Continuing the reply to Joshua Cude

Isn't it an amazing coincidence that of all the possible products of nuclear reactions, the only one they claim to observe commensurate with the heat is the only one that is present in the background at about the right level?

That's not nearly as much of a coincidence as that the helium findings correlate with anomalous heat. Helium is a nuclear product, and it's produced by nuclear reactions (mostly radioactive decay) on the earth. The helium findings fully consider background helium. The ambient level is not the "right level." To get to that level, takes quite a bit of heat. However, in some experiments, the helium levels rise above ambient. They show no sign of slowing as the levels approach ambient, as they would if this were diffusion from ambient. In the Violante work, the levels are eported are all above ambient. He reports three results, with one, the one with the lowest heat, being slightly above ambient (it's the "right level" above ambient, but the error bars are as large as that increase). The other two, with much more heat, are elevated appropriately above ambient.

All the more plausible products that can be detected easily at levels orders of magnitude lower, are found, surprise, surprise, at orders of magnitude below the expected level. Nature is toying with them.

She is not going to lift her skirts for ungrateful boors who know-it-all, who are quite certain that her friends, those who do seek to know her, by consulting her and listening to what she reveals to them, are "pseudoscientists."

There is only one *major* nuclear product from FPHE cold fusion (i.e, from palladium deuteride experiments). That's helium. Tritium *is* found, though it has not been correlated with heat (that's a product of the obsession with "proving" nuclear reactions. Tritium levels were far too low to explain the heat. Tritum is found at about a million times down from helium. So whatever tritium is being produced almost certainly has nothing to do with the main reactin. Tritium -- and neutrons -- were a *massive* red herring. Expected from hot fusion.

So ... cold fusion is not hot fusion. Surprise.

The transmutation situation is similar: all the precursors and products are stable, when of course, only a tiny fraction of radionuclides are stable.)

There is a great experimental mystery here. Basically, the chemists discovered cold fusion, and the physicsts are sitting around waiting for *chemists* to explain it. Storms is giving that task a shot, but my opinion is he should stick to chemistry. He doesn't have the training to handle the mechanism, which has puzzled many highly knowledgeable physicists.

One of the important recent publications in cold fuson was the 2010 Hagelstein paper setting limits on charged particle radiation in cold fusion, at least for the FPHE. His paper reports that if there were charged particles at over 20 KeV, there would be secondary reactions or other observable effects that are not observed. I watch the discussions among theoreticians on this. Nobody likes it! But Hagelstein knows what he is doing. The *exact8 limit may be misleading. For example, Takahashi's theory -- which is quite incomplete, but which is certainly of interest, Takahashi is a hot fusion physicist applying the tools of quantum field theory to the cold fusion problem -- is currently suggesting that 4D fusion is making Be-8. That's not good enough, because ordinarily, Be-8 would fission in a femtosecond, and doesn't have time to radiate energy before fission. Nevertheless, Be-8 as an intermeidary, first pass, solves a major mystery of cold fusion, how helium could be produced without gammas. Unfortunately, the helium produced would, we'd expect, have a kinetic energy of 232.8 MeV/He-4. I.e., all that fusion energy as not alpha particles. These would cause secondary effects that would be highly visible, and, yes, those would include transmutations.

However, if the Be-8, because of the special circumstances of its formation (in a Bose-Einstein condensate, essentially), can enter a halo state, it might be able to last long enough to radiate the energy as a burst of X-0rays, so Takahashi is looking at the physics of that an moving to predict the X-ray spectrum. If that spectrum can be confirmed, well, he might be eligible for a Nobel Prize. HIs whole approach has been a long shot.

My position on cold fusion theory is very simple: we don't know what is happening, and anyone who claims to know, at this point, is blowing smoke. Let's say they are being optimistic. Maybe they are right, and maybe not, but no theory has successfully predicted, with accuracy, experimental results, other than the very general theory I"ve mentioned, that the FP Heat effect is due to deuterium fusion, mechanism unknown.

Preparata actually predicted helium as the ash, he may have been the first, and he was right, but nobody is still looking at his theory. It was a plausible guess, basically.
To sum up: An objective look at the heat/helium results does not provide even weak evidence for cold fusion. And given its extraordinary nature, that means it is almost certainly not happening.
Sum dim.

