User talk:Enric Naval

 Hello Enric Naval, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may


 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.


 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 00:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Baleted content from ScienceApologist's Wikipedia talk page
Hi Enric,

In case you missed any of it, here is a copy of the baleted content from ScienceApologist's WP talk page. —Palomino of Certainty (talk) 20:23, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Reference to an edit of yours
Welcome to Wikiversity! This is about as far as I'd go on Wikiversity, you will notice the lack of personal criticism, your name isn't even mentioned, though, of course, anyone could look at the edit and see who made it. The semantic issue is a generic one, I've also referred to those early results as "negative replications," but, of course, that is "negative" in another sense. They didn't manage to replicate! If you don't replicate and then don't see the same results, that's, like, not surprising. You'd know you replicated when you followed the same recipe and got the same results. Then you get to explain why those results were found, like calorimetry error (specific, demonstrated) or unexpected D2/O2 recombination with the cell acting like a storage battery (easily seen in accurate calorimetry), or ... unknown nuclear reaction.

Anyway, if you'd like to actually learn about cold fusion, this is a place. Otherwise, Wikipedia is fine for people who aren't actually interested in what they write and edit about. Takes all kinds, I guess. --Abd 00:04, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * If you don't replicate and then don't see the same results, that's, like, not surprising. You'd know you replicated when you followed the same recipe and got the same results.
 * Gastrin Bombesin's Ghastly Hypothesis: The recipe of papering controversies over with mind-numbing, eye-glazing, endlessly repeated walls of text always gets the same result &mdash; your audience drifts away and never looks back. And if some schmeggegy straggler in the audience doesn't go away, then you ding them in a surly and churlish manner for not paying perfect attention to your every word. And if that doesn't work, you deftly summon an admin to boot them out of the theater.  This is the place, Enric, to learn how Gastrin Bombesin's Ghastly Recipe works in everyday practice. —Moulton (talk) 12:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm tempted to reply, but I don't want to be seen as taking one side or other. --Enric Naval 15:06, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You don't have to take sides, Enric. You can be like Sagredo in a Galilean Dialogue, a dispassionate observer who simply asks good questions of both Salvati and Simplicio.  —Caprice 17:36, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Of course not, Enric. It could be alleged that the comment about "dinging" Moulton for "not paying perfect attention" was really about not paying attention at all, but was for writing long and/or multiplied responses that were thus beating a dead horse, and it continued even after many comments, repeating what was important, but, hey, this isn't the place to resolve that. However, I'm concerned about the implication that my non-threatening comment to Moulton, cited above, that explicitly waived any right to assert harassment from his repeated edit to my Talk page -- this is an old trick of his, and I'd warned him for doing it to Adambro here and on beta.wikiversity -- was somehow a "deft" summoning of an admin to "boot him out." It's the opposite.
 * Caprice (Moulton) could easily have been blocked for that edit, there are admins who might do it, so I was trying to prevent that. If I'd wanted him to be blocked, probably he'd be blocked, I'd have simply gone to WV:Request custodian action, pointing out his behavior and his prior patterns. Given his recent "outing" edit, revision-deleted, he's on thin ice.
 * Note that, because of my comment on his talk page, he is now allowed to repeat edits to my Talk page, I've given permission. This kind of misrepresentation of the behavior of others, to the point of reversing apparent intention, is what has gotten Moulton blocked all over the place. I don't want that to happen here, so, as long as it's confined to my talk page, I'll tolerate it, and if I decide it's not tolerable any more, he'd be warned first. My hypothesis, tentatively, and the above edit tends to confirm it, is that Moulton wants to be blocked again, but wants it to appear that he's a victim, the sacrificial goat ("Caprice.") Yes, theory of mind. But I do have some understanding of the man, and he's been pretty explicit sometimes as to what he's about. This is not a personal attack, and there is great value in Moulton's thinking, sometimes, it's just frank. Meanwhile, I recommend his atrocious song parodies. Perhaps he will point to the compilation of them. Enjoy. --Abd 17:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * beating a dead horse
 * Palomino of Certainty is not a dead horse. —Montana Mouse (talk) 17:36, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Aw, you are too quick, Mouse, responding to comments before they are made, or to comments other than those made. Of course that beautiful Palomino is not dead! Long live Palomino of Certainty! Mr. Ed forever! ("Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.") --Abd 17:55, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, the Quick and the Dead. Is this an allusion to Resurrection Dramas? —Caprice 18:17, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, the Fast and the Slow. Speedy Tortoise. Like, did you think I linked to User:Caprice for ... for what? Sheer confusion? Hey, not a a bad idea! "Served as a dairy farmer." --Abd 21:30, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

In "Critique of Pure Horse Dookie" we learn why it's sensible to put Descartes before the horse. —Gastrin Bombesin 13:42, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Painted Fraidy Cats
Don't eat the paint chips, Enric. They're full of Plumbum and they will addle your brain. I dunno which is more difficult, falsifying the null hypothesis, or nullifying the false hypothesis.
 * "And now I'm being painted as some sort of big bad villain."—Enric Naval
 * "Abd is never wrong." —Ibid.

Albatross 13:02, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Apologies
I wish to apologize to you on behalf of the community for the action of a bureaucrat who granted Abd Custodianship against community consensus. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Don't know why Ottava is apologizing for a 'crat following routine procedure. You could be a sysop here in a flash, all it takes is for a permanent custodian to agree to mentor; sometimes mentors ask for conditions. All that discussion on the candidacy page happened because the custodian (a 'crat himself, actually) happened to be away when I took him up on his offer, and that's why I temporarily closed it. People do discuss a little, sometimes, at the beginning, but this isn't Wikipedia and community consensus is not necessary to award the tools on a probationary basis (with a mentor), and a couple of people complaining is not "community consensus." Consensus is needed for permanent custodianship, and that's why those discussions are announced, usually in the site message. If you are still concerned, you may watch that candidacy page for an opening of the discussion for permanent custodianship, perhaps in a month or so.
 * In any case, if you have any questions or concerns, my Talk page is open to you. Again, welcome to Wikiversity. --Abd 02:57, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The idea of mentorship was not to make someone a custodian in a flash. It was to allow people who have no experience to be trained in the role. Even mentored custodians must follow custodianship rules, which is to have the community's trust and support. I don't get why you refuse to accept that. As the Custodianship policy page states, custodianship is not a right. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:07, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Jed Rothwell
Hi Enric,

Since you are keeping a watchful eye on the WP discussion page on Cold Fusion, please let me know if you think I am being either too cautious, too bold, or too lengthy in my colloquies with Jed Rothwell.

As a science educator, one of my interests (after teaching science to children) is to understand how persistent misconceptions arise in the way lay persons come to understand scientific subjects.

My objective, if it's not obvious, is that I am trying to understand what Jed believes, how he came to believe it, and how he was able to eliminate any doubt in his own mind.

This is a generic issue, not just for Cold Fusion (or even for any topic in science), but for any belief, be it scientific, cultural, political, or religious.

