t mean a reporter shouldn’t try to temper the latest claims of cold fusion’s stubborn proponents with some context gleaned from its checkered history.
I’m sympathetic to the challenge Anderson faced in writing the article, given his space limitations, but he doesn’t seem to have done much due diligence about including any skeptical context, or even the obligatory opposing view. Everything he needed is readily available online, including original video footage
of the infamous 1989 press conference that started it all, coverage in both the
science trade press and mainstream media, and the full reports from
the Department of Energy, which conducted official reviews in both 1989 and 2004. A quick online trip to Amazon would have yielded a couple of popular science books offering both pro
(Eugene Mallove’s Fire From Ice) and con (Gary Taubes’ Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion) viewpoints. I’m not asking Anderson to include all of that, but can’t we have just a little skepticism? Pretty please?
It’s all the more distressing coming on the heels of a lengthy 2004 feature in Wired by Charles Platt that painted an even more unflattering portrait of the scientific establishment, describing its resistance to the notion of cold fusion as "a colossal conspiracy of denial," rather than professional scientists merely rejecting something due to lack of convincing empirical evidence. Clearly, Wired has picked the more simplistic, underdog "framing" narrative: cold fusion scientists have been deeply wronged by an overly skeptical entrenched "establishment," and any day now they will be vindicated and save the world with their revolutionary new energy source. Hollywood should love it.
(In fairness, the magazine’s cold fusion coverage is still better than Popular Mechanics, which ran a despicable piece of fear-mongering cover story in 2004 claiming that terrorists could use cold fusion to build their own hydrogen bombs. For an example of truly stellar reporting on the topic, see Sharon Weinberger’s November 21, 2004, feature for The Washington Post, which is the most balanced and nuanced treatment of the cold fusion controversy I’ve yet read in the mainstream media outlets.)
Here’s a bit of background for readers with only a passing familiarity with the controversy. Way back in 1989, two chemists at the University of Utah named Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann believed they had succeeded in producing nuclear fusion in a jar — without the need to recreate the temperatures and pressures found in the centers of stars which run on "hot" fusion. We can achieve hot nuclear fusion, but it requires more energy than it gives back, so it’s pretty much an energy sinkhole for the time being (although the physicists are working the problem, yes they are!). Anyway, their finding was counter to everything known to date about nuclear fusion, both in theory and experiment.
Generally, when there’s a significant breakthrough in science, it’s written up in a formal paper containing all the information needed for other scientists to replicate the experiment and test the results — because reproducibility is one of the most fundamental elements of the scientific method. That paper is submitted to a reputable, peer-reviewed journal, and if enough reviewers give it a thumb’s up, the paper is published, and other scientists can critique and/or build upon their work. The system is imperfect — egos and rivalries can get in the way — but over the long haul, it has served science well. It’s an equally accepted maxim that the more potentially revolutionary the result, the greater the burden of proof: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in order to be accepted by the scientific community. And cold fusion was a truly extraordinary claim.
Pons and Fleischmann, for whatever reason, ignored the established protocol and jumped right into the public domain, announcing their results in a March 23 press conference — even as they were applying for patents for what they believed would become a hugely lucrative industry. Those pending patent applications were cited as the reason they couldn’t reveal all the details of their experiment or provide appropriate documentation of their results — which meant their results couldn’t be tested and verified by other scientists. Basically, they wanted it both ways: they wanted scientific glory for their work, while hoarding the details in hopes of reaping a fortune in proprietary patent rights.
The Utah press release made the situation worse by indulging in unfortunate hyperbole, hailing the breakthrough as something that would provide "an inexhaustible source of energy." (Scientists are all too familiar with this tendency of academic media departments.) Now, anyone who’s covered science as a reporter knows to be wary when such a claim is made: we’re all for new and improved energy sources, but inexhaustible? Nature just doesn’t work that way; it sounded more like that perennial bugbear, perpetual motion, rather than any kind of serious science. The New York Times was suitably cautious, and initially refused to run the story, but the Wall Street Journal‘s Jerry Bishop and his editors apparently just saw the dollar signs and published a euphoric front-page article on the breakthrough. Soon other major newspapers followed suit, and it was a media feeding frenzy.
Scientists — especially physicists — shared the Times‘ skepticism, in part because of the manner in which Pons and Fleischmann had made their announcement. 
"Conventional science requires you to play by certain rules," retired Los Alamos scientist turned underground cold fusion researcher Edmund Storms is quoted in the 2004 Wired feature as saying. "First, thou shalt not announce thy results via a press conference. Second, thou shalt not exaggerate the results. Third, thou shalt tell other scientists precisely what thou did. They broke all of those rules." The world may love a rebel, but the unwritten "rules" of scientific culture are in place for very good reasons — and if you break them, it’s best to have a damned good reason of your own for doing so, or at least killer experimental results with all the requisite documentation in hand for independent verification. Is it any wonder Pons and Fleischmann faced a rather cool reception?
Eventually they published a full-length (over 50 pages!) paper with all of the necessary details, but it was rushed, sloppy, and contained at least one egregious error concerning their analysis of the gamma ray spectra. This did not help strengthen their already shaky case. Still, they might have been grudgingly forgiven their poor scientific manners and initial awkward missteps if their work had been verified. Scientists love a good underdog story as much as anybody, and there’s numerous examples in history of lone scientists with poor social skills laboring against the doubts of colleagues and dire financial straits to prove their pet theory. (And they win! Yay for science!)
The problem was, hundreds of researchers all over the world scurried to reproduce the experiments, and invariably failed. Sure, there were a couple of glimmers of hope here and there: teams at Texas A&M and the Georgia Institute of Technology excitedly reported results of excess heat and neutron production, respectively, in April, but withdrew those results almost immediately, citing "lack of evidence." By the end of 1989, a panel of experts had conducted a Department of Energy review of the matter, and concluded there was no basis for the claims. As far as mainstream science was concerned, that was the final nail in cold fusion’s coffin.
But like a lot of pseudoscience — to which it is frequently compared — cold fusion refuses to die. It’s tough not to admire the steely resolve of cold fusion advocates, who have faced derision, suffered in their careers, and labored to build their own scientific enterprise from scratch: their own meetings, their own journals, their own community. (Then again, there’s a whiff of, "Fine! If we can’t play in the big sandbox, we’ll just go make our own!") Alas, those are ideal conditions for crackpots to flourish, so they’ve got some strange bedfellows, but they’ve also got a handful of otherwise respectable scientists conducting their own experiments in cold fusion. Pons and Fleischmann reportedly had a bitter falling out and parted ways in 1995. Fleischmann is still collaborating on cold fusion research in the UK, but Pons has become something of a recluse. The new dynamic duo of cold fusion is SRI International chemist Michael McKubre and MIT physicist Peter Hagelstein.
Gradually, the "serious" researchers started presenting papers at meetings other than their own, including those of the American Physical Society. Those researchers chipped away at the tarnished reputation of their chosen field, publishing peer-reviewed papers now and then on purported evidence of "low-energy nuclear reactions." Eventually, the DOE decided, in fairness, to take another look at the accumulated evidence over the last 15 years and re-evaluate the cold fusion controversy. This time, they relented just a little: they still didn’t find the evidence sufficiently convincing to launch a federally-funded research program. The panel split on the issue of whether subsequent experiments had validated the occasional production of "excess heat," citing poor experimental design, documentation, background control, etc., as muddying their determinations. (Out of 18 members, 12 found no conclusive evidence, five found the evidence somewhat convincing, and only one was completely convinced.) But they felt that funding agencies should consider funding proposed projects on a case-by-case basis, provided those proposals "meet accepted scientific standards and undergo the rigors of peer review."
See? I told you it was a complicated story. That’s why I’d normally be sympathetic to Wired‘s Anderson, faced with the task of conveying the salient points in a short news article. (There’s no excuse for Pratt’s fawning 2004 feature; is there anyone more zealous than a former skeptic turned convert?) Your average reporter doesn’t have time to do exhaustive research on such a short news article, and frankly, your average reader doesn’t want to wade through all the gory technical details. Nonetheless, Anderson could have tracked down at least one skeptical, yet fair-minded, source, to show he had some rudimentary grasp of the complexity of the situation. Here’s a few specific sentences that are badly in need of context:
"Presenters at the MIT event estimated that 3000 published studies from scientists around the world have contributed to the growing canon of evidence…."
I find Anderson’s use of the word "canon" here interesting; it implies that something is established beyond question, which cold fusion most certainly is not. More to the point, this is a misleading statement, since very few of those 3000 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. Certainly some of them were, but this fact should be noted, even just in passing. And don’t just take my word for it. Per WaPo‘s Weinberger, "[T]he most credible cold fusion advocates concede that the vast majority of those papers are of poor quality." She even cites a supporter who calls the collection of papers "toxic waste." That’s hardly a resounding endorsement; it certainly wouldn’t qualify as a "canon."
"Verification of these controversial results is not the problem — many labs around the world have reproduced parts of the results many times."
Again, this is misleading. It’s true that over the past two decades, there have been reports of what appear to be excess bursts of energy in various experiments. But even Hagelstein admits to continued experimental inconsistency; some "results" have never been reproduced. Cold fusion’s claims of verification are based on a bizarre kind of statistical rationale: sure, most of the results are negative, but they have now amassed such a statistically significant sampling of instances of claimed excess heat that at least some of those results must be valid, and any lack of the effect is due to flawed experiments. The WaPo article cites esteemed nuclear physicist Richard Garwin as a source for its dismissal of that tortured argument: "It’s absurd to claim that experiments that seem to support cold fusion are valid, while those that don’t are flawed." There are a few more mainstream scientists around these days who are willing to concede there might be something of marginal interest going on, but most remain unconvinced that it’s bona fide cold fusion. And hardly anyone holds out any hope of it ever becoming a viable energy source.
"Compared to the warehouses worth of billion-dollar gadgetry needed to run ‘hot fusion,’ cold fusion research is cheap to fund. And yet cash is the primary limiting factor holding the research back."
It’s disingenuous to dismiss cold fusion’s difficulties as nothing more than a funding problem. Its biggest problem is the lack of reproducibility, even in the experiments of the most respected members of the cold fusion community. McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that "unmistakably" produced excess heat. That’s just not good enough. Science must maintain its integrity — if only to counter the inevitable human frailties of its practitioners — and that means we can’t lower the bar of standards for reproducibility just because palladium is a "quixotic" metal, riddled with unpredictable, unevenly distributed impurities. Seriously, that’s one of the main excuses given by cold fusion advocates as to why they get such inconsistent results. Materials issues are a bitch, experimentally, it’s true, but cold fusion is not the only field faced with overcoming those challenges, so why should its experimental inconsistencies be excused on those grounds?
As for that "excess heat," it’s nothing to get excited about just yet, since it’s a very small amount indeed. Anderson quotes cold fusionist Mitchell Swartz as saying the question now is not whether the experiments can generate excess heat, "It’s can we can get a kilowatt? Can we get a small car moving on this stuff?" Heck, if they could just boil some water, that would be a tremendous accomplishment. The late Scottish physicist Douglas Morrison was one of the rare skeptical attendees of the annual cold fusion conferences until his death inn 2001. Each year, he would listen to the extravagant claims, then stand and make a simple request: "Please can I have a cup of tea?" It was a bit cheeky of him, but he made his point: cold fusion talks a good game, yet even the simplest applied energy task remains well beyond its reach.