This is pure pseudoskepticism. Basically, there is evidence sufficient to convince the peer reviewers at Naturwissenschaften to publish that Storms review. If that were preposterous, flimsy, "not even weak evidence," there is no way that Springer-Verlage would risk the reputation of their "flagship multidisciplinary journal" on pseudoscience. What the pseudoskeptic does, instead of merely pointing out weakness in evidence, and that's always possible, convert those alleged weaknesses into a complete discarding of evidence -- "not even weak evidence" -- so that the pseudoskeptic can then allege "pseudoscience."

Is Cude lying? Does he know how highly misleading his statements are?

Whether or not he does, he is *responsible* for what he's written. As am I. The difference is that I'm a known person, using the real name I use socially and professionally. If I were to lie, my reputation is at stake. I can't just walk away from some pseudonym.

Anyone can make mistakes, on the other hand. But when someone makes charges like Cude has made, his own mistakes become much less forgiveable.

Posted By: alsetalokinCude comes across as far more believable than Abd, based on what's been written here. Of course without fact-checking myself, I could be watching two people making up stuff or spinning selective tales. I recall an old professor of mine who simply made up references during class lectures. I notice that Abd chooses not to try to refute actually any of Cude's real points, but rather would resort to repeating the same old assertions louder and more slowly, along with other weaseling and wriggling about. This seems to go in Cude's favor, since he's citing specific numbers, dates and facts. I score this round for Cude.

Your right to score as you choose. Your right to ignore Cude's misrepresentation of evidence. He's counting on you not actually reading the papers. Cude raised certain points that might be worthy of response, and I did not address them completely (and, remember, folks here are already complaining about the length -- and *so am I*) but they were fundamentally irrelevant and misleading. To see that, you'd need to read the sources and I'd need to bring them here. I only did this to a small degree, and apparently to no effect.

I' not seeing that this community is actually interested in the topic. That's fine. It's not for everyone.

I intend to analyze this discussion elsewhere, likely on newVortex. Alsetalokin's account of what just happens does not match my memory of what I just did, I did answer nearly every point. Cude, however, has been a full-time cold fusion attack dog, for years. So, apparently, he knows how to appeal to your prejudices effectively.

So, never mind. I'm not continuing unless actually invited. Welcome to the world of Mary Yugo and Joshua Cude.

If someone wants a specific point addressed, ask on newVortex or write newvortex-owner at yahoogroups.com.

Last word.

Cude raised a point here that I want to acknowledge before departing.

Posted By: joshua cude

Posted by Abd:

Anomalous heat from palladium deuteride has been massively confirmed, and at levels far above noise.
...
153 reports existed at last analysis, a couple of years ago, reporting anomalous heat in PdD.

Those 153 reports include NiH experiments and several different kinds of experiment, including gas-loading, so it's not a simple count of replications. And results can be far above the noise, but still within the magnitude of typical artifacts in calorimetry. As Rothwell says, "calorimetric errors and artifacts are more common that researchers realize".

If there's 153 reports, there should be at least one good one, right? But there isn't. They're all bad. And the better they are, the lower the claim -- just like pathological science everywhere.

Cude makes very general statements about an entire body of research, but I will acknowledge here that I may have inaccurately stated the matter of "153 experiments." That was from an analysis of the Britz database, and may have included a few NiH results, early ones. If so, my comment was misleading. I will research this, reviewing the original report on the Britz database (I didn't make this up), and cover this on newVortex.

I would be surprised if there were more than a handful of NiH reports in there. Cude raises other issues that I also intend to address there. I'm leaving his whole original post, intact, below for that purpose.

Yes, setting aside NiH, the "positive results" are almost entirely regarding reports of anomalous heat in palladium deuteride. They are not exact replications of the work of Pons and Fleischmann. Rather, rearchers often created highly loaded palladium deuteride with their own techniques. The results do include gas-loading, in particular. They may also include highly idiosyncratic approaches. Some of that work is weak, but for whatever reason, Britz classified the papers as positive.

Those results do not, as an example, include the consulting McKubre did for EPRI. That was generally not published under peer review, and EPRI reports were not considered by Britz to be "mainstream journals." However, EPRI was critically concerned because of the needs of their memebership, the electric utility industry, and SRI, McKubre's employer, would be responsible for insuring the integrity and scientific professionalism of the reports.

