Talk:Cold fusion

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November 2003 – November 2003 December 2003 – July 2004 July 2004 – January 2005 February 2005 – December 2005 January 2006 – January 2006 January 2006 – April 2006 (E. Storms article, ObsidianOrder article, Powerpedia, Atomic temperature, F&P Press Conference, Jones and Rafelski) April 2006 (POV issues) April - May 2006 (POV issues) June 2006 (Lead section) August 2006 (Nuclear Transmutation and length of article) October 2006 (revert to FA version) December 2006 December 2007

Reorganisation/split?

Hi. I think the current version of the page is getting very large and difficult to follow. The Mosier-Boss/Spzak experiment is now starting to rack up a significant number of references, and it's (IMO) a significantly different experiment to Pons-Fleischmann, with different experimental specifics and some different "issues", so "Cold fusion" is no longer synonymous with "the Pons-Fleischmann experiment".

In light of this, several sections that are specific to PF now need to be reorganised or subcategorised. We also need a separate section on MB/S. I think that given the size of the article (which will increase with the new MB/S material), it's probably time for [we might want to consider] all the very specific technical stuff about Pons-Fleischmann to be moved back out to a separate article. At some point, when the MB/S material also achieves critical mass (and gets an agreed name), that should probably [might] be exported to a separate page too, with "cold fusion" becoming the generic parent page.

I'll be doing some editing on the page today (05 May 2007). ErkDemon 14:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, finished. In the end I chickened out of reorganising the whole article, I just modified the intro, added the section on the Mosier-Boss/Szpak experiment(s)' (using info from a New Scientist, article, 5-May-2007, pp32-34 "Cold Fusion Rides Again"), created a same-level section for the Pons-Fleishmann experiment, and moved a few things about. I think that it makes sense to have all the specifics of the PF experiment corralled in one place, regardless of whether we later split it off as another page or not. I still think that the rest of the article could do with wrangled into a more disciplined shape, but I'm pooped, so I'm stopping here. ErkDemon 16:05, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Retitled a few sections, too, with names that seemed to be more descriptive of their contents. Didn't change the contents or order of those sections. Finished now, honest! ErkDemon 16:36, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the effort. Here are some more suggestions for further improvements:

• The very first sentence of the article should be the definition of cold fusion. This is the case in most wikipedia articles.
• The introduction should present the conclusions of the 2004 DOE review, so that readers have an immediate sense of the scientific view on the subject. With your intro, he would not immediately know what to think of it. Reviews have more value to readers than primary sources.
• Because the article is very long, it should start with an overview section. The section title should reflect it. In past discussions, it was decided to deemphasize the controversy side of the story, because it is old history by now.
• I would not place the attempted explanations so early in the article, for different reasons. The scientific method starts with the evidence, then search for a theory: the article should reflect that, especially in a subject like cold fusion. The reader will wonder "an explanation for what" when reading it, because he would not have yet read about the evidences. Also, the content of this section is actually very poor, because today there is no satisfactory explanation for cold fusion yet; so this section is not particularly instructive for the reader. If you look at superconductivity, it starts with the experimental evidences, then the theory, then the history: why not follow the same structure ?
• The experimental evidences are so far down in the article: who would read that far ? Yet, this is what is most interesting to present, to understand what we are talking about.
• The positionning of "Measurement of excess heat", "Nuclear products", and "reproducibility" seem to imply that they relate to the F&P setup. This is not correct, as a variety of setups have been used to arrive at these conclusions (as explained in "Moving beyond the initial controversy"). It is wrong to think or imply that the F&P setup has been used for 18 years, then came the MB/S setup in 2006.
• I do favour the creation of a section on the MB/S setup and Galileo Project. It should come in the experimental section.

I won't have the time to discuss or implement these changes, so do as you see best. Pcarbonn 16:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I have now implemented most of these suggested changes. Pcarbonn 21:43, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Cheers! This isn't my field, so I'll now happily butt out and leave any further changes to people who know rather more about this stuff than I do. It's nice to see the page being updated. ErkDemon 02:16, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

PS, first paragraph says that in hot fusion, ascending nucleosynthesis releases energy. That's obviously only true for the lighter target elements. Some rewording required. ErkDemon 02:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

OK. thanks. Now fixed. Pcarbonn 16:20, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Fascinating!

That is all I have to say! Excellent read! Bill Sapperton

Codeposition

Maybe we should have an article on Szpak and Mosier-Boss's codeposition technique, since it was really the turning point for reliability and replicability. They've produced a ton of stuff at SPAWAR/SSC, and it's all on lenr-canr.org. 75.35.79.57 20:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Wrong Tone for Wiki

"The 2004 DoE panel identified several areas that could be further studied using appropriate scientific methods."

This sentance in the article suggests that only "inappropriate" methods have been used so far. Is that true? If not it needs to be changed to this -

"The 2004 DoE panel identified several areas that could be further."

Cold fusion in pop culture

I would agree with User:67.188.7.78's removal of the pop culture section. It was becoming undue weight. If someone wants to resurrect, I would suggest breaking it out into a separate article and linking to it. Ronnotel 12:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Section was recreated, I moved it to a separate list and linked to it from See Also section. Ronnotel 11:08, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Removing hoax tag

The hoax tag that just appeared seems somewhat disingenuous. It was added by a new account with only two other edits. The call for reliable sources is at odds with the copious references to reliable sources cited in the article. I'm going to remove this tag. Before re-adding it, please provide more evidence that this page is a hoax, including why you think that the supporting literature is inadequate. Ronnotel 18:56, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Removed recent developments

I removed this recently-added paragraph:

However, recently an entity called D2Fusion claims to be ready to turn cold fusion into commercial products soon. Speculations that cold fusion might be true had stired up investment interest in palladium, the metal involved in cold fusion experiments.

The referenced article does not talk about "commercial products soon". If it did, some people knowledgeable in the field would have strong reservation (see New Energy Times' investigation about previous claims of D2Fusion). You may also want to know that D2Fusion is being sold to Enwin Resources Inc. [1]

The second sentence would need a reference, as there are many other possible reasons for the increase of Palladium price. Wikipedia is not a place to distribute speculative rumors. Pcarbonn 09:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Patent number needed for the Little effect

A recent anonymous commentator has added a paragraph in the theory section about "the Little effect", and references a US patent issued on April 25, 2005. Will that commentator please supply the patent number so we can reference this properly? Using the US Patent Office's search engine, I am unable to find any matches on patents issued on 4/25/2005 to inventor "Little". JohnAspinall 15:42, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I could not find the patent either. A patent is not a proper way to publish a theory anyway. I removed the whole paragraph until more info is provided (anonymous edit because I was not logged :-( ). Pcarbonn 17:21, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Extra shielding from conduction band electrons?

A paragraph in the theory section floats a suggestion whose only reference is an archive of a site called "The HalfBakery". The suggestion, which I'll summarize as "conduction band electrons could shield deuterons more than valence band electrons", should at the very least be presented alongside the mainstream physics which would claim to debunk it. I would prefer to see the paragraph removed completely, but if consensus is to debunk alongside the "half baked" suggestion, I believe all the physics is already well described in WP. Essentially:

• interatomic distances are on the order of 10^-10m (already mentioned in this article)
• nuclear interaction distances are on the order of 10^-15m (already mentioned in this article)
• therefore in order to shield with an electron, you'd have to concentrate the electron probability distribution into a volume that was 15 decimal orders of magnitude smaller than its expected volume (simple math - cube of the ratio of the distances above)
• there is no experimental or theoretical justification for conduction band electrons behaving that way (start with Electronic_band_structure as a reference)

JohnAspinall 16:53, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I would have no prblm removing that paragraph. In fact, the whole section on proposed theories should be significantly reworked. A good source is Ed. Storms' 2007 book, listed in bibliography: it has a chapter on proposed theories. Pcarbonn 18:58, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I finally got Storms' book through inter-library loan. The theory section (it's only one section of one chapter where he actually discusses theories) is only notable for its inadequacy. He considers two possibilities:

• a mish-mosh of transmutation possibilities, with no discussion of the conventional nuclear science; and
• Mills' hydrinos.

It's really pretty sad. JohnAspinall (talk) 01:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: "No strawman tactics on Wikipedia please"

To User:Pcarbonn... apart from assuming good faith, you would know that I wasn't using "tactics" if you had read my edit summary.

The original text read "More claims of experimental success were reported, primarily in non-mainstream publications" until User:Donreed changed it to "More claims of experimental success were reported, primarily in non-mainstream publications: that is, not in refereed physics journals" here. That User has now been blocked due to hundreds of unhelpful edits. I was simply returning the text to what it originally said.

You, in fact, have strengthened the cold fusion case by changing it from "some researchers reported successes - mostly in non-mainstream publications" to "some researchers reported successes in peer-reviewed journals."

I have reverted your change. In-line citations should be provided to back up the statement that any of those successes were reported in peer-reviewed journals. In that case, I think that the most informative wording would be "some researchers reported successes - mostly in non-mainstream publications, with a few in peer-reviewed journals." --David Broadfoot (talk) 09:23, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Please accept my apologies for wrongly assuming bad faith. References to peer-reviewed journals were already cited elsewhere in the article, but I have now repeated them. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

No worries. Good to have the references next to the claim. --David Broadfoot (talk) 13:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 03:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

---

I suggest to move the page from "cold fusion" to "low energy nuclear reaction" because it is the proper name as the article intro explains. Also, this is the name used by the 2004 DOE panel. Any comments ? Pcarbonn (talk) 10:42, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose. Most people recognise the term cold fusion but only those with specialised knowledge would know what an LENR is. There's also some suspicion that LENR is a politically-motivated neologism, and as such may have or develop a subtle but deliberately different meaning to cold fusion. Andrewa (talk) 11:22, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Cold Fusion is the term that any non-specialist would be expecting, and of course it is also the term that was historically used by Pons and Fleischman. LeContexte (talk) 15:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Low energy nuclear reaction" is bureaucratic double-speak because D.O.E. didn't like the publicity around cold fusion. --Bejnar (talk) 05:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose There are other types of low energy nuclear reaction, such as nuclear decay, neutron capture, ... 132.205.99.122 (talk) 19:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose It's not clear that cold fusion (if it actually happens) would necessarily occur at "low energies". It may just be a situation where nucleons can get into close proximity in an ambient medium that is at a lower energy than the microscale energies necessary for a true penetration of the electrostatic potential barrier. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME -- Jheald (talk) 20:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose cold fusion is clearly the most recognizable name for the subject.--Nick Y. (talk) 21:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

I did not expect a WP:POLL to take place. Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. Many arguments presented above seem very dubious to me, and I ask that they be supported by WP:Reliable sources. I also ask that they be ignored unless properly sourced. Also, the article would still be available from 'cold fusion' after a rename, thanks to a redirect. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Please do not edit other users' comments on the tax page - if you believe their claims are unsupported then please say so, rather than inserting 'fact' tags LeContexte (talk) 13:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for that. I did not think it would be an issue. So, I removed the tags, and here are the statements I find dubious:

• There's also some suspicion that LENR is a politically-motivated neologism
• LENR may have or develop a subtle but deliberately different meaning to cold fusion
• "Low energy nuclear reaction" is bureaucratic double-speak
• D.O.E. didn't like the publicity around cold fusion

Pcarbonn (talk) 14:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Did you know how the various deletion processes AND WP:RM work? It does work something like a poll. 132.205.99.122 (talk) 19:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment low energy nuclear reaction/LENR already exists. 132.205.99.122 (talk) 19:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

  Not no more. I redirected that POV-fork to this article. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I expect the closing admin will note both my comments and yours, but I doubt they will discount my comments as you request. But we like to work towards consensus here. So here's my suggestion for a way forward: Now that you've seen what others think of the rename proposal, do you think there's any way you can work towards achieving a rough consensus in support of your view? That should be your goal. Personally I doubt it's achievable, but I could be wrong there. However I'm quite sure that trying to unilaterally impose a whole new set of rules to govern these discussions won't do it. That's been tried before. Andrewa (talk) 12:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the lack of clarity: I'm ready to follow the recommendation to not rename the article. I have already removed the "rename" tag at the top of this page. I could have added a statement with the same effect in this discussion. This issue is not very important any way. However, I'm not ready to accept unsourced arguments. This is not a new set of rules in wikipedia. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:29, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

A good call IMO regarding the rename. But again, suggest you follow existing procedures where they exist, rather than inventing your own as you go. Removing the tag from this page is only one of several steps you need to take to close the discussion. Either do it all or none of it, or you'll just confuse people. If you're unsure as to the procedure, let someone else do it this time around, and watch what they do.

Even better, first change your vote here and see whether there is a consensus for an early close, rather than unilaterally closing a discussion in which others are involved.

Disagree that you haven't proposed new rules above. Where does it state that arguments in these discussions need to cite their sources? Andrewa (talk) 19:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Please note that I have not deleted any comments from editors. Here are the rules that I find relevant to your question: there is a policy allowing one to "Delete material not relevant to improving the article (per the above subsection)" See here. This directly links to a section that includes this: "Stay objective: Talk pages are not a forum for editors to argue their own different points of view about controversial issues. They are a forum to discuss how the different points of view obtained from secondary sources should be included in the article, so that the end result is neutral and objective (which may mean including conflicting viewpoints). The best way to present a case is to find properly referenced material (for an alternative forum for personal opinions, see the Wikibate proposal)." As a consequence, I infer that one is allowed to delete material from the talk page when editors spontaneously recognize that this is their own points of view, and do so despite warnings to stop doing it. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what the last sentence means, but I plead caution. There are many rules, including of course WP:IAR. Make sure you have studied Wikipedia:consensus before taking too much comfort from IAR. I don't think deleting material as you seem to suggest would help the discussion. IMO there's even a risk that it might eventually result in quite severe action against you.

Agree that it does recommend that we find properly referenced material, and that's good advice, but it does not say that this material must be produced to justify a poll vote. When I act as closing admin on difficult polls, I certainly look to see whether there is material of this nature (it generally belongs in the comments section, not the survey) and take it into account. I also look at the contribution histories of those "voting", and give more weight to the opinions of those who have shown that they understand and respect Wikipedia policies and guidelines and support the ethos that underlies them. Andrewa (talk) 19:46, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

You propose that I change my vote here. With all due respect, I won't change it to follow unsourced opinions from other editors. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

That's your decision of course. IMO it would improve your standing here if you saved us all some time and trouble and showed your understanding of consensus by doing this, but it's just a suggestion. It doesn't look like it will have any other bearing on the eventual outcome (I could of course be wrong here). Andrewa (talk) 19:46, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice, which I appreciate. Please note that it's not in this poll discussion that I suggested that I would delete unsourced comments, but in the discussion below. In this poll, I first added the Fact tag, then apologized for doing it, and continued the discussion in a way that I believe is appropriate. Everybody makes mistakes, and I apologized for mine. I don't think that I broke any rule, but let me know if I have.

Please have a look at the discussion below where I threatened to delete unsourced comments (which I didn't do), and the context in which I did it (in particular ScienceApologist' comments to whom it was directed) and let me know what you think in view of the rules I quoted above. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:14, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

IMO this isn't particularly relevant to the rename proposal, so I'll open a new section Talk page rules below. Andrewa (talk) 15:39, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Confirmation of Fleischmann-Pons excess heat?

Pcarbonn, your edits imply that the Fleischmann-Pons excess heat effects have been credibly replicated. I am highly doubtful, since if that were true, where are the patents and followup peer-reviewed papers optimizing the effect? Where are the devices on sale? What is more likely is that researchers perform different calorimeter experiments that, while they might produce transitory excess heat effects, also fail to produce practical devices. Even if recent, higher quality experiments show promising data, my phrasing is still correct: the failure to replicate the results of the 1989 announcement resulted in cold fusion gaining a reputation as flawed science. If there is a credible report that shows that electrochemical activity causes heat that is most likely due to nuclear reactions, please post it. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 19:07, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The pathological science tag was given as early as May 1, 1989. It is thus correct to say that it's the failure of the early attempts that created the reputation. As far as I know, this tag has not been used recently in writing.

I'm not sure what else I can say that is not yet in the article. Replication of excess heat has been reported many times, sometimes in reputable peer reviewed journals. If anything, the field suffers from "pathological disbelief": it would be too good to be true. Replication remains difficult (see the "reproducibility" section), and researchers are working hard to "optimize the effect". So, we are still far from "practical devices" (see "possible commercial developments" section), but that does not imply that the effect is not real, as you suggest. Also, funding is very scarce for many reasons, and few scientists risk their reputation working on it (see History / moving beyond the controversy): this slows down advances in the field .

Here are some credible reports that shows that electrochemical activity causes heat that is most likely due to nuclear reactions:

• Y. Arata and Y-C Zhang, "Anomalous difference between reaction energies generated within D20-cell and H20 Cell", Jpn. J. Appl. Phys 37, L1274 (1998)
• Mizuno, T., et al., "Production of Heat During Plasma Electrolysis in Liquid," Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 39 p. 6055, (2000) [2]
• M.H. Miles et al., "Correlation of excess power and helium production during D2O and H20 electrolysis using Palladium cathodes", J. Electroanal. Chem. 346 (1993) 99 [3]
• B.F. Bush et al, "Helium production during the electrolysis of D20 in cold fusion", J. Electroanal. Chem. 346 (1993) 99

Pcarbonn (talk) 19:29, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

By May 1 1989 many groups had tried to replicate the experiment and failed. It is fair to say that the significant criticism came after others tried in good faith to reproduce the effect. The absence of both useful excess heat devices and federal funding for excess heat experiments after 18 years of effort is telling. If researchers could produce real evidence of heat generated from nuclear reactions driven by electrolysis, they would almost definitely have both increased wealth and a Nobel prize. That void, combined with the 2004 DoE panel output and the incompatibility of cold fusion with established nuclear physics, is very strong evidence that cold fusion is not taking place in the experiments described above. Some might call that pathological disbelief, but it is more accurate to say that it is a recognition of the huge incentives for scientists to discover and publish positive results, and the implication that those positive results likely do not exist.

So where does that leave us? Let's assume that Pcarbonn and I, and others, are trying to produce the best encyclopedia possible. I, for one, am not comfortable with an introduction section that implies that there is a consensus that excess heat from electrochemical cold fusion has been produced. Does anyone have anything to add?209.253.120.205 (talk) 21:36, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I certainly do want to produce the best encyclopedia possible. To me, this means that cold fusion should be presented as an on-going scientific controversy, not as a topic that has been closed long ago. The 2004 DOE report does recommend further research, after all. The panel was evenly split on the evidence of excess heat: one cannot ignore that. Let's avoid injecting our own personal theory. I'm open to any suggestions to improve the intro in that direction. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Let me add this. You asked for the references for the peer-reviewed journals, and I provided them. You were right to request that. After all, the purpose of wikipedia is to inform, and to do that, "articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (quote from WP:reliable sources). So, if you hear someone say : "cold fusion is bullocks", you should question him: did he read any of the paper reporting excess heat ? Did he check the facts as extensively as the peers reviewing an article before publication ? Did he spend the time that the DOE panelists spent on looking at the evidence ? If he has, please ask him to publish a paper to document his view. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:33, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

These are some pretty shitty peer-review journals you're quoting Pcarbonn. Why not an article from Physical Review? Why not provide some cites to more visible and current physics journals? ScienceApologist (talk) 19:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Please provide a quote supporting your view that these are "shitty peer-review journals". Please explain why Wikipedia would consider these journals as unreliable sources. Please provide quotes from journals that you feel are superior and that would say that the replications have failed, for one reason or another. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't have to provide a quote, it's my opinion as a professional and I'm certainly not going to ask that the article talk about my opinion. In any case, I think that these journals are a bit out-of-the-way considering how monumental the claim that is being made is. What is clear is that this view is being marginalized even as it tries to mitigate its own marginalization. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Please stop polluting this discussion with your own opinion: they are irrelevant. If I find a WP policy that allows editors to remove irrelevant statements from talk pages, I will remove your statements. Wikipedia is based on facts, not opinion. Please provide quote supporting your view that "What is clear is that this view is being marginalized even as it tries to mitigate its own marginalization". This is not a café: we are writing a reliable encyclopedia. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, in fact, there is a policy allowing one to "Delete material not relevant to improving the article (per the above subsection)" See here. I intend to apply it from now on. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

This is relevant to the article, you have not been able to find a mainstream source post 2004 that indicates the non-fringe nature of this subject. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:53, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Material on talk pages should be only removed in exceptional circumstances, e.g. spam, vandalism, abuse, clearly irrelevant material (not arguably irrelevant material). If you consider an editor's contribution to be questionable or irrelevant please say so, rather than deleting it. LeContexte (talk) 14:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The core of the issue is this: please provide evidence why Wikipedia should consider these journals and the 2004 DOE panel as unreliable sources. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The DOE panel did not claim that cold fusion was no suddenly "not fringe". All it said was that further investigation was needed and that careful funding of well-posed projects could be done. The journal articles you quote are, frankly, not in the places I would expect for the claims that they are making. Were these people unsuccessful in their attempts to get them published in more accessible journals? ScienceApologist (talk) 16:03, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I have now proposed the following sentence in the intro: "Cold fusion quickly gained a reputation as an example of pathological science after attempts to replicate the effect were unsuccessful." Is the intro OK now ? Pcarbonn (talk) 16:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Reliable sources

The following bibliography entry has been removed, on the ground that it is not a reliable source:

• Mizuno, Tadahiko. Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion. Concord, N.H.: Infinite Energy Press, 1998. ISBN 1-892925-00-1.