In other words, it's about epistemology.

I hope that you will continue to indulge me and offer helpful guidance on how to go about this in the context of WMF-sponsored projects.

Regards,

Moulton 12:00, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The only problem I have is that you are not discussing changes to the article. Oh, and the constant posting bumps the talk page in people's watchlists until they get tired and they stop watching. However, I don't know how to stop them without causing more damage than benefit. And, then again, your discussions are still massively better than Crawdaddy74's proposed changes Salsman's attempts to push any positive interpretation that he can squeeze out of primary sources.


 * I'll just go and collapse them with an informative summary when they die off. (Because, this way, they won't scare away any passer-by who just wants to comment on how the article is written). Maybe manual archival so they don't push on-topic threads out of the talk page.


 * Personally, I would rather have you pursue your investigations elsewhere, but, meh.... --Enric Naval 12:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Before I can discuss any changes to the article, I have to figure out what might be wrong with it. I've spent the last three months with Ed Storms and Abd trying to figure out what's wrong with CF, and now Jed Rothwell has turned up to lend a hand.  I have some ideas on what might be wrong, and how it might be fixed, but I have to solve the problem of WP:OR by somehow showing that the phenomena actually occurring in CF cells is well known in the mainstream literature and not my original analysis.  Feel free to propose to Jed and James that they take up residence here to cavort with me and Abd on the joys of diagnosing tragic misconceptions in hopelessly flawed scientific theories.  —Moulton 13:07, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * OK. --Enric Naval 15:20, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, Enric. Yeah, Moulton has some ideas. His ideas would never make peer review, they are hopelessly contradictory to the experimental evidence. The state of the field, as far as mainstream scientific journals are concerned, is well expressed in the Naturwissenschaften review, Edmund Storms, "Status of cold fusion (2010)", there is a preprint on lenr-canr.org. Supposedly, for science articles the strongest authorities are mainstream, peer-reviewed, secondary source reviews, right? The NW review is simply the latest of 19 secondary sources in mainstream journals, over the last six years, see Cold fusion/Recent sources, as listed in the Britz database. CF turned the corner off of Fringe Avenue in 2004, if you actually read that Department of Energy review and not just the cherry-picked summary from the WP article. The summary says that the recommendations were similar to those in 1989. Yet in 1989, the strong majority, probably 13 out of 15 members of the panel, felt there was no convincing evidence for cold fusion. But if A says "B" as fact and "C" as recommendation, and then D also makes recommendation "C," has D confirmed "B" as fact? The 2004 did not conclude that CF was bogus, unsupported, without evidence. The panel was quite undecided on that, but united on a recommendation for more research under existing programs, not a massive federal special program. That's what was similar. I happen to agree with the recommendations of both DoE reports.


 * If you want to make progress with Salsman, suggest he come here and work on resources under Cold fusion, agree to join him and negotiate consensus. You will learn, he will learn, and in the end the WP article will become better. If I saw progress there, I'd go to ArbComm to get the ban lifted, the latest extension of it was completely preposterous, but I haven't done it because WP had simply become too much work for too little benefit.

Enric, I've assumed, probably incorrectly, that you were interested in cold fusion. If I'm incorrect, indeed, you can just delete this comment, unless you are, perhaps, interested in having the article on Wikipedia reflect true, present, scientific consensus. "Scientific consensus" means the consensus of those who know and understand. It is not the consensus of scientists who get their information from the news like everyone else. It is the consensus of those who study a matter.

"Trying to figure out what's wrong with" a theory is not the scientific approach, if it is someone else's theory. The scientific suggests that you try to falsify your own theories. You can always make up some reason why such-and-such a theory is wrong, why people have been fooled, there are people still doing that with relativity, the expanding universe, AIDS, evolution, and on and on. The key is to test the reasons you make up. Fringe theorists fill their lives with promoting theories that they cannot confirm. Hard-line, utterly convinced skepticism, without experimental foundation, is what has become of the CF "opposition." Shanahan can't get published any more, his latest effort was just a letter. Nothing else has appeared in the mainstream journals over the same period where there have been 19 positive reviews. Isn't it about time to recognize that something shifted?

''Moulton's "alternative theories" result in simple predictions that fail to match the evidence. In some cases he's made up evidence to support his theories. For example, he believes that there is significant current noise in the power supply used by McKubre in experiments in the early 1990s. He saw a screen image of McKubre's oscilloscope, showing a signal that was *very* noisy, it seemed. He immediately claimed that this was the bubble noise. Anyone who knows these experiments would know that he had misread the display. He was seeing the SuperWave stimulation current, which is periodic, as was the display on the screen. SuperWave is not constant current, except for short periods. The display had a time base of about 1 hr per division. To see the problematic current noise, if it exists, you'd need to have a display of about 10 microseconds per division.''
 * Salsman would do a much better job, if he were allowed. I worked with him on other articles, other sock names, where I was "on the other side." He was reasonable. For whatever reason, he's not relying on the strongest sources, but pushes for the "latest," and relies upon primary sources, as you say. But, the elephant in the living room, Enric: what do the secondary sources say.

If you examine the CF literature, you will find very little recent negative peer-reviewed secondary source that is actually about the topic. In 2006, there was a paper on the history of science that used CF as an example of "failed information epidemics." This is, as to CF, a tertiary source. It assumes failure. That was published around the nadir of CF publication, when peer-reviewed papers in mainstream journals (Britz database) had fallen to about six per year. Declining interest is one of the alleged characteristics of pathological science.... but publication, possibly encouraged by the 2004 review, started increasing. Britz's method of displaying publication rates didn't show this, because it was designed when rates were much higher, so the increase looked like noise at the bottom. But rates have quadrupled, and quality has increased, and there are many other signs of acceptance.

The largest scientific publishers in the world are now solidly behind publishing papers on cold fusion: Elsevier, Springer-Verlag. Elsevier covers it in their recent Encyclopedia of Electrochemical Power Sources. The American Chemical Society is the largest scientific society in the world, and is actively promoting cold fusion, publishing the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, two volumes so far, with Oxford University Press.

There is no "Journal of Scientific Consensus." There is no authority that tells us what "scientific consensus" is. Wikipedia relies upon publishers, whose reputations -- and profit -- are at stake, to show us, by the weight of their publishing decisions, what is "mainstream." This is the fundamental basis of notability in Wikipedia policy: the decisions of independent publishers. Before the first ArbComm topic ban, I was not ready to claim that CF had moved out of "fringe," other than tentatively and cautiously. But the more I became familiar with the reality in the publishing world, the more convinced I became that the shift had already taken place.

The pseudoskeptical physicists are demanding publication in their journals. As far as I can tell, those journals, which are independent of the large publishers, like Nature and Science, are still rejecting work out-of-hand. Given that the big publishers are, effectively, eating their lunch, I expect to see something shift on that within the next year. They will either start publishing papers with important work, or they will publish a skeptical review. The latter is quite unlikely, because Shanahan is the most cogent of the skeptics. And that says much.