Meanwhile, it's been noted that newVortex is a "small, insular community." Well, not exactly. It *is* small, but it cannot be judged by the posts alone. The list is being watched, and posts there are googleable, and have already been picked up and echoed elsewhere. That doesn't happen with the private fora on newVortex. So, for me, and given that I'm not seeing an active welcome from this community, it's a loss for me to continue here, and highly distracting.

Thanks, it's been useful for me.

P&F claimed a COP of 4 with tens of watts in the early 90s, but the calorimetry was challenged in the literature by Morrison. They spent a lot of time vigorously defending their results, but when Toyota gave them 50 million dollars, they could never do as well again, and Toyota shut them down.

Piantelli claimed tens of watts from NiH, but CERN showed they could get the same temperature increase, and could explain it without nuclear reactions; Piantell's calorimetry was flawed. To this day, Piantelli's still making claims, and still using the same flawed calorimetry.

Supposedly, the best calorimetry was McKubre's, which is why his 1994 data still holds pride of place on Rothwell's home page. But that was a pathetic fraction of a watt, and about 10% of the input. This is actually *inconsistent* with P&F's claims of COP=4, even if the 10% were right. But McKubre's heat disappeared when the current was turned off, *much* faster then one would expect the helium to diffuse out of the Pd, and again in contradiction to the many claims of heat after death.

McKubre claimed to find the (4?) criteria, which if present produced CF every time. And yet, after that, the Toyota lab in Japan reported 27 cells with no heat in any of them. Were they too incompetent to meet McKubre's criteria?

The fact that McKubre's '94 results are still trotted out is a clear indication the field is making no progress, and that it is pathological.

Did McKubre follow up and improve this landmark experiment? Not that we know about. EPRI pretty much cut him off, and now he goes around trying to replicate people far less learned than he, like Dardik or Godes or Papp. It's kind of sad, really.

All the excitement about cold fusion now comes from experiments with lame calorimetry, including Celani, Piantelli, Miley, Godes, and so on. The latest NRL results that Rothwell called irrefutable showed heat equivalent to a drop of gasoline, and they claimed 5% reproducibility. It seems in pathological circles, the deluded cheer when progress is negative.

Posted By: AbdMeanwhile, it's been noted that newVortex is a "small, insular community." Well, not exactly. It *is* small, but it cannot be judged by the posts alone.

Mirriam-WebsterInsular: characteristic of an isolated people; especially : being, having, or reflecting a narrow provincial viewpoint

We sure can judge newvortex by this standard, outside of your wall-of-words you have people saying that Diet Pepsi is the cause of autism and Alzhimers.

Some random douche on newvortexI am collaborating closely with Woodrow C. Monte, whose breakthrough methanol-formaldehyde paradigm expands the game from aspartame to all methanol sources and dozens of major diseases, from Alzheimer's to autism

This person really should be ashamed of themselves but I think it's worth pointing out that this is something newvortex allows but saying that this hypothesis is so close to impossible that it makes no odds - isn't.

The list is being watched, and posts there are googleable, and have already been picked up and echoed elsewhere.

So we google: "Their first paper reported the heat evidence, and they were world-class electrochemists" from your first post linked to at moletrap. No hits. Not even on your vanity site. Google has to break the phrasing to find hits even on your own site.

Now we google: "I linked this thread from moletrap, and discussion ensued there" - which is one of the earlier posts by you about the Moletrap thread. Google shows 25 results - all on your favorite site for hearing yourself talk.

Googling now: "The story in the Columbia Tribune shows the impact of the anti-cold fusion cascade in the early years." this is message twelve on your board. One hit again on your person source of narcissism on the web.

There might be posts being re-posted elsewhere but not with very much regularity. I'd suspect that if it is, it's probably being done by you. You are so wrapped up in making yourself look important it's both sad and funny.

Posted By: AbdThey are not exact replications of the work of Pons and Fleischmann. Rather, rearchers often created highly loaded palladium deuteride with their own techniques.

*sigh* So you kept whining about how there was all this replication and now you're telling us that perhaps all these experiments were done differently. You really think that makes your hypothesis *more* likely don't you?

Posted by Abd:

Posted by Cude:

If there were a single credible experiment in cold fusion, that gave a predictable result (even on a statistical basis), there would be no need to repeatedly point to the thousand journal papers.

[…] There is such an experiment, and it's been described here. It's the heat/helium correlation.