Presumably, it is on the ground that it is self-publishing. Yet, WP policy says: "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." Mizuno meet this requirement: he has published relevant work in the peer-reviewed Jpn. J. Appl. Phys:

• Mizuno, T., et al., Neutron Evolution from a Palladium Electrode by Alternate Absorption Treatment of Deuterium and Hydrogen. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. A, 2001. 40(9A/B): p. L989-L991 [2]

I therefore propose to add it back. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Nope. A self-published book should only be included if it has notability. There is another self-published book which is established as notable since it is (supposedly) a prime example of pro-cold fusion account of the early controversy. This book has no assertion of notability. Let him publish it at a respectable scientific publishing house and we'll include it here. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I have removed a number of self-published books from the reference section. In order to include a self-published book we must establish that it has notability outside of the pro-cold fusion community. Even a negative review will suffice. Please see WP:FRINGE. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The WP:Fringe policy would apply if cold fusion were a fringe theory. Please provide a quote supporting that view. 2004 DOE panel certainly did not consider it as such, as it recommended further research in the field. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, the notability that you refer to is about wikipedia article on books, not on books in bibliography. It is thus irrelevant. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty of sources in the article that indicate that cold fusion falls under the general umbrella of fringe science. Also, the notability guidelines are a good way to figure out how to evaluate sources in terms of reliability. In particular, self-published sources need to be justified before included so as to avoid soapboxing and original research publications. See also external link guidelines. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Please find a quote of fringe science that is post-2004. Cold fusion was certainly fringe science in the 90's. The 2004 DOE review clearly changed this. The wikipedia article should represent current view, not the 90's. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

So according to you, anything published before 2004 should be treated as representing a fringe view? ScienceApologist (talk) 13:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

No, what I meant is that CF was wrongly considered as fringe science in the 1990's. It has now become a valid subject for scientific inquiry, to help resolve the scientific controversy (and is thus similar to many other mainstream scientific controversies). Pcarbonn (talk) 16:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Here is the guideline for the bibliography section: "Put under this header in a bulleted list that should usually be alphabetized, any books, articles, web pages, et cetera that you recommend as further reading, useful background, or sources of further information to readers." There is no requirement for notability. I will thus revert your change, as the reason for your change is not valid. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't recommend these books because they are self-published and you have not answered the substance of my complaints. I will now revert your action which I take to be roughly inconsiderate in light of the controversial nature of this subject. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Please clarify the substance of your complaint, in view of the guideline for bibliographies. Please clarify why you add "outside of the pro-cold fusion community" when you talk about notability (even if notability is not a requirement). What is the pro-cold fusion community anyway ? Pcarbonn (talk) 15:42, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The "pro-cold fusion community" would be the group of enthusiasts including a few scientists who believe that there has been successful reproduction of cold fusion experiments. Most of these people do not publish consistently in peer-review journals (thus the problem with a number of the websites listed) and many of them are rank amateurs in the field. Even the professionals are often marginalized in the sense that they are clamboring for mainstream recognition. We should focus on sources that have seen impact beyond this particular community. This would include mainstream journal articles, publications from respectable scientific publishing companies, and self-published works that have received recognition from people who dispute the grander claims of cold fusion advocates. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Please clarify the substance of your complaint, in view of the guideline for bibliographies. I do accept that some of the websites you deleted are not recommended reading. I question your position that the books you deleted are not "further reading, useful background, or sources of further information to readers", especially when the author has been published in a neutral, peer-reviewed journal. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Just being published in a peer-reviewed journal does not automatically mean that everything else the person does should be included at Wikipedia. We need to take each source individually. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:17, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Here is what WP:verifiability says on self-published sources: "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." I argue that Mizuno meets the requirements for a source to be quoted on CF, and can thus be recommended as further reading on this subject. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I argue that Mizuno hasn't been established as an expert in the topic because he hasn't been recognized as such by someone who is outside of the pro-cold fusion community. We should have an extremely high standard for including self-published sources, and I don't think having a single peer-review article on a related subject qualifies. Simply having a single article published doesn't do the trick when the person is ostensibly writing a review. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:17, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

He has published many papers on cold fusion, some in non-mainstream papers, others in neutral peer-review journal. He has not one but several papers in JJAP, and one in "Int. J. Soc. Mat. Eng. Resources", titled "Confirmation of the changes of isotopic distribution for the elements on palladium cathode after strong electrolysis in D2O solutions". See bibliography here. Wouldn't these qualify ? Pcarbonn (talk) 20:08, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

They don't seem to lend the rhetorical oomph I would like to see for someone self-publishing a book that reviews an entire subject. He seems to be interested in confirmation of cold fusion, but he hasn't, for example, been recognized as a reviewer by anyone outside of the pro-cold fusion community. If he had been asked by a mainstream publishing company, mainstream periodical, or a respected science review journal to write something along those lines, then I could see an argument for including a book he wrote reviewing the status of cold fusion. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:14, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Who said that his book was a review ?? He is an expert in the field, as shown by his numerous publications. Why would a book he writes on his subject not be recommendable ?? Also, let's be careful to avoid Anglo-American focus and systematic bias Pcarbonn (talk) 09:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Let's put it this way: Has the book received any notable reviews that would lend support to your desire to include it as a reliable resource for our readers? ScienceApologist (talk) 14:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I cannot answer that question, but this is putting a very high criteria for a "See also" section. Could you provide notable reviews for the book that are still in the bibliography section ? If so, please do it. I don't see why we would need to apply double standard in a science that is not fringe, but a valid scientific controversy. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:57, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I don't see why we would apply double standard even if it was fringe. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

In addition, I have an issue of NPOV in the current bibliography, because of undue weight. The balance of papers in peer-reviewed journals is largely in favor of the existence of an anomalous phenomena; scientific papers that challenge its existence are almost non-existent. The bibliography should reflect that. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:48, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

This is patently not how to apply undue weight. Just looking at papers published about cold fusion shows a deliberate publication bias since negative results rarely get published. Most of the time, the scientific community doesn't take the time to write papers challenging the existence of an idea they find to be dubious, even if they people who support it have managed to publish their "results" in out-of-the-way journals and periodicals. It is plainly fact that cold fusion is not considered viable by the vast majority of physicists, for example. Thus it is a distinct minority opinion in science and emphasizing "positive results" is the actual violation of undue weight. ScienceApologist 16:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I actually think the references and bibliography look pretty good. They list articles and magazines which report cold fusion-related success, as well as articles and books critical of cold fusion's prospects. I certainly don't see any reason to remove any of the books from the list. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 23:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I just heard about the discussion happening here. Looking over it reveals to me that ScienceApologist did a good job raising the citation standards on this article, but is now being a tyrant by trying to extend his 'victory' inappropriately. You fought a good fight, stop being belligerent. Shpoffo (talk) 06:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you to Ronnotel for reinserting Mizuno's and other books in the bibliography. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Here's the deal: There are a lot of books out there about a lot of subjects. Let's keep the books that Wikipedia references in controversial articles of the highest quality and published by groups that are univerisally considered respectable. That means avoiding publishing outfits such as Infinite Energy Press, Pacific Oaks Press, and Oak Grove Press as these are simply vanity publishing companies. Such companies have no consistent distribution process, no respect within the reference community, nor is there any real visibility for the books that they publish outside the singular fringe communities that are interested in the subject of cold fusion. ScienceApologist 16:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's a deal: could we add Mizuno, in view of his many publications in scientific journals, and remove the others ? (I don't know who has reverted your edit). Pcarbonn 16:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

He hasn't had "many publications in scientific journals". I don't think that this reference is good at all since it is published by a very questionable publishing press. If you can find a publication by him in a more respectable outfit then that would be great to include! If you cannot, then why hasn't he published there? ScienceApologist 19:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have forgotten his bibliography: he has published many papers on cold fusion, some in non-mainstream papers, others in neutral peer-review journal. He has not one but several papers in Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, and one in "Int. J. Soc. Mat. Eng. Resources", titled "Confirmation of the changes of isotopic distribution for the elements on palladium cathode after strong electrolysis in D2O solutions". See bibliography here. This shows that he is seen as an expert "by someone who is outside of the pro-cold fusion community". Pcarbonn 21:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Publishing papers on a subject does not mean that a book published by Infinite Energy Press is suddenly worthy of inclusion in our reference section. These journals he published in only establish that the reviewers of those journals thought his papers worthy of inclusion: it does not say anything about his status as an expert in cold fusion or that this particular book is a reliable source. Again, you need to come to terms with the fact that this book is not published by a mainstream company. There has to be a damn good reason to include such a text. That the author published some related papers in some obscure journals is not a good enough rationale. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Hawkins (the third author)

Although the popular media have referred to it as Pons-Fleischmann for quite some time now, it seems that very few people realize that there was a third author (Hawkins). Perhaps luckily for him, his name was left off the original paper, but this was corrected in the errata. See page 8 of this document. I believe Hawkins should be discussed in this article, alongside Pons and Fleischmann. Thoughts? Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I have created an article for Marvin Hawkins but have had difficulty finding out much about him. It turns out he was a graduate student at the time the paper came out. Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Although I had noticed his name on the paper, I have no information about him. I don't think that Hawkins should be discussed in this article: it would be giving him a notability that no reliable source has given to him. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

If you wouldn't mind, could you look at the Marvin Hawkins article? Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:09, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I would then suggest you to mention Hawkins in the history section of the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Useful reference, missing information, and wrong electrochemistry

1) [3] Cornell collection on Cold Fusion.

2) Above reference has Steven Jones research on muon-catalyzed fusion which causes the deuterium nuclei to approach the neutron capture radius of deuterium and fuse. "submitted their proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy, which asked nuclear physicist Steven Jones at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, to review it. Jones had been one of the leaders in research on muon-catalyzed fusion (the "well-known" form of room temperature fusion) throughout the 1980s, but he was now working on new ways of creating fusion through electrolysis--what he called "piezonuclear fusion." Though Jones had been working on piezonuclear fusion since 1986, only by the fall of 1988 had his team developed a neutron detector sufficiently sensitive to measure the low levels of neutrons produced by his experiments. Pons and Fleischmann, who said they had begun working on their electrochemical experiments around 1984 and had been funding the research from their own pockets, also reinvigorated their research program in the fall of 1988, hiring one of Pons's graduate students, Marvin Hawkins, to design, build, and run new cells and to begin to study the nuclear aspects of their apparatus."

3) My experience ranges from Contract Testing Lab to Plating Chemist. Occam's Razor. The conditions of reaction contradict intent. Common plating problem is hydrogen injected into metal lattice weakening it. High hydrogen ion concentration, pH=-2 (dilute sulfuric acid), is most favorable for generating hydrogen. Lithium Hydroxide solution, pH=14, has very low hydrogen concentration. Raising cell voltage to create the "required" minimum Deuterium flux at the Palladium surface would actually drive Lithium into the Palladium. Lithium 6 isotope has a neutron absorbtion radius much larger than Deuterium. The reaction product Li 7m (metastable, excess energy) gives alpha plus Tritium (this is DOE breeder reactor formula for tritium production). Li 7 + neutron > Li 8 > (Be 8) > 2 alpha. The Deuterium reaction is reported to work with Lithium Hydroxide but not Sodium Hydroxide, although Borate (Boron 10 has a huge neutron capture radius) improves the reaction?

4) Palladium disks used to purify hi pressure hydrogen for GC-FID analysis. Palladium disk is alloyed with 5% Silver because pure Palladium shatters after reacts with Hydrogen with acompanying phase change.

5) By the way Be 8 decomposition does not generate a gamma because the alpha are emitted in opposite directions therefore all the energy of reaction.

Shjacks45 (talk) 08:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Talk page rules

From the requested move discussion section above:

Please have a look at the discussion below where I threatened to delete unsourced comments (which I didn't do), and the context in which I did it (in particular ScienceApologist' comments to whom it was directed) and let me know what you think in view of the rules I quoted above. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:14, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

and above that:

Please note that I have not deleted any comments from editors. Here are the rules that I find relevant to your question: there is a policy allowing one to "Delete material not relevant to improving the article (per the above subsection)" See here. This directly links to a section that includes this: "Stay objective: Talk pages are not a forum for editors to argue their own different points of view about controversial issues. They are a forum to discuss how the different points of view obtained from secondary sources should be included in the article, so that the end result is neutral and objective (which may mean including conflicting viewpoints). The best way to present a case is to find properly referenced material (for an alternative forum for personal opinions, see the Wikibate proposal)." As a consequence, I infer that one is allowed to delete material from the talk page when editors spontaneously recognize that this is their own points of view, and do so despite warnings to stop doing it. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

This was all as follow-up to Pcarbonn's suggestion that my vote in the rename survey should be ignored unless properly sourced. This most recent request doesn't seem to be about the rename, so let's have a new section.

Please note that I did not say that your vote should be ignored unless properly sourced. I asked that the arguments be ignored unless properly sourced. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

The arguments in question appear in the survey section and are part of the vote. Andrewa (talk) 20:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. This does not invalidate what I said: I did not say that your vote should be ignored. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:56, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there's anything in these rules that should encourage one party in a heated discussion to unilaterally delete comments made by another. I'd recommend that you look beyond what is allowed. Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are designed to work towards consensus, and don't work well at all when winning an argument becomes the objective, however correct the cause may be. You might also look at User:Andrewa/creed for where I'm coming from in all of this. Andrewa (talk) 15:59, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your opinion. I'm glad that you recognize that I did not invent any rule, and that deletion of others comments is allowed in some circumstances. I agree that the tone of the discussion with ScienceApologist was more heated than it should have been, but I did not start that (I agree that I was quick to react though, with the purpose of stopping it early). Pcarbonn (talk) 16:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I think you are misquoting me here. But what's the point? Andrewa (talk) 20:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

The key question is this: Did I invent new rules ? Is deletion of other comments allowed when a user repeatedly insert his opinion without sources, acknowledge doing it, and ignore requests to stop doing it ? I'd like to know your opinion. It could help make wikipedia a more reliable source, and save a lot of time to a lot of people. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:56, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Let me rephrase a bit: Is deletion of other comments allowed when a user repeatedly insert his opinion without sources, acknowledge doing it, refuses to offer sources when requested, and ignore requests to stop doing it ? I'd like to know your opinion. In my view, this is a direct consequence of this: ""Stay objective: Talk pages are not a forum for editors to argue their own different points of view about controversial issues. They are a forum to discuss how the different points of view obtained from secondary sources should be included in the article, so that the end result is neutral and objective (which may mean including conflicting viewpoints). The best way to present a case is to find properly referenced material (for an alternative forum for personal opinions, see the Wikibate proposal)." Pcarbonn (talk) 21:07, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

No, the key question is: Where do we go from here? Did I invent new rules: Let's agree to disagree about your behavior up to this point. Is deletion of other comments...?: I probably don't have enough information there to form an opinion as to whether or not it's allowed. But either way, it's probably not helpful, particularly when you're one of the parties involved in a vigorous discussion. Andrewa (talk) 02:59, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your opinion. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I have now started a new thread in the talk page of WP:TALK to help resolve the issue. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Andrewa is surely understating the case - it is positively unhelpful to everyone trying to follow a discussion in a talk page if one party to the discussion deletes another's comments. LeContexte 21:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Widom Larsen theory and "heavy" electrons

I dispute the presentation of the Widom Larsen theory as using conventional quantum mechanics. In mainstream physics, so-called heavy electrons appear in the theory of heavy electron superconductors. I believe (but I welcome expert guidance here) that the "heavy" electron is a calculational artifact, designed to express the dynamics of the collective motion of electrons. In some ways it is similar to the reduced_mass of classical dynamics. I do not believe that any mainstream physics publication has ever suggested that a single electron, the particle that would participate in Widom and Larsen's proposed reaction, ever gains mass. JohnAspinall 20:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Mainstream physics says that electrons gain mass when they become relativistic and in no other way ('electrons have no hair'), but that is not what is being proposed. I've removed the section, since it seems overly laudatory to something that is to all appearances just another hodge-podge of algebra and selective use of data. Michaelbusch 21:24, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

You are right : the statement that WL theor is compatible with conventional quantum mechanics was not properly sourced. I removed it from the paragraph. Thanks for identifying this issue.Pcarbonn 08:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I removed the entire section, for the reasons given. Please don't put it back without a complete re-write for NPOV and acceptance of the scientific consensus - and also please explain why this particular set of ideas is WP:N. Michaelbusch 16:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

You are right. Please accept my apologies for responding too quickly. We should just mention this theory, with appropriate links. Pcarbonn 21:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

NPOV of article

Information and relevance of nuclear transmutations with unnatural isotope ratios have been suppressed in this article. There are other problems I will address over time. Ron Marshall

Please provide specific examples of suppression and please explain why 'nuclear transmutations with unnatural isotope ratios' is relevant to the article. When you have done this, the tag can be convincingly added. Michaelbusch 23:40, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

In October of 2006 the cold fusion article was trashed by self appointed censors of science in order to suppress information about transmutation and other positive evidence. The only references in the current article are "Although there appears to be evidence of anomalous transmutations and isotope shifts near the cathode surface in some experiments, cold fusion researchers generally consider that these anomalies are not the ash associated with the primary excess heat effect.[21]" and "To address the nuclear products issue, and because transmutations products have been reported, it has been suggested that fusion occurs between one or more deuterium and palladium, and is followed by a fission of the resulting nucleus." The first remark is misleading and the second is inadequate.

Many experimenters have found transmutations with unnatural isotope ratios since 1992. Usually the result produces several elements spread over the atomic weight scale. Some experiments show direct conversion from one element to another. The unnatural isotope ratio proves that the result cannot be caused by contamination. A transmutation is a nuclear reaction. Transmutations prove that nuclear reactions are happening in cold fusion experiments beyond a reasonable doubt. This is true whether or not transmutations are the primary source of heat. Ron Marshall 19:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC) Ron Marshall

Provide links to the edits showing suppression and your claimed 'self appointed censors of science', and citations for your statements above - and I'm removing the NPOV tag again because you need evidence. You may find it useful to examine WP:CABAL. Re. 'transmutations' - give cites for that too - although I deem your statements nonsensical at the moment, because the presence of radioactivity in an experiment in no way implies fusion. And sign your posts. Michaelbusch 19:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I will provide links, however a major part of the evidence is the state of the article at this point. This statement does not look logical to me "although I deem your statements nonsensical at the moment, because the presence of radioactivity in an experiment in no way implies fusion". Radioactivity could imply fusion. Whether or not deuterium fusion is going on is one question. Whether or not any nuclear reaction is going on is another question. When an element is changed to another element protons are added or removed from the nucleus. You change a nucleus and you have a nuclear reaction by definition. Changing an isotope means adding or removing neutrons, also a nuclear reaction. The new element could be radioactive when the old element was not. The new element could be not radioactive when the old element was radioactive. Both these cases have been observed. It has been the claim of skeptics from the beginning that no nuclear reactions are occurring in cold fusion experiments. The skeptics have been proven wrong in this case. No scientific case can be made for suppressing the evidence of nuclear transmutations or the conclusion this evidence points to. Ron Marshall (talk) 21:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The cold fusion article as of 06:09, 29 September 2006 is shown in the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=78453163 before it was trashed by ScienceApologist and others.

The nuclear transmutations section:

Nuclear Transmutations

Nuclear transmutations have been reported in many cold fusion experiments since 1992. These reactions (which may be a nuclear fusion or nuclear fission reaction) result in the transformation of a chemical element into another. If one accepts that nuclear transmutations are in fact observed in these experiments, he would have to accept that nuclear reactions take place in cold fusion experiments. He would also have to accept that an apparently enormous Coulomb barrier can be overcome, and that the released energy can be converted to heat.

Tadahiko Mizuno is a prominent nuclear transmutation experimenter, and was among the first to contribute several papers and a book on the subject.

Nuclear transmutation experiments have been reviewed by Dr. Miley., a recognized researcher in "Hot Fusion" for his contributions to Inertial electrostatic confinement. He reports that several dozen laboratories are studying these effects. Some experiments result in the creation of only a few elements, while others result in a wide variety of elements from the periodic table. Calcium, copper, zinc, and iron were the most commonly reported elements. Lanthanides were also found: this is significant since they are unlikely to enter as impurities. In addition, the isotopic ratios of the observed elements differ from their natural isotopic ratio or natural abundance. Many elements have multiple isotopes and the percentages of the different isotopes are constant on earth within one tenth of one percent. In general it requires gaseous diffusion, thermal diffusion, electromagnetic separation or other exotic processes of isotope separation or a nuclear reaction to change an element from its natural isotope ratio. The presence of an unnatural isotope ratio makes contamination an implausible explanation. Some experiments reported both transmutations and excess heat, but the correlation between the two effects has not been established. Radiations have also been reported. Miley also reviews possible theories to explain these observations. Ron Marshall (talk) 03:57, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

So far the clearest evidence for transmutation has come from an experiment made by Iwamura and associates, and published in 2002 in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics (one of the top physics journals in Japan). Instead of using electrolysis, they forced deuterium gas to permeate through a thin layer of caesium (also known as cesium) deposited on calcium oxide and palladium, while periodically analyzing the nature of the surface through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. As the deuterium gas permeated over a period of a week, the amount of caesium progressively decreased while the amount of praseodymium increased, so that caesium appeared to be transmuted into praseodymium. When caesium was replaced by strontium, it was transmuted into molybdenum with anomalous isotopic composition. In both cases this represents an addition of four deuterium nuclei to the original element. They have produced these results six times, and reproducibility was good. The energy released by these transmutations was too low to be observed as heat. No gamma rays were observed. When the calcium oxide was removed or when the deuterium gas was replaced by hydrogen, no transmutation was observed. The authors analyzed, and then rejected, the possibility to explain these various observations by contaminations or migration of impurities from the palladium interior. The experiment was replicated by researchers from Osaka University using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry to analyze the nature of the surface (the Pd complex samples were provided by Iwamura).

In later similar experiments by Iwamura Barium 138 was transmuted to Samarium 150 and Barium 137 was transmuted into Samarium 149. The Barium 138 experiment used a natural isotope ratio of Barium. The Barium 137 experiment used a Barium 137 enriched isotope ratio. These transmutations represent an addition of six deuterium nuclei.

While recognizing the quality of the experiment, a 2004 DOE panelist said that, from a nuclear physics perspective, such conclusions of transmutations are "not to be believed". Fusing 2 deuterons is difficult enough; merging four deuterons with a heavy nucleus such as Palladium [sic] is not to be believed, especially when no evidence is presented for any nuclear products with intermediate atomic mass such as Yttrium, Zirconium, and Niobium. The panelist suggested that the observation could be explained by the migration of the anomalous elements from the interior of the Palladium.

Cold fusion researchers responded that such migration is not possible:

1. Deuterium atoms, flowing from the surface to the interior, would cause diffusion of the anomalous element away from the surface, not toward the surface.
2. Mass spectroscopy done at various depths shows that the anomalous element was not present in the palladium.
3. The element that was originally on the surface disappears at the same rate as the anomalous element appears.
4. The isotopes of the anomalous element are unnatural, and the isotope shifts are exactly what are expected should the missing element transmute into the new element

They say that, since the initial element disappears, the "migration explanation" would imply that the element applied to the surface migrates toward the interior, while the anomalous element migrates in the opposite direction toward the surface. This would violate as many expected behaviors as does cold fusion but in a different field of science: therefore, the Iwamura results justify additional research to understand what's happening. They also said such explanations are mere hand waving, and that this kind of reasoning is typical of most reviews.

Bush and Eagleton have reported the appearance of radioactive isotopes with an average half-life of 3.8 days in electrolytic cells, an observation that is difficult to explain by contamination or migration.

Attempts to find at least partial theoretical explanations are being made by Takahashi and others. One proposal by Takahashi to explain the wide range of elements generated is that fission of palladium is initiated by high energy photons, and suggests potential applications in the treatment of nuclear wastes by transmutation.

The current article should contain a summary on nuclear transmutations in the introduction and a section on nuclear transmutations. Ron Marshall (talk) 04:04, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Reference for the Mitchell Swartz theory

We need a cite-able reference for the Mitchell Swartz theory. The reference given is to a 1955 Phys Rev article. JohnAspinall 15:37, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Cold fusion theorizing

There are a lot of problems with the following text:

Cold fusion theoreticians have thus proposed explanations of the reported observations based on other mechanisms than plain D-D fusion.

To address the Coulomb barrier issue, some researchers propose that nuclei absorb neutrons, not deuterons; because neutrons have no charge, they are not affected by the Coulomb barrier. Widon and Larsen propose that heavy electrons react with protons to create neutrons. John C. Fisher proposes a theory based on hypothetical polyneutrons. Mills proposes a theory based on hydrino, which assumes that the electron in a hydrogen atom can reach an energy level below the ground state permitted by quantum mechanics. These theories are contrary to conventional physics.

These theories are not only "contrary" to conventional physics: there are observations available which show them to be incorrect. In particular, the idea that a neutron with its extremely short lifetime can be involved in low-density fusion at low temperatures is easy to refute with a back of the envelope calculation where you take the fusion cross-section as roughly that of the nucleus, multiplied by the density of the material (assuming it to be all neutrons and nuclei) and multiplying that by the velocity of the particles (assuming roughly that v is on the order of kT/m) doing this yields about one contact per 10⁵ seconds which is much larger than the hundreds of seconds that neutrons can survive. Polyneutrons have zero mainstream support and energy levels below ground is patent pseudoscience. Why are we including such garbage in the article?

To address the nuclear products issue, and because transmutations products have been reported, it has been suggested that fusion occurs between one or more deuterium and palladium, and is followed by a fission of the resulting nucleus. The observed heat is difficult to reconcile with the observed transmuted products though. Others propose multi-body interactions: the following reaction, if proven to exist, would not generate gamma rays: D+D+D+D -> ⁸Be -> 2 ⁴He. However, in order to offer an explanation of the absence of gamma rays, a theory would also have to propose a mechanism that would suppress the more probable 2-deuteron reaction. Mitchell Swartz and others have theorized that the lower angular momentum of less energetic, cooler deuterons might affect the initial conditions required and the branching ratios of fusion reactions.

This paragraph is at least slightly more plausible, but still suffers from presentation of ideas that are really far out there without proper contextualization.

To address the conversion to heat issue, researchers have proposed a Mossbauer-like effect: in the Mossbauer effect, the recoil energy of a nuclear transition is absorbed by the crystal lattice as a whole, rather than by a single atom. However, the energy involved must be less than that of a phonon, on the order of 30 keV (50% chance of phonon excitation), compared with 23 MeV in nuclear fusion.