And what of the implied vast scientific conspiracy to squelch further research and kill the field entirely (perhaps to ensure that the major investments in hot fusion research don’t become obsolete)? The "evidence" for that is mostly anecdotal hearsay — i.e., not true evidence at all. Science undeniably has its politics, its bitter rivalries, petty jealousies, and its turf wars. There’s some hefty egos involved, and feelings tend to run a bit high on both sides of the controversy. Scientists aren’t always very polite in their disagreements, either. On the whole, though, cooler heads ultimately prevail in the public sphere, however much heated rhetoric is flung around in private.
I’ve personally heard physicists dismiss Hagelstein as an embarrassment to MIT. (Hagelstein has countered by describing the mainstream scientific community as a closed-minded "mafia," that only publishes the work of the official "family" of scientists.) Caltech physicist Steven Koonin famously denounced Pons and Fleischmann as "delusional" at an APS April meeting, and Princeton physicist Will Happer has described them as "incompetent boobs." Happer also objected strenuously to Robert Jahn’s controversial PEAR project in psychic research, solely on scientific grounds. Yet he has repeatedly stated, on the record, that however much he disagreed with Jahn’s science, he supported his right to conduct that research. I’ll indulge in a bit of conjecture here myself: I suspect that despite Happer’s harsh disdain for the scientific caliber of Pons and Fleischmann, and his skepticism of the validity of the field in general, he would still support the right of cold fusion scientists to conduct their research. (He just doesn’t think the government needs to pay for it.)
The ever-irascible Bob Park, author of Voodoo Science and editor of the weekly
electronic newsletter, What’s New, has been one of the fiercest of cold
fusion’s often-vitriolic critics. Yet he has corresponded with many cold fusion scientists over the years, and welcomed the second DOE review. He still thinks it’s most likely a bunch of bad science, but conceded to the WaPo, "Maybe there is… some funny reaction going on…. If there is, it may solve some puzzles, but it won’t be important." Also quoted is Hagelstein’s MIT colleague, Milly Dresselhaus: "I think scientists should be open-minded. Historically, many things get overturned with time." She stops short of recommending federal funding, however, especially in these cash-strapped times: "When you feel poor, you don’t invest in long shots. This is kind of a long shot."
Cold fusion has had its day in court, so to speak, not once, but twice, and some skeptical scientists have been willing to listen to a few of the more reputable claims. Garwin was a member of the 1989 DOE review panel, and subsequently visited McKubre’s lab at SRI in 1993. Far from dismissing the work outright, he praised the lab for its "serious and competent work," and found no huge blunder in the experimental setups. (That’s something that sets McKubre’s work apart from the vast majority of cold fusion experiments, which caused Garwin to gripe to the WaPo, "People who can’t do a good sophomore experiment are suddenly free to suggest that the discrepancies in their results come from unexplained, basic, earth-shaking, heat-producing phenomena.") But he did identify any number of possible problems with the setup, as well as some measurement errors, concluding bluntly, "Did not support any finding of ‘excess heat.’"
In short, individual scientists might have indulged in harsh derision about cold fusion over the years, and promising young physicists like Hagelstein have indeed paid a professional price for their choice of research. (Note that it was Hagelstein’s choice.) That doesn’t amount to a cabal-like conspiracy n the part of the scientific establishment — a notion that provides the linchpin of an emerging "cold fusion mythology" being fostered by — among other things — unquestioning articles in popular science magazines, and it has little basis in reality. The scientific community as a whole has not unfairly dismissed the
claims: it simply remains unconvinced by the erratic evidence that has
been presented to it. Should cold fusion advocates one day beat the odds and provide truly reproducible, compelling evidence for low-energy nuclear reactions, the stodgy old scientific establishment might grumble a bit, but ultimately it will accept those findings and alter its theories accordingly. Because that’s what the scientific method is all about.
Perhaps the most telling anecdote comes at the end of the WaPo article, where McKubre cites the multiple pop culture references to cold fusion as evidence that cold fusion is losing its stigma as a suspect pseudoscience. In fictional worlds, he insists, cold fusion is a fact. "It’s a fantasy fact. That’s nearly as good as reality." Here’s a free media-savvy tip for scientists: That’s the kind of inane statement you never want to make on the record to a reporter, particularly when you’re being grilled about a controversial subject like cold fusion. In this case, it serves no purpose other than to lend credence to Park’s assertion earlier in the article that cold fusion’s advocates want to believe the world is a certain way, when there simply isn’t sufficient evidence to support what they so dearly want to believe.
I like science fiction and fantasy as much as the next person, and I’ll be the first to trumpet the fact that real world science feeds off sci-fi to design new technologies and gain inspiration, before inspiring sci-fi authors with new fundamental breakthroughs that spark their creativity in turn. It’s the perfect symbiotic relationship. But that’s a far cry from claiming that because something is "real" in a cartoon universe, it’s only a matter of time before real-world scientists make similar breakthroughs. While writing The Physics of the Buffyverse, I concluded that the most basic mechanism in that fictional world was an infinite supply of extra "mystical energy" that allowed for phenomena that would be impossible in our universe. But I didn’t extrapolate that observation to conclude that someday we, too, would have access to a similar energy source and scientists just needed to identify it and figure out how to tap into it. Because the Buffyverse is a fantasy world, and we don’t live in a fantasy world. Quod erat demonstratum, or, more colloquially: Duh, squared.
This article has many factually incorrect statements and misperceptions. Let me list some. I shall try to avoid nitpicking:
“It’s an equally accepted maxim that the more potentially revolutionary the result, the greater the burden of proof: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in order to be accepted by the scientific community. And cold fusion was a truly extraordinary claim.”
This maxim was coined a few decades ago by Carl Sagan. It is not accepted by all scientists by any means, and it violates traditional scientific criteria. Cold fusion researchers feel that extraordinary claims are best supported with ordinary evidence from off-the-shelf instruments and standard techniques, and this is the kind of evidence they have published. They also feel that all claims, and all arguments (including skeptical assertions that attempt to disprove cold fusion) must be held to the same standards of rigor.
“Pons and Fleischmann, for whatever reason, ignored the established protocol and jumped right into the public domain, announcing their results in a March 23 press conference . . .”
A paper by Fleischmann and Pons was in print before the press conference. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanelectroche.pdf
“First, thou shalt not announce thy results via a press conference. Second, thou shalt not exaggerate the results. Third, thou shalt tell other scientists precisely what thou did. They broke all of those rules.”
Researchers in other areas, especially plasma fusion, routinely announce results immediately following experiments, sometimes months before they publish papers. Fleischmann and Pons were not able to tell other scientists precisely what they did because they did not fully understand experiment yet.
“Eventually they published a full-length (over 50 pages!) paper with all of the necessary details, but it was rushed, sloppy, and contained at least one egregious error concerning their analysis of the gamma ray spectra.”
The paper (listed above) is 7 pages, not 50. There is an egregious error regarding gamma ray spectra, but dozens of subsequent papers confirmed gamma rays without errors. Fleischmann, Pons and their colleagues later published roughly 50 papers, including many in the peer-reviewed literature.
“It has a handful of supporters among scientists, but the field boasts a far greater number of crackpots who inevitably undermine the rare occasions when a bona fide result is obtained in such experiments.”
Where did you get this information? Have you counted the authors and checked their institutions? My database shows over 3,000 authors, most of them from accredited universities, national laboratories and corporations. Many of them are distinguished scientists. They include, for example, Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger; Heinz Gerischer, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin; Dr. P. K. Iyengar, director of BARC and later chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission; Prof. Melvin Miles, Fellow of China Lake; three editors of major plasma fusion and physics journals; a retired member of the French Atomic Energy Commission, and many top researchers from U.S. national laboratories.
“The problem was, hundreds of researchers all over the world scurried to reproduce the experiments, and invariably failed.”
There is no evidence that hundreds of researchers all the world attempted to replicate this experiment. There are rumors to that effect, but most of these rumors trace back to one or two universities in the United States. If hundreds did attempt to replicate, they never documented their work. On the other hand, hundreds of other groups did succeed in replicating and they did document their work. There were meetings in 1989 and 1990 that included roughly 100 research groups mainly from mainstream institutions such as the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, Amoco, SRI, Texas A&M, Los Alamos, Mitsubishi Res. Center, and BARC Bombay. By September 12, 1990, 92 groups in major laboratories reported replications. See: Will, F.G., Groups Reporting Cold Fusion Evidence. 1990, National Cold Fusion Institute: Salt Lake City, UT.:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/WillFGgroupsrepo.pdf
“By the end of 1989, a panel of experts had conducted a Department of Energy review of the matter, and concluded there was no basis for the claims. As far as mainstream science was concerned, that was the final nail in cold fusion’s coffin.”
Cold fusion researchers consider this ERAB report highly prejudiced for many reasons. It was concluded in a rush long before there was time to perform and publish serious replications. The authors dismissed experimental evidence by pointing to theory, which is a violation of the scientific method. And they selectively ignored positive data. For example, ERAB report authors visited Dr. Melvin Miles at the China Lake Naval Weapons Laboratory when he had just begun experiments in cold fusion. He told them he had not observed excess heat or other evidence of fusion. Months later, he did observe significant heat. He contacted the authors. He informed them of his results and invited them to return. They ignored him and reported only his initial, negative results.
“It’s tough not to admire the steely resolve of cold fusion advocates, who have faced derision, suffered in their careers, and labored to build their own scientific enterprise from scratch: their own meetings, their own journals, their own community.”
Cold fusion does not have its own journal. All papers on the subject have either been published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings. Cold fusion researchers have suffered in their careers.
“I find Anderson’s use of the word “canon” here interesting; it implies that something is established beyond question, which cold fusion most certainly is not.”
The signal-to-noise ratio in many of these papers is high and the experiments have been independently replicated hundreds of times. Therefore by the standards of experimental science the claim is proved beyond question.
“More to the point, this is a misleading statement, since very few of those 3000 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. Certainly some of them were, but this fact should be noted, even just in passing.”
Roughly 500 were published in mainstream, long-established peer-reviewed journals. This is based on a quick tally of papers in English in journals that have published many papers on cold fusion such as: Fusion Technol., J. Appl. Electrochem., J. Electrochem. Soc., Proc. Electrochem. Soc., Jap. J. Appl. Physics. Roughly 2500 others appear in conference proceedings and non-peer-reviewed journals. The total is 3,439 but several of these are not Journal papers. You can see the list here:
http://lenr-canr.org/LibraryGuide.html
This list is incomplete. It does not include several hundred papers in Chinese and Japanese.
“And don’t just take my word for it. Per WaPo’s Weinberger, ‘[T]he most credible cold fusion advocates concede that the vast majority of those papers are of poor quality.” She even cites a supporter who calls the collection of papers ‘toxic waste.’ That’s hardly a resounding endorsement; it certainly wouldn’t qualify as a ‘canon.'”