This was the basic problem, Enric: when a new discovery is vetted, there are attempts, first, to confirm. Not to "falsify." New theories that might be true and that might be revolutionary are precious. You don't just toss them in the trash because you don't like them, not if you are a scientist. Rather, scientists try to confirm the findings. Not the theory! Just the experimental findings!

Many tried to confirm, as you know, and, for a number of months, nobody succeeded. Miles, for example, reported, to the DoE panel, failure to see any anomalous heat. Caltech found no heat, MIT found no heat, etc. MIT found no helium, as well, they looked. No neutrons, no tritium. Replication failure! Yes!!! That was, exactly, replication failure. Failure to reproduce. This is not in contradiction to later success, because it is now well-known why the early efforts failed. Bottom line, it is difficult to get deuterium loading over 70%, it starts leaking out of the palladium, unless conditions are just so. McKubre and many others showed that the CF effect starts at about 90%. The early work, from their data, only got to about 70%. It wasn't enough, and with the original P-F techniques, it took months.

With N-rays and polywater, the initial reports were replication success. Then, it was shown that the successes were due to prosaic phenomena, proven by controlled experiment. N-rays, a prism that was supposedly focusing the N-rays was surreptitiously removed, and the N-rays were still observed establishing that the visual observations, down near the limits of dark-adapted vision, were imagination. With polywater, the thickened water was shown to result from contamination, such as the sweat of experimenters. Did anyone show what the source of "excess heat" was?

No. That was never done. In the 2004 review, in spite of the presence on the panel of some scientists who weren't going to consider CF real no matter what -- not without a theory they could accept as to mechanism -- 50% of the panel thought that the evidence for excess heat was "conclusive." That is a very strong statement, Enric. Conclusive means "proven."

But that's an anomaly. Is excess heat proof of fusion? Of course not! Not by itself. Anomalous heat means "heat of unknown origin." However, the amount of the heat was suspiciously high for chemical process. Barry thinks he's found the source, as error in the estimation of power supply input. This would get very long if I explained why that's not reasonable, why the evidence proves otherwise, conclusively. There is no publication under peer review, where the review would be by experts, that shows any demonstration of artifact in the CF excess heat results. Barry's theory, if true, would have been discovered within months, or certainly by the end of 1990. (He has two theories, which he thinks makes the matter stronger, since one theory applies to open cells and the other to closed cells. He hasn't noticed that both theories would apply to open cells, and would add, making it even easier to find "anomalous heat" that was artifact. I.e., that would disappear when the alleged cause of the artifact was examined and fixed: misting, and power supply AC noise.)

When there is conflict of sources, as to strong secondary sources (i.e., PR mainstream secondary sources), Wikipedia policy would be to present the conclusions of those sources in balance, according to their predominance in the literature. Problem is, Enric, the "balancing" secondary sources, supporting the position of editors like Joshua Schroeder, don't exist. There is no contradiction of sources. If there is, please let us know, here. I'd love to cite them at Cold fusion.

CF was never rejected in the mainstream peer-reviewed literature. There were papers like one that set an upper bound for d-d fusion, based on the lack of neutrons. But the reaction is not d-d fusion! There are still some theories that propose d-d fusion, with various explanations for the suppression of normal branching ratio, but there are hosts of problems with these theories. Storms favors some kind of cluster fusion, but considers no theory as adequate. Except, of course, for the overall theory that deuterium is being fused to form helium, mechanism unknown. That's quite well established.

Negative replications were mistaken for negative conclusions. Lewis of Cal Tech certainly came to a conclusion, announcing that the whole thing was delusion. But that wasn't published under peer review, it was his personal conclusion. His colleague at Cal Tech, Goodstein, is far more balanced. He knows that there is a problem with the supposed mainstream rejection of CF, because he knows there is solid work on the positive side. The early replication failures were simply a result of inadequate information, inadequate patience. Miles eventually started getting results, he phoned the 1989 panel to tell them, they had not issued their report. They did not return his phone calls. Miles went on to publish his work correlating excess heat with helium. This is covered in Huizenga, actually. Miles' work can be sourced to Huizenga from 1994, Huizenga is RS, even though not peer-reviewed. Ordinary RS is fine for history! The truth about heat/helium is amply covered in many sources, yet it's still missing from the article. I have to conclude, given how solid this is, that it's been actively suppressed.

Storms (2010) writes that "many think helium is the strongest evidence for fusion." He's right. It completely bypasses the arguments about calorimetric accuracy, it confirms the accuracy, roughly. It demonstrates that the reaction produces helium from deuterium fuel. How it does this remains unknown! Moulton thinks that a theory without a mechanism doesn't even qualify as a scientific theory. He's very incorrect. Science came up with theories and tested them long before details were known about how things worked. The theory that the Fleischmann-Pons heat effect results from deuterium being fused to helium is testable, and has been tested. The experimental work to do that is reproducible, and has been reproduced, Storms lists twelve research groups that have done it. In fact, the early negative replications, some of them, are part of the proof. If you don't get excess heat, you don't get helium! Period. No exceptions have been reported. If helium were artifact, wouldn't it still be found when there is no excess heat? --Abd 15:29, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Now, look, Abd, I don't know what you are smoking but I want some of it errrr, I mean, you seem to be a bit on denial and disconnected from reality. I only have the preprint of Storms 2010, but it says:


 * "The field (...) has expanded beyond the knowledge obtained 21 years ago on which most popular opinions are based. (...) [In this world] every possible energy source would be explored, no matter how unlikely. Why is cold fusion the only proposed source that is widely ignored at the present time?"


 * Since you imply that only very recent sources are valid, see "Sun in a bottle" from Charles Seife, 2008.


 * Also "An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies", John Wiley and Sons, 2009 (search for "cold fusion"). Maybe also "Fundamentals of renewable energy processes", Academic Press, 2009, . Or you can see how "Nuclear energy: an introduction to the concepts, systems, and applications of nuclear processes" Butterworth-Heinemann, 2009 dedicates only two lines to cold fusion, to say that replications failed. If you expand the acceptable sources to the years 2005-2007, then there are a few more mainstream sources available.


 * I am not interested in working with Salsman. But if you think that he could be a useful collaborator in your efforts here, then by all means recruit him. Me, I already my hands full with wikipedia, and I am not sure that I am fit for wikiversity.


 * I find that competing articles use to have a positive effect in wikipedia articles. For example, I'm sure that the existance of the "Homeopathy" article in citizendium has created a positive pressure in its wikipedia counterpart. We can't allow our article's quality to fall lower that citizendium's, so the better the citizendium article is, the better the wikipedia article struggles to become in response. There also retroalimentation from wikipedia into other websites, as people disillusioned from wikipedia go build their own competing articles, or work to go improve the already-existing ones, or simply salvage wikipedia material to build more narrowly-focused articles that wikipedia won't allow. --Enric Naval 11:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You quote Storms as if he contradicts something. What?
 * Storms is referring to "popular opinion," and "widely ignored" is a fact. Your point?