The only source for this is from Infinte Energy magazine (not a reliable source). I suggest removing the entire speculative paragraph as it represents original research.

In fact, all these paragraphs are very close to original research and I have therefore removed them from the article.

ScienceApologist 20:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Apologist, I concur with this removal - it seems we have a problem with some editors blindly accepting marginal data, followed by scrambling to fit that data with one particular interpretation. Michaelbusch 20:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but it looks like some of the good (peer reviewed) suggestions were removed and the pseudo science ones were left in. Look at this list from a month ago. That is more acceptable, minus a few offending bullet points, is it not? MigFP 20:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

That list is full of nonsense, and you will find my detailed analysis of many individual cases here on this talk page. JohnAspinall (talk) 15:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Based on a quick reading of the article, I've flagged it as needing further cleanup. I'm afraid cold-fusion enthusiasts have been having far too much fun here, and the scientific and logical accuracy of the article has suffered greatly. As examples, Apologist's large removal, and the paragraph I just removed - which claimed that an electrolysis patent was related to cold fusion. Michaelbusch (talk) 21:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

This site describes a book on heavy electrons http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/EngineeringTechnology/MaterialsScience/?view=usa&ci=019851767X Ron Marshall (talk) 21:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

And quoting (with my emphasis) from the very link you provide: "characterized by a large effective mass", which is exactly the point I was making above. JohnAspinall (talk) 20:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

'Cold fusion' patent

The article contained a sentence 'the US Patent Office has approved a patent relating to cold fusion'. The patent cited is about an improved electrolysis device. It is not related to cold fusion, and so I have removed the reference. User:Pcarbonn has disputed this based on his reading of the patent (here). While the patent description references various cold fusion articles, the term 'fusion' occurs nowhere in the patent itself, which refers only to electrolysis. Claiming that this is the Patent Office approving something related to cold fusion is like saying that patenting a better magnetic alloy is related to perpetual motion. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You may think so, but that is not what PhysicsWeb and others are saying, as shown in the quote for this statement. So, please stop removing statements that are properly sourced and notable. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:18, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The text of the patent makes several references to cold fusion and if you read the entire patent you see that it is talking about a nickel hydrogen cold fusion device.

Sample text: "2. Description of the Related Art

Since 1989, scientists have demonstrated that liquid and gaseous electrolysis processes, though not yet completely understood, may be able to address future heating and electrical power requirements. For example, it has been readily demonstrated that electrolysis of many fluids results in heat generation that can be employed for other purposes, e.g., heating or generation of electricity.

A growing need has developed for compact, reliable, rugged and self-contained power sources providing heat and/or electricity in applications such as mobile vehicles, trailers, and equipment support units. There is a concurrent need for reliable, rugged and self-contained power sources providing heat and/or electricity for larger stationary power requirements. A sense of urgency for such new power sources has resulted from the realization that fossil fuels are in limited supply. It will be appreciated that nuclear fission power plants are not an acceptable alternative due to the dangers associated with uncontrolled releases of fission products and the enormous environmental and political problems associated with waste disposal.

Early attempts to develop the needed energy production apparatus focused on energy production using nuclear batteries. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,290,522; 3,409,820, and 4,835,433, which patents are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes. A radiation source was required, and radiation from this source which was absorbed in a potential barrier, e.g., p-n-p junction or metal-semiconductor contact, gave rise to electron-hole pairs that flowed as electricity due to the beta voltaic or Volta effect. Efficiencies on the order of about 25% were demonstrated.

In their now famous (or infamous) paper, Pons and Fleischmann reported excess heat in heavy water, palladium apparatus. See Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, "Electrochemically Induced Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium," submitted to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Mar. 11, 1989. Due to the amount of heat produced per unit volume of cathode material, the energy measured in these types of apparatus has generally been considered to be from a nuclear process. Measurements of helium and tritium produced have given credibility to methods where heat is produced.

Recently, engineered devices based upon these results have been built with the objective of investigating the production of heat and by-products over extended periods of time. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,273,635 and 5,318,675, which patents are incorporated herein for all purposes, as well as Great Britain Patent No. 2 231 195, EP 0 568 118 and WO95/20816 have been granted for or described such devices, respectively. As a result, problems with the state of the art of methods of liquid and gaseous electrolysis have begun to be addressed by investigators with improved consistency. It will also be appreciated that problems associated with such systems include: hydrogen recombination with oxygen, with the potential for explosion; the relatively slow loading of hydrogen into cathodes; inefficient designs; and, the potential dangers of loaded, pressurized bulk material." Ron Marshall (talk) 23:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see the relevance of the patent office's granting such a patent, whatever the proper interpretation of the patent itself. All that shows is that a researcher patented his methods, nothing more. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The relevance is demonstrated, for example, by the fact that PhysicsWeb is talking about the cold fusion patents in one of his article[4]: "In contrast to Pons and Fleischmann, who were not able to gain patents in the US, CETI has been granted a number of patents for its devices." The sentence in disupte thus meets the WP:notability requirement. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Notability does not equate relevance. I still don't see what this has to do with anything. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

For information, this discussion is about this diff. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

paragraph on theory vs experiment

There is a disagreement on the relevance of this paragraph:

One reason for many to exclude a nuclear origin for the effect is that current theories in physics cannot explain how fusion could occur under such conditions. However, the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss experimental evidence.

This paragraph is sourced by a reliable, notable source: the 2004 DOE panel. It would not be difficult to show many other sources discussing the lack of a theory as a reason to reject cold fusion. So why do you want it remove ? Pcarbonn (talk) 22:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The paragraph is sourced, but it has zero meaning and is POV-slanted towards cold fusion. The wording implicitly assumes that the cold fusion experiments are valid, which is most definitely not accepted in the scientific community. Further, it makes an argument that is a logical fallacy, and assumes that fusion is happening and not something else. It doesn't really say anything. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I have now started a list of deletion of properly sourced statements done by Michaelbusch on his talk page. Feel free to add comment there on his pattern of behavior. Pcarbonn (talk) 06:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Please note that I have also raised a wikiquette alert. Pcarbonn (talk) 06:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

For the benefit of clarity, here is the full source for that statement: "Cold fusion research : A Report of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy". 1989. Retrieved 2007-11-21. "Nuclear fusion at room temperature, of the type discussed in this report, would be contrary to all understanding gained of nuclear reactions in the last half century; it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process"" and "the failure of a theory to account for cold fusion can be discounted on the grounds that the correct explanation and theory has not been provided Pcarbonn (talk) 06:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The statment made above directly contradicts the statement that MichaelBusch noted above. The quoted statements are saying that cold fusion can be discounted because no theory accounting for it has been developed. That's the opposite of the statement removed. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Please do not misquote the 2004 DOE panel. Here is the full quote:

The claims of cold fusion, however, are unusual in that even the strongest proponents of cold fusion assert that the experiments, for unknown reasons, are not consistent and reproducible at the present time. However, even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. As a result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve all cold fusion claims since, for example, any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons. Likewise the failure of a theory to account for cold fusion can be discounted on the grounds that the correct explanation and theory has not been provided. Consequently, with the many contradictory existing claims it is not possible at this time to state categorically that all the claims for cold fusion have been convincingly either proved or disproved.

I don't see how it could ever support the view that "cold fusion can be discounted because no theory accounting for it has been developed". Please provide adequate quotes in support of your view. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Likewise the failure of a theory to account for cold fusion can be discounted on the grounds that the correct explanation and theory has not been provided. You're selectively quoting. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Not so. Here is how the sentence must be understood in its context: 'Likewise the failure of Quantum Mechanics to account for cold fusion can be discounted on the grounds that the correct explanation and theory has not been provided.'. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:06, 5 December 2007 (UTC) This clearly says that "the failure of Quantum Mechanics to account for cold fusion can be discounted".Pcarbonn (talk) 15:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

In addition, the principle that "the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss experimental evidence" is the basis of the scientific method. Arguing the contrary puts you in the WP:Fringe of science.Pcarbonn (talk) 15:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Nope, you are misreading the statement. The statement is saying that the lack of theoretical development is a direct hindrance to accepting the claims of cold fusion advocates. You can try to put as much positive spin on the statement as you like, but I'm not going to let you insert that spin into the article. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I really don't understand how you could ever come to this conclusion by neutrally reading the quoted statement or the report. I have created a request for comment below. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Michaelbusch, ScienceApologist, could you tell us whether you would accept mediation on this issue ? Thanks. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, but I'll only accept mediation from a mediator who has a degree in physics, chemistry, or a related science field. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Experiment is the reality check of science. If theory cannot explain a valid experiment then the theory has to be described as having limitations or the theory must be revised. This is the scientific method. We do not have to source the scientific method or other basic principles in science. There is no rational other position. Ron Marshall (talk) 23:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

No way. Experiment drives theory, but unless you believe that reality is not self-consistent then there have to be occasions when experimenters report results that are erroneous. We don't have to explain N-rays. They simply don't exist and the experimenter who reported their existence was simply wrong. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:56, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, some results are erroneous, and should be dismissed : The N-ray experiment was demonstrated to be wrong. Note that it was not the lack of a theory that convinced the scientific community, but a "test" experiment where a prism was removed. This was the turning point in the controversy. Never was the lack of a theory used to dismiss the N-ray experiment.

There are many differences between the N-ray experiment and cold fusion: cold fusion has been reported by many scientists, it has been reported in several peer-reviewed journals, the DOE panel in 2004 was evenly split on whether the evidence of excess heat were convincing. To convincingly dismiss cold fusion results would require explaining the experimental artefacts. Until it is done, one cannot dismiss it, and certainly not based on a lack of theory to explain it. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

While you can be rah-rah all you want about cold fusion, the fact of the matter is that it is plainly dismissed by the majority of scientists in the know: rightly or wrongly. Trying to weasel your way out of this fact will lead you nowhere as Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which gives the most weight to scientific consensus. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You won't get anywhere with this "cold fusion is plainly dismissed by the majority of scientists in the know" until you provide a source supporting this statement that would be more reliable than the 2004 DOE panel, which clearly says the contrary. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:38, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

My anecdotal 2 cents: it's been a long time since I took nuclear physics, but my professors at the time accepted that cold fusion might happen through a process involving muon substitutions for electrons (they have a closer "orbit" to the nuclei than electrons, thus requiring less energy to start the fusion process), but that the Pons-Fleischmann-Hawkins experiment was very flawed. I.e., there was no reason to rule out cold fusion as a theoretical process, but there was no experimental evidence (at the time, about 1989, IIRC) to support it, either. Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 17:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

That was 1989, as you said. Since then, dozens of different and improved experiments that addressed the shortcomings of those first ones have been executed and replicated, and the results have been published in peer-reviewed journals (though with considerable difficulty, especially in the US: the Japanese and Europeans have handled the matter in a far more sensible way). This article, at least before this last edit warring sessions, linked to e-prints for many of those papers (I have no time at the moment to check what the usual suspects have done to the references section). I would suggest you to read the works appeared on the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics and INFN's Report 41 if you want to get up to date on this subject. By the way, what your professor was referring to was Muon-catalyzed fusion: known since long, well understood, but unfortunately almost working. A completely different beast. --Holland-it (talk) 18:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

There has been no outside corroboration of cold fusion supporters claims that there has been advances since 1989. This is just posturing and making more excuses for POV-pushing. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

In your dreams. Just the two references I have given point to a peer-reviewed paper by Iwamura and a report by the first nuclear physics organization of Italy that present evidence which is qualitatively different from what was available in 1989 (and in the case of the Iwamura paper, not even postulated at the time). You can obviously point to refutations of those papers published in similar venues, if you can find them, but you can't possibly say that no other corroborations ever emerged. I have just cited two of them. --Holland-it (talk) 19:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Ben's got it. The fact is that cold fusion in principle may or may not be possible seems like it may fly, but the methodological problems and questionable results arise when it comes to the reports on cold fusion actually happening in the laboratory. The DOE report outlines the skepticism surrounding these claims. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The statements by ScienceApologist and others have been answered before in the article text and that text has been deleted to suppress evidence. It has been pointed out before that there was no theory to explain the anomalous heat from the radioactivity of radium when it was discovered. It was pointed out before that many years passed before there was a theory for low temperature super conductivity. I think we still are looking for a theory for high temperature super conductivity.

As I pointed out in the NPOV article nuclear transmutations with unnatural isotope ratios is valid experimental proof that nuclear reactions are occurring cold fusion experiments whether or not deuterium fusion is occurring. All this talk about theoretical barriers is just so much nonsense.

Its really about social conformity and censorship. Ron Marshall (talk) 18:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

(undent)Ron, you are becoming increasingly shrill and adding nothing to the discussion. According to talk page guidelines, we are here to discuss the article not complain about the cabal censoring your favorite pet ideas. This kind of rhetoric will get us nowhere and your inflammatory edits that try to make a point are also not appreciated. Please cease this behavior at once. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Michaelbusch: Stop deleting important books!

Michaelbusch, or someone, keeps deleting important books about cold fusion. Michaelbusch asks: "please explain why these particular references are required." Reasons:

Experts in cold fusion ranging from Storms & Bockris to Arthur C. Clarke recommended these books, and wrote forwards & introductions to the books.

Mallove was published by Wiley, one of the largest and most respected technical publishers. It was widely reviewed and nominated for a Pulitzer prize. Mallove himself played a key role in the history of cold fusion. Mallove purchased the rights to the book and reprinted it, partly because he needed the income, which was considerable.

Dozens of experts contributed to Beaudette. The University of Utah asked for, and accepted, his papers, interviews and the manuscript of this book.

Mizuno is one of Japan's leading cold fusion scientists and electrochemists. He has published over 50 papers, mainly in Japanese, about several different aspects of electrochemistry, including cold fusion. The Japanese edition of this book has sold tens of thousands of copies and the publisher asked him to write a second book, which he did. (It has not been translated into English.)

Contrary to your assertions above, these are not in any sense "self published" books. They were all professional edited and they have all sold thousands of copies.

The fact that you ask why these books are important tells me that you are unfamiliar with the field. Have you even read these books? There are roughly 2,500 researchers in cold fusion listed in the LENR-CANR database. I have met or worked with hundreds of them. I am sure that most of them are familiar with these books, and consider these books important. If you are not an expert in cold fusion, you have no business second-guessing them. Whether you think cold fusion is real or not has no bearing on this issue. If this article was about the Flat Earth theory it would include books that most Flat Earth believers consider important.

PLEASE STOP VANDALIZING THIS PAGE!

- Jed Rothwell Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

Let me add that I have several other books on cold fusion, both pro and con, that do not merit listing in this bibliography for the reasons cited by Michaelbusch; i.e. they are obscure or self-published. Some are pretty good, but obscure. In other words, Michaelbusch's standards for exclusion are reasonable but they do not apply to the books he excluded.

- Jed Rothwell Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

Obviously, this person has a conflict of interest in this case and while their concerns are noted, cold fusion is ultimately subject to the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, not the wishes of the LENR-CANR librarian. Thank you. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

By this standard, all 2,500 of the scientists who have published positive experimental evidence for cold fusion would also be excluded, and any biologist who is convinced that evolution is real would be excluded from contributing to articles about biology or creationism.

Four of the leading cold fusion researchers are (or were) contributing editors to peer-reviewed physics journals, such J. Fusion Energy (which is mainly devoted to plasma fusion). They would also have a conflict of interest by this standard, since they get to pick and choose who publishes papers on both plasma fusion and cold fusion, and obviously they are convinced that both phenomena exist. They have much more editorial control than a librarian does. Are you going to exclude them, as well?

In any case, LENR-CANR.org is the world's leading anti-cold fusion website, as well as the largest pro-cold fusion site. We are strictly even-handed. We include nearly every skeptical, anti-cold fusion paper ever published. Thousands of papers have been written about cold fusion, including at least 1,200 peer-reviewed papers. Out of all these papers, there are only 5 or 10 that deny cold fusion exists, or that list any technical reason to doubt that it exists. We have asked all of the authors of these papers for permission to upload. Some said yes, so we have copies of four of these papers. There are no others.

- Jed Rothwell

Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

Your slippery slope argument holds no water. We evaluate sources, subjects, and articles for inclusion on a case-by-case basis. There are undoubtably sources in your library which can be used here. There are also sources which cannot be used here. Just because a source is in your library does not mean that the source must be worthy of inclusion at Wikipedia. You cannot impose the goals of your organization onto Wikipedia. Thank you. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I am imposing nothing. A large majority of people who know something about this field will agree that these books are important. That includes even some of the leading anti-cold fusion skeptics, who have cited these books.

It also includes other librarians, such as the U. Utah librarians and scientists who are collecting papers from Beaudette and others. They know as much about cold fusion as I do, and along with nearly every scientist who has read the literature, they are convinced that cold fusion is real. The only people who remain unconvinced are a handful of flakes who do not believe in the conservation of energy, and people such as the editor of the Scientific American, who has read nothing about cold fusion, and who knows nothing. He told me he has never read a paper on cold fusion because it is "not his job." His editorials and articles bear this out. They are full of ridiculous mistakes.

YOU are the one who is imposing an arbitrary, personal standard. Have you even read these books? Do you know who wrote the forwards? Have you read any reviews, blurbs, or attacks on these books? Do you know what their Amazon.com ranking is? I and others have evaluated all of these factors before selecting these books. We include some obviously rotten-to-the-core nonsense polemics such as Taubes, because they are somewhat important. What are YOUR standards for excluding these books?

- Jed Rothwell

Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

If you can provide us with evidence that the references that have been removed are cited in mainstream publications or have received enough notability to make them important for consideration to our article, then please do so. However, the standard for inclusion of material published by marginal publishing presses must be higher than that published by those that are mainstream. To establish the necessity for the inclusion of these books, please show that these books are prominent enough to, for example, have generated a reviews or have been referenced extensively in books and publications that are not solely the purview of the fringe community. Thanks. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You wrote:

"If you can provide us with evidence that the references that have been removed are cited in mainstream publications or have received enough notability to make them important for consideration . . ."

I did that! The first message in this section lists the reasons. U. Utah established a special collection for Beaudette's papers and manuscripts. Mallove was reviewed in the New York Times and elsewhere and nominated for a Pulitzer. The forwards and reviews are written by important people such as Clarke. What more do you want? Do the authors have to win a Nobel Prize in literature?

Speaking of which, three of the cold fusion authors do have Nobel laureates, albeit in physics not literature. You call this a "fringe community" but you have no objective basis for saying that. That designation is absurd. There are, as I said, 2,500 authors, and they probably include a large fraction of the world's electrochemists. Authors in our library include Heinz Gerischer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin; Dr. P. K. Iyengar, director of BARC and later chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission; Prof. Melvin Miles, Fellow of China Lake; a retired member of the French Atomic Energy Commission; three of the editors of major plasma fusion journals that I mentioned previously, and many top researchers from U.S. national laboratories. Who the hell are you to claim this is a "fringe community"?!? YOU are the fringe element here! Cold fusion is mainstream. It was replicated in hundreds of labs such as Los Alamos and BARC, and these replications were published in some of the world's top peer-reviewed journals.

Peer-reviewed replications are the only standard of importance in science. Not your opinion or your arbitrary exclusion. You are not a journal editor. The Jap. J. of Applied Physics is Japan's number one journal of physics. It published several of Mizuno's papers (as author and co-author). It published a special issue devoted to cold fusion. His two books were published by one of Japan's largest academic publishers. Therefore, Mizuno is important. What standard do you apply that makes him unimportant? An ouija board?

- Jed Rothwell Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 15:32, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You still haven't addressed the concerns about the particular sources that were removed. You are just commenting on the authors rather than the books. So, for example, you need to address the fact that the books themselves have not received recognition. Just because the author is of some renown does not mean every book he's ever written is worthy of inclusion. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You wrote: "you need to address the fact that the books themselves have not received recognition." Look, for crying out loud, do you speak language? The books HAVE -- I repeat HAVE -- received recognition. They have been nominated for major prizes, reviewed in major newspapers, and sold in much higher numbers than most academic books. They have been praised by some of the most prestigious scientists in the world, and attacked by some of the leading opponents of cold fusion. The original manuscript of one has been acquired by U. Utah, which is one of the largest university libraries in the world, and the place where cold fusion was discovered. What more can you ask for?!? What standards do you have in mind? Are you expecting an endorsement from the Scientific American? No doubt you have dreamed up some new, arbitrary standard of "recognition." You should at least tell us how far you have moved the goalposts, and in which direction. No one else uses your imaginary standards of excellence, so please tell us what they are.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 19:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Is this objection based in policy? WP:UNDUE doesn't seem to say anything about whether sources have gained recognition in mainstream media. If they are not self-published and not the opinions of a single person, I don't see what policy can exclude them. 89.12.160.59 (talk) 18:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This objection is based on my interpretation of WP:N, WP:RS, WP:EL, WP:FRINGE, WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:SOAP. I get the impression from all these policies and guidelines that my request for books published by what may be termed "vanity presses" to be referenced by outside sources is totally legitimate. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah. I get it. You have declared John Wiley & Sons and Kougakusha to be "vanity presses." They are among the biggest publishers in the world, but not big enough for you. That's hilarious. Why don't you dream up some more outrageous and arbitrary reasons to censor information you don't like?

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 19:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Where have I asked for a book published by Wiley or Kougakusha to be excised from the article? I have no problem offering people a book available by these presses. However, it looks to me like these books are no longer published by those presses for reasons we can only surmise. As such, we are definitely under no obligation to advertise books that have been reprinted by vanity presses because the original publishers now feel that the books should no longer be printed. Complain to Wiley and Kougakusha, not to editors trying to keep Wikipedia free from cruft. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:55, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I repeat, Mallove was published by Wiley, and then reprinted by Infinite Energy Press. (That was actually a gift from the Wiley editor to Mallove, because it was a major source of income for him.) Mizuno was published by Kougakusha, and then translated by me, and reprinted by Infinite Energy Press with permission from Kougakusha. Kougakasha does not publish in English. A translation is a reprint. That is to say, publishers and authors usually get royalties from English to Japanese translations, and Infinite Energy pays royalties to Mizuno, not to the translator. I don't know if they pay Kougakusha or not.

In any case, whether these books are published by obscure publishers or major ones, the consensus of opinion by people on both sides of the debate is that these books are important. Supporters recommend these books; skeptics attack them by name; and skeptics like you frantically try to erase them. That proves they are important.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 21:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yawn. I have included the ISBN for the Wiley book as we should not be in the business of getting Mallove income (Wikipedia is not a soapbox). Since the Kougakasha book was translated and not published by a legitimate English publishing press, it will not appear in our references. If you want to include the Japanese version, that's fine with me. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

"I have included the ISBN for the Wiley book as we should not be in the business of getting Mallove income . . ."

Mallove is dead. I do not think his estate gets any income because Infinite Energy is tax exempt. The Wiley ISBN version is no longer sold.

"Since the Kougakasha book was translated and not published by a legitimate English publishing press, it will not appear in our references. If you want to include the Japanese version, that's fine with me."

We are not supposed to include foreign language sources here. YOU have no business declaring that Infinite Energy is not a legitimate press. Thousands of cold fusion researchers consider it legitimate, and that makes it legitimate for this purpose, in this context. Your opinion of cold fusion has nothing to do with this. A major publisher of creationist literature is still a major publisher, even if creationism itself is bogus science.

Please stop vandalizing this article and stop inserting your own opinions. The only opinions that count here are those expressed by experts in cold fusion, such as Mallove and Beaudette. Not yours, and not mine.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 22:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Note that the creation science Wikipedia article includes 17 books by creationists. They come from publishers such as Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research, and from several obscure publishers I have never heard of. I think that creationism is bogus science, and I expect ScienceApologist agrees. But neither of us has any right to barge into that article, declare that "Answers in Genesis" is not a legitimate publisher, and start erasing titles. We do not get to decide who is important or legitimate in creationism. Only the creationists do. Obviously they are a "fringe science" but again, that does not give us the right to disrupt their presentation or insert our opinions. That article is about creationism, not what Jed and Mr. Apologist think of creationism.