Which one? Not Miles' experiment in the 90s. That was hugely controversial in refereed literature, so it's not accurate to call it credible. It was also considered by the 2004 DOE panel, who also did not find it credible. The levels of heat were on the order of a watt or so, and there are so many claims of heat at the level of tens of watts. Why don't they look for helium in experiments where the levels would be much higher?

And Miles hasn't been replicated in the peer-reviewed literature, so I don't accept that it is an example that gives a predictable result.

But heat/helium is not merely statistically reliable, it is *quantitatively reliable.* It's been confirmed by a dozen research groups, independently.

A revolutionary result, worthy of the Nobel prize, if true, and none of them could pass peer review. Hmm.

A dozen groups found quantitatively reliable results? Then why did Storms only use the results from 4 groups. Sounds like you're misrepresenting things again.

Especially since of the 12 groups, Storms himself writes that one did not measure heat, and another claims the helium measurements were not definitive. And a third is under a cloud of suspicion about falsifying data. And a 4th required private communication to bring the results in line. I shudder to think what I'd find if I examined the other 8 *non-refereed* claims.

But as McKubre himself said in 2008, there is no quantitative reproducibility in the field, and there is no inter-lab reproducibility without exchange of personnel. Most scientists would say that means there is no reproducibility in the field.

That's taken out of context, another trick of pseudoskeptics. McKubre was not talking about correlation,

Maybe that's because the correlation has not been reproduced under peer review. So the argument stands.

[….] He was talking about the raw heat experiments. It's a *very difficult* experiment, and there are many, many ways to fail.

Doesn't matter. If someone finds a way to succeed, he should be able to teach others to succeed as well. It works in every other field.

At the very least, when they get a piece of palladium or nickel that works, they should be able to supply it to other labs to make it work as well.

When you have a real phenomenon, understood or not, like high temperature superconductivity, people don't list the number of papers to support it; they cite a single seminal paper that describes how to get the phenomenon.

If that is known. There was no such "seminal paper," for historical reasons. However, people *did* reproduce the effect, and that's what really matters.

No, they really didn't, by any reasonable meaning of reproduce. What they claim is that they observed excess heat sometimes. They got the same *sign*. But the excess heat bore no reproducible relation to any experimental metric.

- P&F got tens of watts and a COP of 4, and McKubre, using better calorimetry got a COP of 1.1 and a fraction of a watt.

- Electrolysis people claimed 90% plus loading was needed, and then the gas-loading people got excess heat with loading probably barely above 50%.

- First, they claimed heavy water was needed, and McKubre even used light water as a control, and then others started claiming light water worked too.

- In 2003, in a NewScientist article, someone wrote: "When Imam examined the sample, he found that unlike the others, which all had a flawless surface, this one had minute cracks that had appeared when it formed. A correlation between cracks and null results has been noted by many researchers, before and since." Now, if you're following the field these days, cold fusion is all about minute cracks and imperfections.

That same article in NewScientist quotes a cold fusion researcher who finally threw in the towel: “For close to two years, we tried to create one definitive experiment that produced a result in one lab that you could reproduce in another,” Saalfeld says. “We never could. What China Lake did, NRL couldn't reproduce. What NRL did, San Diego couldn't reproduce. We took very great care to do everything right. We tried and tried, but it never worked.”

The fact is that there is not a single experiment in the field that a qualified scientist can perform with expected results (other than null results), even on a statistical basis. There is not a single nuclear reaction that people in the field can agree is occurring. There is not a single example of unequivocal energy density that exceeds chemical. There is not a single example where the energy from cold fusion can power the experiment itself, let alone anything else.

Posted By: adminroot

Posted By: AbdThe post length limit is very roughly one screen (obviously, YMMV). Beyond that, one must break the post up into sections.

Now increased, just for you.

And reduced again. You don't need 20,000 characters to say fuck all.

Posted by Abd:
Cold fusion *did* die, for the "mainstream," now defined not as those informed on a science, but on those who pay no attention to it, in 1990.

Well, you can define it however you like to make your ridiculous claims true, and to help you sleep at night, but it's not going to persuade skeptics. You may think that you are somehow more savvy and better informed than Brian Cox or Murray Gell-Mann or Stephen Hawking, but only your gullible groupies will believe you. Scientists dream of an opportunity to make breakthroughs like cold fusion would represent if it were true. That's the sort of thing that brings honor, glory, and fame to an otherwise fairly sterile existence. They make it their business to
keep informed of new and important developments in their field.