Many cold fusion researchers disagree with this characterization. In any case, new areas of research often include many mistakes, and experts often dismiss most papers in an academic field as being substandard.
“Cold fusion’s claims of verification are based on a bizarre kind of statistical rationale: sure, most of the results are negative, but they have now amassed such a statistically significant sampling of instances of claimed excess heat that at least some of those results must be valid . . .”
This is completely incorrect. The statement is true of many areas of physics, such as top quark research at Fermilab, but in cold fusion data is based on stand-alone runs with high signal-to-noise ratios for individual runs. McKubre’s initial experiments failed to produce heat except on 50 occasions with many no runs, but with many other techniques – including McKubre’s more recent experiments – the success rate is much higher.
Many cold fusion research experiments, such as those conducted by Iwamura et al (Mitsubishi and the National Synchrotron Laboratory) work 100% of the time. These experiments have been performed dozens of times over the past 14 years and they have produced a positive result in every run. (Each run of this particular experiment takes a few months so it can only be conducted several times a year.)
“Its biggest problem is the lack of reproducibility, even in the experiments of the most respected members of the cold fusion community.”
This is incorrect, as noted above.
“McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that “unmistakably” produced excess heat. That’s just not good enough.”
As noted, McKubre’s replication rate is much higher now. However, if poor reproducibility is taken as a criterion to reject results, you must reject the top quark, many plasma fusion results, cloning mammals (which works less than 0.1% of the time), and semiconductor production before 1955, which failed roughly 90% of the time for many types of devices. This makes no scientific sense.
“And what of the implied vast scientific conspiracy to squelch further research and kill the field entirely (perhaps to ensure that the major investments in hot fusion research don’t become obsolete)? The “evidence” for that is mostly anecdotal hearsay — i.e., not true evidence at all.”
There is no conspiracy. A conspiracy is defined as a surreptitious organized effort. Mainstream opposition to cold fusion is not secret and it is not organized. It is practiced quite openly. The evidence is well documented, and letters from the patent office, letters from universities and the Navy ordering its researchers not to publish results or attend conferences, attacks published in major magazines and newspapers, comments published by the Department of Energy and so on. See, for example:
http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LENRCANRthedoelies.pdf
“The ever-irascible Bob Park, author of Voodoo Science and editor of the weekly electronic newsletter, What’s New, has been one of the fiercest of cold fusion’s often-vitriolic critics. Yet he has corresponded with many cold fusion scientists over the years, and welcomed the second DOE review.”
Park told McKubre, I, and several others that he is not read any papers on cold fusion but he is certain that all papers are incorrect. His comments on the subject confirm that he knows nothing about it. All of his assertions are factually and scientifically wrong.
“The scientific community as a whole has not unfairly dismissed the claims: it simply remains unconvinced by the erratic evidence that has been presented to it.”
The scientific community as a whole has not read the peer-reviewed literature. Most critics of this subject – like Park – have not read any papers on the subject, they have not addressed the technical issues, and they know nothing about the instruments, techniques, the signal-to-noise ratio or any other detail. Therefore their opinions have no merit. A person cannot learn about cold fusion by ESP or by guessing but only by reading the actual scientific papers.
“Should cold fusion advocates one day beat the odds and provide truly reproducible, compelling evidence for low-energy nuclear reactions, the stodgy old scientific establishment might grumble a bit, but ultimately it will accept those findings and alter its theories accordingly. Because that’s what the scientific method is all about.”
Breakthroughs throughout history have met with irrational hostility that often lasts for years or decades, despite overwhelming evidence that the breakthrough is real. In public health, for example, there was famous opposition to hygiene (Semmelweis); pasteurization; studies showing the sex-specific effects of AIDS in women; and the fact that helicobacter causes stomach ulcers. Pasteurization was discovered in the 1860s, but pasteurization of milk was not made mandatory in New York City until 1917, when the U.S. army demanded that soldiers be given safe milk.
I suggest you review the literature more carefully. Our website, LENR-CANR.org, includes a bibliography of 3,500 papers and the full text from over 500 papers, including papers from all of the authors and institutions listed above.
Sincerely,
Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
The author and I both made a mistake in the messages above. The initial Fleischmann paper error was in neutron detection, not the gamma ray spectra. I should have said “neutrons were later confirmed in dozens of other experiments.” Gamma emissions have also been confirmed. Tritium, excess heat, helium commensurate with the excess heat, heavy element transmutations, and other nuclear effects have been widely confirmed. Some other claimed nuclear effects have not been widely replicated, and remain tentative.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
And the cold fusion zealouts waste no time weighing in, because anything that attempts to lend a dose of reality to their claims MUST, by definition, be “riddled with errors.” Seriously, folks, if you want to supply links to your lengthy counter-arguments, that’s fine, but please, this is not the place to try and drown readers by listing all your claimed “accumulated evidence.” Write your own damn blog post. I tried to provide a few links to pro and con sites, but it’s hardly exhaustive. Anyone interested in the technical specifics, counter-arguments, etc., can certainly follow those links, or check out the links at the end of the lengthy Wikipedia entry. And I’m sure Mr. Rothwell would be delighted to enlighten you further via email. 🙂
Fusion involves high energies. This energy is greater than 20 kiloelectron volts per particle. Cold fusion proceeds at low energies. Room temperature energy is less than one electron volt per particle. Main stream scientists have rejected cold fusion on the basis that it is energetically impossible.
Low temperature physics is assumed to be complete. It is not. It cannot describe the path of the quantum transition. Cold fusion is a transition quantum technology. It provides information on the path of the quantum transition. This value of this information goes beyond cold fusion. The observables produced by cold fusion experiments may enable man to classically control all of the natural forces.
Shame on you, Jennifer. If you don’t want to read contradictory comments like the one by Mr. Rothwell above, then (1) refuse to allow comments on the site, or (2) don’t write such irresponsible articles. But because in fact you did both, you actually invited that response. You were out of line to then insult Mr. Rothwell, whose citation and reference resources are so clearly superior to your own.
My own point is along a different line: Why has cold fusion research been so vilified, when it HAS demonstrated some results by reputable researchers in their respective fields, even if the results have not been consistently reproducible? You mention youself that there have been at least 50 “unmistakable” cases of excess heat generation. It would not be proper science to then say that those 50 cases out of 50,000 hours are statistically insignificant… because they are not. Not only would that be improper use of statistics (changing the measure in the middle of the calculation), it would also reflect a lack of understanding of the science involved. For example, if such an improper statistical argument were to be given merit, then the neutrinos detected by our best detectors would have to be called nonexistent, and could only be mere “statistical glitches”. I think researchers in the field would disagree, and rightly so.
Now compare this whole cold fusion situation to the field of AI research. This field has been given lavish and even constant “mainstream” scientific and media attention, and consistent funding, when it has NEVER produced ANY measurable results of any sort! Yet we seldom see armchair scientists like Jennifer berating the researchers in this field, who have invariably claimed that a breakthrough is just around the corner, while never — even once — producing same.
And I mean that. Even the best, most celebrated chess-playing machine to date — which is very good indeed and could be called the poster child for AI today — is in principle nothing more than a calculator. A very big, very fast calculator on steroids, I will grant… but just a calculator. There is nothing about its processing or software that could honestly be said to be “AI” in any meaningful way, at all, in any measure.
I am not insulting the hardware or software engineers who are involved with chess-playing computers. Their work has been excellent. But even today, there is nothing about it that could honestly be called AI.
Yet the field of “AI Research” had been around since long before cold fusion claims. Decades longer. With MUCH less to show for itself. There have been no major breakthroughs even though they have always been “next month, maybe next year”. Yet… this field and its results, shameful as they are, have not been attacked as cold fusion has been.
Can anyone provide an explanation for this hypocrisy? I certainly do not understand it. It seems to me that fields of endeavor that show some actual promise and even results, no matter how thin, should be given more legitimate attention than those that do not. Especially when they offer much more short-term promise to the human condition.
I almost forgot to add:
Your “appeal to authority”, re: your stated reliance on peer-reviewed journals, may be misplaced.
A new study has concluded that as many as 90% of research articles that have appeared in just such peer-reviewed journals in recent years have subsequently been invalidated.
Apologies; I do not have the reference at hand, but I have seen it. If I turn it up, I will be happy to post it here.
Astute readers will note that I have only deleted one comment — the third time Mr. Rothwell tried to comment, which I felt was excessive. For the record, I will not allow someone to highjack my blog to get on their personal soapbox. It’s my blog, and MY soapbox. 🙂 It’s a big Internet out there, and Mr. Rothwell (and others like him) is welcome to start his OWN blog if he feels the need to over-react to the slightest bit of skepticism towards the claims of his chosen field. Then he can wail and gnash his teeth and question my competence and integrity all he likes.
The post was a critique of the media coverage of cold fusion, NOT an invitation to discuss the pros and cons of the field’s merits. (And less biased readers would also note that my take is reasonably well-balanced, regardless.) There’s plenty of other places for that if you’re just spoiling for a fight. I have made it clear that this is NOT the place for that. Please respect it.
Well, pardon me for multiple posts, too. But you could have fooled me. The article certainly appeared to me to be a critique of the entire field, and not “balanced” at all. Perhaps that reflects some kind of misreading on my part of your choice of phrasing, but it is apparent that if so, I am not the only person who got that impression.
I am not defending cold fusion or the researchers. I thought it was pretty clear that my own point is that much research that is outside the mainstream seems to be treated differently by the media and the scientific community, even to the point that some of it seems to get re-defined as “mainstream” due to its popularity, even when research in the field has shown no merit whatever. My intent was only to point out this very inequality. I did not intend to engage in an argument of any sort.
However, I am still of the opinion that the very fact that you wrote that article, in the way you wrote it, and allowed public comments, could be construed as “trolling” for exactly the kind of comment that Mr. Rothwell posted.
Wow, Jennifer. You really hit a nerve, it seems. This is a fascinating spectacle for us, the REST of your readers, who appreciate you deeply for your fabulous, upbeat, entertaining, informed, and VERY good-natured blog.
Lonnie: I appreciate your viewpoint. Everyone brings their own subjective biases to bear when reading. But the post is pretty straightforward in its intent. It begins by discussing the lack of any kind of skepticism in the Wired article, and proceeds to tell an alternate “story” of cold fusion to demonstrate that the situation isn’t as cut and dried as that — an alternate story that is readily accessible from any number of respectable sources online, duly hyperlinked. I acknowledge that there are a handful of researchers doing solid work in this area, they just haven’t yet convinced the majority of their colleagues — and they have trouble being taken seriously because they ally themselves with some very questionable characters. I don’t think cold fusion it a joke. I think it’s a riveting tale of how human frailty can adversely affect the pursuit of science, in lots of different ways: self-delusion as to what one is (or isn’t) seeing in one’s experimental results, being too quick to reject/deride new ideas, etc. Nobody involved in the cold fusion controversy is beyond reproach; that’s what makes it so compelling. If cold fusion comes up with truly convincing evidence in the future, I will happily join the mean nasty scientific establishment in altering my views accordingly. Until then, I stand by the post.