Note that the creationist bibliography is split between creationist and anti-creationist books. Perhaps we should split the cold fusion bibliography, for clarity.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 22:40, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly, I have been heavily involved in the creation science page and can say that there are plenty of sources which give AiG notability through, for example, critical review. Note that we have an article on the subject. That's the kind of notability I'm asking for from the three printing presses I am questioning here. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You did not read what I wrote. Yes, even I have have heard of AiG, but, I repeat, there are also "several obscure publishers I have never heard of." I doubt you have heard of them either. Probably, no one outside the creationist community has heard of them. But I do not see you barging in there and erasing them. The people in that community know which authors are prominent, and you do not. I know which authors are widely read in the cold fusion community, and which books have been reviewed and praised by leading experts, and attacked by leading skeptics. You do not. You have not even read these books. So you should stop imposing your unfounded, ignorant opinions on this article. It is bad enough that you stuff unscientific foolishness into the article, but when you censor out legitimate sources of real information, you go too far.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 15:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

This argument is fallacious. We aren't dealing with the creation science article, we're dealing with the cold fusion article. If you want to delete problematic references at creation science, be my guest. However, there is no requirement that an editor run around keeping every article to the same standard. I'll worry about creation science at a later date. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You wrote:

"This argument is fallacious."

Well, if so, at least I make an argument, whereas you bully and censor and impose your own opinions with no regard for the scientific consensus.

"We aren't dealing with the creation science article, we're dealing with the cold fusion article. If you want to delete problematic references . . ."

Ah, so there are different standards for different Wikipedia articles? You get to make up the rules as you go along. I see.

Anyway, you are wrong. These references are not problematic. You say they are, but you know nothing about the subject, nothing about these books, and you have no logical reason to say they are problematic. You are trying to censor information you don't like, and you do not even bother to invent an excuse to do it. You are violating Wikipedia rules.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 16:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You need to read the Wikipedia policies on civility and no personal attacks. Currently you are not engaging in proper talk page etiquette and will quickly find yourself losing editing privileges if you keep up this kind of advocacy. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Rothwell, Apologist's above statement seems to be correct. Now, please be aware that there is no cabal and that the Apologist, Someguy1221, myself, and various other editors of this page have considerable knowledge of physics. Your rationale for including the references seems to be 'these are good books'. Unfortunately, that is not the same as Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Relevance. If these references are to be included here, you must provide concise, neutral, reasons for them to be included. This is not 'these are good books' or even 'these are important books' but something like 'this is a standard reference work' - but then you need to justify that statement. Michaelbusch (talk) 18:13, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I have made it abundantly clear that these are standard reference books, and they are considered important by experts in this field.

Your knowledge of physics has no bearing on this discussion unless you have read these books and you can list reasons why they are NOT important, and NOT standard references. Even then, you are outvoted by the experts in the field who wrote the forwards and positive reviews of these books.

I have not said these are good books. As a matter of fact, the ones by Taubes and Huizenga are dreadful. See my mini-review of Taubes here, on p. 4 and 5:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusion.pdf

Taubes is out of print, so it is obscure, and I am probably one of the few people who has actually read it, yet I agree it should remain on this list.

Regarding civility, you are bullying; imposing your point of view without justification; overruling expert opinion; and inventing arbitrary rules that are not applied in other Wikipedia articles such as the creation science article. You people are much ruder than I am.

- Jed Rothwell

You will need to calm down or you will find yourself subject to blocking and perhaps even banning. I suggest that you take a Wikibreak as you are obviously too heated to engage in rational discussion right now. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:33, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You need to stop reverting. You have reverted one more time that I have, because I started this round; i.e., if I reverted 3 times, you must have done 4.

I doubt you would recognize a rational discussion if it bit you on the butt. Anyway, I will not let you gag my friends and censor out the truth as long as I am allowed in here. You can fill the article with your unscientific, unsourced "skeptical" nonsense all you like, but I will not let you hide the truth completely. People deserve a chance to see these books, so they can learn the facts.

Also, by the way, I don't respond well to threats. If you can block me and censor me as one of your bullying tactics, go ahead and do it. Don't waste your time threatening to do it.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 19:46, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this conversation is over. Unless someone has some new information as to the relevance of these few books, I think we should stop with this back-and-forth. We are here to write an encyclopedia, not to decide who is censoring whom. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

RfC: Is the lack of theory a reason to dismiss cold fusion, according to the 2004 DOE panel ?

Editors have conflicting view on it. Please help resolve the dispute. This RFC continues a discussion started here.Pcarbonn (talk) 17:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Lack of a theory is a peferctly good reason to dismiss something that's never been observed. Someguy1221 (talk) 19:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure. The problem here is that the 2004 DOE panel was evenly split on the observation of excess heat, so that a neutral point of view cannot assume that "it has never been observed". None of those who rejected the evidence in 2004 said that they did it because of a lack of theory. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The title of this section makes no sense, for two reasons:

1. Lack of theory is never a valid reason to reject replicated experimental results. That violates the scientific method at the most fundamental level. When theory conflicts with experiment, theory always yields.

2. The 2004 DoE panel never asserted anything like this. Very few scientists are so ignorant of the scientific method that they would claim this. The only opponent of cold fusion who says this is John Huizenga. The others all claim, falsely, that the effect was never replicated. They pretend that hundreds of peer-reviewed papers do not exist. This is what a few members of the DoE review panel did.

Someguy wrote: "Lack of a theory is a perfectly good reason to dismiss something that's never been observed." That is true, but it has no bearing on this discussion, because cold fusion has been observed thousands of times in hundreds of laboratories, often at very high signal to noise ratios.

I see the level of confusion and scientific illiteracy here remains as high as ever. People who have read nothing and who know nothing feel they have a solemn obligation to trash research and erase the titles of books written by actual scientists about the actual subject. I should stop wasting my time here. I have to hand it to the supporters of cold fusion, who have done a remarkable job holding off the forces of ignorance and censorship, but I still feel it is a futile task. If you want to learn about cold fusion, or any other science, you need to go to legitimate sources of information such as peer-reviewed journals and the books by Storms, Beaudette and the others that the fanatics here are so anxious to erase.

- Jed Rothwell

When theory conflicts with experiment, theory always yields. This is not true. When a student measures the acceleration due to gravity in the lab to be 8 +/- 0.5 m/s^2, that does not mean we throw out Newton's Theory of Gravity. Sometimes experiments give erroneous results due to systematics, human error, etc. When there is no consistent theory that can be offered which explains an experimental result: one sometimes looks with suspicion on the experimental result. This is basic experimental methodology: skepticism about misleading measurements is important and can only be provided by theory. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You wrote: "This is not true. When a student measures the acceleration due to gravity in the lab . . ." I meant replicated, peer-reviewed experiments that have been repeated thousands of times in hundreds of labs. Not undergraduate mistakes. I expect you understood that is what I meant, and your counter-example is a red herring. Please be serious.

- Jed Rothwell

Excess heat has been observed, neutron emission has been observed, but no results have been observed that are consistent with known processes of nuclear fusion as accepted by the quantum physics. There's a reason mainstream physics doesn't believe in cold fusion, and it's not because it doesn't fit nicely into their longstanding theories. The DoE's report shows they were very unconvinced that the heat observed resulted from nuclear fusion, even if the actual source remained unknown. Thus, they are not dismissing the evidence of nuclear fusion, merely doubting the interpretations. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Someguy wrote:

"Excess heat has been observed, neutron emission has been observed, but no results have been observed that are consistent with known processes of nuclear fusion as accepted by the quantum physics. . . ."

Neutrons are seldom observed, and only at rates ~11 million times too small to explain the reaction. Helium is always present in the same ratio to the heat as plasma fusion. Some theorists disagree with your statement. They feel that quantum physics can explain the reaction. In any case, you cannot reject or ignore replicated experiments just because they appear to violate theory. That turns the scientific method upside down.

"There's a reason mainstream physics doesn't believe in cold fusion . . ."

That's why SOME mainstream physicists don't believe the results. That is also why many chemists do believe the results. Chemists are more used to dealing with the real world, and not idealized theories. See the comments by Gerisher, for example: "there is now undoubtedly overwhelming indications that nuclear processes take place in the metal alloys." You "skeptics" sometimes imagine that you speak for everyone, but thousands of distinguished scientists such as Gerisher disagree with you, and they find the evidence "overwhelming."

"The DoE's report shows they were very unconvinced that the heat observed resulted from nuclear fusion . . ."

The DoE report was a fiasco, in my opinion. I have a low opinion most of the panelist's comments. Most of them got a smattering of information, they glanced at a few papers, and then they jumped to conclusions. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm

You need to read peer-reviewed papers instead of the half-baked opinions of DoE panelists. People spend years writing these papers. The panelists spent a few hours.

- Jed Rothwell

This is fast descending into speculative original research that cannot possibly lead to improving the article. The opinions of Jed Rothwell are not verifiable nor are they going to dictate the form of the article since consensus, neutrality, and reliable sourcing are what governs how articles get written. I suggest tabling this discussion as it has degenerated into a debate over the merits of cold fusion rather than an honest attempt to improve this article. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This article is attempt by self appointed scientific censors to delete or block positive evidence and but a skeptic spin what is left in. Improving an article means giving the relevant facts to the reader and let the reader decide. Ron Marshall (talk) 23:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Another red herring! The opinions of Jed Rothwell have nothing remotely to do with the issues under discussion. Jed Rothwell did not invent the scientific method, and he is not the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin, and he has not performed or published any research -- original or unoriginal. He did not write any of the books listed here, and he is not mentioned in any of these books. He is completely, utterly, absolutely irrelevant and you are trying to personalize the discussion, and use ad hominem arguments.

Are you suggesting that the opinions and information published by the Director of the Max Planck Institute and researchers at BARC or Los Alamos are "not reliable" or "not important"? What would be important? Who are we supposed to quote?

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 22:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

What quote are you wanting to include in the article and where? ScienceApologist (talk) 22:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I do not wish to insert any quote into the article. I referred to the quote from Gerisher in this discussion, above. When you wrote: "This is fast descending into speculative original research . . ." I assumed you meant this discussion right here, in this box. I have not made any speculative comments here.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 22:14, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The accusation of scientific illiteracy can also be leveled against those who write about sketchy fringe theories and attempt to pass them off as consistent with the best scientific understanding. (Example: Widom Larsen heavy electrons passed off as "mainstream". Example: the four deuteron reaction sourced to an article that said the two-deuteron reaction was 10⁴ times more likely. Example: Swartz' theory sourced to a 1955 article.) Experiments test theory, but theory guides the experimentalists on what to test. Without theory, experimentalists have an infinite set of possibilities to search. It is a notable part of the evaluation of cold fusion science as a whole that the expected back and forth between theory and experiment is so impoverished. JohnAspinall (talk) 21:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• Outside comments. First, it is very hard to understand what the issue being disucssed is, since it is not clear in what context the controversial paragraph was used in (and the RfC thread is already filled with what I assume are comments from the involved parties). In other words, a diff or some other help is needed for outsiders to understand how the paragraph fits into the article. Second, it seems as you are making this debate and the controversial paragraph much more compliacted than it needs to be, since the DOE report [5] is both clear and easy to read (I assume conclusions 4 and 5 are relevant to this discussion). In conclusion, I did not understand neither the removed paragraph nor this discussion, but I did understand the report. Therefore, I believe it should be possible to present the information in the report in a way such that everybody can agree on what its conclusions are. Labongo (talk) 12:35, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Here is a diff higlighting the change. While conclusion 5 of the 1989 report is still relevant, its conclusion 4 has been significantly change by the second DOE panel, in 2004: the panel was evenly split on the evidence of excess heat, i.e. heat that cannot be explained by current theories or experimental artifacts. That's why it becomes important to explain that theory cannot be used to exclude experimental results, as quoted above. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Absence of a theory is a reason to be skepticall, but it's not a reason to outright reject a result. In this case "being skeptical" would mean taking a hard look at any proposed experimental evidence. But "taking a hard look" isn't the same as rejecting it out of hand, so I'll agree with the opinions that it's should not be listed in and of itself as a reason to reject cold fusion. The question of whether the 2004 DOE report said it was a reason to reject it is a different question-- that should be a simple problem of finding a citation; did they say that, or not? Geoffrey.landis (talk) 01:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The DOE certainly did not say that lack of theory can be a reason to dismiss cold fusion. I presented evidence that it actually said that the lack of theory cannot be a reason to dismiss cold fusion. See discussion here.Pcarbonn (talk) 16:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Moved cold fusion to cold fusion research

My quick glance at the article failed to find much significant information about what cold fusion is, which is not surprising since the DOE said:

Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not,

stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented.

I hesitate to call this a "controversy", although there is a certainly a scientific dispute. Perhaps this is merely protoscience; I hope so, because cheap energy would benefit the third world tremendously.

The possibility that it's protoscience does not necessarily lead to cheap energy. It is possible that the eventual benefit of the unknown effect or effects called "cold fusion" will be slightly better battery technology, or an alternative method of hydrogen storage. Or an interesting laboratory demonstration with no practical application. The personality clashes we see here, and the larger "controversy" are evidence that many egos, and much money, are being bet on the possibility that it has to turn out big, important and earth-shattering. But it doesn't have to turn out that way. JohnAspinall (talk) 15:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

But I think what our readers are looking for is research about the "cold fusion" elusive effect. We should be fair to the possibility that it can be / has been produced, while not exaggerating anything. If the mainstream of physics is saying things like, "Sorry, gentlemen, we simply cannot reproduce your results", then the burden is on the proponents. Anyway, we can be neutral here in the contributor club, can't we? --Uncle Ed (talk) 00:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

article names should cause the least surprise. I think Cold fusion is a better term and there should be a consensus before a new name is adopted. Ronnotel (talk) 00:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that tacking the word "research" onto the title of this article achieves anything valuable. I oppose this move. The rationale offered makes no more sense to me than would moving Dog to Dog information on the grounds that most people who try to go to Dog are looking for information. Cardamon (talk) 08:46, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Being bold

I know it's extreme, but I have reverted this to the 2004 Featured Article version. The amount of edit warring and POV-pushing that has cgone on here is breathtaking, the hundreds of to-and-fro edits have fragmented the article while obscuring the clarity that was in the original. It would be good, I think, to work back up from this adding new published research available since 2004, measuring every source and sentence against WP:NPOV and WP:RS. What we don't need is conflicted editors promoting thier own commercial interests, so I'm going to ask that Jed Rothwell restrict himself to short, factual statements on this discussion page and resist the temptation to indulge in lengthy segues. Just the facts, please, and only those facts available in rock-solid sources. Guy (Help!) 20:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You wrote: "I'm going to ask that Jed Rothwell restrict himself to short, factual statements on this discussion page . . . Just the facts, please, and only those facts available in rock-solid sources." All of my sources are rock solid, from peer-reviewed mainstream journals. Every statement I make can be checked on line at LENR-CANR.org against journal papers (or proceedings papers similar to the journal papers). The statements made by skeptics have never passed peer-review -- apart from Morrison's paper. Their assertions are all unfounded nonsense or lies. Despite the best efforts of honest supporters, Wikipedia is still a disgrace where censorship, mob rule, and unsourced opinions steamroll over objective science. Now YOU have arbitrarily erased months of work, and you have the chutzpah to call ME disruptive?

No self-respecting researcher will contribute to this article as long as you carry on this way. You make a mockery of science, fairness, objectivity, and academia. You "skeptics" should be ashamed of yourselves, and you should take a moment -- just one moment -- to consider the possibility that you are wrong and the 2,500 researchers who have observed the cold fusion effect are right. Think carefully: the laws of thermodynamics still work, x-ray film and mass spectrometers still work. Thousands of positive experiments are meaningful. Think about what you have done, and the harm it has caused. Why are you so angry? Why do you trash researchers, censor their references, and attack them so harshly? You know nothing about this research, and nothing about the books you erase, and yet you are certain you are right! This is hubris. I have been angry too long, and have exhausted the well of acrimony, but I shall never cease pitying you people, or mourning the damage you have done.

- Jed Rothwell

Your arguments have been spectacularly unpersuasive in the past and continue to be so now. So instead of long rambling discourse about how you are right and everybody else is wrong, please stick to short factual statements supported from credible peer-reviewed sources. Guy (Help!) 09:05, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not like he didn't try. I would ask you to review the discussion about the books by Mallove et al., and see for yourself if mr.Rothwell was given a fair opportunity to defend his reasons. Personally I think that the comments about removing the ISBN for the second publishing of the Mallove book "because we are not supposed to help Mallove get income" speak for themselves. Like every other ISBN link for every other still-available book didn't contribute to the author's income.... (And leaving aside the sad part about Mallove being, you know... dead). The bad faith in the insinuation about Wiley not publishing the book anymore meaning that it has been "found unfit for publishing by Wiley" is also hilarious, knowing that even classics of literature and university textbooks still used in classes routinely go out of print without anybody calling them "disqualified" by that. --81.208.60.199 (talk) 10:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

You'll forgive a little scepticism here, I hope. A new anonymous user appearing to back up another anonymous user just when we've asked him to desist form promoting his own interests? Looks a bit fishy. Guy (Help!) 13:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I do forgive, actually, I know sockpuppets abound around here. Anyway, I'm not Rothwell, and I admit that he did himself a great disservice by bursting in the way he did. But I think that it's quite clear how most of his opposers didn't ever bother with listening to what he actually had to say. One of then flatly stated that NO SENSIBLE CORROBORATIONS of any kind emerged after 1989 about this topic, and that claiming otherwise is "POV-pushing". How are you supposed to present a person with "factual statements supported form credible sources" if they deny their existence?.

Rothwell gave some reasons for his conduct. They could have been questioned in a civil manner, editors could have asked him to present more proofs: but the most vocal ones just decided to brand him as a crank from the start and be done with it. Concerning the books the links could have been simply put as "Originally published by XXXX (ISBN), then reprinted/translated by YYYYY", saving all the drama. Nobody cared. So much for wikilove, assuming good faith and all those other empty words. --81.208.60.199 (talk) 14:34, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not exactly new to this subject either, a friend of mine did his PhD in one of Fleischmann's labs and did some work on the original experiments. He is now a full professor at a British university and author of a standard undergraduate text. His view, if I recall our last conversation about it, is that science has rejected the argument that is it cold fusion, but that the amount of energy liberated in the reaction is still something of a mystery, just not one that anybody cares enough to work on. Regardless, where are the recent stories in mainstream scientific journals? The original paper was in Nature, wasn't it? So it should be in the chemistry journals at least. That does not appear to be the case. Guy (Help!) 15:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Again.... there were lots of references to journal articles before the last revolution in this article. I don't remember them by heart obviously, but maybe I'll dig them out the old version when I find time. Many of those probably linked to lenr-canr, but in no way the site was the only possible source for articles. Concerning recent stories in reputable jounals... the papers by Iwamura and others in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. Italian ENEA's so-called "Report 41", by De Ninno and Frattolillo (I would link to an Italian state TV report about those articles and the involvement of Carlo Rubbia with them, but I can't find an english-subtitled version). The US Navy research works. Yeah, it's a controversial topic if there ever was one, but the controversy is NOT OVER. And there is people working to clear the matter once and for all. Your friend's opinion is a common one, and in the nineties it would have been pretty much correct, but he simply wasn't really up to date with recent activities inside and especially outside the USA.

I took the time to read the papers I am mentioning before intervening here. I lent the book by Mallove at the physics library of my university and read it. Rothwell obviously has read many more, while one of the users who ganged up against him insisted that the "only recent development in cold fusion" was the sonofusion affair at Purdue, something that has NOTHING to do with Fleischmann-Pons type experiments or anything that evolved from them.... i.e. he doesn't even know what he's writing about. And some people wonder why Rothwell loses it.... --81.208.60.199 (talk) 16:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not an expert sock sleuth, but IMHO 81.208.60.199 (talk · contribs) is not a new anon nor does it seem very likely to be a sock for Jed 66.32.161.85 (talk · contribs). Ronnotel (talk) 15:00, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

As you say, this is indeed extreme, but it seems like a good place to start - especially since the only recent cold-fusion related item I recall is the research misconduct case at Purdue. However, please do keep the protection on the page for the moment. Michaelbusch (talk) 20:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds great to me. What I would like to see is a succinct summary of the DOE report and perhaps the ACS conference but not much more as not much else has happened. The article that was restored is, in my opinion, fairly good. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the SPAWAR work with CR-39 radiation detectors from 2006 is probably an exception. I believe the findings were published in a peer-reviewed journal and there was some independent (not-entirely-conclusive) verification. Ronnotel (talk) 21:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

May I suggest to start from the last stable version, ie. something like this one of end september. It is much expanded compared to the FA, and provides a lot of sources. It was the result of intense discussions, and has been pretty stable for a long time: presumably, it is not so controversial.

If this is not agreable, could we at least use some sections from it, such as the history ? Thanks in advance. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind looking at sections on a case-by-case basis, but I would not like to start from that version which reads much more horribly than this one. The history section I'm not too fond of, either. I think a lot of the wording is questionable. We can workshop it if you like. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:30, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Reverting to the 2004 article is totally unacceptable behavior. I reverted to the September 2006 version so skeptics can see what it feels like. These revisions need to stop until there is full discussion on them. Otherwise non-skeptic revisions will be made without discussion.Ron Marshall (talk) 18:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

That's disruption to prove a point, something you have been warned against doing in the past. Keep it up and you will be subject to sanction. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, I do not think you wood come off all them well in a comparison of ethics. Ron Marshall (talk) 22:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree with ScienceApologist. Just because that version stood for a relatively long time does not mean it was valuable. In particular, (and you will recall our discussions on the Condensed_Matter_Nuclear_Science page) that was about the time I was beginning to question all the cold fusion theories on their connection to any basis in conventional science. Now that I've spent effort looking into every one of them, I would not like to see that shopping list of nonsense reappear. At the risk of making an assumption of bad faith, I think that certain entries there came close to deliberate intellectual dishonesty. (I'm thinking in particular of the cite for the 4-deuteron theory, which actually pointed at a paper offering evidence against the theory.)

I have two recommendations for vetting future edits:

• Follow the citations. Just because someone cites the Respectable Peer Reviewed Journal of Whatever, it doesn't mean that the cited article actually verifies the claim.
• Watch for cut'n'paste jobs from New Energy Times. The history in the September version bears a strong resemblance to http://newenergytimes.com/PR/TheSeminalPapers.htm ; not just in general content which you would expect, but also in specific choices of phrase.

JohnAspinall (talk) 19:30, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I am having a hard time understanding how a behavior by a censor is okay and the same behavior by someone else is not. JohnAspinall, I was there when the text was created and you are totally and completely wrong about the source. Ron Marshall (talk) 22:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I see a correlation between

• "On April 10, 1989, Fleischmann and Pons published their 8-page "preliminary note" in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. The paper was rushed, very incomplete and contained a clear error with regard to the gamma spectra." from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=158754774, and
• " On April 10, Fleischmann and Pons published their 8-page "preliminary note" in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. The paper was rushed, very incomplete and contained a clear error with regard to the gamma spectra." from http://newenergytimes.com/PR/TheSeminalPapers.htm .

Of the three possible explanations:

1. Wikipedia author plagiarizes from New Energy Times,
2. New Energy Times author plagiarizes from Wikipedia,
3. It was pure chance that the two texts came out the same way,

which would you propose? JohnAspinall (talk) 06:47, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The quotation was exactly identical, lacking the newer addition of "1989", when Pcarbonn added it. --Noren (talk) 03:50, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Mediation

Would you accept a mediation on the following point of dispute: "Which version should we continue editing from: the Featured Article of 2004, or a more recent one, eg. this one" ? Pcarbonn (talk) 23:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

• It seems pretty straightforward to me: either we can start form a version that made featured article, or we can start from a version that was bed enoug to get FA status withdrawn. Not a very difficult call. Guy (Help!) 14:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

So, do you accept mediation ? I would hope that the committee will reestablish the principle that wikipedia is based on facts, not opinions, that it will request you to provide sources for your opinions, and that it will be sensitive to the fact that the work of dozens of editors doing two thousands edits over the last 3 years to reflect the latest developments in the field and to provide nearly 100 reliable sources on the subject, after considerable debates on how best to present the subject (see archives), cannot be deleted by the whims of a couple of users unable to provide sources for their views. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

While not perfect, the recent version is a perfectly good basis to continue editing the cold fusion article towards feature article status. It is well supported by the most reliable sources available, in particular regarding the recent events in the field such as the 2004 DOE panel, the SPAWAR experiment, and presentations at the annual meetings of the American Physical society and the American Chemical Society.