 * I do not believe that only recent sources are valid. The opposite. All reliable sources are valid. But for what? I have Seife. This is a shallow review, for popular consumption. Yes, WP:RS. But not the kind of RS that is considered the gold standard for science articles.


 * Any source that says that "replications failed" is saying what was true as of a few months in 1989. It's obviously false or highly misleading if it implies that this situation continued. Those "failed replications" were not actually replications. They were attempted replications that failed to reproduce the experimental conditions, which required average loading above 90%. Very simple, in fact.


 * What you are showing is that there is very substantial opinion found in ordinary reliable sources (which includes newspapers) that cold fusion was never replicated. It's true that such statements exist, and it is verifiable that many people still believe that. Is this the current state of the science? The "never replicated" claim is blatantly false, and thus demonstrates, for any document that claims it, the shallowness of research underlying the document. The author is reporting popular opinion as if it were fact, ignoring mountains of contrary evidence. I.e., claimed replications.


 * What is the other side of this story? What is found in peer-reviewed or academic reliable source"? --Abd 14:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Are you aware that there is a recent scientific encyclopedia with two positive articles by Steve Krivit on cold fusion? Elsevier, Encyclopedia of Electrochemical Power Sources.? That Krivit is the editor of The Wiley Encyclopedia of Energy Volume 1: Science, Technology, and Applications - Nuclear Energy? Given the Elsevier encyclopedia articles, he is certain to cover LENR.
 * But the key at this point is the Naturwissenschaften review. It is not isolated, it is only the latest of 19 secondary sources from the Britz database. First of all, the science in the article should present all that is available in peer-reviewed secondary sources, by default. What do you have from the first 15 years? Very little, Enric, there weren't many true reviews of the field, back then. From a scientific point of view, as to what is being published, the first controversy is over. Nuclear reactions are taking place. Storms shows very strong evidence that it's fusion of some kind. None of this contradicts the earlier secondary sources; where they considered fusion, they considered only d-d fusion, which, of course, would produce tritium, He-3, and copious radiation. Almost certainly, cold fusion is not d-d fusion. But d-d fusion is not the only possible kind of fusion. Krivit favors Widom-Larsen theory, with a mechanism involving neutrons, and claims that this wouldn't be "fusion," but he's only playing a semantic trick. If the fuel for a reaction is deuterium, and the product is helium, the reaction is a fusion reaction, and will produce 23.8 MeV/He-4, that's a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics.
 * The controversy that remains, among the experts, which includes the peer-reviewers at those mainstream publishers, is what the reaction is. The "theory." For years, the lack of a theory was used to deprecate the experimental results. This is why the cold fusion episode has been used as a foil for criticizing attachment to entrenched theory. In reality, there was nothing wrong with accepted theory, the problem was that it was applied outside of scope, outside of what it was capable of predicting. I don't think you have ever understood this, Enric; I had the background to get it, because I sat with Richard P. Feynman in the lectures used to create his famous physics textbook. He explained that we didn't have the mathematical skill to use quantum mechanics to accurately predict the complex behavior of condensed matter. Takahashi has, with his Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate theory, set up a simplified problem (the math is easier because it's symmetric), did the math, and has shown that classical theory predicts fusion. The fusion predicted is 4D -> Be-8 -> 2 He-4 + 47.6 MeV. Storms covers this, briefly, in his review (2010), as he had in his book (2007). Takahashi's work is not a complete theory of cold fusion. It does not explain how the TSC condition would arise (it would take a little energy, far less than classical hot fusion, but still more than Storms expects would be available), nor does it explain, in detail, how the energy is released. In an earlier work, he predicted a series of nuclear state transitions that would radiate energy from the excited Be-8 nucleus. If the decay of the Be-8 were delayed from normal because of being part of a Bose-Einstein condensate, this might dump all but about 90 KeV of the energy. That would still give 45 KeV/He-4, more than the limit Hagelstein recently published in his review for Naturwissenschaften, of about 20 KeV. (Another recent review, Enric.).
 * You recently referred to the radiation problem in last edit to the article. It's a real problem. However, most researchers in the field are inclining toward some kind of cluster fusion, more complex than the TSC theory, where the energy is shared among all members of a larger quantum entity. Enric, this stuff is beyond my pay grade, and yours, for sure. I'm dependent upon the reviews of experts. As should be Wikipedia. Instead, we've had amateur experts like Joshua Schroeder, who know a little quantum mechanics, sitting on the article, basing the balance on their opinions and not on peer-reviewed secondary source.
 * If this goes back before ArbComm, you are not going to look good, Enric. Word to the wise. If you become a part of the solution, you'll be very well protected, and by "part of the solution" I don't mean that you adopt my POV. I mean that you participate in balancing the article by including all the relevant information from mainstream peer-reviewed secondary sources. There is no basis for excluding material by "fringe" authors, which is what's done. There is no basis for excluding references to lenr-canr.org, based on discredited arguments, as continued to happen. There is no basis for excluding cross-wiki links to other WMF wikis, for additional material on the topic. There is no basis for excluding editors based on their POV, which certainly happened, it's easily documented. The global warming cabal fell because it was defending the indefensible, sooner or later it became all too obvious. --Abd 14:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

By the way, as to competing articles, I agree. Wikiversity is ideal for creating something even better, much better. A detailed, deep, educational resource, ultimately becoming equivalent to a graduate seminar on a topic, or a collection of such seminars. The resource would include, as subpages, more popular explanations, more like the Wikipedia article. The WP article attempts to cover, in a single page, what was called, by Huizenga, "the scientific fiasco of the century." This was huge, Enric. WP should have articles on the history, on the science, on various details, wherever there is enough reliable source to cover a subtopic. That will require forks, and the MPOV-pushers consistently repressed the creation of forks, on the argument that this was a fringe topic of no importance. Which is completely belied by the availability of massive reliable source on, for example, the history. I have Taubes, Huizenga, Hoffman, and others, all RS by Wikipedia standards, without question. Huizenga covers Miles, by the way, creating early secondary source on Miles quite adequate for inclusion of heat/helium. Not to mention the copious later secondary sources!

You know what happened when I tried to argue for inclusion. You stood by and watched; previously you argued for my ban as "tendentious," but did nothing about those who actually revert-warred or violated Fringe Science ArbComm rulings -- probably because you disagreed with those rulings. Shame on you, Enric. You could fix this. Will you? --Abd 15:04, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

By the way, the preprint of Storms (2010) is identical as to text, with the NW publication. That is commonly true of preprints, unless they are "as-submitted" preprints. As to content, if the WP article is going to contradict Storms (2010), it should do so on the basis of peer-reviewed secondary source of equivalent quality, placing the contradictions in apposition. Instead, Storms has been excluded. Don't smoke that, it will make you sick.


 * I provided you with nine recent sources in w:Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_37, in a collapsed section called "source dump". I see that two of them were published by World Scientific, the publisher of Storm's book, a book that you defended so much because it came from that publisher. I can't but notice that you are simply choosing to ignore negative sources.