I never “troll.” Ever. The mere fact of writing a post on a topic I find of passing interest does not equate trolling. I also moderate comments with a very light hand; it’s a very rare occasion when I delete a comment that isn’t obvious SPAM, and in general, I think I have some of the best regular commenters on the Internet. They’re terrific: I love it when they correct tiny errors in my posts, because that’s how I learn. Nonetheless, it’s my prerogative to delete as I see fit; usually I do so as a means of directing the conversation. In Mr. Rothwell’s case, he was showing classic signs of the zealot with no sense of boundaries who runs on and on with lengthy multiple comments, sometimes footnoted, refuting every single imagined slight by claiming “factual inaccuracy” 🙂 — a practice which quickly becomes tedious to both me and many of my readers. So after two comments, I started deleting him. He is also, BTW, extremely biased, being in charge of one of the main repositories of cold fusion papers. When it comes to critiques of my posts, I always consider the source.
Why talk about cold fusion at all? Because it demonstrates how science works, or doesn’t work, and how it can go horribly wrong when egos and rivalries and such impinge on the process. I’m not out to convince anyone to accept or reject the field, merely to lay out the “story” as I see it, having watched it unfold over the last 20 years. nobody has to take my opinion as gospel. If people decide they want to learn more, they can follow the various links to do their own exploration and reach their own conclusions. Who knows, maybe Mr. Rothwell will get some converts out of it all…
I can appreciate what you say. I should point out, however, that I am rather new to the site, and was not aware of any deletion at all until you mentioned it above, after my initial post. So I was not responding to your having delete anything, only to the posts that I saw. So there might have been a misunderstanding, but please understand how it looked to me:
(1) You wrote an article that, despite some mention of differing points of view, is decidedly one-sided. (It is not my intent to argue the merits of one “side” or the other… only to point out that your position was obvious.) This article was written on a *public* blog.
(2) You allow public comments to this public blog.
(3) So then, it appeared to me (being ignorant of multiple or run-on posts), that you were then berating a respondent, merely for taking your bait. And that did not seem quite fair.
Just explaining my comment… it is indeed your blog, and I was not aware of all the circumstances.
Your bias is not at issue. Your assertions are factually wrong:
No author has ever claimed to have “amassed . . . a statistically significant sampling of instances” of excess heat. All claims are based on individual instances of heat production. (On single experimental runs, in other words.)
There are no journals dedicated to cold fusion research; all original research has been published in existing peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings.
There is not a shred of evidence that “hundreds of laboratories” failed to replicate in 1989.
And so on . . .
As Moynahan put it, you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.
You may have read these claims in newspapers and magazine articles, but the actual scientific literature proves they are incorrect. When you write about scientific research, I think you should base your statements on the literature and other original sources, rather than newspaper reports.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Seeing as how the point of the post was the media coverage of the issue, the focus on media sources was perfectly appropriate.
Granted, this blog belongs to Blumberg and she has every right to edit follow-up comments as she sees fit.
As for my own two cents:
Ironically, it strikes me as a bias reaction on Blumberg part to assume Mr. Rothwell must be “…extremely biased” simply because he is “…in charge of one of the main repositories of cold fusion papers.” It’s my understanding that while Mr. Rothwell’s title is that of “librarian” who manages the on-line repository the site is actually managed by two individuals, Mr. Rothwell and Dr. Edmond Storms. Dr. Storms, now retired, had a 34 year career as a radiochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory which included 18 years in cold fusion science. Dr. Storms has recently published a long overdue book on the fascinating subject of cold fusion, a subject he obviously has accumulated years of personal experience in researching.
For a brief interview on Dr. Storms see:
http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/stormsinterview.pdf
At what point does being a librarian who manages a collection of scientific research papers make them “bias”? How does that work! If Blumberg suspects Rothwell shows signs of being bias it seems to me that she would also have to apply the same set of personal standards (personal opinions), perhaps even more harshly, towards Dr. Storms activities because of his 18 years of cold fusion research. Which begs the question: What criteria is actually being used here on librarians (and perhaps research scientists as well) with all their accumulated experience on this subject, making their opinions bias, their contributions dismissible?
But then it gets personal. Well, who is perfect, certainly not me! I note that Blumberg goes farther in her analysis of Rothwell, stating he shows “…classic signs of a zealot with no sense of boundaries…” It seems to me that when someone like Mr. Rothwell makes the effort to meticulously correct several misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies made by others like Blumberg, at worst, their efforts may be considered an annoyance by the individual whose recent work is being challenged. In so far as Mr. Rothwell and his librarian duties are concerned, I suspect he takes his librarian work seriously. Who better than a librarian to KNOW when factual inaccuracies are being made in regards to a subject they have spent years accumulating data on. OTOH, Analyzing Rothwell’s responses, classifying them as belonging to that of a “zealot” in my view ironically digs the author, Blumberg, only deeper into a bias laden hole dug themselves.
Steven V Johnson
http://www.OrionWorks.com
This blog does not “belong to Blumberg,” a regular reader who left a two-sentence comment some time back.
This comment was made in the blog – “McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that “unmistakably” produced excess heat. That’s just not good enough”. This shows a misunderstanding of reality. Actually, only one UNMISTAKABLE incidence of excess heat in 50,000 to the power of ten trillion hours of experiments is enough to establish the reality of the effect beyond doubt. The blogger confuses the sad state of what passes for some scientific judgement these days, with something worthy of respect. Unfortunately, science by weight of numbers of people’s beliefs seems to give more weight to those prejudices and less to OBJECTIVE reality…
Jennifer,
I have no dog in this fight. (While I’d love to have Mr Fusion on my desk, I’m not holding my breath.) But I am puzzled by this:
— snip —
‘McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that “unmistakably” produced excess heat. That’s just not good enough.’
— snip —
How many “unmistakable” events are “good enough” to allow further research without ridicule? The history of science is replete with examples of experiments that worked erratically, until the hidden variable was exposed.
It may be likely that those “unmistakable” events were, in fact, mistaken. It’s also possible (albeit unlikely) that they are the result of some unrecognized differences between the runs.
Leaving aside the snake oil that unsettled science attracts, where is the shame in trying to determine what underlies the events?
A W
Jennifer,
You posted:
‘This blog does not “belong to Blumberg,” a regular reader who left a two-sentence comment some time back.’
I now see my mistake. My apologies,
The way the formatting of this blog is laid out I mistook the “posted by” name as belonging to the text below – what is written between two horizontal lines. Visually speaking that looks like a block of text, including the “Posted by” name posted above.
As stated before, even I make mistakes! 😉
Steven V Johnson
http://www.OrionWorks.com
So — can I have a cup of tea yet? 🙂
A. W. wrote:
“It may be likely that those ‘unmistakable’ events were, in fact, mistaken.”
That is extremely unlikely, because similar events have been replicated in over 180 other laboratories, and because the events can now be replicated far more often; close to 100% of the time by McKubre and others. Furthermore, tritium, helium, neutrons, gamma rays, transmutations and other nuclear effects are also measured. A mistake in calorimetry cannot cause mistakes in tritium detection or mass spectroscopy. (Some instrument types can interfere with one-another, but not these.)
“It’s also possible (albeit unlikely) that they are the result of some unrecognized differences between the runs.”
The differences between the runs was readily observable, and described by McKubre, Storms and others in detail. In runs that did not produce excess heat, the loading, OCV, current density, flux and other necessary conditions could not be achieved. Whenever they were achieved, excess heat was always produced. In other words, the effect is 100% reproducible when the known control parameters reach certain levels, but it has been very difficult to push the parameters up to these levels. (It is now considerably easier.)
As McKubre explained: “We observe a lack of reproducibility among replicates which we ascribe to metallurgical, chemical, or physical differences presently beyond our control.”
In many of the failed experiments, the problem is apparent even to naked eye. The cathodes bend and crack apart under the tremendous pressure of high loading. See: Storms, E., How to produce the Pons-Fleischmann effect. Fusion Technol., 1996. 29: p. 261.
Nashville Bill asked:
“So — can I have a cup of tea yet?”
No, but if you have $20 million, a team of experts, and one of the world’s largest synchrotrons I can show you how to use cold fusion to transmute elements in nearly macroscopic amounts, with 100% reproducibility. That research may, with time, reveal enough of the mechanism to allow a cup of tea.
Cold fusion is much more difficult than people imagine. The newspapers often describe it as “simple” experiment. I have seen many experiments in person, and read about hundreds of others, and I have yet to see one that I would describe as “simple” or “easy.” It is roughly as difficult as making your own semiconductor from scratch.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Hi Jennifer,
I was Mark Anderson’s editor on the Wired News article you refer to. I saw the piece as a glimpse into a world where a group of aging researchers refuse to give up on something that the rest of the world has. We never intended to be boosters for cold fusion. We describe the specious 1989 claims, the dearth of reproducible results and the general derision cold fusion researchers receive from other scientists. We also never intended to, and I don’t think we have, implied as you suggest some kind of mainstream science conspiracy to discredit cold fusion.
Now that I see the nerve the article struck, I realize we should have inserted more skepticism. At the very least we should have included the voice of someone who strongly refuted cold fusion. So I’ve written a post on our Wired Science blog (blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/cocktail-party-.html) linking to your post, and linked to the WS post from Anderson’s original story.
Best regards,
Kristen Philipkoski
Kristen Philipkoski described the “the dearth of reproducible results.”
There is no such dearth. The cold fusion effect has been replicated in hundreds of world-class laboratories, and these replications have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals. When other experimental findings are replicated hundreds of times, no one says there is a “dearth” of evidence. Findings such as high temperature superconducting and cloning mammals were accepted long before 100 replications were reported.
“Now that I see the nerve the article struck, I realize we should have inserted more skepticism.”
Skepticism based on what? Rumors? The opinions of people who know nothing about the research? I suggest you ignore the “nerve” that has been struck and stick to the peer-reviewed scientific literature. You will find hundreds of papers proving that cold fusion does exist, and also 5 or 10 papers written by skeptics who have tried to find errors in the experiments to prove cold fusion does not exist. Compare the two sets of papers and decide which is right.
You will find most of the skeptical papers at LENR-CANR.org, because we strive to be fair and to represent all points of view. See the ERAB report and papers by Jones and Morrison. Outside of our library, see the book by Huizenga. In my opinion the skeptical arguments have no merit, but I invite you to read them and judge for yourself.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Jennifer;
Boy, this takes me back to the good old days at Earth Island Journal, fending off the chemtrails and perpetual motion machine folks and the like.
I’m not certain I wanted to go back, but oh well.
And after posting the above, I clicked over to Mr. Rothwell’s site and saw that familiar “Infinite Energy” logo. Shudder.
Ah, good old Jed Rothwell, wrong as always. The Pons and Fleischman paper was not “in print” at the time of the press conference. It had just been accepted and the accepted version was reportedly not the one that was finally published (in May, as I recall). Details of that particular history are clearly documented in Frank Close’s book, which is a must read by anyone interested in that period of time. Frank Close shows the original gamma ray figure, which has the peak at the wrong energy. [See pp 97, 115, 150, and 166, which shows that the shape is also wrong.] That first figure has always been the most interesting part of the entire story.