Brian Cox is passionate about science and the public good. He believes (as does Hawking) the most important technological advance during this century will be exploitation of fusion energy. He recently made a documentary on fusion, and didn't mention cold fusion at all. I'm gonna rule out ignorance on this one.

And, contrary to true believers' ideas, one does not have to become familiar with 20 years of cold fusion research to reject it. In fact, the very notion that you think such familiarity is required should be a hint that it is bogus. The sort of claims made by cold fusioneers are not subtle, like the Higgs boson or the top quark. They should be obvious like superconductivity or aviation. And physicist of all stripes immediately accepted high Tc superconductivity without reading any background. The Nobel prize followed a year later. It took 110 seconds for the Wrights to persuade skeptics they could fly. Cold fusion would be like that if it were real.

Posted by Abd:
Really, get this: a definitive judgment was issued and cold fusion was declared dead, before the actual cause of the FP Heat Effect was known.

For most it was because the existence of the heat effect was not believed. Or, that the cause was experimental error and confirmation bias.

The *mechanism* is still unknown. But the effect is real, and the cause is the conversion of deuterium to helium, and *there is no contrary evidence and no contrary review in mainstream journals.

This is not the judgement of the DOE panel, who reviewed the evidence *after* all those confirmations of which you speak. I see no reason to accept your judgement, or Storms', above that of the panel of experts, or of the vast majority of reviewers who reject papers for prominent journals.

And there is contrary evidence. There is 60 years worth of contrary evidence, all of which fits perfectly into a generalization that suggests cold fusion won't happen. That includes experiments (and commercial devices) that produce fusion in palladium deuteride, and a vast array of other experimental observations of nuclear reactions in condensed matter. In fact, the name "Condensed matter nuclear science" is hardly appropriate for this fringe science, because fission, and radioisotope thermoelectric generators and all manner of natural radioactivity represent condensed matter nuclear science. Curie's work was all condensed matter nuclear science.

But again, the judgement is that the claims of cold fusion would manifest in a far more unequivocal way. The evidence reported so far simply is not persuasive. That's the bottom line. And the cold fusion researchers give up on the most definitive experiment without any peer-reviewed papers replicating the controversial results from 20 years ago. That does not inspire confidence.

The absence of negative reviews means nothing. Skeptics don't review fields that the mainstream already dismisses. What would be the point?

I feel a bit like someone who was just out walking his dog when two UFOs collided at the intersection.

Posted by Abd:
I believe I stated, in one of the posts here, that the rate quadrupled from the nadir rate, which was six papers per year. While we could quibble about this or that detail,

It's not a detail. You stated that the number of papers in peer-reviewed mainstream journals quadrupled. In fact, in the past 3 years, the rate is 2 per year -- 1/3 of the rate. That's a factor of 12 less than what you claimed.

*Twelve* times less.

You and others have emphasized the importance of publication in mainstream journals, and now it's merely a quibble.

there is no doubt at all but that interest has increased since 2004-2205.

If you have some evidence to support that, then by all means, present it. I think internet activity has increased, thanks to Rossi. There may be more conference papers than before. But so far at least, there aren't more mainstream papers. And that's what you claimed.

If you have to be dishonest to make your point, then one wonders if you think the truth is not adequate.

There is also some evidence that mainstream interest is on the wane again. For 5 years the ACS hosted a cold fusion session, and in the early ones, they had press conferences. And they published 2 SourceBooks which included the proceedings. But lately they've turned down publication of the proceedings, as has the APS, and this year the ACS rejected a proposal for a 2013 cold fusion session. Could it be that after 5 years, they realized that there was no progress, and it was a case of the delusional preaching to the deluded?

Instead of looking at actual publication rates, overall, Cude, as is typical, just makes his drive-by claim.

No. It was *you* that qualified the publication rate. You are the one who said mainstream publications were coming in at 24 per year, when in fact, according to the database *you* cited, it's only 2 per year in the past 3 years.

No problem with people being skeptical, it's understandable. But don't depend on what Cude claims. He lies, or is grossly misleading.

Again. *You're* the one caught in a lie here. What I said about publication rates is scrupulously true.

The "conference proceedings" book he mentions is not a set of conference proceedings.

I got the information from Tanzella in his preface to JCMNS vol 10: "This symposium resulted in the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook Volume 2,"

Whether it is more than a proceedings or not, it is certainly not a mainstream journal. It's a LENR sourcebook; obviously, they will accept papers on LENR.