 * "If this goes back before ArbComm, you are not going to look good, Enric. Word to the wise. If you become a part of the solution, you'll be very well protected, and by "part of the solution" I don't mean that you adopt my POV. I mean that you participate in balancing the article by including all the relevant information from mainstream peer-reviewed secondary sources.". Please don't make veiled threats of dragging me to Arbcom if I don't follow your lead.


 * The Global Warming cabal fell in disgrace? Oh, w:Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change, you are right, look at how Atren, Cla68, A Quest for Knowledge and ZuluPapa5 got all topic banned. Surely that will teach them cabalists! --Enric Naval 15:39, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * P.D.: Go improve Wikiversity's article. --Enric Naval 15:46, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I will, and I will use your arguments here and on the Talk page. That's actually quite an interesting discussion you pointed to. You are making an assumption about what I'm saying, there. You preface your Source Dump with about cold fusion no longer being discredited since 2004-2005, as if I'm claiming there is still no negative opinion. But the section header was It is, among the experts, over. and that was put up by EdChem. It was a quotation of a comment of mine from Talk:Newyorkbrad. I look at the sources you cite and they show, in fact, the nature of the remaining "discrediting" of cold fusion. Very well, thank you.
 * The key to my comment is among the experts. That means experts in relevant fields who participate in peer review at mainstream journals. It means those who know the literature and who look at the evidence. I will go into detail at a relevant Cold fusion page. Your sources are about general scientific opinion, not about the opinions of experts in relevant fields, formally charged with review tasks. Ask Robert Duncan about cold fusion before CBS hired him, what would he have said? His opinion would have been typical then, and would still be typical now, i.e., probably the opinion of a majority. But that's not science, Enric. It's politics and popular opinion. Physicists know, quite well, that d-d fusion is, given a couple of exceptions, impossible at room temperature. And when they hear "cold fusion" that is precisely what they assume it would be. So they have an automatic, knee-jerk, reaction of "impossible." You can ask a physicist a trick question. "Impossible? Completely impossible? Dueterium fusion at room temperature is completely impossible?" The answer will show how careful the person is. You really should read Hoffman, if you can find a copy. Dialogue on Cold fusion.... He covered all this in the mid-1990s. A careful physicist would say, "Well, it is possible, muon-catalyzed fusion is an example. Fusion occurs at any temperature, because of tunneling, but the rate at room temperature is very low, and couldn't possibly explain the Cold fusion results." Ask the physicist if other reactions are possible, other than d-d fusion, and a careful one would say, "I don't know of any." And a really careful one, also knowledgeable, would say, "Well, there is evidence for anomalous heat in palladium deuteride, and Pons and Fleischmann actually claimed an "unknown nuclear reaction," not "fusion" and certainly not "d-d fusion," so, if we knew what the ash was and the ash was commensurate with the heat, then I'd have to say it's possible." And then, if you show this physicist the evidence for exactly that, the physicist then becomes a "believer." But engaging physicists in this process is quite difficult, because they were conditioned by twenty years of propaganda that there was nothing to the CF claims and they stopped looking a long time ago. Pay one to look, though, like Duncan, something different happens.
 * The reason why peer reviewers at mainstream publications are approving papers that treat cold fusion as real is because they are expected to actually review the evidence, not to just stamp their personal opinions on the papers.
 * And my point has not been to get the WP article to be a gushy promotion for cold fusion, but simply to follow WP policy on notability, reliability, and balance. The theory is that balance is obtained through the preponderance of sources of equal quality. You are citing sources that show opinion, shallow secondary or tertiary sources with off-hand comments, not studies of the field. The Scientometrics paper assumes that CF is a failed information epidemic. And happens to have coincided with the nadir in publication. In no way is that paper an indication of informed expert opinion.... not then, and even less now. --Abd 17:33, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Please replace "experts in relevant fields who participate in peer review at mainstream journals" with "among the small number of scientists that keep researching cold fusion and manage to publish in mainstream journals despite the discredit of their field". --Enric Naval 12:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Enric, you've radically misunderstood something. You have confused the researchers in the field -- which is a small number, it may be a few hundred, it's unclear -- with the peer reviewers at mainstream journals, "experts in the relevant fields," which is a much larger number, and which is not biased toward cold fusion. Essentially, the field is no longer discredited to the extent that publication has remained difficult. There are still some journals which seem to refuse to publish, that is quite another matter. --Abd 16:28, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "some journals"? I think that you have misspelled "almost every nuclear physics and chemistry journal, and also Nature".


 * Anyways, they eventually manage to publish in obscure physics journal, speculative science journals, or in biological science journals like Naturscwiffwhateverthewayitsspelled. And then they run into another big problem: people outside the field refuse to reply, make constructive critics, point out errors, publish through analyses, attempt replications, etc. --Enric Naval 17:21, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * NW is not a "biological science journal." It is a "multidisciplinary journal," covering all the "natural sciences," which certainly includes chemistry and physics, but a lot of articles have to do with biology in some way. But they have access to major experts to review any field of the sciences. I do know that skeptics are submitting papers to journals, but ... they are being rejected. You are using a classification of journals that is purely POV, subjective judgment. This is not Wikipedia, it's fine here. But it's also ... what it is. As to impact factor, NW was, last time I checked, at about the same level as Scientific American. It's more technical, SA is more popular. --Abd 19:03, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Fun fact: this is not the first time that a cold fusion paper has been published in Naturwissenschaften:


 * F. PANETH and K. PETERS, “Uber die Verwandlung von waterstoff in Helium,”

Naturwissenschaften, 14, 958 (1926).


 * guess what, the authors discovered that their helium was just contamination from the air (turns out that glass can absorb helium from air and then release it into the cell). And then Tandberg performed the same experiment, but using heavy water, which had been just discovered. Guess what, Tandberg performed the exact same experiment that Fleischmann and Pons were doing. And then Paneth and Peters had to retract the paper, and Tandberg's patent was denied. It is even described in our article, in en:Cold_fusion. You were always talking about how relevant it was that the result was published in Naturwissenschaften, and how important was to name the journal in the article. What would you think of adding the name of the journal also in that section? --Enric Naval 09:40, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


