Posted By: AbdAfter then, negative papers entirely disappeared,

One possible explanation of this apparent fact is that most or all competent investigators gave up on the phenomenon, leaving only those who measure poorly or self-deceive.

Posted By: AbdInterest in cold fusion has not died.

It largely has among main line scientific journals as well as most of the press. Goofy weirdoes like Joe Shea and Mats Lewan are still interested. But more reasonable reporters like Gibbs, who is very interested but finds that interest futile, are trying hard to find things to report... and not succeeding.

Posted By: maryyugo

Posted By: AbdAfter then, negative papers entirely disappeared,

One possible explanation of this apparent fact is that most or all competent investigators gave up on the phenomenon, leaving only those who measure poorly or self-deceive.

Sure. That explanation worked for two decades. It's dead, there has been entirely too much publication on the real cold fusion in mainstream journals, and I've cited sources here showing how skeptical physicists have moved their positions. It's not just Duncan, there is, for example, Shamoo. The claim of "poor measurement" and "self deception" is pure pseudoskepticism, unsupported by the experimental evidence. In normal science, if the heat measurements and helium measurements were artifact, this would have been shown *long ago*. It wasn't *ever* shown. No, something else happened with cold fusion and it's called a "cascade." The *belief* arose that cold fusion was bogus, and that belief was widely shared, with everything thinking that anyone who knows the evidence was of that persuasion. But, quite because of the cascade, this supposed "consensus" was no longer familiar with the evidence, but was assuming, collectively, that early characteristics and assumptions still held (whether or not they were *ever* true is debatable.)

For example, it was true for part of 1989 that "nobody could replicate.* By next year, there were plenty of counterexamples, so a sure sign that a writer is accepting the cascaded "consensus" is that they repeat the trope. It is possible to quibble in a more sophisticated way about the "replications," but they don't do that. They are apparently entirely unaware of the replications, or dismiss them as "poor measurement," in spite of what is, in fact, on the face, *conclusive evidence.*

Posted By: AbdInterest in cold fusion has not died.

It largely has among main line scientific journals as well as most of the press.

No. Just not so. Publication rates in mainstream journals have quadrupled since the nadir. That is not "largely dying." There are agencies and institutions which still accept the cascaded belief. We are watching the death of a skeptical position. It lives on *only* because of people like Mary Yugo. Real skeptics, many, still remain skeptical, but they have been saying for some time, "maybe there is something to this." The ones who, for whatever reason, actually look closer, become what pseudoskeptics then call "believers."

My publication data comes from a skeptic, Dieter Britz, an electrochemist who took it upon himself to maintain a database of cold fusion papers from mainstream publications. He's familiar with the research, so why is he still a skeptic? I've asked him. He has no answer, which is, in fact, a sign of being a skeptic. I think he wants an explanation. Which we all do. Except for pseudoskeptics, who don't need one other than "woo."

Goofy weirdoes like Joe Shea and Mats Lewan are still interested. But more reasonable reporters like Gibbs, who is very interested but finds that interest futile, are trying hard to find things to report... and not succeeding.

I don't know who Joe Shea is. Mats Lewan is simply a reporter, and reported what there was to report. He's got his own publication now, and appears to have not followed up. He was not really involved with cold fusion, unless you believe that Rossi has something to do with cold fusion. There is no evidence for that, but do you have any? Did Rossi claim that his results were due to cold fusion?

Yeah, he wrote something about proton fusion with nickel to produce copper, quickly discredited, and this was just talk talk, no real experimental results, just a reported analysis that showed that the copper was very unlikely to come from transmutation.

I've been writing about cold fusion, Mary loves to write about Rossi. And then tar everyone involved with cold fusion with the same brush.

Posted By: spinner"One, with an input power of a milliwatt, resulted in 7 W of power for 600 seconds."

I'd like to have one of these, please!?
Thank you!

How to get it is described in the literature. Since that was the best result of a series of experiments, you will likely have to run such a series yourself, not just one. Most results are likely to be lower than that. Watch out for nanoparticle metals, they are health hazards, and nanoparticle palladium is very, very expensive. Have fun.

I was told that with the easier electrochemical approach, I'd need to spend about $8,000 just to see my first excess heat. $8,000 for what, if you are lucky, is a few watts. Depending on the calorimetric method, though, the calorimetry precision is much smaller than that, it's below the milliwatt range (Pons and Fleischmann, who were measuring excess power in the 500 milliwatt range), or as much as 50 milliwatts of noise with some simpler (and requiring less expertise) methods. I rather doubt you would do this just for personal curiosity, but maybe.