I'll defend the position that the reversion to the 2004 FA version is requested in violation of the "neutral point of view" and "no original research" policies of wikipedia. It is an attempt to eliminate well sourced evidence for the purpose of advancing a personal opinion. I'll suggest that the best way for the other party to defend its case is to provide relevant sources in support of their point of view.

A good illustration of this issue can be found in the discussion titled "paragraph on theory vs experiment", where the other party is trying to justify the deletion of a well sourced statement. The other party is seen misquoting sources, arguing against the basic tenet of science since Galileo which says that "the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss experimental evidence", and, when it all failed, used their personal opinion to justify it. They failed to respond to the request to support their point of view that cold fusion is dismissed by mainstream science.

The reversion to the 2004 FA version is the same as the deletion of the sentence on theory vs experiment, only on a grander scale. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:33, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

About damn time. I would like you to explain the procedure for a mediation request, to the benefit of any user who would like to intervene but doesn't know the correct protocol that should be followed. --81.208.60.199 (talk) 10:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Here is the procedure for mediation. Both sides need to accept it, hence my question, which I repeat again here, hoping to get an answer. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The reversion to the 2004 FA version is very good idea because it is much closer to NPOV that the recent versions. The sections on the recent activities (SPAWAR, CR-39, mechanism descriptions, etc.) were too long, which presented an erroneous impression that cold fusion is probably taking place in these experiments. It may be, but that is not yet supported by the documentation or the scientific consensus. The total amount of space devoted to the pro-cold-fusion reports should be kept short. Short discussions combined with links to key New Energy Times articles, JJAP articles, and related sources is the proper way to inform readers of the recent work. If cold fusion researchers produce articles in Physical Review Letters, Science, or Nature describing how to produce cold fusion devices (or start selling them), then those sections should be lengthened. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 12:42, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The Japanese Journal of Applied Physics is just as good a journal as PRL. I could agree with you about New Energy Times, but the JJAP is absolutely kosher. About the "erroneous impression that cold fusion is probably taking place in these experiments", I think that YOUR impression is the erroneous one. Since those are both IMPRESSIONS, shouldn't we just present all the purported evidence and let the reader make up his own mind? (That is NPOV, ain't it?) And by the way, the reality of nuclear fission was accepted well before that anybody had any plan for constructing a reactor, let alone a bomb, so the "when they start selling them" bit is unrealistic....

Anyway, I just got a reference for a paper that offers possible corroboration for cold fusion in the European Physical Journal A. ("Evidence for a host-material dependence of the n/p branching ratio of low-energy d+d reactions within metallic environments", Eur. Phys. J. A 27, s01, 187{192 (2006)) Is that good enough for you? --81.208.60.199 (talk) 16:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I think most scientists, even Japanese scientists, would agree that PRL is a much more prestigious journal than JJAP. If a submitted paper showed clear evidence of cold fusion, they would publish it. Until that (or something similarly convincing) happens we should make sure that the wikipedia article stays concise and does not imply that cold fusion has been believed by mainstream scientists.

The article should reflect the weight of each side in the scientific debate (see undue weight). It so happens that much more articles in peer-reviewed journals are favorable than unfavorable. I would invite the skeptics to write more articles in peer-reviewed journals, so that we can present their views in wikipedia. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I would also invite you to look at parity of source : the skeptics view should be presented based on sources at least as reliable as the sources presented by the pro-side. I don't see any support in wikipedia policies for the idea that cold fusion statements need to be sourced by Nature or PRL. Please explain otherwise. I believe that Nature and PRL does not publish article yet because cold fusion is still a protoscience, as the article describes. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:30, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I would be happy to add a sentence describing cold fusion as protoscience in the article, but, unfortunately, I have not found a reliable source saying that. It should be clear from the many sourced statements though, eg. from the DOE panel. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

By my count, the present version of the article is about 11 screens long, while the last version before the "bold move" was about 28 screens long. I will defend the proposition that, with proper links and modest updating, 11 or so screens is plenty of space to describe cold fusion, and would actually be more useful to users of wikipedia. Perhaps a split off article titled "Proposed Cold Fusion Mechansims" would help? 209.253.120.205 (talk) 19:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The section on proposed mechanism was fairly short. If the goal is to reduce the size of the article by splitting it, create an article on the history of cold fusion would be more effective. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

One last time: do you accept mediation on this issue, or do we go to the arbitration committee ? Pcarbonn (talk) 16:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with mediation, as long as the mediator has a degree in physics, chemistry, or a related field. I will not participate in a mediation with a mediator who has no familiarity with scientific subjects. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I have now created a request for mediation here. I'm not sure whether it is possible to add participants, but feel free to do it if you want/can. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Current to-do list

Okay, so we're looking at:

1. Adding in-line references
2. Adding commentary on 2004 DOE report
3. Adding some findings on SPAWAR work
4. Discussing the LENR sessions at ACS
5. Reinclude the Taubes book (Bad Science)

Anything else?

ScienceApologist (talk) 21:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I would add the research misconduct case at Purdue ([6]), where Rusi Taleyarkhan has been charged with obstructing tests of his work. Technically, this is bubble fusion and not cold fusion, but the distinction between the two is not clear to me. Michaelbusch (talk) 21:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought the whole point of bubble fusion is that it is 'hot' - i.e. purportedly relies on conventional physics. I don't really see that as belonging on a page about low-energy phenomena. Ronnotel (talk) 21:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Bubble-fusion is contentious at best: Taleyarkhan claims to be able to force deuterium to fuse by forming bubbles in deuterated acetone under room conditions, but no one has validated this. It seems like a cold fusion claim to me - fusion in the absence of high-energy radiation. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I have no opinion about Taleyarkhan or the validity of bubble-powered nuclear reactions. However I disagree with your statement about absence of high energy. Bubble fusion is not theorized as fusion in the absence of high-energy radiation. It's theorized as fusion in the extremely hot interior of collapsing bubbles. Bubble fusion has never been on this page - I think we should avoid putting in new material that doesn't have consensus. Ronnotel (talk) 22:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I will point out that since no-one really knows what cold fusion is, it is hard to make this distinction. If, for instance, cold fusion were to turn out to be "crack generated" ([7]) then it would be "just as hot" as bubble fusion. JohnAspinall (talk) 18:39, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I have been making edits for a while now, but this version is a huge improvement. I would freeze it for a year if that were possible. When it is reopened for editing, the discussion of SPAWAR results and "alternative" mechanisms should be kept short, and the Taubes book (Bad Science) should be put back in. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 23:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

With a bit of luck, the to-do list above and a bit of polishing here and there will restore it to FA status. Guy (Help!) 23:56, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Reverting to the 2004 article is totally unacceptable behavior. I reverted to the September 2006 version so skeptics can see what it feels like. These revisions need to stop until there is full discussion on them. Otherwise non-skeptic revisions will be made without discussion.Ron Marshall (talk) 18:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ron Marshall (talk • contribs)

[ I have removed an attack from here, if the originator wants to re-state his request in less polemical terms he will be welcome to do so ]

"Kook"?

JzG, please explain what do you think is "kooky" about a repository of articles previously published in other venues, mostly conference proceedings or peer-reviewed journals, and republished with permission of the authors. (That is, http://www.lenr-canr.org/) If you think that anything outside Nature and Physical Review Letters is "kooky", then we should just delete this page and be done with it. An encyclopedia writer should at least read things before passing judgement about them, and not follow his "nose" blindly. --81.208.60.199 (talk) 17:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

• Are we sure they have copyright permission for every single reprint? Guy (Help!) 15:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I have no reason to doubt it, but if you have a reliable source saying that they do, let us know. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

That's what they state on the home page, we have no reason to suppose that they lie. Anyway, it would be a problem much more for them than for us... I'm glad to see that you recognize that lenr-canr is an article repository and not a "kooky" blog --Holland-it (talk) 16:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Basis of evaluation

Clearly there have been dozens or hundreds of reports of anamalous temperature increases or neutron emissions occurring while researchers study the electrolysis of D₂O. Everyone agrees it would be good if we could get cheap energy this way.

What we do not agree on is the basis for evaluating these experiments. "Your" inability to reproduce "my" experiments is not a disproof of anything, of course. Perhaps the question is more an economic one.

How much money should private investors or foundations allot to this promising new line of research? Should the government subsidize it? Good gosh, man, we are already spending over one billion dollars a year to prove that human-caused global warming threatens the future of the planet! Low-temp nuclear fusion could replace coal power for electricity generation, so why don't we fund cold fusion research?

Anyway, what we as writers here need to do is to describe both sides of the issue fairly. --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I've come here from the Fringe theories noticeboard. I'm not sure that cold fusion is a fringe theory, but I have no strong POV on the question and will edit for a bit in what seems to me to be an NPOV direction. Please revert me if I get the science wrong. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

• Are we sure lenr-canr.org is a reliable source? Guy (Help!) 15:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I have no reason to doubt it, but if you have a reliable source saying that they are not, let us know. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Lenr-canr is mostly a repository for sources that have been published elsewhere. We need to look at each on a case-by-case basis. Anything that has no attribution or reference at LENR-CANR does not belong being referenced at Wikipedia, in my humble opinion. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

LENR-CANR is not "mostly" a repository. It is entirely a repository, as stated on the top page. Every paper at LENR-CANR.org has an attribution or reference. You can always view the original versions at a good library, such as the Georgia Tech University library and the Los Alamos library, which is where we got most of the documents in the first place. There are a few "housekeeping" documents that have not been published elsewhere, but they are not scientific papers. There is no original research.

Many papers are from conference proceedings. These proceedings were published by the American Nuclear Society, the Societa Italiana di Fisica, Tsinghua U. and others, as noted.

Note that ScienceApologist's "humble opinion" indicates that he has not read the documents at LENR-CANR. He has not even glanced at them, or he would know they are all attributed. I am sure that he has read no papers or books about cold fusion whatever, because all of his assertions about the subject are mistaken. He has no business contributing to or editing this article.

- Jed Rothwell

Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 20:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Conference proceedings are usually quite poor resources as they are rarely (if ever) peer-reviewed and not subject to the usual editorial control of most journal publications. I suggest avoiding LENR-CANR entirely and referring to papers and publications directly. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:07, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

ScienceApologist wrote:

"Conference proceedings are usually quite poor resources as they are rarely (if ever) peer-reviewed . . ."

That is true, but I can sometimes get carte blanche permission to reprint the papers from proceedings, whereas it is often difficult (or impossible) to get permission to reprint journal papers.

"I suggest avoiding LENR-CANR entirely and referring to papers and publications directly."

Well of course you refer to papers and publications directly. What else would you do?!? You can't "refer" to papers on LENR-CANR because we have not published any, as I just said. Every paper comes from somewhere else, so obviously you list the original location. You can copy it right out of our HTML, for example:

McKubre, M.C.H., et al., Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the D/Pd and H/Pd Systems. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1994. 368: p. 55.

You might as well include our URL while you at it, since you want people to actually read the paper and think for themselves:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHisothermala.pdf

By "you" I don't mean you, ScienceApologist. Of course YOU don't want anyone reading anything, and you yourself wouldn't dream of reading a paper. You want to censor out all genuine scientific information, erase book titles, censor out and stomp the opposition, and replace facts with your own opinions. That's why you erased the old version of this article. That's what you mean when you talk about "avoiding LENR-CANR entirely."

- Jed Rothwell

Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 23:29, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Please stop personally attacking me, Jed. You've already been blocked once. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Full protection

I've temporarily increased the protection level to this page to full protect in the face of continuing instability. Let's please resolve the outstanding issues on the talk page before undertaking massive edits. Ronnotel (talk) 20:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

For the general interest of the discussion, here are some past decisions of the arbitration commitee regarding POV:

• It is inappropriate to remove blocks of well-referenced information which is germane to the subject from articles on the grounds that the information advances a point of view. Wikipedia's NPOV policy contemplates inclusion of all significant points of view.
• Injection of personal viewpoints regarding the subject of an article is inappropriate and not to be resolved by debate among the editors of an article, but referenced from reputable outside resources.
• Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy contemplates including only significant published viewpoints regarding a subject.

I wish supporters of the view that cold fusion is still pseudoscience provides source for their personal views, that are at least as reliable as the 2004 DOE panel which says the contrary. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

More to the point, the editors and peer-reviewers at the J. Electroanal. Chem., Fusion Sci. & Technol., Naturwissenschaften. and hundreds of distinguished scientists such as the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, government of India say that cold fusion is not pseudoscience. In a sane web site, their views would override the personal views of a handful of fanatics such as ScienceApologist -- fanatics who have never read a paper or book on cold fusion and who clearly know nothing about the subject. As long as these people are allowed to run roughshod over the carefully expressed, peer-reviewed views of world-class experts in electrochemistry and nuclear science, this article will be worthless. What we have here is mob rule by a clique of ignorant people who trample on academic traditions, and censor out anyone who disagrees with them. This is a distillation of the worst attributes of Wikipedia. The problem is that ignorant fanatics have no self-awareness, and even though they mouth platitudes about science and objectivity, it never occurs to them to read papers, learn something, or look at experimental evidence.

- Jed Rothwell

LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 21:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

You need to butt out. Advocating links to your own website is considered a form of spamming. You don't seem to do much other than that at present. Incidentally, my friend who worked with Fleischmann is a world class expert on electrochemistry with a publicaiton list as long as your arm, an endowed chair at a British university, a worldwide lecture schedule and a standard undergraduate text to his name. And he thinks it's not fusion. And he wrote one of the control systems for one of Fleischmann's original experiments. Beware the appeal to authority. Guy (Help!) 23:36, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

First of all, LENR-CANR is edited by Storms, not me. Second, I have not added any links to my own website. I have not touched the Wikipedia article in years, and neither has any cold fusion researcher as far as I know, because it is dominated by skeptics. Other people have added links to LENR-CANR.org. Most of these have been erased.

"Incidentally, my friend who worked with Fleischmann is a world class expert on electrochemistry with a publicaiton list as long as your arm, an endowed chair at a British university, a worldwide lecture schedule and a standard undergraduate text to his name. And he thinks it's not fusion."

What is the basis for his opinion? Has he published a paper describing why he thinks it is not fusion? If so, I would be happy to reprint this paper at LENR-CANR.org, if he would like.

Anyway, I know several hundred world-class electrochemists such as Bockris, Miles, Mizuno and Oriani who disagree with him. They too have published dozens of papers, including many papers about cold fusion. I invite you and your friend to read these papers, at LENR-CANR.org. I also invite you to read the anti-cold fusion papers that try to disprove the findings. Only 5 or 10 have ever been published, as far as I know, mainly by Jones and Morrison. We have nearly all of them.

I invite you to read original sources. The skeptics here, on the other hand, are trying very hard to prevent you and everyone else from reading papers.

- Jed Rothwell

LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, by the way, sorry to nitpick but what I wrote is not an appeal to authority. Quoting the definition:

"This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious."

". . . Claims made by a person who lacks the needed degree of expertise to make a reliable claim will, obviously, not be well supported. In contrast, claims made by a person with the needed degree of expertise will be supported by the person's reliability in the area."

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html

All of the people I quote, such as Bockris and Oriani, are widely recognized genuine authorities. Also, they published their experiments in detail, and other experts replicated them. That is the gold standard of proof that they are right. There are some people working in cold fusion who, in my opinion, are not experts, but I do not quote from them.

- Jed Rothwell

Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.32.176.42 (talk) 01:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I wish supporters of the view that cold fusion is still pseudoscience provides source for their personal views, that are at least as reliable as the 2004 DOE panel which says the contrary. -- I don't think that the DOE panel ruled on whether much of what is going on under the umbrella of "cold fusion research" is pseudoscience or not. Certainly there are people promoting pseudoscience as cold fusion and as such there are parts of this subject which are definitely pseudoscience. Nevertheless, there may be isolated researchers doing good work as well. That's what I get from the 2004 report. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

ScienceApologist wrote: "Nevertheless, there may be isolated researchers doing good work as well." How would you know? You have not read any books or papers. For all you can say, all 2,500 researchers are doing good work. Or they may all be lunatics and frauds, just as Time magazine and the Washington Post say they are.

You can't begin to judge, and you have no basis to make this statement. It is pure speculation. Speculation and opinion are not allowed in Wikipedia, but you have nothing else to offer.

Or HAVE you actually read anything? Would you care to list one or two authors you have read? McKubre, Miles, Fleischmann? Did you find any mistakes?

- Jed Rothwell

Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 23:36, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Please stop referring to the contributor and instead focus on the content, Jed. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:41, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I shall refrain from referring to you personally, and I shall make a general statement. The "skeptical" anti-cold fusion assertions in this discussion page, and in the article, are counter-factual. They are mistaken. I don't mean that one or two of them are slightly inaccurate, I mean that if you compare them to actual, bona fide, peer-reviewed scientific information, you will see that they are utterly wrong. For example, take this statement by some unnamed person that there "may be isolated researchers doing good work" People have different ways of defining good work, but let's take a conventional one. Let's say that "good work" is "work accepted by top-notch peer-reviewed journals, and performed at major universities and corporations by prestigious scientists, and which is replicated by hundreds of other scientists." If that's what you have in mind then there are HUNDREDS of such researchers, not a handful of isolated ones. (Most are dead or retired, so it would be more accurate to say there were hundreds.)

It seems likely to me that whoever wrote these things could not have read the literature.

- Jed Rothwell

Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

I no longer think the word skeptic is appropriate. A skeptic might allow an opposing opinion to be expressed. We have seen rampant deletion of positive evidence. Perhaps we should coin a new phrase to express it, pathological censorship.Ron Marshall (talk) 03:42, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Skeptics by definition, at least the dictionary definition, allow every opinion to be heard and simply refrain from making positive conclusions on the subjects they believe insufficiently proved. Everyone should be a skeptic in this sense, when talking about science: blame the rabid "debunkers" of CSICOP and such for giving "skeptics" a bad name.... --81.208.60.199 (talk) 07:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely correct. Scepticism is in fact a core principle in the scientific method. {{proveit}}, as they say. Guy (Help!) 00:04, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I mentioned that the "skeptical" anti-cold fusion assertions on this page are mistaken. Only a handful of anti-cold fusion papers have been published. They are equally mistaken. The Morrison paper is a good example. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

Much of the Morrison paper is devoted to the argument that ". . . a complicated non-linear regression analysis is employed to allow a claim of excess enthalpy to be made."

As Fleischmann pointed out in his rebuttal, Morrison "failed to observe that we manifestly have not used this technique in this paper."

Morrison demanded that Fleischmann et al. use another method. Again, he failed to note that Fleischmann did, in fact, use this method. Fleischmann asked: ". . . given that Douglas Morrison accepts the methods advocated by the group at General Electric and, given that we have used the same methods in the recent publication should he not have accepted the validity of the derived values?"

Another example is the Hoffman book, "A Dialog on Chemically Induced Nuclear Fusion." Most of this book is devoted to the hypothesis that cold fusion experiments were conducted with used, recycled heavy water from CANDU fission reactors. This, too, is manifestly incorrect. I contacted Ontario Hydro (now Atomic Energy of Canada), which produces all of the CANDU heavy water, as well as heavy water for laboratory use. They responded immediately with a 2-page fax pointing out that used moderator water exceeds radiation safety standards by a factor of 100,000,000, and that it is strictly against the law to sell it. They concluded: "Used moderator water can often be re-sold, but only to other reactor operators. . . . Ontario Hydro dominates the world's nuclear market for heavy water and the world's non-nuclear wholesale market, and we have never attempted to use diluted, cleaned-up old moderator water for our non-nuclear markets."

All other skeptical assertion are equally unfounded, and never fact-checked. Hoffman spent years and a grant for hundreds of thousands of dollars writing his book, but he never bothered to make a 10-minute phone call to Ontario Hydro to check his hypothesis. These "skeptical" assertions appear to be based solely on the imaginations of skeptics. I do not understand why Wikipedia allows made-up speculation to dominate this article, but it does. I further do not understand why Wikipedia allows these "skeptics" to erase actual, legitimate information from conventional sources such as peer-reviewed, mainstream journals.

- Jed Rothwell

Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.224.24 (talk) 16:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

From NPOV Tutorial

Information suppression

A common way of introducing bias is by one-sided selection of information. Information can be cited that supports one view while some important information that opposes it is omitted or even deleted. Such an article complies with Wikipedia:Verifiability but violates NPOV. A Wikipedia article must comply with all three guidelines (i.e. Verifiability, NPOV, and No original research) to be considered compliant.

Some examples of how editors may unwittingly or deliberately present a subject in an unfair way:

• Biased or selective representation of sources, eg:
  • Explaining why evidence supports one view, but omitting such explanation in support of alternative views.
  • Making one opinion look superior by omitting strong and citable points against it, comparing it instead with low quality arguments for other POVs (strawman tactics).
  • Not allowing one view to "speak for itself", or refactoring its "world-view" into the words of its detractors.
• Editing as if one given opinion is "right" and therefore other opinions have little substance:
  • Entirely omitting significant citable information in support of a minority view, with the argument that it is claimed to be not credible.
  • Ignoring or deleting significant views, research or information from notable sources that would usually be considered credible and verifiable in Wikipedia terms (this could be done on spurious grounds).
  • Concealing relevant information about sources or sources' credentials that is needed to fairly judge their value.

Thus, verifiability, proper citation and neutral phrasing are necessary but not sufficient to ensure NPOV. It is important that the various views and the subject as a whole are presented in a balanced manner and that each is summarized as if by its proponents to their best ability. Ron Marshall (talk) 23:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• The phrase "information suppression" is a 100% proof positive indicator of a POV being pushed. Try again. Guy (Help!) 00:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Guy, that is precisely our point: reverting to the 2004 version results in the suppression of many well-sourced statements, and a 100% proof positive indicator of a POV being pushed. Ron and I have never deleted a well sourced statement from the article, be it pro or against cold fusion. We have never refused the deletion of a statement without sources. We would like ScienceApologist and MichaelBusch to do the same. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:01, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

That reads to me, as a seasoned admin with much exprerience of POV-pushing by fringe science proponens, as follows: blah blah blah SUPPRESSION OF THE TRUTH™ blah blah. The 2004 version is an FA, a fairly objective measure of merit. The edits since caused demotion from FA due to POV-pushing by cold fusion kooks, whihc indicates a distinct downward trend. Instead of attacking the 2004 version, try suggesting good, well-cited, peer-reviewed content on which to build. Guy (Help!) 13:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Guy - use of characterizations such as kooks does not help consensus to form. Ronnotel (talk) 13:49, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

But that's exactly what the more recent version contains ! well-cited, peer-reviewed content ! Please tell me which sentence is not properly cited, so that we can address it.

Again I must disagree. Every single one of the cold fusion "theories" was inadequately sourced, and/or presented in POV-pushing terms to suggest they were more consistent with mainstream consensus than they are.