Jed, does your library include the figure of the “gamma ray data” from the original 13 March 1989 preprint? Your library lacks historical value until it contains the original preprint and the revised version sent on 22 March as well as a copy of the published paper and its astounding set of errata. [How many scientists have seen a paper where one of the three authors was left off and had to added in an erratum?]
The paper that was “in print”, in that it had actually been printed, was the abstract of Steve Jones’ invited talk at the APS meeting in Baltimore. Similarly, the strongest defense of a patent would not be a press conference but the notarized description of a planned experiment that existed in Steve Jones’ lab notebook. Pons and Fleischman held the press conference to do an end run around their gentleman’s agreement with Steve Jones on joint submission of papers to Nature, which they thought had been violated by his APS abstract, hence their “preliminary note” to JEChem.
Anyone who knows that will also know the statement in the Wired article “Today’s understanding of nuclear fusion, which involves the synthesis of two hydrogens to make one helium in an energy-creating reaction, doesn’t allow for the type of reaction reported in 1989.” is false as well as being “not even wrong”. (Synthesis of two hydrogens? Nonsense.) There were several papers, and even a Scientific American article, explaining how it might be done.
Jed, where is the water heater they promised us by Christmas of 1989?
The central problem in Cold Fusion is that the proponents cannot tell you how to build something that will produce a certain amount of excess heat every time, and where you will get 10x the heat if you scale it up by a factor of 10, again in a way that they can describe in detail. They get “results” once in a while, but they seem to end up like the Wizard of Oz and his balloon: “I don’t know how it works!” As others noted in the discussion, there are plenty of examples in science where an uncontrolled parameter produced “results” that were not what they appeared to be at first. The two key steps in science are (1) you can make the experiment work exactly the same way every time and (2) you can tell someone else how to do it and make it work the same way every time. Cold Fusion ran into trouble at step 1. Pons and Fleischman could not deliver on the prototype commercial hot water heater they promised us by the end of 1989. As a result, most of those “replication” attempts were actually variations on several different experiments as people tried (and still try) to find and control the unknown variables. Which is what they should do.
Jed also makes conflicting claims about what McKubre has actually done. Amazingly, the success rate of McKubre’s experiments grows from “much higher” to “100%”, although the reader will note that it is 100% when it works a certain way, but Jed says it does not work that way 100% of the time even when the experiment is done exactly the same way. Since that means it is not fully reproducible, Jed supports what Jennifer said in her article. (I recommend that you read McKubre’s papers if you are interested in what McKubre has done. McKubre makes very precise scientific statements in his papers.)
A PS to Frank Znidarsic:
Look up muon catalyzed fusion and the theoretical work on what might happen (at an extremely low rate, not of any practical value) in the solid state. The work before 1989 contains flaws, but refined calculations (see Koonin and others) says there is no reason it should be zero. The sensitivity of nuclear detection methods allow one to see effects with very small signatures.
A PS to Steven Johnson:
Jed has been a true believer in cold fusion since Day 1, and his approach to this topic has always emphasized rhetoric over reality. Look no further than his dismissal of the observation about the number of scientists, both physicists and electrochemists (sometimes teams involving both at the same time), who attempted to replicate the experiment in 1989. There were a dozen at my university alone, and more than a dozen teams reported their negative results at the Baltimore APS meeting. A prime example of zealotry at work is his preposterous assertion that the top quark cannot be observed in a reproducible fashion. Another example of his zealotry is the silly attack on Jennifer about the length of the actual full paper, which Jed confuses with the Preliminary Note. The Preliminary Note, like its name says, promised a later paper that would document its claims in detail. You can see it references in the Note. That later paper is quite long, yet lacks any mention of some important claims in the Note.
Perhaps Jed’s highlight is when he claims that hundreds of researchers had done confirming experiments and that 100 groups attended a meeting in 1989, while asserting that the DOE ERAB report could not be correct because there had not been “time to perform and publish serious replications” before the end of 1989. Of course, you don’t see him say that all of those 100 groups that attended a 1989 meeting had gotten the same results as Pons and Fleischman, or that all of those “confirmations” were sent to journals in 1989 or 1990.
Chris Clarke wrote:
“Ah, good old Jed Rothwell, wrong as always. The Pons and Fleischman paper was not “in print” at the time of the press conference. It had just been accepted . . .”
That is incorrect. The journal was issued the day before the conference. In those days it took a while for paper copies to reach subscribers via the mail, so for a few days copies circulated by fax. Nowadays they circulate via the internet.
“The central problem in Cold Fusion is that the proponents cannot tell you how to build something that will produce a certain amount of excess heat every time . . .”
100% reproducibility has never been held as a standard in experimental science before. In 1955, no semiconductor manufacturer could produce devices that worked every time; for some transistor types, reproducibility was 10%. Cloning today works less than 0.1% of the time. But no one claims that transistors and clones do not exist because they are hard to reproduce.
“. . . and where you will get 10x the heat if you scale it up by a factor of 10, again in a way that they can describe in detail.”
Plasma fusion reactors are incapable of producing 10x input, but no one claims they do not exist for this reason. Many cold fusion cells produce output with no input, so the ratio is infinite.
“They get ‘results’ once in a while, but they seem to end up like the Wizard of Oz and his balloon: ‘I don’t know how it works!'”
This is incorrect. As I noted above, McKubre and others have described the control parameters in detail. They say they do know how it works.
“Jed also makes conflicting claims about what McKubre has actually done. Amazingly, the success rate of McKubre’s experiments grows from ‘much higher’ to ‘100%’, although the reader will note that it is 100% when it works a certain way . . .”
There is no conflict. The experiment was not controlled years ago. (It is much better controlled now.) That does not mean the control parameters were unknown. McKubre showed that when loading, power density and other parameters reach certain levels the effect always appears, but years ago these parameters seldom reached the critical levels. As I noted, researchers using different techniques, such as ion beam and gas loading, produce the cold fusion effect in every run (100% reproducibility).
“. . . but Jed says it does not work that way 100% of the time even when the experiment is done exactly the same way. Since that means it is not fully reproducible . . .”
The experiment is not done exactly the same way, despite the best efforts of experts. The instruments show the differences quite clearly. As I said, in many cases you can examine the cathode with the naked eye and see the differences; i.e., failed cathodes are bent or cracked. It is extremely difficult to do the experiment exactly the same way, but not difficult to see the differences between successful runs and failed runs.
“Jed has been a true believer in cold fusion since Day 1 . . .”
That is incorrect. I read the experimental papers and talked to researchers for about a year before concluding the effect is real. In any case, this is not about me. I have not made any claims or published any experiments, so whether I personally am right or wrong is irrelevant. I am a librarian, not a researcher. Perhaps I have misrepresented McKubre’s claims, but I invite readers here to read original sources, rather than relying on me. Clarke should address the peer-reviewed papers published by researchers, and try to show errors in these papers. If Clarke has published a paper showing errors in the experiments, and he would like me to upload it to LENR-CANR.org, I would be pleased to do so. I have uploaded several negative papers, as I noted.
“Look no further than his dismissal of the observation about the number of scientists, both physicists and electrochemists (sometimes teams involving both at the same time), who attempted to replicate the experiment in 1989. There were a dozen at my university alone, and more than a dozen teams reported their negative results at the Baltimore APS meeting.”
A dozen is correct. There were not “hundreds” but a dozen or so. There may have been others but their work is not documented. The reasons these early replications failed is now well understood. Some of the teams who reported failures in Baltimore, especially CalTech and MIT, were mistaken. They had actually replicated but they did not realize it because their analysis was incorrect. The Harwell experiment also produced excess heat but in 1989 the researchers there failed to recognize this. Later analysis by experts in calorimetry revealed the excess heat.
“Perhaps Jed’s highlight is when he claims that hundreds of researchers had done confirming experiments and that 100 groups attended a meeting in 1989, while asserting that the DOE ERAB report could not be correct because there had not been ‘time to perform and publish serious replications’ before the end of 1989.”
That is correct. The first meeting at Santa Fe was held on May 23, 1989. There were some preliminary reports of excess heat and other nuclear effects but most were not published until 1990. The ERAB report was published in November 1989. As I noted, Miles and others contacted the ERAB authors before (and after) November to tell them that their experiments were now producing excess heat, but the ERAB panel described only their earlier null results.
“Of course, you don’t see him say that all of those 100 groups that attended a 1989 meeting had gotten the same results as Pons and Fleischman, or that all of those “confirmations” were sent to journals in 1989 or 1990.”
I did say that! That is exactly what happened. You can read many of the confirmations at LENR-CANR.org, and you can see the tally of replications published by Will in the link I posted previously.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Correction: the comments I responded to were made by “Old Fusion Fan” not Clarke. Sorry about that. The layout of this blog is a little confusing, as noted by S. Johnson.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian (NOT researcher), LENR-CANR.org
I have confused the issue here. Old Fusion Fan wrote:
“. . . There were a dozen [researchers] at my university alone, and more than a dozen teams reported their negative results at the Baltimore APS meeting.”
I wrote: “A dozen is correct. There were not ‘hundreds’ but a dozen or so.”
I meant there were about a dozen negative reports in 1989, and 1/4th of these (3) turned out to be false-negatives (MIT, Caltech, Harwell).
I have not counted how many authors there were for these dozen negative papers. I should do that. If it turns out they have ~8 or ~12 authors on average that will mean Old Fusion Fan is right, and there really were 100+ researchers who failed to reproduce cold fusion in 1989, and who abruptly stopped research and reported their results.
There were many others who continued the research and got results late in 1989 or in 1990. A serious experiment in cold fusion takes several months to set up and ~3 months to run, so this is not surprising. Also, some of the people who got positive results ran arrays of 100 cells at a time, and only about a third worked, whereas the negative groups ran only one cell, and they only looked for neutrons, which are never observed in the kinds of experiments they did.
I wish that the authors of the negative reports and false-negative reports would send me copies of their papers to upload to LENR-CANR, but so far they have refused permission.
There were also some false positives. The situation was confused until late 1990.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Jed, thanks for realizing that 12 times 12 might be more than a hundred. I expect you will retract your attack on Jennifer for her observation about how many researchers jumped on this problem, whether they published it or not, in March and April of 1989.
Jed, I see you support my observations about the absence of a hot water heater by not attacking it. Would anyone reading this buy a water heater that only worked as reliably as the experiment originally done by Pons and Fleischman? That would be a lot of cold showers over the last decade.
Jed claims that the JEChem journal was printed on 22 March 1989 because the journal article has that as the receipt date of the revised manuscript. I think that is sufficient evidence that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Anyone who has any doubts need only go to a university library and look up that journal and notice the publication date on that issue compared to the one before it. In 1989, it took time to turn that Fax into plates ready for the printing presses. That alone should destroy his credibility. He chooses to ignore the fact that Steve Jones’ abstract was already in print at that time, just as he ignores Frank Close’s documentation that the gamma ray figure in the published paper was different from the one submitted on 22 March 1989, having been fixed after the error was pointed out during a talk on 28 March 1989 (see pp 112-115 in Too Hot to Handle) at Harwell.