 * P.D.: man, that was a very corrosive comment that I made :-) Anyways, I'll see if I can find further sources for this info. --Enric Naval 09:47, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There is speculation that Tandberg did, indeed, observe helium from palladium deuteride, but that he was unable to confirm it. The techniques available in those days were relatively primitive. I cannot imagine why you think I'd not be happy with citing Naturwissenschaften on that early publication. Making an explicit parallel would be SYNTH and OR, though. Even if Paneth was mistaken and the helium he saw was artifact (which I consider likely), so what? There was a paper with remarkable findings, NW published it. That's normal. Happens all the time that some problem is later discovered. I think you have adopted, long ago, a battleground mentality on all this. Performing the "exact same experiment" as Pons and Fleischmann is rather difficult, are you aware of that. Did Tandberg actually observe the effects of fusion? Maybe. Maybe not. What happened with Pons and Fleischmann is that the report was taken seriously enough that many attempted replication, and a few succeeded. If that were all that happened, we'd still be in doubt. It isn't all that happened, but attempting to explain this to you was fruitless in the past, you had no clue what "correlation" meant, and the scientific significance of it, and I think the fact that I pointed this out caused you to take it all very personally. --Abd 17:16, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Not the same experiment? Well, it was very similar, and it was a precedent for "claims of fusion at room temperature":
 * Science magazine, apparently written in 1989, "Tandberg's process sounds quite similar to the Utah method for cold fusion, and the original German results sound much like an experiment done (...)"
 * Annal of guilibility p. 101 "Tandberg's method differed from that of Pons and Fleischmann only in the use of ordinary (light) water (...). When heavy water (deuterium) was discovered in the 1930s, Tandberg substituted it for light water, and thus predated the Pons and Fleischmann exact experiment by over 50 years. Tandberg had little success with this method, however, and eventually concluded it did not work. if Pons and Fleischmann had been less secretive they might have learned of this precedent and thus saved themselves and their university much grief."
 * The Golem pp 61-62 "Tandberg had remarkably similar ideas to those of Pons and Fleischmann 60 years later, or it seems with hindsight. (...) The only substantial difference between Tandberg's device and the later set-up of Pons and Fleischmann was the use of light water as electrolyte (...) However, after the discovery of deuterium (in the 1930s= Tanberg pursued the work further by attempting to create fusion in a wire of palladium which had been saturated with deuterium by electrolysis. It seems he met with little success, at least in regard to the production of helium. Pons and Fleischmann were unaware of the earlier work when they started their experiments in 1984."
 * Conjuring science, "Ironically, un anrealted (sic) scientific problem led to an experimient eerily similar to Pons and Fleischmann's cold fusion experiment. In 1924 (...)"
 * Too hot to handle, Frank Close, p 21 "Given what was to transpire with Fleischmann and Pons, 60 years later, there is a bizarre feeling of déjà-vu in all of this." p 65 "With this new development [using palladium as metal cathode] the Brighman Young University team were replaying Paneth and Peters, and Tanberg's tactics of the 1920s and were moving towards the same road that, unknown to them, Fleischmann and Pons were following." p 78 "They were in effect about to repeat experiments that had been done, unknown to them, by Tanberg in Sweden 50 years earlier, passing electrical current through a solution of heavy water, splitting it into its constituent oxygen and deuterium."
 * Bad science, Gary Taubes, p 214 "It was kind of a nonfusion fusion claim, because neither the neutron nor deuterium was discovered until 1932. Only months after publishing theur results, Paneth and Peters retracted, explaining that the minute amount of helium they had observed could be attributed to contamination from air rather than fusion. Sixty-three years later, Stan Pons would make a similar mistake."
 * Cold fusion: the scientific fiasco of the century, Huizenga p 13-14 "Little was understood about thermonuclear fusion in 1926, although Paneth and Peters mentioned in their paper the hypothesis that helium was produced from hydrogen in stars. (...) Hence, the experimental setup of Tandberg had many similarities ti that used by Fleischmann and Pons some sixty years later." p 271 "Lewenstein writes (...) 'The experimental setup used by B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann ... had been reported in 1926' (...) The second statement is nearer to the truth if one refers to the electrolysis experiments of heavy water carried out by Tandberg in 1932."

The sources mention several other similarities, and also similarities in why they decided to use deuterium and palladium, and why they thought that this would increase the probability of fusion, but I am not going to list them all here. --Enric Naval 15:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not denying the similarity, Enric, and it's common that you infer some purpose from what I write, to which you then respond, with painstaking research to refute what I won't deny. Fleischmann was apparently aware of the prior work, that's what he's written. If that's true, the claim that secretiveness was the cause of the problem, though some strange idea that knowing about Paneth and Tanberg would have changed things for him and the world, is bizarre. By the way, Fleischmann's claims as to what he knew and thought before running his experiments, as published by him, qualify as reliable source as to Fleischmann's opinion, that can be used under some conditions. Self-published material by an expert, including biographical material, can be usable.


 * The routine results of experiments attempting to replicate Pons and Fleischmann was early failure, and Fleischmann himself was later, for a time, unable to replicate his own work, so sensitive was it to the exact manner of processing of the palladium rods. That's a well-known trait of the P-F approach to cold fusion, and if Tanberg's method was similar, then his failure would be understandable, even *predictable.* To get the required high loading, as was later shown to be necessary (over 90%, normally), was extremely difficult, and the early replication attempts apparently didn't get over 70%. Paneth's work was almost certainly artifact, from leakage, from what we now know about CF. Tanberg, with deuterium? I don't know. I haven't looked at his work in sufficient detail, and my suspicion is that Taubes, for example, hadn't either. Taubes was pursuing a story, a story of incompetence and even fraud, and he did assert fraud, later found to be spurious.