If you actually wanted to do something useful, I have two alternatives: do a heat/helium study. That's going to be, however, much more trouble. A mass spectrometer that can resolve He-4 from D2 is about $10,000. You can't use just any mass spec, unless you are content with approximate results, like Miles was. Some people doing work in this area collect samples for blind analysis, which is a good way to do it. That's what Miles did.

Or try replicate the SPAWAR neutron results, which can be done for about $100, my estimate. Nobody has replicated so far. It's not really important, but, hey, *interesting.* One would probably have to run the experiment a few times, checking out possible errors, and there are many ways to get this wrong. I arranged for one of these attempts, by a student, and the results were apparently negative, but with problems. Not conclusive at all. The SPAWAR neutron results are relatively 'convincing' but not conclusive, and, as mentioned, really have nothing to do with the main reaction, the neutron levels are vanishingly small, though significant.

Posted By: Abdso that I'm not stuck depending on the word of "Hairy" on moletrap

Because we're not often called upon to depend on the word of Abd of forum newvortex which seems to promote diet pepsi as the cause of the worlds ills. Oh wait...

Posted By: maryyugo

Posted By: spinnerI'd like to have one of these, please!?
Thank you!

Me too. The phenomenon is supposedly 20+ years old and $100 Million or more has been spent trying to make it work and it still seems to sputter along when it feels like it? I know no other scientific discovery that has proceeded in that manner. Maybe I missed one.

My impression is that many discoveries languished for a very long time before any practical applications appeared. However, $100 million is, indeed, a lot of money, and one might think that should have produced more results than it did. However, that's *what happened.* The reality of cold fusion was *demonstrated* conclusively more than twenty years ago, and, as I wrote, confirmed widely over the next decade. The large sums of money were probably spent foolishly, trying to create a commercial level effect before the mechanism was understood. I know that those who were involved with MITI, the largest project, in Japan, have said that it was a disaster, with money being spent pursuing alleys that were known to be blind. It was, essentially, a boondoggle. I'm not aware of any significant results from MITI, but there might be some. The Toyota project in France did produce more evidence, but was cancelled when they realized that this was going nowhere as far as *commercial power production*, fast. It is quite possible that we won't know the mechanism for a long time. And until we know the mechanism, any efforts to make the effect reliable will likely be hit-or-miss. It's real. Muon-catalyzed fusion is real, but that doesn't make it practical, and there are reasons for thinking it will never be practical. Unless you can figure out a way to allow muons to catalyze more reactions than has yet been attained, something north of 100 per muon. Muons are too energy-costly to make, and, unfortunately, helium sucks them right up.

It seems to take forever and a day to get my brilliant repartee through the moderation on NewVort. Not really worth the trouble. Kills the spontaneity.

I'm not intending to "win" anything, just to make my views known over that side. But as has been said, there may be no point anyway since (by volume, at least) he is approximately the only poster.

I would disagree about "promote the possibility..." Most of us will at least entertain that. He is promoting the actual, genuine, definite conclusive _reality_ of what he says, or what he says somebody says.

Posted By: pcstru

Posted By: Abd

Posted By: hairykrishna

Posted By: Abd

Posted By: hairykrishnaSimple conservation of momentum rules out d+d->4He.

That's a naive expectation, but a very reasonable one.

http://www.moletrap.co.uk/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=3402&page=12

(^^ 1 day ago)

Posted By: Abd

Posted By: hairykrishnaSimple conservation of momentum rules out d+d->4He.

That's a naive expectation, but a very reasonable one. Those who are working on d+d theories are physicists, generally. They know about conservation of momentum, and so do I. If you want a description of how they are attempting to deal with the problem, I could give that, and it would simply irritate more people, and for little benefit.

(^^ 1 hour ago)

And yet they are not the same post.

OMG! I thought the forum software just forgot where I left off. I think this guy is really setting a new standard for jackass trollery. I think that surpasses the shit Gaby used to pull!

I nominate Abd for permanent owner of FWOTW until such time as he shuts the hell up or we get someone else to pick on. It will make it much easier to skip his posts.

Posted By: korkskrewI nominate Abd for permanent owner of FWOTW until such time as he shuts the hell up or we get someone else to pick on. It will make it much easier to skip his posts.

Please be hospitable. It is not all that easy to find someone like Abd. He is willing to argue that dowsing rods and homeopathy have value. That's rare in uncensored fora. forumorums? foramina?

He tells me via a private message - perhaps it will turn up on NewVort - that he sees moletrap as a "bar crowd". That's interesting. So do I. Maybe the White Hart, or Callaghan's Crosstime Saloon. That's why I hang around. But if you're looking for gravitas, maybe here is not the place.