Now look at how Jed does not even read what I wrote before claiming that the only people working on cold fusion were the dozen or so at our university, not even reading about the others at the Baltimore meeting, then pretending that there is no documentation of the abstracts for that special session. Here is a clue, Jed: just because you were not there and do not include the Bulletin in your “library” does not mean it did not happen.
Another characteristic of his selective view of the world is that he splits the first part of my observation that “Amazingly, the success rate of McKubre’s experiments grows from “much higher” to “100%”, although the reader will note that it is 100% when it works a certain way, but Jed says it does not work that way 100% of the time even when the experiment is done exactly the same way.” from the last part, to weaken its exposure of his own internal contradiction. He supports my point when he says that even the “experts” cannot do it the “same way” each time that they try to do it the same way, even after 18 years. EIGHTEEN YEARS!
That is why we all say that the experiments are not reproducible. Compare where high temperature superconductors, discovered a year or so earlier, are today: being used to make magnets. But Jed said it best himself, when he wrote As McKubre explained: “We observe a lack of reproducibility among replicates which we ascribe to metallurgical, chemical, or physical differences presently beyond our control.” Beyond their control. Not controlled. They cannot “replicate” their work. After 18 years, they still don’t know how to make it work.
Also a big thanks for destroying your credibility by admitting that you were claiming that all of the groups at the May 1989 meeting had results that confirmed the Pons and Fleischman experiment. The fact is that a wide variety of experiments were presented, many running off in their own direction. Further, as he admits in his previous posting, Miles was among those at that meeting who reported “null” results (prior to the ERAB report), not a confirmation of the Pons and Fleischman results.
I won’t even bother with Jed’s failure to comprehend what I meant when challenging their inability to get 10x signal from a 10x scaled up experiment, which has been the sign all along that they are turning noise into signal.
Now back to your original posting where Jed wrote that “There is an egregious error regarding gamma ray spectra, but dozens of subsequent papers confirmed gamma rays without errors. Fleischmann, Pons and their colleagues later published roughly 50 papers, including many in the peer-reviewed literature.” Please list the dozen papers with Fleischman or Pons as co-authors that show gamma ray spectra. Or were you trying to mislead the reader into thinking that they had not abandoned that claim completely in their later work?
Finally, I want to remind people that, although you try to juxtapose assertions about “neutrons, gammas, Tritium, excess heat, helium commensurate with the excess heat, heavy element transmutations” with the McKubre heat results, you are not claiming that McKubre sees neutrons and tritium and gammas at the expected rate commensurate with heat production in all of those “positive” experiments and none in his “negative” experiments.
Old Fusion Fan wrote:
“Jed, thanks for realizing that 12 times 12 might be more than a hundred.”
I checked a few of the other negative papers and there were only 2 or 3 authors each.
“Jed, I see you support my observations about the absence of a hot water heater by not attacking it. Would anyone reading this buy a water heater that only worked as reliably as the experiment originally done by Pons and Fleischman?”
Demanding a hot water heater at this stage in the research would be like demanding a plasma fusion power reactor now, after only 60 years and $100 billion have been invested, or demanding a fission bomb a year after Hahn and Meitner split uranium. Not enough progress has been made.
“Jed claims that the JEChem journal was printed on 22 March 1989 because the journal article has that as the receipt date of the revised manuscript. I think that is sufficient evidence that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. . . .”
This is a trivial matter. The paper was soon published and it is now readily available. Apparently I was not aware of the exact dates of events that transpired 18 years ago, but that is not quite the same as having “no idea what I am talking about.”
“Now look at how Jed does not even read what I wrote before claiming that the only people working on cold fusion were the dozen or so at our university, not even reading about the others at the Baltimore meeting . . .”
I have read several of the papers from the meeting, and read a description of it.
“Here is a clue, Jed: just because you were not there and do not include the Bulletin in your “library” does not mean it did not happen.”
If someone will send me the Bulletin and permission to upload it I will do so.
“Another characteristic of his selective view of the world is that he splits the first part of my observation that “Amazingly, the success rate of McKubre’s experiments grows from “much higher” to “100%” . . .”
100% of the time when certain conditions are met. Not 100% of all runs.
“. . . although the reader will note that it is 100% when it works a certain way, but Jed says it does not work that way 100% of the time even when the experiment is done exactly the same way.”
That makes no sense. The experiment is NOT done exactly the same way when it fails. The differences are obvious. It cannot be done the same way.
“He supports my point when he says that even the “experts” cannot do it the “same way” each time that they try to do it the same way, even after 18 years. EIGHTEEN YEARS!”
Far more man-years of effort have been expended in cloning than cold fusion, yet the success rate for cloning remains well below 1%. There are many industrial techniques have been researched for thousands of man-years yet which remain very hard to control. If semiconductor research had been conducted with as few people as cold fusion, transistors would still be at the level they were in the early 1950s, when entire batches failed, or only 1 to 10% worked, for reasons no one understood until the 1960s, after huge amounts of money had been spent.
“That is why we all say that the experiments are not reproducible. Compare where high temperature superconductors, discovered a year or so earlier, are today: being used to make magnets.”
HTSC are still difficult to reproduce, and far more money has been spent on them than cold fusion. In any case, the comparison should be made to semiconductors, which are similar to cold fusion cathodes in many ways (both surface effect devices).
As McKubre explained: “We observe a lack of reproducibility among replicates which we ascribe to metallurgical, chemical, or physical differences presently beyond our control.” Beyond their control. Not controlled. They cannot “replicate” their work. After 18 years, they still don’t know how to make it work.”
They know a lot more than they did when McKubre wrote that; the success rate is much higher. After 60 years, not much progress has been made in plasma fusion either, but no one suggests plasma fusion does not exist.
“Also a big thanks for destroying your credibility by admitting that you were claiming that all of the groups at the May 1989 meeting had results that confirmed the Pons and Fleischman experiment.”
I never said that. I said there were encouraging results and that by late 1990, Will tallied 92 groups that succeeded. I have uploaded several of the LANL May 1989 papers and I know that many of those authors are listed in Will’s tally and they later published more formal papers, but I do not have the exact count.
“The fact is that a wide variety of experiments were presented, many running off in their own direction.”
That’s true.
“Further, as he admits in his previous posting, Miles was among those at that meeting who reported “null” results (prior to the ERAB report), not a confirmation of the Pons and Fleischman results.”
“Admit” is the wrong word. I emphasized that several times! He did not confirm P&F at the LANL conference, but he did confirm it later in the year before the ERAB report. He contacted them and told them, but they ignored him and published only his earlier null results.
“I won’t even bother with Jed’s failure to comprehend what I meant when challenging their inability to get 10x signal from a 10x scaled up experiment, which has been the sign all along that they are turning noise into signal.”
Cold fusion experiments cannot easily be scaled up, but the excess heat has increased from 0.1 watt to over 100 watts in some labs, a factor of more than 10.
“Now back to your original posting where Jed wrote that “There is an egregious error regarding gamma ray spectra, but dozens of subsequent papers confirmed gamma rays without errors. Fleischmann, Pons and their colleagues later published roughly 50 papers, including many in the peer-reviewed literature.” Please list the dozen papers with Fleischman or Pons as co-authors that show gamma ray spectra.”
I am not aware of any papers they did on neutrons. Other researchers have investigated neutrons.
“Or were you trying to mislead the reader into thinking that they had not abandoned that claim completely in their later work?”
They abandoned their claim immediately. Others, however, have confirmed that cold fusion does produce neutrons.
“Finally, I want to remind people that, although you try to juxtapose assertions about “neutrons, gammas, Tritium, excess heat, helium commensurate with the excess heat, heavy element transmutations” with the McKubre heat results, you are not claiming that McKubre sees neutrons and tritium and gammas at the expected rate commensurate with heat production in all of those “positive” experiments and none in his “negative” experiments.”
This is correct. The tritium and gamma are never seen the rate commensurate with plasma fusion heat. They are about 10 million times lower than this. Only the helium is commensurate with this rate. Obviously the mechanism of cold fusion is different and it does not produce these other products in the same ratios as plasma fusion. I know little about theory and I cannot speculate as to why this is, but it has been confirmed by observation, beyond question. In any case, no one has ever claimed that cold fusion is the same as plasma fusion. As Schwinger put it:
“Where is the accompanying gamma-ray of about four million electron volts? So stands the indictment of cold fusion.
The defense is simply stated: The circumstances of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion.”
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Thanks Jed, for confirming your ignorance when you write, concerning Pons and Fleischman “I am not aware of any papers they did on neutrons” while implicitly acknowledging that your assertion about dozens of papers by them about gamma rays was an empty one.
Here is a hint: Read the “Preliminary Note” by Pons and Fleischman you have been talking about. The bogus gamma ray spectrum they show was offered as proof that they had produced neutrons. You can see the photocapture equation right there in the paper (and the erratum, because they had the energy wrong).
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ROTFLMAO.
Nothing more needs to be said.
Old Fusion Fan wrote:
“Thanks Jed, for confirming your ignorance when you write, concerning Pons and Fleischman “I am not aware of any papers they did on neutrons” while implicitly acknowledging that your assertion about dozens of papers by them about gamma rays was an empty one.
Here is a hint: Read the “Preliminary Note” by Pons and Fleischman you have been talking about. The bogus gamma ray spectrum they show was offered as proof that they had produced neutrons. . . .”
Obviously, I meant I am not aware of any after the first one. As I said, they retracted that first claim immediately.
“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ROTFLMAO.
Nothing more needs to be said.”
Let me restate something here. There are ~3,000 papers about cold fusion. The authors include hundreds of distinguished scientists such as Schwinger and the director of BARC. The research is carried out at the NRL, Mitsubishi Corp., the National Synchrotron Laboratory, Toyota, and other world class laboratories. Let me suggest that you read some of these papers, and you learn what these researchers claim, rather of challenging me about the dates in which papers were published and other “gotcha” trivia, and rather than posting sophomoric sound effects such as “BWAHAHAHA.” You should stop making me the exclusive focus of your thoughts, and turn your attention instead to the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Cup of tea? If you can hear us from where you are, Dr. Morrison, the vessel described in the report by Mizuno and Toriyabe, “On Anomalous Energy Generation during Conventional Electrolysis”, on the web at
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MizunoTanomalouse.pdf
viz. “We experienced an explosive energy release during a conventional electrolysis experiment. The cell was a 1000 cc Pyrex glass vessel that has been in use for 5 years. It contained 700 cc of 0.2 M K2CO3 electrolyte; a platinum mesh anode; and a tungsten cathode wire 1.5 mm in diameter, 29 cm long, with 3 cm exposed to the electrolyte. The estimated heat out was 800 times higher than input power, based on the data recorded up to the moment of the event.”
reached a temperature of around 80C, so could have produced a cup of tea of a sort had the experimenters had the foresight to include a teabag in the setup (pity about the K2CO3 though, it does ruin the taste rather).
Jed Rothwell obviously hopes that the reader will think that saying “3000 papers about cold fusion” enough times will make people think there are 3000 refereed papers in scientific journals supporting a particular type of cold fusion.
Skeptic wrote:
“Jed Rothwell obviously hopes that the reader will think that saying ‘3000 papers about cold fusion’ enough times will make people think there are 3000 refereed papers in scientific journals supporting a particular type of cold fusion.”