In addition, the FA version contained a small sub-section titled "Energy source vs power store". That subsection represented the intermediate opinion that there is a real unexplained phenomenon here, but it may not turn out to be as significant as the true believers believe. That subsection was well-written, brief, and clear. Its subsequent disappearance supports Guy's opinion of article degradation. JohnAspinall (talk) 15:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

If true, this can be addressed by correcting the corresponding sections or statements. No need to delete 3 years of work. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:42, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

One problem is that the statements on "energy source vs power store" are not properly sourced in the FA version, though. I believe that this is the reason it has been deleted, so that the article meets high NPOV standard. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

A lot has happened since the FA version, and all editors recognize that it is wanting (see Current to-do list). Entering this information is what dozens of editors have done over the last 3 years, after intense discussion and some POV disputes (see talk archive), and the current version of the article reflects all that. Asking to do it again is disruptive, and will drive valuable editors away. It sounds groundless to me too, as it is based on arguments such as "cold fusion is pseudoscience" which are not supported by the 2004 DOE panel and peer-reviewed journals. Cold fusion is a scientific anomaly that asks for an explanation, not pseudoscience. It looks much more like the pioneer anomaly than the paranormal or N-ray. The article should reflect that, and the new version goes in that direction. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Isn't the important difference that nobody denies the existence of the Pioneer anomaly, and it has been independently verified by several separate teams. There is, on the other hand, a considerable body of physicists that does not accept that there are any anomalies associated with cold fusion other than experimental error and, in at least some cases, pathological science. LeContexte (talk) 14:19, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a difference between people saying that the pioneer anomaly could be caused by observational error, and people saying that cold fusion could be explained by observational error. In that sense, if "nobody denies the existence of the Pioneer anomaly", as you say, then "nobody denies the existence of a cold fusion anomaly". Pcarbonn (talk) 15:42, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

This is really comparing apples and oranges. For example, many of the most fringe-y cold fusion claims of people like Jed Rothwell read like free energy suppression. There seems to be a concerted group of pseudoscientists that have more-or-less co-opted the cold fusion idea and are even now making grandiose claims beyond the sources -- including many that have been promulgated on this talkpage and the talkpages of various editors of this article. Now certainly there are also some fringe theory supporters who include the Pioneer Anomaly on their list of things they can explain with their amazing theory of everything, but there really isn't the same concerted cruft problem that has happened with cold fusion. There are some minor developments that have happened since the FA article that need to be covered (witness the to-do list), but the way to cover them was not in the version that got steadily demoted to B-class. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:50, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

ScienceApologist and Guy, how come ScienceApologist insults are okay and Jed's are not. Ron Marshall (talk) 16:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It' always the others who are the conspiracists, right? Or does following the "scientific consensus" get you a free pass for accusing others of conspiracy without proving it? (Or removing their work without proving them wrong beforehand?) --Holland-it (talk) 16:23, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I had no intention of insulting anybody. What I'm trying to say is that the claims made by Jed Rothwell and other supporters of the fringe-theory aspects of cold fusion read differently than those made by the people who include the Pioneer Anomaly in their "theory of everything" productions. So either you think it is an insult to characterize Jed's posts as fringe-y or an insult to state that there are pseudoscientific claims that have been made on this talkpage and on the talkpage of users. I'd like to know which it is so I can amend my statement accordingly. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:47, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I would be curious to see what grade the FA version would get now, and whether it would qualify for FA today. I really doubt it. The level of quality of articles has greatly increased since 2004. For example, the FA version has only 6 sources. Comparing grades of 2004 and of today is really comparing apples and oranges. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The difference is that in 2004 Wikipedia was not so strict about WP:CITE. What most of the editors here are saying is that even with the increased attention to references in the 2007 version, the article was still significantly worse. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Even if some sections are worse, which I doubt, this does not give you the licence to delete properly-sourced statement from the 2007. Finding adequate sources for the 2004 version, and merging the properly-sourced statement from 2007 into the FA 2004 version would be a very difficult work, in my opinion. It's much easier to improve the 2007 version. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree fully. First of all, just because a statement is properly sourced does not mean it is sacrosanct. We remove properly sourced statements from articles all the time for editorial reasons. What I think we should do is start by sourcing the 2004 FA version paragraph-by-paragraph and then sentence-by-sentence if need be. After that is accomplished we can look at including statements regarding the DOE report, SPAWAR, and the ACS conference. I anticipate those statements to be minimal (no more than one paragraph for each). At that point, we'll have an article of which we can all be proud. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Because the 2004 FA version does not have "sufficient external literature references, preferably from reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (peer-reviewed where appropriate)". As a consequence, it would also get a B grade, according to the assessment scale. So, the fact that the 2007 version has a B grade does not mean that it is of a lower quality than the 2004 version, and that "the quality has degraded". Pcarbonn (talk) 17:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It's interesting to see what the reviewer who gave the B-grade has to say, here: he's only asking for some copy-edit. No major POV issue, no issues with the lenght of the sections, ... and no reason to delete any of the well-sourced statements. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:22, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

So, should we go to the arbitration committee then ? I'll argue that, by reverting to the 2004 version, you want to delete properly-sourced statement for the purpose of advancing an unsourced POV. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration committee does not handle content-disputes. I say that the 2004 version is better. There seems to be more people who agree with me than agree with you. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

While wikipedia is not a democracy, it would be interesting to know who would like to continue editing from the 2004 version, and who would like to continue editing from the 2007 version. Discussion on the issue should still continue though.

We did this before: Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 11#Survey (request for comment). ScienceApologist (talk) 20:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The 2004 revert was done at the end of September 2006 by ScienceApologist and others. Two years of work were negated for the purpose of information suppression. Now ScienceApologist and others want to negate another year of work for information suppression. This behavior is censorship and it is not NPOV as the description of information suppression above states. Ron Marshall (talk) 23:04, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Once, again, Ron, you are commenting on contributors rather than content. Cut it out. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:09, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Again, in my not inconsiderable experience, pretty much 100% of allegations of "information suppression" are in fact complaints by fringe believers about WP:NPOV being correctly enforced in articles. Guy (Help!) 23:45, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Edit from the 2007 version:

• Pcarbonn Cold fusion is not a fringe or pseudoscience, but a scientific anomaly that begs for an explanation. This is clearly explained in the 2007 version, with sources such as 2007 DOE panel which recommended further scientific research. It is not abandoned and it is developing, as exemplified by the SPAWAR experiment that was discussed at length at the 2007 annual meetings of the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society and other scientific meetings (see Wired article). The article was demoted to B status for copy-edit reasons, not POV (see here). The reversion to 2004 is supported by unsourced opinions that are contrary to reliable facts. I wish its supporters would provide sources for their statements. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
• Ron Marshall (talk) 23:04, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Edit from the 2004 version:

• ScienceApologist (talk) 20:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
• User:Michaelbusch - because the version in recent years has been run over by cold fusion enthusiasts, who claim any attempt to restore this article to the scientific consensus represents 'deliberate suppression'. What would make you accept that there is no cabal? Michaelbusch (talk) 23:09, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
• Obviously I also support the 2004 version for the reasons stated above; working fomr a FA is always better than working from an article that was demoted from FA due to POV-pushing. In a field which is essentially abandoned and not developing it's a no-brainer. Guy (Help!) 23:41, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
• JohnAspinall (talk) 02:16, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Can there be a disambiguation page link here?

There needs to be a link to go to Adobe ColdFusion. -- HAYSON¹⁹⁹¹ 21:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)  Done Guy (Help!) 00:03, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Talk page semiprotected

With due apologies to the few anonymous editors who have been thoughtfully contributing here, I have semiprotected this talk page to prevent the relentless self-promotion and abuse of Jed Rothwell. I can't rangeblock due to likely collateral damage, and he's IP-hopping. The whole talk page will be better off without him right now, I think. Good faith comments for this page posted ot my talk will be brought here as soon as I have time, no doubt other eidtors will be similarly helpful. Jed Rothwell should consider himself topic-banned for a month to let less conflicted editors settle the matter of what to do next. Guy (Help!) 00:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Page now semi-protected

I have reduced protection level on the article to semi. Let's all please renew our efforts to assume food faith on the part of our fellow editors. I think a very good place to re-start is discussing the To-Do list that was mentioned above. Ronnotel (talk) 14:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

BRD cycle revert

I reverted the inclusion of an overview section. I shall now enumerate my problems with this section:

There is a basic question as to whether we need an overview at all. I'm of the opinion that the lead right now does a decent enough job explaining what cold fusion is and providing the appropriate background. Perhaps one or two more sentences can be added or rearranged, but adding an additional section seems to me to be overkill. However, I have provided explanations below for why each of the individual wordings were problematic as well. ScienceApologist (talk) 07:05, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Overview

The electrolysis cell

When water is electrolyzed in a closed cell surrounded by a calorimeter, all energy transfer can be accounted for using the theories of electricity, thermodynamics and chemistry: the electrical input energy, the heat accumulated in the cell, the chemical storage of energy and the heat leaving the cell all balance out. When the cathode is made of palladium and heavy water is used instead of light water, the same conservation of energy should be observed.

Comments

This seems to me to be a bit much for the article. Explanations of electrolysis should go on the electrolysis page and not on this page. Mentioning that cold fusion was electrolysis with palladium and heavy water should be sufficient. That would only require one sentence, not a paragraph. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

F&P in overview

What Fleischmann and Pons said was that the heat measured by their calorimeter significantly exceeded their expectations in some cases. They calculated a power density over 1 W/cm³ based on the volume of the cathode, a value too high to be explained by chemical reactions alone. They concluded that the effect must be nuclear, although they lacked evidence for it.

Comments

A couple problems here: This should be in a section devoted to Fleidshmann and Pons, not in the overview. Also, I'm not too happy about lenr-canr and newenergytimes being used as sources as they have obvious reliability concerns. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. The overview should present succinctly what F&P have reported. The source is not lenr-canr or newenergytimes, but the original paper in Physics Letter A. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Succinctly is the key. An entire paragraph seems like overkill. Also, I'm not convinced that an overview section is needed. WP:MoS seems to be of two minds on the subject. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a point of clarification here. F&P's original paper is the one in J.Electroanal.Chem., right? The link from the Physics Letters A reference actually points at a reprint labelled as being from The Third International Conference on Cold Fusion. 1991. I am OK assuming that the 3ICCF paper turned into the PhysLettA paper. I am not OK is this one being cited as a fundamental reference for "cold fusion". The word "nuclear" does not appear anywhere in this paper. The word "fusion" does not appear anywhere in this paper (except in the titles of other publications). The whole paper is about the measurement of excess enthalpy, and makes no claims at all about the sources of excess enthalpy. In particular they do not say anything like "a value too high to be explained by chemical reactions alone." What they say is "the specific excess rates are broadly speaking in line with those achieved in fast breeder reactors". That might be considered suggestive, but it is not a clear claim about anything. JohnAspinall (talk) 19:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The Physics Letter A paper was provided to support the energy density mentioned in the disputed statement. The rest of the statement should be obvious, but, since you challenged it, it should be better sourced. Sources can be found in the history and the See also sections of the deleted version of the article: the JElectroanal.chem, the press release of F&P, the video of their press conference, and the error they made on the interpretation of gamma spectrum, ...

If you keep putting the NewEnergyTimes POV on this, you are going to see a lot more challenges. P&F did not make an error in the "interpretation" of the gamma spectrum. They published a gamma spectrum which could not have come from a properly calibrated instrument. And if the instrument wasn't properly calibrated, then their claim to have observed the 2.2MeV gamma is invalid. Please understand that there is no "interpretation" involved. The counts come out of the multichannel analyser, and you plot them. All gamma peaks have a nearby Compton_edge. P&F's peak didn't have it. Their spectrum also did not show a separate peak for a nearby gamma that is ubiquitous in the background radiation (it comes from radon decay). While this would normally be way too much detail to include in the article, it is important because this pair of facts was responsible for the balance of judgement shifting to "not real" in the eyes of many. (See e.g. the Ron Parker interview, or Chapter 4 of the Gieryn book.) Now NewEnergyTimes goes beyond POV to falsehood, when they say P&F "corrected" the error in their later paper. Those words were copied into the Wikipedia article at one point. JohnAspinall (talk) 16:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

You are right. I should have said "the error they made with the gamma spectrum". Sorry for that. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, please understand that the foundation of the field is the observation of unexplained, excess heat. The mechanism that explains it is unknown. A paper that discusses excess heat is in the field of cold fusion, even if it does not talk about fusion. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:17, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree. No problem with that. I just want the "it must be fusion" statement to be accurately sourced. JohnAspinall (talk) 16:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Is the video of the press conference not enough ? They clearly propose that nuclear fusion is the origin of the excess heat, if I recall properly. Hence the name of the page. Whether they have put that in a scientific paper, I don't know. In any case, why the question ? Pcarbonn (talk) 21:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I suppose the press conference will have to do. What I was looking for was a single citeable reference where P&F say "our reasoning to conclude that it's nuclear fusion, is ...". A press conference doesn't usually permit that degree of technical reasoning. JohnAspinall (talk) 21:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Replication

Others have tried to replicate their observations. Many failed, but some succeeded, using a variety of setups.

Comments

Obvious POV. The idea that "some succeeded" is entirely arguable as seen in the 2004 DOE report, for example. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. They did succeed in replicating their observations. Whether this is proof of cold fusion is another story though, as the 2004 DOE report says. So this is not POV. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

According to them. Of course, according to others there were problems. This is POV because it takes a controversial claim at face-value. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Should we then say "Many said they failed, but some said they succeeded" ? Pcarbonn (talk) 09:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

We should try to see how many said they failed and how many said they succeeded, then we can apply the appropriate weight and determine whether the people who believe that success happened should be referred to in the same way as the people who believe that there was wholesale failure. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Easy: there are 200 reports of the generation of excess heat, as reported by Ed Storms. How many said they failed ? Pcarbonn (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Journals

They reported high power densities in peer reviewed journals such as the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics and the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry.

Comments

Highly contentious. First of all, these peer review journals are, as has been said previously, somewhat out-of-the-way. More than this, we shouldn't be reporting only positive results lest we succumb to publication bias. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Wikipedia only requires scientific sources, not top-notch sources. Also, 1989 panel said "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. " So it is perfectly valid to report positive results. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

No, Wikipedia requires reliable sources, and in the case of contentious claims WP:REDFLAG applies. This is a situation where we need better sourcing to come to the appropriate conclusions. These journals may not be good enough. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

We could now cite some more prestigious journals: the European Physical Journal - Applied physics, Naturwissenschaften, European Physical Journal A and C. Would that be OK ? Pcarbonn (talk) 09:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

There is also a problem of us looking for only positive results. Finding more "prestigious journals" does not solve the problem of publication bias. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The 1989 report said : "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary". So it is perfectly OK to look at positive results only, as long as they are valid. That's what the prestigious journals seem to think. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Review of heat

In the most recent review of the field by the DoE, some researchers believed that the experimental evidence was sufficient to establish the scientific validity of the excess heat effect. Others rejected the evidence, and the panel was evenly split on the issue. This was a significant change compared to the 1989 DoE panel, which rejected it entirely.

Comments

POV-interpretation. The majority of the DOE panel rejected the evidence. To say that "some believed" is to paint a rosier picture than the report gave. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

This is simply not correct. Please go back to the 2004 DOE report. Here is the full quote: "The excess power observed in some experiments is reported to be beyond that attributable to ordinary chemical or solid state sources; this excess power is attributed by proponents to nuclear fusion reactions. Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic." So you could also say : "the majority of the DOE panel accepted the evidence. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

You know very well that I have read the DOE report, Pcarbonn. While the reviewers were split evenly as to whether there was excess power, this is a technical iteration away from cold fusion, of course, and since systematics are not discussed explicitly in the DOE report it is contentious to include such a statement without the accompanying disclaimer that the DOE report rejected cold fusion interpretations. In effect, what this statement does is mislead the reader into thinking that this statement is something more important than a technicality. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Obviously, because cold fusion is about the generation of excess heat, this is more important "than a technicality". The systematics are discussed in the DOE report: it explains the reasons for the rejection of the excess heat, as described in later section of the deleted version of the article (which I'm certainly in favor of including). The disclaimer that the DOE report rejected cold fusion comes in the next sentence, so I don't see the issue with this sentence.Pcarbonn (talk) 09:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, simply, that it is misleading to readers who are not reading carefully. We don't need a sentence that is that iteratively complicated. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I wish we could make it simpler, but that would be very difficult to do without introducing bias. What do you mean by "it is misleading to readers" ? Pcarbonn (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Review of nuclear reactions

The search for products of nuclear fusion has resulted in conflicting results, leading two thirds of the 2004 DoE reviewers to reject the possibility of nuclear reactions.

Comments

Again, a POV-interpretation. Claiming a controversy of "conflicting results" here is something that isn't sourced. To source this, you will need to find a mainstream, uninvolved scientist who reports that the results are indeed "conflicting".

I agree that the wording of the first part could be improved, and better sourced. The DOE part of the statement is correct though.Pcarbonn (talk) 16:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

There is also the issue of 2/3 rejecting the possibility of nuclear reactions. In fact, this is a very stringent rejection and there were less-stringent rejections made as well. Only one reviewer actually supported cold fusion claims. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

So, you agree with the second part of the statement ?Pcarbonn (talk) 09:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the way it is worded as it seems to be misleading. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "it seems to be misleading" ? You say : "it is a very stringent rejection". I do not think so: they are many scientific debates that would have the same type of evaluation, e.g. the pioneer anomaly: how many scientists would say that the anomaly is real, i.e. explainable only by new physics ? Is it a reason to reject research in the field ? No.

I would argue that the article should reflect the view of the DOE: this means adequate recognition to those who find the evidence convincing. Presenting the field as fully rejected by mainstream is a gross oversimplification. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Navy

In 2006, Pamela Mosier-Boss and Stanislaw Szpak, researchers in the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego, reported evidence of high-energy nuclear reactions concentrated near the probe surface. Based on this work, two other teams have reported similar findings at the American Physical Society meeting of March 2007 (sessions A31 and B31).

Comments

Problematic. First of all, why is a US Navy scientist reporting in a German journal? Seems supicious. Also, we should not user LENR-CANR: there are other neutral archive servers we can use. Finally, almost anyone can report conference proceedings which are not peer-reviewed and are only subject to minimal oversight. What's important is to document the response at the conference -- but this is almost impossible to do. So we should find a neutral third-party journalist who reported on the session if we want to discuss the APS meeting. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Why do you have suspicion in a German journal? Please do not show American bias. Feel free to provide other servers for papers, but that's not a reason to delete the statement. Since when journalists are considered reliable sources on scientific subjects ??? Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The US Navy is an American institution. If this was the German Navy then I can see why they would publish in a German journal. Journalists are reliable sources when it comes to reporting on social events which is basically what a conference is. Conference proceedings are the opinions of the attendees and notoriously biased accounts. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The SPAWAR team also reported their results in the European Physical Journal - Applied Physics. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Why didn't they get it published in an American journal? ScienceApologist (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know. But this is not important to me. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Theory

One reason for many to exclude a nuclear origin for the effect is that current theories in physics cannot explain how fusion could occur under such conditions. However, the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss the reported evidence. Many theories have thus been proposed, in a continuing effort to explain the reported observations.

Comments

Ridiculously POV. The statement that "the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss the reported evidence." might as well read: "mainstream skepticism against cold fusion is wrong." That is completely unacceptable for inclusion here. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. This is your interpretation of the sentence. The sentence is well-sourced from the 2004 DOE, and entirely relevant. We discussed this already.[8] I'm about to raise the issue to the arbitration committee if you still delete it. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it isn't sourced: it is cherry-picking an idea and massaging it to fit a pro-cold fusion POV. This statement is entirely unacceptable. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, MichaelBusch did delete this sentence again.[9], and I have raised the issue to the arbitration committee.

Again, the statement is properly sourced. At the same time, please provide a source saying that cold fusion can be rejected based on a lack of theory. None of the 2004 DOE reviewers have used the lack of theory as a reason for rejection: they are scientists after all. If mainstream skepticism is based on the lack of theory, it is wrong. If wikipedia wants to be a reliable source of information, it cannot represent that view. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Clearly, making a statement that is supposed to tell the reader what to think about whether to dismiss evidence or not is not acceptable per WP:NPOV. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I fail to understand your reasoning. Please explain. This statement is sourced by a reliable secondary source; as such it is entitled to "draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims". Wikipedia article should use secondary sources for such purpose. Where is the problem ? Pcarbonn (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Patents

The US Patent Office accepted a patent in cold fusion in 2001.

Comments

Trivia. The US Patent office accepts a lot of dubious patents. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I find this relevant, but won't make a big fuss about it. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Future studies

Still, current knowledge of the effect, if it exists, is insufficient to expect commercial applications soon. The 2004 DoE panel identified several areas that could be further studied using appropriate scientific methods.

Comments

Again, POV. First of all, this is a POV explaining away one of the major criticisms of this endeavor: why isn't cold fusion making us energy right now if it exists? Secondly, the stock phrase about the DOE panels recommendation is throwaway and misses the point that the majority of the panel members were dubious as to the very existence of the effect. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. The answer to "why isn't cold fusion making us energy right now if it exists" is that it would take $50 to 100 million only to test its viability and commercial applications, and that they did not get this money (yet). (see Wired article) Pcarbonn (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

There are obviously a lot of people who disagree with this. What I'm saying is that this is serving the purpose of pandering to a pro-cold fusion lobby. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that there are some who will take this as meaning the Government is deliberately suppressing cold fusion research, and others who will apply occam's razor and conclude that nobody thinks this long-shot is worth the price of the research. Given that such a budget would be peanuts to the rewards if it were real, and many companies have incredibly deep pockets, I think the lack of ongoing research is pretty significant, but that's just my supposition. Guy (Help!) 15:36, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The DOE statement comes from the conclusion of the report: I find it hard to believe that you argue with its reliability, notability or relevance. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:40, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

This is true, but it is iteratively irrelevant. The DOE panel was charged with answering the question as to what things could be funded. That they answered this question has no relevance to an article on cold fusion. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

You say "the DOE panel was charged with answering the question as to what things could be funded". Therefore, it should make sense to quote their answer to this question. The answer is in the lead section, which says that the panel "did not find the evidence convincing enough to justify a federally-funded program, though they did recommend further research". Which further research ? "they identified several areas that could be further studied using appropriate scientific methods", as the deleted statement says. When you consider the lead section and this overview section, I really don't see where the problem is. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

This isn't an article on the DOE panel, it's an article on cold fusion. We should say what makes the source relevant to cold fusion. It's not the DOE's recommendations about how to fund specific research projects. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying that whether cold fusion should be the subject of further research is not of interest to wikipedia readers ? I would say it is. So, if we find a reliable source answering this question, we should quote it. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration

I have now requested arbitration on all the pending subjects. See here.Pcarbonn (talk) 19:36, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

• It will be declined as a content dispute. Guy (Help!) 09:45, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • But you could also try mediation. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Summarising the relevant scientific papers

Five papers have been listed as finding cold fusion effects. They are all put together in a lump and no-one has gone through them to summarise what they say. And I just searched for "cold fusion" on ISI and found about 150 references of different kinds, from peer-reviewed journal papers to conference proceedings to a couple of recent articles in the scientific magazines that seem to be saying that cold fusion research is "back" (possibly prompted by the appearance of Storms' book). I'm sure that if editors more scientifically literate than me are willing to put in the work, then an article can be written that sums up the current state of the research in a way that will be acceptable to all. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your optimism. I wish you good luck... Pcarbonn (talk) 17:14, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I wish you good luck Pcarbonn, since if anyone is going to summarise those papers it will have to be you. It won't be me anyway as I don't have the science background. I'm going to keep the page on watch but all I can do is to help with the spelling, grammar, style and referencing, and to ensure that it remains at least partly accessible to lay readers. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the trust you place in me. Unfortunately, it's taking way too much of my time to defend reliable sources. Because the statements from the 2004 DOE panel are challenged, I don't see how statements from the articles you mention would not be. I can have a better use of my time than arguing about this. If the arbitration committee does not consider the case, and if the position of the other editors does not change, I'll say goodbye to wikipedia. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:29, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

ArbCom won't consider the case, for the reasons stated above. NB that WP articles on controversial subjects are usually themselves controversial for a long time, but eventually editors get fed up with the warring and start focussing on improving the article. I was marginally involved with the Islam article which is now a Featured Article - if it can happen there it can happen here. Anyone who wants a page that unequivocally advocates CF or unequivocally debunks it can dream on. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

As I said, I wish you good luck.