 * There are similarities, just as there are similarities between the early replication failures and the P-F experiment. I doubt that the Tanberg work was more similar than those failures, say the MIT or Cal Tech work. Enric, you clearly have an agenda to defend something, or to attack something, you consistently come up with evidence on one side. What is it? --Abd 15:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The sources say that it was a very similar experiment, that Fleischmann had never heard of their research (hum, in which source did i read that the history would have been different if F&P had bothered to research precedents?), that the reasoning process that brought them to make their experiment in that way was similar, if not identical, to Fleischmann's. (According to Chadwick, Ellis and Rutherford, the helium found by Paneth was not from leakage, but from helium absorbed from the atmosphere by glass. It's from Close's book, page 21). --Enric Naval 16:37, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * How do sources know what Fleischmann "never heard of"? Very likely, that source simply speculated, and then you report it as a fact. I'll check. Okay, while I haven't seen a source showing, on any evidence at all, that Fleischmann hadn't heard of Paneth and Tandberg (It's very unlikely that he never heard of Paneth, if you check his history, but the truly relevant work would not be Paneth, but Tandberg), I also haven't found evidence otherwise, that he had heard of Tandberg. Instead, what is known is that Fleischmann was aware of work by Cohn (1927), regarding hydrogen diffusion through palladium wire, which led to what's commonly known, now, that hydrogen -- and deuterium is the same -- exists in the lattice as raw protons.
 * "Leakage," Enric, includes leakage through glass, but I suppose you could be correct on that. I.e., there would be a separate, perhaps stronger, effect if the glass contains helium from previous exposure to air, internally, as it would and will. I know that materials are baked to clear such absorbed helium. In Miles' work, however, this is covered, easily, by controls and by the uniform treatment of experimental cells. Basically, if leakage were the source, it would show up as well in control cells, including deuterium cells where there was no excess heat. Instead, it never shows up in those cells, apparently. --Abd 19:09, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You quote Collins and Pinch for the "unaware of the early work" comment. They do not describe how they know this. It looks like a mere assumption. --Abd 19:09, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have no idea if the helium absorption happens only before the experiment, or if it keeps happening during it. I recall reading about "performing experiments in atmospheres that contained helium" (not the exact words), so I assume that it was during it.
 * From Taubes, it looks like Tandberg's prior research was "discovered" by a computer scientists in April 13 1989. I understand that F&P had never mentioned or cited Paneth, Peters, or Tandberg. Tuabes does say that Palmer and Jones didn't know of Tandberg (p 25). It also says that Palmer reached the same conclusions as Tandberg independently: "Bart [Czirr] suggests that we use palladium as the metal cathode as it has the ability to let hydrogen diffuse through it at will. It should work fine" (Taubes, p 65). I understand that F&P said that they had thought of the experiment by themselves, so they had simply followed the same path of thought. Taubes seems to chastise F&P and Jones "An important part of the research process is to search through the literature and find what ideas similar to your own have been investigated in the past, and then by learning what became of the earlier ideas you can avoid their mistakes and build on the successes." (Taubes p 17-18) I am not sure that F&P ever said anything about Tandberg.... --Enric Naval 04:24, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Experts in Traditional Fields
It goes without saying that I am not an expert in the literature of Cold Fusion. My degrees are in Electrical Engineering, and my professional experience at Bell Telephone Laboratories is in Telephone Network Planning and Systems Analysis. I don't know beans about Cold Fusion. But I do know something about the propagation of telephone signals, dating from Alexander Graham Bell's first demonstration, some 135 years ago, that it is possible to generate a signal by varying the amount of surface area of an electrode exposed to the electrolyte in which it is submersed. So when I observed bubbles forming and sloughing off the electrodes in those Cold Fusion cells, it occurred to me that there would be some AC Burst Noise in the circuit, which would dissipate some heat. Using sophomore level AC Circuit Analysis, I constructed a simplified model of the AC noise power and suggested that McKubre had erred in assuming there was no such AC noise power adding some unreckoned ohmic heating to his cell. Since I only did this calculation about a month ago, I asked four people to check my work. Of them, Dieter Britz is the farthest along. I anticipate that he will publish his own independent analysis, which I expect will be considerably more comprehensive than my simplified model originally presented to Abd here on Wikiversity. —Moulton 14:29, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Dieter Britz has release the first (as yet unreviewed) draft of his new analysis. I have no idea how long it will be before his work passes muster as a citable document per WP standards, but a first reading is that he has confirmed my models, which estimate the AC burst noise to be given by the approximation PAC ≈ α²PDC, where α = r/R is the proportional fluctuation in the cell resistance from the bubbles.  In the simulation based on real data, where PDC = 9.5 W, Dieter finds PAC ≈ 18 mW ≈ 12 dBm ≈ 65 Joules per hour.  In the simulation with a sinusoidally varying resistance, Dieter finds PAC = ½α²PDC, which coincides with the model I derived a few weeks ago using sophomore level AC circuit analysis. —Moulton 06:36, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Dieter did release this, and did not describe it as a "first draft." I rather doubt that this study will be published, not because of lack of quality, but simply because it's a narrow detail, merely confirming and defending a narrow aspect of CF calorimetry, against charges that have not been notably made, Dieter specifically refers to Kort (Moulton). He has not confirmed Barry's models, not any overall model. The study is here. Kort confuses total AC noise power with the kind of AC noise that would cause a problem, which is current noise. Above, Kort claims that Dieter found something that Dieter did not find. This is a typical misrepresentation of a source by a POV-pusher. Britz shows that there is significant error only if the time constant of the power supply is unrealistically large. I could not find an "18 mW" figure in the Britz paper. Barry is ignoring the conclusion by Briz (p. 13):


 * For realistic cell resistance fluctuations and current control circuits, the long-term running mean power calculation is correct within small error bounds. The time constant of the control circuit (or its slewing rate) will not, in practice, lead to false power calculations, and therefore not to significant excess power artifacts.


 * To explain the significance of this, almost all CF researchers use a constant-current power supply, which is designed to respond rapidly to shifts in the load resistance (due to bubbling or any other cause) to keep the current at the set value. They then measure the cell voltage, sampling it many times and averaging the samples to record average voltage for a time interval. They then calculate the input power by multiplying the average voltage by the constant current, squared. If there were significant noise in the current, this could introduce an error, Kort is correct about that, and Britz acknowledges this, as I acknowledged it long ago. The question is the current noise. This is the question that I asked of the CF researchers, realizing that there was little data on this point, and Britz was one who responded; Kort had independently written him. I got answers from many researchers confirming the fact: current noise can be neglected, the level is too low to be a problem. This is confirmed by many different measures. Britz's paper simply examines one issue, the theory, with some data from real voltage noise and the resistance (bubble) noise it implies. In other research, Britz had reported the noise figures, showing that there was negligible noise above 3 KHz, i.e., the noise is down in the low-speed region that these power supplies can easily handle.


 * Britz, as you may know, Enric, is known as a skeptic on cold fusion. He is an expert on the issues Kort has raised. He is, in fact, confirming what I'd told Kort for long, that the issue was how well the power supply maintains constant current. Kort is still denying that he made any mistake. He has asked others to confirm his work. None have. Note, his formula may be completely correct, but that formula does not provide the necessary information, current noise.


 * None of this is ready for Wikipedia. Kort, taking his input power error theory there, was way outside what could be appropriate for a Wikipedia article. --Abd 18:58, 26 February 2011 (UTC)


 * First of all, Richard Garwin, a nuclear physicist who helped build the H-Bomb, said that he believed McKubre was measuring the input electrical power incorrectly. Rob Duncan, in a follow-up talk at the University of Missouri, disclosed that it had to do with the effect of bubbles forming on the surface of the cathode, referring back to the work of Wehnelt, which immediately links to Compton (who wrote the definitive analysis of Wehnelt's device) and to Violle (who first reported the underlying phenomenon that Wehnelt exploited in his carefully engineered device).  What I did was apply sophomore level AC circuit analysis to demonstrate that such analysis is well within the scope of knowledge that has been available in the literature for well over a century.  Moreover, it can even be demonstrated to be the effect upon which Elisha Gray suggested the design of a liquid telephone transmitter that Alexander Graham Bell famously demonstrated in his Boston laboratory 135 years ago this month.  Moulton 16:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Barry misrepresents the situation. McKubre does not claim, as we can see Barry claim above, that "there was no such AC noise power." By misunderstanding what the researchers actually claim, Barry then creates an "error" which he then attempts to correct. I've correspondence with Dieter Britz about this, and his review should not be considered, in any way, a confirmation of Barry's claim. Britz, and the other CF scientists which I've corresponded with on this matter, agree that a particular piece of experimental evidence was not stated, thus not making explicit something which everyone in the field already knew. McKubre actually covers it, without giving the numbers, but Barry doesn't believe him.
 * Briefly, there is AC noise power, and McKubre's method of calculating input power considers it and handles it correctly, under the experimental conditions. In order to assert his alternative theory, Barry has misrepresented the experimental conditions, has fabricated evidence by misinterpreting a television image of CF experimental data, and has ignored mountains of contrary evidence showing that his theory is incorrect.
 * And, by the way, I was an electronics engineer and understand Barry's theory, and am rejecting it from knowledge, not from reliance on authority. Barry's theory was, in fact, stated by Morrison in an early exchange. Not RS for Wikipedia, I think, normally, though the exchange was an attributed conversation between Morrison and Pons and Fleischmann, notable experts. Definitely we can use it here, see and the subpage Cold_fusion/Skeptical_arguments/Were_the_excess_heat_results_ever_shown_to_be_artifact?/Morrison-Pons-Fleischmann_debate. For Wikipedia, Barry's theory is purely original research and is an example of why WP doesn't rely on OR! --Abd 16:41, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Dieter is up to his third revision now, mostly minor corrections. There are still a number of substantive discrepancies to work through.  In Equation 2, Dieter forgot to apply the product rule when he differentiated the time-varying current.  If he used an incorrect formula for the time-derivative of I(t) in his Fortran program, he's gonna have to rerun the whole thing with the correct formula.  —Moulton 18:01, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