That is incorrect. In the messages posted earlier, I repeatedly emphasized that I counted roughly 500 refereed positive papers about cold fusion. I said the other 2,500 are from conference proceedings and other non-reviewed sources, such as the reports issued by the Navy, LANL and BARC.
Nearly all of the 500 peer-reviewed papers are about the “convention” palladium electrolysis type of cold fusion. A few are about gas loading “lukewarm” plasma electrolysis and other variations, but they all involve deuterides (or hydrides in a few cases). The 2,500 non-refereed papers cover a wider variety of cold fusion techniques, and also many unconventional theories. There are also a few hundred papers in the proceedings about subjects that I do not consider cold fusion, so I did not add them to the database.
There are also ~500 entries in the database which are newspaper reports, summaries, history papers and so on — not scientific papers. The total is 3,500 as I noted above.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
For those who came in late, let me repeat that you can see the entire list of papers here:
http://lenr-canr.org/LibraryGuide.html
You can do a rough count of the peer-reviewed ones yourself.
If you would like to read the papers, I recommend you start with peer-reviewed ones and the ones issued by LANL, the U.S. Navy and BARC. The latter two are in “Special Collections.” From LANL I highly recommend Claytor et al. and Storms et al.
Also let me suggest you review previous messages to avoid misunderstandings, such as the notion that I claimed all 3,000 are peer-reviewed.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Nitpicking myself, I wrote:
“The tritium and gamma are never seen the rate commensurate with plasma fusion heat. They are about 10 million times lower than this.”
Well, that isn’t quite true either. Not for tritium with “lukewarm” Ti plasma cold fusion, for example. In an experiment where the expected tritium production rate according to conventional plasma fusion theory was no more than 10E9 tritium atoms, a titanium target produced 10E16 tritium atoms. See:
Rout, R.K., et al., Detection of high tritium activity on the central titanium electrode of a plasma focus device. Fusion Technol., 1991. 19: p. 391.
http://lenr-canr.org/Experiments.htm#AutoradiographsMSrinivasan
This subject is complicated. When I try to summarize results in one or two sentences, or generalize, I usually oversimplify. This is why I strongly recommend the reader carefully review the original source literature.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
The story of Pons and Fleischmann is not complete until you read the following:
THE 2006 PHYSICS NOBEL PRIZE FRAUD
http://www.geocities.com/bibhasde/blackbody.html
I thought this was pertinent:
======
I am sure that my first topic, cold fusion, has caused many eyebrows to raise. Cold fusion? Isn’t all that nonsense dead and buried? How can anyone be so insane as to talk about this totally discredited subject?
Well, to the extent that sanity implies conformity with the mores of a society–didn’t the Soviets clap their egregious dissidents into insane asylums?–sanity, I submit, is not a canon of science. Indeed, isn’t it a goal of physics, specifically, to push at the frontiers of accepted theory through suitably designed experiments, not only to extend these frontiers, but, more importantly, to find fundamental flaws that demand the introduction of new and revolutionary physics?
The seemingly bizarre behavior of some key players in the cold fusion melodrama have managed to obscure a fundamental challenge that this episode presents. Whether or not the reality of cold fusion has been demonstrated experimentally, one must ask if any conceivable mechanism now exists, or might be devised, whereby nuclear energy could be extracted by manipulations at the atomic level.
One is mindful of the high temperature superconductivity story. Despite the assurances of theorists that superconductivity could not exist much above absolute zero, that barrier was broken experimentally. Although it took time to get reproducible results, the reality of the phenomenon is completely established, despite the absence (to my knowledge) of any accepted theory.
High temperature superconductivity is an atomic process, cold fusion is that too, but also involves the much shorter space and time scales of nuclear physics. It should therefore be much more difficult to control this phenomenon by manipulations of the atomic, perhaps better said: at the chemical, level. More difficult, but not necessarily impossible.
Despite my earlier qualification of the established reality of cold fusion, one cannot ignore the evidence accumulated in many laboratories–of excess heat production, of tritium production–all of which is characterized by irreproducibility and by uncontrollable emission in bursts. But, from what has just been said, that kind of behavior is expected; it is not a basis for rejecting the reality of the phenomena.
– Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger, 1993 (1918-1994)
Only you think the focus is on you, Jed. The focus is on the technique you use to mislead people about the scientific support you claim exists for cold fusion.
Thank you for admitting, clearly, that it was wrong of you to write a paragraph that stated “There are ~3,000 papers about cold fusion. …. You should stop making me the exclusive focus of your thoughts, and turn your attention instead to the peer-reviewed scientific literature.” Don’t put “3000 papers” and “peer reviewed literature” in the same paragraph when you know there are only 500 peer reviewed papers, and also know that those include papers that demonstrate no effect under carefully reproduced conditions as well as papers making wildly different claims about when an effect is seen.
Schwinger’s statement is an important cautionary one. There was no mechanism for high temperature superconductivity, yet experiment demonstrated it in a highly reproducible fashion. In fact, several experimental groups managed to duplicate the recipe from newspaper reports and see the effect before the first paper appeared in print. In contrast, there were papers published on the mechanism for cold fusion by Jones and others, both before and after the experiments reported in 1989. Despite the fact that nuclear detection methods are among the most sensitive of all, reproducible cold fusion results remain elusive in the decade since Schwinger’s observation.
Eifen Krohn wrote:
“Only you think the focus is on you, Jed.”
If I am not the focus then why have the skeptics here quoted me exclusively and not cited a single paper other than the first one by Fleischmann and Pons? Why have they totally misrepresented McKubre, claiming that he has no idea what the control parameters are? If the skeptics would take five minutes to review his papers they would see this is not true.
“The focus is on the technique you use to mislead people . . .
Thank you for admitting, clearly, that it was wrong of you to write a paragraph that stated “There are ~3,000 papers about cold fusion. …. ”
“Admitting” is an absurd choice of words. How can I be misleading when I have REPEATEDLY emphasized that there are ~500 positive peer-reviewed ones. (Actually Britz sent me 1,382 peer-reviewed papers but I do not have them all accounted for. Several are in languages I cannot read.)
“Don’t put ‘3000 papers’ and ‘peer reviewed literature’ in the same paragraph when you know there are only 500 peer reviewed papers . . .”
Why not? Only a person who is half-asleep could fail to notice that I said AGAIN AND AGAIN there are ~500 peer-reviewed ones. I meant that a reader new to the field should start with the peer-reviewed ones.
“Only 500” is an odd thing to write. A ratio of 500 to 2500 is normal for any scientific field. Some of the non-peer-reviewed ones from the Navy and LANL are better than most peer-reviewed papers.
“Schwinger’s statement is an important cautionary one.
It is also 15 years out of date.
“There was no mechanism for high temperature superconductivity, yet experiment demonstrated it in a highly reproducible fashion.”
Cold fusion was demonstrated in a less reproducible but equally convincing fashion. Transistors in 1952 were ever more difficult to reproduce than cold fusion; cloning only works in about 1 per thousand attempts; and the Top Quark findings are so difficult and expensive to reproduce, they have only been done once.
Some things are harder to reproduce than others. So what? That does not make them less convincing. Ease of reproducibility has NEVER been taken as a criterion to reject an experimental finding.
“In fact, several experimental groups managed to duplicate the recipe from newspaper reports and see the effect before the first paper appeared in print.”
Okay, so HTSC were relatively easy to reproduce. Here are some things that nobody could reproduce from a newspaper report: a transistor, a V2 rocket, jet aircraft, a fission bomb, a plasma fusion reactor, an LCD high-def television, the Top Quark. Are you saying these do not exist because they cannot be reproduced from newspaper articles? If that is not what you mean, then what is your point?
“Despite the fact that nuclear detection methods are among the most sensitive of all, reproducible cold fusion results remain elusive in the decade since Schwinger’s observation.”
That is completely incorrect. The nuclear detection techniques in many experiments produce positive, high s/n ratio results 100% of the time, especially in “lukewarm” fusion and transmutations. Some of the tritium results are millions of times background. There is not the slightest chance they are a mistake, or not a nuclear effect.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Your straw man arguments are nonsense, Jed, as they are based on a basic logic error on your part. My point was that high temperature superconductors were easily reproduced despite the fact that theory said they were impossible, whereas cold fusion (apart from muon catalyzed fusion) has proved irreproducible despite the fact that Rafelski and Jones predicted it should be possible. All your other comments are just your attempt to shift the discussion from this simple fact, the simple fact that Pons and Fleischman were spectacularly wrong in their prediction 18 years ago that they would have a working household hot water heater in six months, and the simple facts that Mizuno is not replicating the McKubre experiment and neither is replicating the Pons and Fleischman or Jones experimental claims from 1989. All they are doing is struggling to understand how to replicate their own work, with limited success.
But I can’t resist pointing out to Jennifer’s fiance your assertion that the Top Quark has only been observed in a single experiment.
And I can’t resist pointing out that it is a fact of history that the crucial elements of the first US fission bomb design were replicated by a group of German physicists within a few days of reading about the Hiroshima bomb in a newspaper, just as it was independently invented by a Russian physicist in late 1942. Nature does not hold its secrets for long once people know there is an effect worth looking for.
Skeptic wrote:
“. . . cold fusion (apart from muon catalyzed fusion) has proved irreproducible . . .”
As I noted above, the excess heat, tritium, transmutations and other effects of cold fusion cold fusion has been replicated hundreds of times. There are over 180 replications of the heat in in Storms’ book, Table 2. Most are with Pd-D2O electrolysis, and most were published in peer-reviewed journals. This is a matter of fact; anyone who reads these journals can confirm it. You cannot wave your hand and make matters of fact vanish.
You might argue that the authors of all these excess heat claims are wrong, but you cannot argue that the claims do not exist. If you want to argue that the claims are wrong, you will have to publish a paper showing why flow, static and Seebeck calorimeters do not work even when they are used by hundreds of different researchers who carefully calibrate and check their results, and when the signal to noise ratio is high. I do not think you are capable of doing this. Furthermore, if this could happen, the experimental method itself would not be reliable, and the whole basis of the scientific method would crumble, so I do not think this is possible.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Skeptic wrote:
“. . . and the simple facts that Mizuno is not replicating the McKubre experiment and neither is replicating the Pons and Fleischman or Jones experimental claims from 1989.”
Just to clarify: T. Mizuno et al. (Hokkaido Nat. U.) and McKubre both replicated Fleischmann, not Jones. They both observed excess heat with Pd-D2O electrolysis. Mizuno et al. also reported neutrons and tritium, and Mizuno later experimented with proton conductors and glow-discharge, which Fleischmann did not do. Perhaps you are only aware of the latter work. (Or possibly you another Mizuno in mind; it is a common name.)
Perhaps you disagree that McKubre replicated, but McKubre et al. say they did. They wrote: “EPRI PERSPECTIVE This work confirms the claims of Fleischmann, Pons, and Hawkins of the production of excess heat in deuterium-loaded palladium cathodes at levels too large for chemical transformation. . . .”