Maybe the drama of all this can be summarized this way. As I contributed to the article, I have had a lot of fun learning about the fascinating field of cold fusion. It progressively became clear to me that cold fusion is a serious scientific question worth of further investigation. I contributed to the article in this direction. Yet, every once in a while, editors that know nothing of the subject come and are surprised to see what's in it. Some rejects it based on their prejudice, and destroy all the work that was done. Others, like you, keep an open mind. Now, it may be your turn to go through the journey I made. If so, I wish you a pleasant experience. Let me know if I can help: I'll be happy to support you. Feel free to look at the version that was reverted: it has all the elements you need to bring the article to FA status. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:45, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

And after talking to a friend who was part of the original Fleischmann experimental team and is now a full professor at a British university, specialising in electrochemistry and with an international lecture career, numerous patents, many tens of publications in mainstream journals and a standard text published by Oxford University Press - in other words, a person who by any rational criteria could be counted not only an expert in the subject but a particularly well-informed one - I am equally convinced that the main claims made by more recent publications are pure hokum, and that's probably why they are not published by reputable mainstream journals. I am not a believer in the free energy suppression school of conspiracy theorising. You probably worked that out already, of course. Guy (Help!) 19:04, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

In what I would consider the normal process of science, he would have to go on the record and publish the reasons for his position in a scientific journal. Was his paper also rejected by mainstream journals ? Then, how much credence should he have ? Pcarbonn (talk) 09:11, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Guy is just explaining why he personally isn't convinced. Of course a personal conversation with a scientist can't be used as a source for the article. We have to look at the recent papers one by one and find out what they claim. The status of the journals can be ascertained by citation indices. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:27, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I must have been mistaken. I thought that wikipedia was based on facts, not opinions. I now realize my mistake. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:55, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

It's based on sources! Itsmejudith (talk) 12:53, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Then, please explain to me what's going on on this page, because I don't get it. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:45, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Pcarbonn, what you don't get is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The probability of deuterons overcoming coulomb repulsion is so small and so well understood that extremely convincing data is required. The JJAP and New Energy Times articles have data which hints at fusion, true, but the burden of proof here is on the side of the fusion advocates. Wikipedia is built by editors' opinions, and what you see are the results of many peoples' opinions that electrochemisty-driven fusion is very unlikely in any of these experiments.

I'm curious why we seem to apply double standard. Surely, the pioneer anomaly would require extraordinary proof : it makes the extraordinary claim that the theory of gravitation may need to be revised. What is so extraordinary about the proof of the pioneer anomaly that makes it a valid subject of scientific discourse ? What is missing from the cold fusion proofs ? Pcarbonn (talk) 08:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Something else you might not get is that scientists rarely write papers which disprove other papers. Remember that a scientist's most valuable resource is time, which means that if one thinks certain experiments are a waste of time, they will avoid that field. That is exactly what you see when you compare the number of scientists at prestigious institutions working on conventional fusion issues to the number working on cold fusion issues. The absence of large numbers of papers showing evidence against cold fusion is completely consistent with the scientific process. It should be noted that articles critical of cold fusion have appeared in prestigious journals: Science "DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY: Outlook for Cold Fusion Is Still Chilly" (2004); Nature "The embarrassment of cold fusion"(1990); and Physical Review "Cold fusion: How close can deuterium atoms come inside palladium?"(1989).

If it matters, I have posted previously as 209.253.120.205. I started posted several months ago trying to consider the effect this article would have on a nonexpert wikipedia reader. At that time, the article gave the impression that the chance that electrochemistry-driven fusion is occurring is better than 50%, which is completely against the scientific consensus. The lack of favorable articles in journals like Physical Review, together with the 2004 DOE panel recommending against federal funding are strong indicators that scientific consensus does not believe in the fusion effect.

So where does that leave us? The article should indicate the scientific consensus view while describing the 1989 activities and the post-2004 results. The current article at least does not give the reader an inaccurate view of the scientific consensus. However, it should probably have 2 or 3 references to post-2004 results such as the Navy-related reports. Olorinish (talk) 20:51, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

To sum up, both sides of the controversy should be presented by reference to papers in peer-reviewed journals or other very good sources. The article should indicate that the current consensus is unfavourable to the idea, but that pro-cold fusion is a notable minority scientific view. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:17, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

• Actually it's probably more like a notable fringe view, a notable minority scientific view would be held by a meaningful number of mainstream academics, which this does not appear to be. Guy (Help!) 23:22, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are misinformed. There is an interesting discussion going on on my talk page. Feel free to participate.Pcarbonn (talk) 08:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

By misinformed, you mean, I take it, informed by those with whose views you disagree. My primary source of information here, as I have said before, was actually active in the original Fleischmann & Pons experiments. Guy (Help!) 18:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I would be interested to know what this person said that confirmed your conviction that "the main claims made by more recent publications are pure hokum". Hopefully, this will convince me too. Also, would you mind giving us his name ? Pcarbonn (talk) 08:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I suggest not carrying on this conversation as it will lead nowhere. The purpose of the talk page is to discuss how to amend the content of the article, not to argue out the topic of the article. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Cold Fusion Decision

The practical result of what has been done to the cold fusion article is the public will get misleading information on the current status of cold fusion. Since cold fusion is something that can be a major benefit to the human race, this is a serious error.

I have decided to give up on Wikipedia. PCarbon seems to me to have the patience of a saint. PCarbon has told me that he is also quitting Wikipedia. I will admit that cold fusion is a complex and unique issue. I think that most people who do not have at least a bachelor’s degree in the physical sciences or engineering would have a hard time grasping it. However there are many notable exceptions to this rule.

Pons and Fleishman made their announcement in March of 1989. The announcement was to protect The University of Utah’s patent rights. Some important information like the palladium alloy they used and the length of time it took to get a result (weeks) were not released to protect patent rights. Many scientists understood the significance of the discovery and scientists all over the world began experiments. Pons and Fleishman had been reproducing the experiment for five years and did not expect the difficulty others would have reproducing the experiment. Expectations were raised very high, and when a lot of positive experimental evidence was not appearing, there was a backlash. In the scientific world editors of journals have a lot of power, since scientists must publish or perish. The editor of Nature and other editors decided that cold fusion could not be real, that it was an embarrassment to science and that it needed to be squelched immediately. They also concluded the end justified the means. The used de facto censorship, name calling, and tried to ruin the careers of people who advanced the cold fusion idea. For this reason many of the scientists who continued to work on cold fusion, were retired, had tenure, or worked in another country where the witch hunt was not active.

Even while this political assault was under way, Nature refused to publish a positive result on the grounds that the issue was already decided. Melvin Miles had an initial negative result which he reported to the DOE committee. The DOE committee told the world about this negative result. When Melvin Miles later reported a positive result to the DOE committee, the DOE committee reported the result to no one.

This is how the “consensus” and de facto censorship came about. Cold fusion was done in by the political method, not by the scientific method.

The experiments have gone on for 18 years. Something like 3500 scientific papers by hundreds of scientists with PhDs in physics and chemistry have been written. Since 1992 nuclear transmutations with unnatural isotope ratios have been found. These nuclear transmutations are proof that nuclear reactions are occurring. More heat, tritium, He3, and He4 has been found. Some x-rays, gamma rays, and charged particles have been found. Reproducibility has improved.

Now some comments about Wikipedia. When working on the cold fusion article I have merely tried to include the experimenters’ point of view. I have not tried to censor or delete the skeptics’ point of view. I have tried to create a NPOV article.

I have a problem with some of Wikipedia’s rules and how they are applied. The rules do not show a grasp of the scientific method. Wikipedia has a nest of self appointed scientific censors that do not have a grasp of the scientific method. The scientific method is that experiment is the reality check of science. The only logical proof against experiment is experimental error. Consensus, existing the theory, and expertise can cast doubt on an experiment, but they are not a logical proof that negates experimental evidence. To imply other wise is a use of the political method. Your “undue” weight rule is seriously flawed. It seems to favor consensus over truth and does not give experimental evidence its proper weight. The principal of “information suppression” is well described in the NPOV Tutorial. Wikipedia does nothing to stop “information suppression.” Wikipedia claims that NPOV is its highest principal, but it does not enforce it. Apparently consensus is its highest principal. Truth and facts do not make the list. I do not see how content dispute is not a NPOV dispute. I do not see why “information suppression” is allowed under content dispute. “Content dispute” just seems to be a buzz word for doing nothing. I was told by one of your admins that if Wikipedia had existed in the Middle Ages, it would say the world was flat. If this is true, you should put this statement on your home page as a warning label.

You seem to be overrun with censors who like to throw around words like pseudoscience, pathological science, proto science, and fringe science. These are nonsense words. There only purpose they serve is political name calling. It is not all that complicated. If you are following the scientific method you are practicing science. If you are not following the scientific method you are not practicing science. If you make mistakes while following the scientific method, you are still practicing science.

There are ways that Wikipedia can improve their product. Wikipedia could change its rules to incorporate a sense of the scientific method and give experiment its proper weight They could stop using old censorship to justify new censorship. They could bring their nest of scientific censors under control. They could stop publishing articles on controversial science or new science since they cannot do it competently. They could issue warning labels. They could stop “information suppression”. They could enforce NPOV. They could resolve disputes with people who are scientifically knowledgeable and do not have a censorship passion or axe to grind. However Wikipedia does not seem to be interested in reform. Ron Marshall (talk) 03:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

For readers' interest, Ron Marshall cross-posted this to the talk pages of the WP Arbitrators, as well. Antelan ^talk 03:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Section break for editing convenience

• Might be time for an RfC, disrupting Wikipedia by aggressive promotion of fringe views is not considered acceptable by the wider Wikipedia community. All the above by Ron Marshall is just so much special pleading anyway; you can publish as many papers as you like in the minor journals and you'll still be wasting your time, the mainstream scientific community is highly unlikely to recognise a concept which is not repeated i the major research institutes and is not published in the thought leading journals. I feel Wikipedia is being abused here as a way of boosting something beyond its true acceptance in the scientific community, as a way of compensating for the inability or unwillingness to do rigorous enough science to get in the big name journals. Guy (Help!) 18:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Concur with Guy. Michaelbusch (talk) 19:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Mediation would be the obvious next step, as suggested earlier. I can't see any abuse of Wikipedia principles. We just need to put aside our differences about the status of the science and state the agreed facts so that readers can decide for themselves. As it stands, we are told that there have been papers in refereed journals reporting findings of effects of cold fusion but we are not given any detail of the content of those papers. Please also remember that a minor journal is exactly that, a refereed journal, although of less standing. There are metrics available to give the precise standing of every journal. We must also be aware of the need to reflect a world view. If every US scientist is steering well clear of cold fusion yet a few labs in Japan are still investigating it, well that is notable and should be described exactly as it is, without any excessive claims or attempts to debunk either. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I did propose mediation a couple of week ago, and I'm still open to it. I'm afraid we can't agree on which facts to include in the article if we can't agree on the status of the science, as shown in the previous conversations. I would recommend to base the article on 2004 DOE review, as the deleted version was: it is better to use such reliable secondary source than the 5 primary sources you suggest. Also, many teams are continuing research in the US. Some US teams presented their results at the 2007 annual meetings of the APS and ACS: SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego, JWK Technologies Corporation, U. C. Berkeley. Other US researchers have presented to the 2004 DOE Panel: MIT, SRI International, George Washington University, Research Systems Inc. Others US companies are known to be working on CF: Lattice Energy, Coolescence, ... Pcarbonn (talk) 16:48, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

And the minute they publish in Nature, we'll be right there. Guy (Help!) 17:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Guy, are you really suggesting that the only source you'll accept as reliable is Nature? Ronnotel (talk) 18:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

If it was good enough for Fleischmann and Pons... But no, I will accept any of the highly respected peer-reviewed journals. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, or at least the very highest standards of rigour and fact-checking in the publishing journal. Guy (Help!) 19:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I would support inclusion of a summary of the claims in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, an ISI-listed journal. That this research is continuing is a notable fact. The encyclopedia should not of course take a view on whether the claims are proven or not. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:38, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I have a friend who is an academic working in Japan, I will ask him what he thinks of that journal. I am not sure ISI listing is necessarily the benchmark here. Guy (Help!) 00:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

We should also report on this article describing the SPAWAR experiment, published in the European Physical Journal-Applied Physics (0.938 ISI impact factor in the applied physics category). Guy, would you accept that this is a reliable source ? Pcarbonn (talk) 16:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks OK to me, as long as we report only what it says and not what we infer from it. Guy (Help!) 22:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Surely the ISI and its impact factor calculations are objective while a Wikipedia editor having a quiet word with a single academic isn't? I'm sure ISI is not above criticism, it may well be that there is the potential for bias towards US and English-language sources, but what else is available? Itsmejudith (talk) 15:51, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Checking sources

Checking sources, always a good idea. For example, when the article mentioned the DoE report it linked to what looked as if it was a mirror of the report on lenr-canr.org. I would prefer to link direct to the report on a .gov domain, so I opened the pdf to get the report number and reference. Guess what? The pdf turns out to begin with a polemic by Jed Rothwell. Who, as far as I can tell, linked the thing. I'm also removing copies of copyright works hosted on that site with no evidence of permission. Authors are allowed to distribute copies for private study, but not, as far as I am aware, to release the documents for hosting on websites, the copyright attaches to the publication, as was made clear in the first one I just removed. I do have some experience here, I am on the editorial board of a website that discusses published research in another area; many of the contributors have published papers but we cannot, in most cases, use the originals on the site, we clarified this with our lawyers. Guy (Help!) 17:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing the link on the DOE report. The wikipedia policy on copyright says: "However, if you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work." Do you know that LENR-CANR violates the rights of the creator ? Please have a look at its home page, which states: "It features a library of more than 500 original scientific papers in Acrobat format, reprinted with permission from the authors and publishers." Do you have evidence that this is incorrect ? If not, please do not remove proper links to articles on lenr-canr.org. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:35, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The burden of proof, in cases where a site is hosting material not its own copyright, lies with the editor seeking to include such links; in other words, prove it's not a vilation of the copyright notice clearly reproduced within the document. Given that at least one link has been manipulated in this way I am not inclined to trust lenr-canr anyway, since the same editorialising could be applied to any of its content and there is no known process of review on that site to prevent it. Actually the onus is always on the editor seeking to include any disputed content within an article to achieve consensus for its inclusion, whihc is the meaning of bold, revert, discuss. So, what evidence do we have that journals are prepared to waive copyright in this way? I think you'll find that the more likely they are to do so, the less willing we should be to accept their papers - no reputable journal of which I'm aware would allow an activist-run website to republish full article text in this way. Guy (Help!) 17:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I came to this article from the Fringe Theories Noticeboard where help was requested. I had and have no opinion on cold fusion, my knowledge of physics being quite limited. I'm 100%convinced that fusion will be the solution to our planet's energy problems, mind you, it's just that I'd give priority to working out better ways to use the energy already being generated through fusion in the Sun and radiated to us on Earth.

What I came here to help achieve is an NPOV article written up from good sources. Now from everything that I can see, the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics and die Naturwissenschaften scream out their good source credentials. They are both ISI-listed peer-reviewed academic journals. Yes? No? Die Naturwissenschaften was founded by Max Planck, someone even I have heard of. Am I missing something really important? If I am please tell me in simple language.

I also understand that the effects researchers are claiming to have found, if they are real, might shake much of the currently accepted knowledge of nuclear physics. That makes them extraordinary claims, and as we are repeatedly reminded, "extraordinary claims need extraordinary sources". But that is a warning relating to claims that can be stated as fact in the encyclopedia. In this case no-one is proposing that we state the cold fusion effect as fact. It is only being suggested that the fact that these papers have been published is a notable part of the controversy. Which it is - a search shows up news reports in the mainstream science magazines on the lines of "cold fusion is back". So someone needs to summarise very briefly the methods and findings of each of the significant papers that reports cold fusion or related effects, say one or two sentences per paper. It needs someone with a good physics background to do the summarising. Anyone fancy a bit of "writing for the enemy" practice in this season of goodwill? Itsmejudith (talk) 21:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It is extremely unwise to be convinced to any extent that cold fusion, as described here, will be the solution to anything at all. I am very passionate about bicycles, and believe to a near religious level that they are the perfect solution to many modern traffic and health problems, but humans being at root both lazy and ingenious I have no doubt that it is equally possible that our salvation will be belliwheels and tablets to stop coronary artery disease and thrombosis. I think that Heinlein's The man who was too lazy to fail is an incredibly perceptive piece of writing. Guy (Help!) 22:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The wikipedia policy on copyright says: "However, if you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work." The burden of proof is on your side. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

No, the burden of proof is always on the editor seeking to include disputed content. Anything else would be a POV-pusher's charter. Guy (Help!) 16:24, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I've submitted the issue to the noticeboard on reliable sources. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:38, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

You've misunderstood my comment, Guy, which I should have attached a smiley to. I meant that if you're looking for a free source of renewable energy, look no further than solar energy (which is produced by fusion unless my scientific knowledge is even more limited than I'd like to think). It seems that it was the hope of a something-for-nothing "technofix" to the energy crisis that led to the initial high hopes placed in this science and then to the correspondingly deep disillusionment. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Issues of copyright aside, what we have a Wikipedia editor passing off his own editorial content as a DOE report. That is enough to render any reference at lenr-canr suspect. JohnAspinall (talk) 17:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions for Article Improvements

Why not consider these possibilities?

• 1. Have all these alternative names for this stuff added to wiki as redirects, so if someone does a search they end up in the one place.
• 2. Instead of having a huge sub topic in the middle of any article, slice it off to it's own article.

There is possibly a good reason for doing this as it would appear that some protagonists see this as either an article;

• that describes a theory or;
• that presents the history of an experiment that made headlines and had been subject to further controversy in the media or;
• that describes a process that allegedly or otherwise does something or;
• that describes current research on the subject;
• attempts to describe in an encyclopaedic way all the above in one article.

I seem to think that some appear to want to encompass everything possibly known in this topic into the article, and that others appear to either want it to be only about one (or a mix) of the above style of presentations. I suggest breaking it up and turning Cold Fusion into a disamb page, sort of like an index to articles about the theory, the process, the media history, the research to present day, and whatever other topics that may not already be covered elsewhere in wiki. Regards.petedavo (talk) 22:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I would be happy to split the deleted version of the article, as you suggest, and work from there. The current version is too short to justify this splitting, in my opinion. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I also don't think there is enough for several articles, but there is enough for an article on the Fleischman-Pons experiment and its reception. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:17, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

European Physical Journal article

Here's what I take away from the recent CR-39 article in the European Physical Journal. Mosier-Boss, et. al., describe a repeatable mechanism for generating and detecting energetic particles from a Pd-D cell. They assert that the characteristics shape of pits in the CR-39 detectors can only be made from energetic particles, and not from other sources such as background radiation or chemical attack. They also describe a number of experimental controls that were designed to rule out these other sources of pits. They do not make any claims regarding excess heat. Comments? Ronnotel (talk) 05:22, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Is the DOE a reliable secondary source ?

Can we consider the 2 DOE panels as reliable secondary sources ? If so, shouldn't we write the article to represent its views ? We should then try to agree on what it said, and complement this with the recent developments. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:41, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• It's a primary source, what do the reliable secondary sources (as in: not New Energy Times) have to say about the reports? Guy (Help!) 16:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why you think it is primary. I'm going to take this to the reliable sources noticeboard to get some more comments. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Guy, you are incredible. How can you argue that it is a primary source, since it is a review, not a report on an experiment ? In addition, in the case you are unaware of it, the 2004 DOE panel generated a lot of comments, showing its notability: [10] [11] [12] [13]Pcarbonn (talk) 16:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

For a good source for NPOV description of the state of the debate: Daviss, Bennett. "Cold fusion rides again: physicists scoff, but enthusiasts say they now have hard evidence that proves room temperature fusion is real." New Scientist 194.2602 (May 5, 2007): 32(3). Itsmejudith (talk) 16:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Here is what New Scientist also said in Dec 2004: "Grab a beaker of heavy water and a pair of palladium electrodes: it's time to start experimenting with cold fusion again, without any need for embarrassment."[14] Pcarbonn (talk) 16:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that was their report of the issue of the second DoE report. It may be relevant to bear in mind though that this is a science article on an area of scientific research (however contested, however minor). If it were a sociology of science article on an a scientific controversy or a philosophy article on an epistemological controversy then the DoE reports would be primary sources and we would need the New Scientist to show how they were presented. As it is, the DoE reports are good secondary sources and the New Scientist is not needed except for updates. That's my current understanding anyway; hoping for some further views from the RS/N. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree with your analysis. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:34, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

question about cold fusion

This is a partial copy of a discussion that took place on my talk page.Pcarbonn (talk) 09:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me if this is bold taking this "offline," but I am curious about what you personally think about cold fusion. Do you actually think it is occurring? There has been 17 years of failure since 1989. If there had been any real hope the 2004 DOE panel would have recommended funding. If you do believe it is occurring, how many years without practical devices or mainstream respect would it take for you to change your mind? 209.253.120.205 (talk) 12:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

First of all, my opinion does not matter in writing the wikipedia article. To respond to your question, I have no doubt that something strange is happening in CF experiments, and that we should fund additional research. I'm not sure why you say "17 years of failure". What is failure, when you have only a trickle of money to conduct the research ? Still, I encourage you to buy the book of E. Storms to see the wealth of quality research that has been done in the last 17 years. The informal information I get shows that the wind is turning, and that mainstream science is getting more and more interested. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:36, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, all edits are a product of the editor's opinion of the relative merit of facts and phrasing. I will try to get the Storms book. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 13:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The Storms book wasn't in the Chicago library system, but I requested it through inter-library loan, which might take a few weeks. If you will indulge me, please tell me the 2 or 3 best references that show electrochemistry-driven fusion is real. In case it matters, I have a Ph. D. in condensed matter physics and I am a coauthor on 11 patents and 17 scientific articles (PRB, APL, PRL, JAP, etc.). 209.253.120.205 (talk) 18:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

You may want to look at the list of selected papers on New Energy Times, or at the end of the document presented by researchers to the 2004 DOE panel.