About the history of cold fusion
On Wikipedia, the history of cold fusion, for which normal reliable source is adequate, and the science of LENR, get mashed together in one article. Science fact is normally presented according to what's found in peer-reviewed or academic reliable source, which is much more confined. Being an encyclopedia, a summary of knowledge, depth on Wikipedia can be impossible.

However, on Wikiversity, a resource can have subpages and can go into any desired depth. We can have subpages on the history of Cold fusion and subpages on the science. We can present, as would be presented in any college seminar, original research, by teachers or students. (I just saw a series of student PowerPoint presentations as part of a course in a University, each student had researched some narrow subtopic and had prepared a presentation.)

For various reasons, I think you know why, you might be stronger at covering the history of cold fusion than the current state of the science. How about helping develop the cold fusion resource here, especially as to study of the history?

My long-term goal is fully developed, deep resources here, and a project could include writing encyclopedia-type articles that could be considered by Wikipedia editors, for placement on Wikipedia. This has been done with other articles: a superior article was written on another WMF wiki, and then was readily seen as superior, overall, by Wikipedia editors and was then ported to Wikipedia as one transwiki edit. Since the editor who wrote it, primarily, was banned on Wikipedia at that point, this was a demonstration of how content was more important than "bans." And I supported and worked (a little) on that move, and the editor was then called ScienceApologist.

The Wikipedia article, Cold fusion, is a mess, the result of years of revert warring, tendentious editing, drive-by changes, and tons of POV-pushing with variable "success." It's erratic and variable in result, and it's impossible to get a major consensus on what would be better, as long as it's piecemeal.

Please think about it. Thanks. --Abd 17:06, 3 March 2011 (UTC)


 * There are too many things to do in wikipedia. I have my hands full just trying to do the stuff I want to do, and I have a long list of edits that I would like to make one day, when I get the time to research properly the sources. I already have bought books for Valentine's Day and Father's Day, and I haven't even opened them. --Enric Naval 19:17, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations
Read at leisure, Enric. Hope you got to read your books.

. I was saying this two years ago, pointing out that the site was mentioned in reliable source, that it wasn't what it was claimed to be (copyvio, fraudulent alteration, etc.). You know what happened. I'm currently topic-banned by an admin who saw the discussion on meta that led to the delisting of lenr-canr.org,[] a discussion based on a simple request I made that got complex because the same old claims were made, once again. So I dismantled them, that takes a lot of words, and the admin didn't like how many words I used, even though those words apparently led to the request being granted.... In any case, it was time two years ago to stop keeping lenr-canr.org links out, and it is the best bibliography available, it's more extensive than Britz, plus it hosts the actual papers (usually as preprints, to avoid copyvio problems).

Mostly, lenr-canr.org is a library, like it claims to be, the true advocacy site is http://coldfusionnow.org. These are real advocates! (I know the people, they are not scientists, their interest is political and supporting the scientists.)

It's all gone bananas with Rossi, see Energy Catalyzer. The people I know, hard-headed scientists, have basically been convinced that, while there are lots of reasons to smell a rat, there are also reasons why Rossi is secretive, it's that U.S. Patent Office knee-jerk rejection of LENR patents because it's allegedly impossible, like perpetual motion, so Rossi has to keep it secret until he has such a killer demonstration that the Patent Office will cave. Apparently the demonstrations have been sufficiently convincing and sufficiently independent (none of them fully satisfactory in that, to my mind) that researchers have quietly dropped other avenues of approach and are working with nickel-hydrogen, trying to figure out what Rossi is doing.

If they are right, it's all over. 12 kW continuous generated power for hours cannot be an "artifact," a simple error, and it's damn hard to figure out how it could be deliberately faked, given all the conditions of the known demonstrations. My position is that human ingenuity is limitless, nothing is impossible on a small scale, once we allow suspicion of fraud. But when there are actual devices being sold, if that happens, the matter will be finished, except the physicists will then have the task, as they should have taken up in the 1990s, of what is actually happening. I don't think Rossi knows, himself. He just got it to work by trying many, many combinations.

By the way, you might tell your friend Ludwig that cold fusion isn't "pseudoscience," never was, it doesn't meet the criteria, it's testable, etc. Not to mention being routinely accepted by journals now. Just not a few hold-outs, and there is still a lot of belief that it is bogus, as with Ludwig's comment. (At the nadir, it was Fringe Science, not pseudoscience.) It's often been called "pathological science," but it doesn't meet Langmuir's criteria, which are iffy in themselves (See Bauer, referenced at the pathological science article.) He's right about everything else. I confronted some of the same issues, same topic, a year ago, there was an RfC, etc.

If you didn't notice, our friend Barry (Moulton) seriously insisted on being blocked, and finally got his wish. It's hard to get blocked on Wikiversity.

Meanwhile, I did add a link last year to the Wikiversity cold fusion resource, just before being topic-banned again. Those interwiki links are routine, or should be. The argument given with removal, that this was "self-published" would obviously apply to every See Also link, Wikiversity is no more -- and no less -- self-published than any Wikipedia page. Wikiversity is a place, covered by WMF neutrality policy, where topics can be discussed, for educational purpose, people try to do that on Wikipedia, which causes problems, right? Here was the removal of my insertion:. Looking for this, I noticed how, the previous edit, the editor now presented as "Vanished User", since he's banned and requested renaming, had removed a pile of convenience links to lenr-canr.org that I'd added. This was before the delisting of the site, it was based on the old whitelistings that we'd gotten. He'd mistaken convenience links for a claim that the site was reliable source. It's reliable for copies of preprints, those are author-provided, though some materials are scanned and processed from public-domain sources. I've never seen any alteration, the claims of alteration were based on a preface that Rothwell had prepended to a DoE report, publishers often do that. The report was unaltered and the preface was clearly separate (all this was debated in the blacklisting/whitelisting/delisting discussions, as well as at w:Talk:Martin Fleischmann. --Abd 13:16, 27 April 2011 (UTC)