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHdevelopmen.pdf
The reader should review this document and others to decide whether you are right, or McKubre is right. The same goes for claims made by Oriani, Bockris, Miles and the hundreds of others who say they replicated Fleischmann. Perhaps you are right, and they did not, but I think you would have difficulty making that case. You have not made that case merely by asserting it. You need to provide a detailed analysis to show why all these people are wrong.
Regarding household water heaters and predictions of technology, plasma fusion researchers have been spectacularly wrong, missing their goals by 50 years and ~$100 billion. But no one has suggested that plasma fusion does not exist because of this.
Also, the Germans at Farm Hall would not have been able to construct a bomb a few days after reading about it. Even if they read the Smyth Report in the New York Times, “Atomic Energy for Military Purposes” (1945) they could not have done that, despite the fact that the report reveals a remarkable number of technical details, such as this description of the Clinton separation plant:
“This scheme was to build a ‘canyon’ which would consist of a series of compartments with heavy concrete walls arranged in a line and almost completely buried in the ground. Each compartment would contain the necessary dissolving or precipitating tanks or centrifuges. The slugs would come into the compartment at one end of the canyon; they would then be dissolved and go through the various stages of solution, precipitation, oxidation, or reduction, being pumped from one compartment to the next until a solution of plutonium free from uranium and fission products came out in the last compartment.”
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/SmythReport/index.shtml
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Thank you, Jed, for clarifying that my statements were correct while pretending to do otherwise. I trust you know the difference between present tense and past tense. As you stated, Mizuno is doing a different experiment (glow discharge) than was done by Fleischman and Pons in 1989 or is being done my McKubre today. Similarly, as you stated, McKubre is only looking for excess heat, not any of the nuclear signals that Pons and Fleischman claimed to see. That also makes their experiment different from the original claims made in the paper you emphasized from the start. Just as was stated above.
Learn to read, Jed. No one said the German scientist could physically build a bomb while in an English manor house. Someone said they replicated the design, just as Flerov did. Just read what is written, not what you wish to see (a problem you have with the cold fusion literature as well). And history is clear that Flerov figured it out on his own, and that the only thing the Germans needed to know to correct years of errors was that it worked in order to figure it out. And both designs were for the U weapon, not the Pu weapon you rambled on about.
Thanks also for pretending that another strawman argument about a different issue (your misrepresentation of the claims made for hot fusion) will strengthen your case for cold fusion. It only weakens it, because it shows you have no answer to Pons and Fleischman’s inability to produce a hot water heater in EIGHTEEN YEARS when they promised it would be ready as a commercial prototype in SIX MONTHS. And they don’t even have the excuse that their work was not fully funded.
Finally, you have never noted that a single experiment has seen “excess heat, tritium, transmutations and other effects of cold fusion” in the ratios predicted for the heat seen, despite trying to create that illusion in the reader’s mind. Indeed, you merely claim that one experiment sees tritium while another says there is helium without tritium and another sees nothing at all. That is what is in the refereed literature you cite. McKubre is not claiming he sees tritium and neutrons and helium in specific ratios every time he sees excess heat, and none when he does not. Don’t try to mislead people into thinking this is what he is doing.
Skeptic wrote:
“Similarly, as you stated, McKubre is only looking for excess heat, not any of the nuclear signals that Pons and Fleischman claimed to see.”
That is incorrect for two reasons: first, McKubre did search for tritium and helium and he found them, second Fleischmann and Pons retracted their claims for neutrons immediately. Although others have detected neutrons.
“That also makes their experiment different from the original claims made in the paper you emphasized from the start.”
That is not what McKubre, Mizuno, Oriani and hundreds of other researchers say. If you disagree with them, I suggest you write a paper showing why they are wrong. Do not argue with me about claims made by hundreds of professional scientists; argue with them, instead.
“Learn to read, Jed. No one said the German scientist could physically build a bomb while in an English manor house. Someone said they replicated the design, just as Flerov did.”
I did not mean they could have built a bomb in the house; I meant they did not have enough information to design a bomb, even with the Smyth report. Even the Russians did not have enough information, despite their spy ring. They had to independently rediscover many aspects of the bomb design and production methods.
“Finally, you have never noted that a single experiment has seen ‘excess heat, tritium, transmutations and other effects of cold fusion’ in the ratios predicted for the heat seen, despite trying to create that illusion in the reader’s mind.”
I did note that. I stated it very clearly: “The tritium and gamma are never seen the rate commensurate with plasma fusion heat. They are about 10 million times lower than this. Only the helium is commensurate with this rate.” Obviously the mechanism of cold fusion is different and it does not produce these other products in the same ratios as plasma fusion.
Not only did I say this, but so did Fleischmann, Schwinger, Hagelstein and all of the researchers in this field. No one is trying to create the illusion that cold fusion is the same as plasma fusion. I suggest you review my previous statements, and I also suggest you read the literature, so that you will know this sort of thing.
“McKubre is not claiming he sees tritium and neutrons and helium in specific ratios every time he sees excess heat, and none when he does not.”
He claims helium in specific ratios, but not tritium or helium.
“Don’t try to mislead people into thinking this is what he is doing.”
I am not misleading anyone. I repeatedly and correctly summarized McKubre’s claims. You are either tying to mislead people or you have not read what I wrote, or what McKubre wrote. Let me once again strongly recommend that you FIRST READ THE LITERATURE before commenting on this research — or any research. You waste your time and make yourself look foolish with strawman arguments. You put words into McKubre’s mouth that he never said. You should critique what he actually claims, not an imaginary version of his work.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
I wrote:
“‘McKubre is not claiming he sees tritium and neutrons and helium in specific ratios every time he sees excess heat, and none when he does not.’
He claims helium in specific ratios, but not tritium or helium.”
Excuse me, I meant: “. . . not tritium or neutrons.”
Let me go out on a limb and speculate a little here:
Many researchers believe that tritium and neutrons are sporadic because they are precursors, or signs of cold fusion reaction that is just beginning. There is evidence that a cathode loaded to less than the critical level produces neutrons, and then as it reaches high loading it produces heat and helium. There is some evidence that neutrons and heat are inversely proportional. Since cathodes are never loaded evenly, it is likely that part of the cathode will be below the critical level, and part of it above. This may be why neutrons are often observed along with heat, but not in fixed proportions. When more of the cathode becomes highly loaded, the heat increases and the neutron flux decreases.
– Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Jennifer Ouelette is wrong when she says:
“The main difference is that sonoluminescence — while nowhere near the stage of development depicted onscreen — is nonetheless a well-respected, well-funded field of study, whereas cold fusion has pretty much languished along the edges of the lunatic fringe since its alleged “discovery” almost 20 years ago”.
Because the sonoluminescence experiment made by Taleyarkhan can be explained by the hypothesis of cold fusion only.
Ahead it is described my discussion with the Nobel Laureate Dr. G. t’Hooft, on the Taleyarkhan experiment:
In 2002 the journal Science published the Taleyarkhan’s paper describing his experiment, where he relates the emission of neutrons by a sonoluminesence phenomenon.
The sonoluminesence is the implosion of bubles within a liquid.
The fact that there is emission of neutrons in Taleyarkhan’s experiment imply that there is nuclear reactions.
After the publication of Taleyarkhan’s experiment by Science, the physicists Suslick and Didenko made another experiment, in order to show that it is impossible to occur nuclear reactions in the Taleyarkhan’s experiment. Their paper has been published in Nature.
When I took knowledge of Didenko-Suslick experiment published by Nature, at once I realized the meaning of their experiment. Their experiment means that the emission of neutrons in Taleyarkhan’s experiment can be due cold fusion only.
Let us see why:
Suslick and Didenko tried to show that hot fusion cannot take place in Taleyarkhan experiment. They made his experiment and showed that the greatest portion of energy in the sonoluminesence experiment made by Taleyarkhan is wasted in chemical reactions.
From Suslick-Didenko experiment (according which the greatest portion of energy is spent in chemical reactions) we conclude that the emission of neutrons in Taleyarkhan’s experiment cannot be due to hot fusion, because Suslick and Didenko have shown that does not remain sufficient energy for hot fusion reactions.
But since there is emission of neutrons in Taleyarkhan’s experiment, then we can explain such emission by cold fusion only, since hot fusion has been discarded by Suslick-Didenko experiment
So, after the publication of Suslick-Didenko paper, I sent a message to the Nobel Laureate Dr. Gerard t’Hooft, where I said that Taleyarkhan experiment is an evidence of cold nuclear reactions, because neutrons were emitted in his experiment. I said nothing about Suslick-Didenko experiment.
Dr. t’Hooft replied that the emission of neutrons in the sonoluminescence experiments is due to the fact that high energy us liberated in the implosion of bubles, which is an energy sufficient to produce hot fusion.
I replied to Dr. t’Hooft that his argument was valid BEFORE the result obtained by Suslick and Didenko. That is, Suslick-Didenko experiment showed clearly that Taleyarkhan experiment cannot be explained by hot fusion. And so the argument alleged by Dr. t’ Hooft lost its validity AFTER Suslick-Didenko experiment.
And since there is emission of neutrons in Taleyarkhan’s experiment (which indicates nuclear reactions) that his experiment can be explained by the hypothesis of cold fusion only.
Dr. t’ Hooft did not reply.
Then I offered to send him the Borghi’s paper.
Dr t’ Hooft replied the following:
“There is much more wrong with n=p+e, but most of all the fact that the ‘experimental evidence’ is phony”.
Then I sent a message to Taleyarkhan, saying to him that Dr. t’ Hooft did not understand his experiment, since t’ Hooft did not realize the meaning of Suslick-Didenko experiment.
I sent a copy of the message to Dr. t’ Hooft.
Dr. t’ Hooft sent me his last reply, saying:
“1. The observation of neutrons emerging from an experiment does not mean n=p+e.
It was this conclusion, that YOU draw, which I consider as phony.
2. Theoretical explanations for the observation of neutrons in line with conventional theory do exist. Sonoluminescence is an observed and understood phenomenon.
It is generally considered to be theoretically possible to generate fusion temperatures in imploding bubbles using sound. As for tunnelling through the Coulomb barrier at low temperatures, so as to achieve fusion at low temperatures, this could have been possible in principle, but experts who did the calculation say that, unfortunately, the rate will be far too slow to be observable, let alone be of any practical importance.
3. In all these theories, the only transition considered is n –> p+e+neutrino.
4. This is a transition; it does not imply that the neutron “is” a bound state of such objects.
G. ‘t H.”
As we see, Dr. t’ Hooft insisted to show that he did not understand the meaning of Suslick-Didenko experiment.
But I am sure that Dr. t’ Hooft did understand it very well, of course.
He was only dissembling that he did not understood the meaning of Suslick-Didenko experiment.
His feigning was comfortable to him, because if he should confess that he did understand the meaning of Suslick-Didenko experiment, he would have to confess that Taleyarkhan’s experiment can be explained by the hypothesis of cold fusion only.
SUCH A CONFESSION WOULD NOT BE COMFORTABLE TO HIM.
Open Lab 2007 – the winning entries for you to see!
Well, The Day has arrived! After reading all of the 486 entries at least once (and many 2-3 times) and after calculating all of the judges’ ratings of all the posts, Reed Cartwright and I are happy to announce which…
But what about sonoluminescence? now I am totally curious about the chemistry/science behind that.