Here is my personal selection. On excess heat:

• McKubre, M.C.H., et al., "Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the D/Pd and H/Pd Systems" Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Vol. 368, p. 55, (1994)
• Szpak S. et al., "Polarized D+/Pd-D2O system: Hot spots and mini-explosions" (video), ICCF 10, 2003
• P.A. Mozier-Boss et al,”Pd/D CO-DEPOSITION: EXCESS POWER GENERATION AND ITS ORIGIN”,Symposia Papers Presented Before the Division of Environmental Chemistry American Chemical Society, Chicago, IL March 25-29, 2007,

On nuclear reactions:

• Szpak, S., et al., "Evidence of Nuclear Reactions in the Pd Lattice", Naturwissenschaften, Vol. 92(8), p. 394-397, (2005)
• Szpak S. et al., Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles, Naturwissenschaften, 2007
• Iwamura, Y., M. Sakano, and T. Itoh, "Elemental Analysis of Pd Complexes: Effects of D2 Gas Permeation" Japanese Journal of Applied Physics A, Vol. 41, p. 4642, (2002)

Pcarbonn (talk) 09:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

In any case, the article should reflect the best review available on the subject, and that's the 2004 DOE panel. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. As I suspected, the papers are pretty flawed. I have been a reviewer and a submitting author for journals like Physical Review, and in my opinion none of those papers would be published there because of incomplete disclosure and experimental methods. Getting published in prestigious journals is the oxygen of a successful scientific career. I strongly suggest you advise your informal contacts to stop submitting to second rate journals and do the hard work of getting their results published in Physical Review (or similar journals), since that is how mainstream scientists earn respect. On a related note, I am curious, does the lack of publication in prestigious journals cause you to doubt the reality of electrochemistry-driven fusion? It should. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 23:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

User 209.253.120.205 states: "As I suspected, the papers are pretty flawed." A PhD and you still don't realize that opinions means nothing in Wikiland. If you really want your efforts here to have an impact, and even help improve things, then provide us with a list of the flaws. Ought to be a piece of cake for you since you've just finished reading all the references and the material is still very fresh in your mind. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.94.22.110 (talk) 06:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

According to you my opinions are irrelevant, so that would be a waste of time. I am still curious, does the lack of publication in prestigious journals cause you to doubt the reality of electrochemistry-driven fusion? It should. Confirmation of transistor amplification and high Tc superconductivity both appeared in Physical Review less than a year after they were announced to the public, but it has already been 17 years without such confirmation for cold fusion. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 13:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know who wrote the anonymous comment before yours. While the lack of publication causes me to doubt the reality of electrochemistry-driven fusion, it is counterbalanced by the breadth, depth and quality of experimental evidence published elsewhere. Prestigious editors may have plenty of good reasons to reject papers, as you suggest, and authors should improve the quality of their papers as the 2004 DOE panel said. But they have also plenty of bad reasons to not publish, such as the need for conformity, and the difficulty to recognize an error that they made 18 years ago when they rejected it. Sometimes, papers are rejected for reasons that are not scientific: eg. the lack of a theory to explain it, or the difficulty to reproduce them. While these reasons could reasonably prevent publications in prestigious papers, they cannot remove anything to the scientific validity of the results. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Another reason for me to believe cold fusion is worth researching is the 2004 DOE panel. After all, they were better place than me to judge it. When 1/2 the panelists accepts the excess heat, and 1/3 does not reject a nuclear origin, it tells you that something is going on, and that's worth investigating if you are curious. And that was without reviewing the anomalous transmutation evidence (for some reasons the researchers did not present it). I'd be happy to hear your comments on the Iwamura paper: do you see a flaw ? Is it not properly described ? How do you explain the results ? Pcarbonn (talk) 17:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The Imawura paper is extremely incomplete. They report no heat, no radiation, and no intermediate products with an atomic mass change of 4. They also have no graph of [fusion indicator] vs. [time of chemical reaction]. In this case, they could make a series of samples(~20) which have varying amounts of exposure to D2 or H2, and perform identical isotope analysis on all of them. If the graph shows a monotonic increase for longer reaction times, they may have something. However, if they really want to convince people that deuterons are fusing, they have to address the issues of radiation and intermediate products. Of course, even if cold fusion was present there, it would have very little to do with heavy water fusion. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 21:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for looking at the Iwamura paper. You say: "They also have no graph of [fusion indicator] vs. [time of chemical reaction]. They could make a series of samples(~20) which have varying amounts of exposure to D2 or H2, and perform identical isotope analysis on all of them". I believe that's what they did in Fig 4.a, 5.a, 6.a, 7.a and 8.a Let me know if I'm mistaken.

When you say "they have to address the issues of radiation", IMHO, you are asking more than is required. You are trying to see if the experiment fits current theoretical knowledge. Obviously, it does not: current knowledge says that transmutations cannot occur in this environment. And that's the whole point. You should go back to your original requirements: is the experimental protocol flawed ? Is it properly described, so that replication can be done (it has, by the way) ? If so, the paper supports the view that additional studies are necessary, like the one you suggest, rather than the conclusion that it is all bogus. The deleted version of the article never said that cold fusion is absolutely sure; it said that more research is justified.

You say "it would have very little to do with heavy water fusion". Indeed. That's why researchers believe the name should be changed from cold fusion to low energy nuclear reaction.Pcarbonn (talk) 11:21, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Since you are asking for traces of radiation, I would invite you to look at the recent paper in the European Physical Journal, reporting on the SPAWAR experiment with CR-39 detectors. Use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments.Pcarbonn (talk) 08:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

You are not mistaken. I should have said "They have no convincing graph of [fusion indicator] vs. [time of chemical reaction]." Your comment on "asking more than required" is core of the disagreement. When an extraordinary claim like cold fusion is made, the burden is on the advocates to have extraordinary protocols (many many data points, multiple labs, multiple analytical techniques, etc.). If they do those things and get consistent results, mainstream scientists will listen. When high Tc superconductivity was announced in late 1986, it only took weeks for it to be confirmed. Physical Review Letters published one key paper (Wu et al., March 2, 1987) less than a month after it was submitted because they want to disseminate important news quickly. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 03:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me if I butt in. I don't particularly like the sentence about "extraordinary evidence", not because I don't accept it in principle but because it's often associated with "moving the goalposts". In the case of cold fusion, the critics asked for better repeatability, they got it after some years (H/Pd > 0.95 and all that jazz) and in most cases never acknowledged it. They asked for radiation and got it (tritium production well above background measured multiple times) but, same as above. They asked for helium production correlated to heat, and when it came they mostly dismissed it citing contaminations (without demonstrating that a contamination indeed happened, I mean). I'm not accusing you personally, obviously, but I don't detect much good faith in this pattern. Well, at least here in Italy academic people in the last years went back to speaking openly of cold fusion without fearing ridicule or immediate dismissal... we'll see what they can come up with (and if I manage to get in the position of helping, I'll be there ;) --Holland-it (talk) 07:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and about the "17 years of failure", for me the "upper bound" for this kind of thing is the time it took to accept continental drift: 40 years ;) Not to mention that Wegener's evidence, after all, was less than what the CF researchers have to offer in defense of their field, and his attempt at a theory was very clumsy (like those of many CF researchers, sadly). Yet right he was.... --Holland-it (talk) 08:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree with Holland-it. You ask for "many many data points, multiple labs, multiple analytical techniques, etc.". Then look at Ed Storms book: you'll see plenty of protocols, plenty of reports, plenty of labs. The extraordinary evidence are there, if you look for it. If you ask for a publication in Nature, we just need to wait: it will happen, eventually. But I don't see the scientific basis for asking it. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify further: I completely agree with our friend that the Iwamura paper by itself shouldn't convice anyone of anything: it's the way it fits in the picture drawn by many more studies, most of which were concerned with different things, that should be evaluated.

Recently, an article published on the EJP brought evidence of anomalous d+d branching ratios for conventional deuteron-beam experiments at low energies. They didn't reproduce the CF ratios, and their setup didn't have anything to do with Fleischmann-Pons experiments, but that's just why it's so interesting: when a number of completely different methods of inquiry continue to crash into "something strange going on" with hydrogen isotopes in metal lattices, in my opinion, you have a much more compelling evidence than what would come from incremental betterments of a single experiment.

The obvious sign of real pseudoscience is that no matter how high the efforts, the quality of evidence never increases with time or even diminishes. The quality of CF evidence, on the other hand, has steadily increased. If you say "I think it's still not enough to make us rewrite nuclear physics", fine with me. But it's surely enough to make us want to know what the hell is really going on there ;) --Holland-it (talk) 11:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The Wegener episode is a great example of how science succeeds. There was a shocking proposal with only limited data. People discussed it openly but few believed it. Years later new measurements in several areas, especially sea floor magnetism, convinced people that the continents are moving. When cold fusion advocates have data like that, people will definitely pay attention. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 13:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

And many people are paying attention again, I tell you, especially outside the USA (You keep paying attention to string theorists in the meantime, I really doubt that it is a more intelligent bet but we'll see ;) The Wegener comment was just in response to your "17 years are too much" sentence: since sometimes it took more than double the time to vindicate a theory, I surely won't dismiss CF just because of that... I would if I saw published papers just going in circles around the same old things. But they are not. --Holland-it (talk) 13:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I would like to thank User 209.253.120.205 for responding in a scientific manner: namely, reading and bringing up what he believes are SPECIFIC flaws in the papers, and doing it in a sincere, non-condescending way. If we could get the main editors of the CF page to do the same, it would shape up quite nicely. Instead they want to criticize the journal, the publisher, the country it was published in, the scientists, etc. They find all kinds of things to criticize except experimental setup, procedures or analysis of the science! That is completely unscientific... PhysicsEng (talk) 06:03, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

POV tag

The current version of the article portrays cold fusion as pseudoscience and fringe science, a position that was valid in the '90's, but fails to recognize the rebirth of the field, with the 2004 DOE review and recent publications in prestigious peer-reviewed journals such as European Physical Journal. In addition, the current version of the article lacks reliable sources for many of its controversial statements. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:26, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• Um, rebirth? The report concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to justify a federally funded research program. The supposed "rebirth" is also not published in mainstream journals with anything like the profile of the original. It's now very evidently a fringe field. Guy (Help!) 22:10, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

One person's fringe is another person's niche. Anyway, what we think doesn't matter. Bring on the sourced mainspace edits. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Dieter Britz's graphs of submissions and publications of cold fusion papers versus time show no evidence for a revival. Cardamon (talk) 00:22, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Moving the article forward

The article now needs to be moved on towards consensus. There is no point in lengthy "oh yes it is - oh no it isn't" arguments here. We need to work through it point by point, establishing which sources say what and bringing disagreements here. The disagreements should be on specific intepretations of the validity of specific sources, not on the generalities of the science. Compare solar energy, which was bogged down for a long time in argument, now GA and moving towards FA, due to editors willing to do the painstaking groundwork. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, and ideally without giving the impression that the true believers are anything other than the tiny minority they are, and hopefully without the kind of fringecruft that caused demotion from FA and two reverts to the FA version. Guy (Help!) 16:01, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

As Itsmejudith says, this can be easily resolved by providing sourced edits. That's how FA article are made. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:13, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

And as has been pointed out numerous times, when you are challenging the scientific mainstream you need good sources, ideally from journals of the degree of prominence of the original journal in which Fleischmann and Pons published. You also have to be on the lookout for the "free energy" kooks and their spin on it all. There seems to be a historical problem with the latter in this article. Guy (Help!) 18:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't see the logic of demanding that the journals should be "of the original journal in which they published". I'd prefer us to follow through the approach in WP:NPOV by referencing both sides of the argument and allowing the reader to decide. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with this is the tacit assumption that the two sides in this "controversy" should be weighted equally when clearly the "pro" side is consistently marginalized. Wikipedia should carefully conform to a similar kind of marginalization of the "pro" side since focusing too much on it will result in an accommodation and inappropriate soapboxing of the fringe. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The two sides in this "controversy" should be weighted according to the votes in the DOE panel: evenly split on the evidence of excess heat, and 2/3 vs 1/3 on the evidence of nuclear origin. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Rather, I think an appropriate reading would be minimal support of cold fusion as a nuclear reaction as described by cold fusion proponents. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Todd Rider thesis

There is no indication of why this is relevant to cold fusion research. Could someone either delete it or rewrite it so that it is clear why it is included. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this is not relevant to the cold fusion article, and that it could be deleted. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The paragraph about Rider's thesis is in the wrong place. It should be in the subsection titled "Generally cold, locally hot fusion". It is talking about non-equilibrium systems. That's why it's there. I think the general question of how big to make the "Other kinds of fusion" section is a good one, though. JohnAspinall (talk) 17:10, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

In fact, looking at it more, I'm sure it was intended for the "Generally cold, locally hot fusion" section. The referent for "these systems" is clear. I made the edit. I'm open to further edits here. JohnAspinall (talk) 17:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I have proposed to shorten the "other types of fusion" by talking only about cold fusion (see this version). After all, this is the subject of the article. Unfortunately, it was reverted. Any third opinion on this ? Pcarbonn (talk) 15:53, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, many other reverts were done here, and third opinions on them are more than welcome. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe the other kinds of fusion section is necessary because there are a sizable set of readers who come to this page looking for sonofusion or cluster impact fusion who become confused if these things aren't clarified in the cold fusion article. Before that section was added there a description of sonofusion, for example, was added by editors trying to help several times, sometimes in multiple disjointed sections concurrently. The fact that some media sources call these other things 'cold fusion' means that even if they are not formally cold fusion they should be addressed here if only to redirect folks to the appropriate pages. --Noren (talk) 15:30, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Mizuno belongs

Dr. Tadahiko Mizuno's book belongs per the information about it already included. But the Japanese publisher is Kogakusha. PR^talk 21:51, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

News section

Do we need a News section ? The relevant WP guideline does not list this as a standard appendix. I would suggest to remove it, which I did, but it was reverted by Guy. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:07, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Question

Do those who reverted and supported reversion to the 2004 version intend to do anything on the lengthy To-Do list above, which ScienceApologist said was required after the reversion? MigFP (talk) 09:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, we intend to resist attempts by Pcarbonn and others to insert only those things which pretend that this is anything other than a tiny fringe belief. This includes the fact that the lead must make it abosolutely clear that the DoE reviews represent the mainstream view, something Pcarbonn seems to think is not rleevant. Guy (Help!) 10:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree that the DoE represent the mainstream view. The DoE was split on the evidence of Cold fusion. It is a gross oversimplification to say that it has rejected it. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:18, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully, this will be done by providing adequate sources. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

An argument which fails on one very important point: the majority of scientists simply are not investigating this. As with most fringe science, the mainstream recognises lack of publication in serious journals as being functionally equivalent to rejection of the theory. The original experiments were problematic on a number of levels, and there is pretty much nothing in the major journals to change that, as the DoE reviews found. The DoE reviews are the best overall review we have, and the 2004 review should set the tone for the whole article. I think the Physics Today piece says it best: "The cold fusion claims made in 1989 by B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann didn't hold up. But they did spawn a small and devoted coterie of researchers who continue to investigate the alleged effect." Spot on. Guy (Help!) 12:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Problem is, the Physics Today was written in April 2004, before the 2004 DOE panel published its finding. Compare this to what Wired says in August 2007: "At an MIT lecture hall on Saturday, a convocation of 50 researchers and investors gathered to discuss a phenomenon that allegedly does not exist. " or "Verification of these controversial results is not the problem -- many labs around the world have reproduced parts of the results many times. "[15]. So please find a more recent source. In any case, it's better to stick to what the DOE has said, rather than rely on the interpretation by journalists.

If all the subjects that "a majority of scientists simply are not investigating" are pseudoscience, as you suggest, then there would not be much real science left, because it's not possible for everybody to study everything.

You say: "the mainstream recognises lack of publication in serious journals as being functionally equivalent to rejection of the theory". This is in direct contradiction with WP:fringe policy : "a lack of consideration or acceptance does not necessarily imply rejection either; ideas should not be portrayed as rejected or labeled with pejoratives such as pseudoscience unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources." In addition, we have listed several CF papers in respectable scientific journals: how can you talk of a "lack of publication in serious journals" ?Pcarbonn (talk) 14:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Keyword being "necessarily". Sometimes obscure ideas are just obscure and not rejected. You'd be hard-pressed to find people in the field who hadn't at least heard of cold fusion. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:16, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• "resisting attempts ... to insert only those things which pretend that this is anything other than a tiny fringe belief" is not listed on ScienceApologist's to-do list. I ask again: Does anyone who supported the reverting intend to do anything on that list? MigFP (talk) 04:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

If you'd care to read the CF page you would note that progress has been made on his first two suggestions, both by myself and by others. I'm less convinced of an urgent need for some of his other suggestions. Also, for Pcarbonn's request for a cite for more recent indications of fringe status: "Fleischmann and Pons's results quickly proved elusive in other research labs. The hapless pair were laughed out of mainstream science, and most nuclear physicists since have refused to give the slightest credence to the idea." - New Scientist, May 2007 [16] (text bolded by me, as it seems to be popular in this thread.) --Noren (talk) 06:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Sentence in intro

There is a dispute over the following statement in the intro:

The mainstream view, reflected in the DoE reports, is that these effects are not due to nuclear fusion. None of these publications has achieved the prominence or been published in a journal with the same prestige as the original Fleischmann and Pons

The second part presents an unsourced, original research argument that has absolutely no notability. It does not belong in the intro, let alone in the article. As for the view from the DOE, only 2/3 rejected the evidence of nuclear evidence, the other 1/3 found the evidence somewhat convincing, and one was entirely convinced. The DOE offers no support for the absolute statement that is proposed above. Rather, it shows the nuclear origin as an open scientific question, not unlike the one on the pioneer anomaly (which is also a challenge to a core theory of current physics, the theory of gravitation). Any comment ? Pcarbonn (talk) 11:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• It's there to balance out your dogged insistence on including laundry lists of citations to publications by true believers in minor journals. If you'd like to stop doing that, and stop trying to slant the lead to give the impression that this is anything other than fringe science, then it would not be necessary. Guy (Help!) 12:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not fringe science, but a valid subject of scientific inquiry, as the DOE said. That's why respectable scientific journals, as listed in the article, publish articles on the subject. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It's fringe science. Most of the DoE reviewers were unconvinced, and most of the scientific establishment is, too. Guy (Help!) 14:46, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

In case you missed them, here are the journals who recently published articles on CF: European Physical Journal A, C and AP, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Naturwissenschaften, Journal of Physics D. Hardly minor journals, as you suggest. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The fact that many DOE reviewers were not convinced only shows that there is a scientific debate, not that it is fringe (see also the discussion above). Please note also what Wired said in Aug 2007 : "[The SPAWAR paper] joins a long list of cold-fusion research papers that many scientists now reflexively write off as junk". It clearly says that many scientists have not reconsidered the recent evidence, but instead rely on past judgements. I don't see why the wikipedia article should be written to represent this view. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like special pleading to me, and an implicit acknowledgement that what I said is true: the mainstream reflexively writing stuff off as junk is exactly what's meant by consensus. Plus, if the mainstream reflexively writes this off as junk, then it means that a lot of junk must have been produced (because scientists take even longer than Wikipedia to get tot he point of reflexively writing off junk). The very source you cite begins "Despite a backdrop of meager funding and career-killing derision from mainstream scientists and engineers..." Guy (Help!) 19:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Links to copy of article on New Energy Times ?

Someone has deleted the links to copies of the article on New Energy Times (see here). Yet, this site is linked to from [a wired article (search for "cold-fusion research papers"), giving him a label of reliability and notability. Another such list that is linked from the same article is here (search the wired article for "long list"). I would think that the links to the scientific paper are useful to Wikipedia readers, and I would thus propose that we add a link to the copy on these 2 sites when citing scientific papers. Any comments ? Pcarbonn (talk) 11:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• What, apart from finding it problematic that you keep introducing laundry lists of papers by true believers, you mean? Guy (Help!) 12:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Some beating of a dead horse

I removed some stuff from the article, and would like to discuss it here:

The generation of excess heat has been reported by...

Now this whole paragraph was basically a POV-push without proper criticism being made available. People report observations all the time, but not every report is worthy of inclusion at Wikipedia. We have to be especially careful because of publication bias. Since these "reports" are not generally considered to be necessarily evidence for cold fusion, they should not be included in our encyclopedia. If someone wants to include commentary on these reports, please find a secondary source that connects them directly to the topic of this article.

Dr. Michael McKubre thinks a working cold fusion reactor is possible. Dr. Edmund Storms, a former scientist with The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, maintains an international database of research into cold fusion.

Seeming non-sequitors and uncited statements. We need to have a reason to report the opinions of these people.

In March 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) decided to review all previous research of cold fusion in order to see whether further research was warranted by any new results.

Not really relevant to the section of the article since this was a review and does not represent further research. Plus, this statement doesn't convey any useful information to the reader about the review.

Since January 2000, the following scientific journals have published articles on cold fusion...

See comments above on the reports of excess heat. We should not be simply "listing" journals for the sake of listing them. This has no purpose other than to promote the idea that cold fusion is a mainstream research project. Whether it is or isn't is not Wikipedia's job to insinuate.

ScienceApologist (talk) 18:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

what happened to transmutation?

the related topic, low energy nuclear transmutation, seems to have disappeared, as has the broader topic, low energy nuclear science (a.k.a) chemically-assisted nuclear science. Kevin Baas^talk 19:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• What were the exact article titles? Guy (Help!) 20:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

i don't think i can remember the exact articles titles, but i think at one point, there was brief mention of them here. Oddly, this article links to "transmutation" in the see also section, which is a disambiguation page that includes "nuclear transmutation", and the article of interest: low energy nuclear transmutation - which is now a redirect back to this page, which has not a word on transmutation save the aforementioned "transmutation" link. it's a shame, really, because there has been some really interesting experiments done in this field.

LENR-CANR (low energy nuclear reactions / chemically assisted nuclear reactions) is the broader topic under which both cold fusion and low energy nuclear transmutation fit. Kevin Baas^talk 02:27, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

There was this one experiment where they put powderized palladium in - i think - a lithium-oxide solution and ran electricity throughout, and the palladium would get deposited on the cathode through electrolysis. They had a paper with slides showing magnifications that showed reaction sites, and they examined the shape of the disruptions left by the reactinos and used spectroscopy to measure the chemical composition of the reaction sites. there ws tons of informatino. great work. i remember a graphic on wikipedia showing a frame of the heat distrubition video they had recorded from one of the experiments. Kevin Baas^talk 02:42, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's some of the info: [17]. Szpak, i guess is the name of the researcher, and if I remember correctly, SPAWAR is where the research was done. This is the Pd/D co-deposition technique, where pallidium and deutrium are simultaneously deposited on a cathode, thus one doesn't have to wait for the deutrium to get "packed in" to a pallidium lattice. I also found this: [18] which goes over some more of their results, and talks a little about low energy nuclear transmutation. The heat profile picture i was talking about above is on page 12.

There's also transmutation experiments that used (if i understand correctly) pressured gas applied over a surface over a long time - or something of the sort - inspired by the idea that this would be a more-controlled environment because one doesn't have to concern oneself with turbulence and cavitation as one would with a liquid. From what I recall, the results where, as expected, much more reproducable, thought the experiments were also much more expensive. When putting different atoms in there they were able to get different transmutations, (i believe strontium and molybdium (sp?) where two examples.) Each transmutation moved the element up four units in the periodic table (i.e. it seemed to gain four protons) The new, anomoluous elements appeared at the same rate that the source elements disappeared, and they appeared in isotopic ratios that differed significantly from their naturally occurring ratios. These are certainly interesting and important results, and verifiable by way of these papers and the reproducability of the experiments. And they are thermodynamically "cold" nuclear reactions, so they belong in the same general subject area as classical "cold fusion". Kevin Baas^talk 16:30, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

It was:

• Szpak, et. al., Pd/D co-deposition, &
• Iwamura, Y., Low energy nuclear transmutation by loading Pd w/deuterized gas.

In the latter (the transmutations), regardless of what element was transmuted, the element always gained 4 protons and 4 neutrons, (as if two helium atoms somehow joined it), hence the unnatural isotopic ratios of the (apparent) products. In any case, I feel that these two experiments (or series thereof) are the most important contributions to LENR-CANR /(a.k.a. CMNS (condensed matter nuclear science)), besides the well-known pons-fleishman experiment. And I think they merit mention in this article, as not only are they relevant, but they provide corroborating evidence. And they certainly should be in a LENR-CANR/CMNS article, if there is one (and if there isn't, there should be.) Kevin Baas^talk 20:50, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Cold Fusion = IMPOSSIBLE

Im knowledgeable eneough about this topic to make this factual statement. This may be a little informal, but I have the right to my opinion just like everybody else around here.I AM JOHN SMITH (talk) 19:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

If you want, I can elaborate. I just didnt want to get too wordy and get my ass banned for that.I AM JOHN SMITH (talk)

It usually takes more than one or two wordy statements to get your ass banned. Guy (Help!) 20:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It just seems as if I'm getting ganged up on, sometimes. Whoever is in charge, or owns the articles is always ridin me.--I AM JOHN SMITH (talk) 22:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Rest assured, i am john smith, there is no cabal. On the topic of disbelief here - I think it may be useful to take a look at what is required for a nuclear reaction to occur and what "cold" fusion means:

• Nuclear reaction probability is measured in units of a "cross-section", which uses MeV (electron volts), not temperature.
• "Cold" fusion means thermodynamically "cold" fusion. Only high MeV (and high density) is required for a reasonable probabilty of fusion, and high MeV does not necessarily mean high temperature.

Furthermore, there may be ways to lower this "cross-section" through known (or possibly unknown) physical effects, such as quantum tunneling, or, more classically, electron screening.

This is an attempt to resurrect two pieces of fringecruft that went away in the big revert. Electron shielding is discussed earlier on this talk page. As for tunnelling as a mechanism, I discussed it on the (since deleted) LENR article's talk page. Summary: Neither "theory" survives even the briefest critical analysis. Every time cold fusion proponents trot out some misunderstood, poorly constructed piece of theory they make their own case worse. JohnAspinall (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Ummm, thanks for the opinion, original research, and commentary, but it's quite unneccesary. And in this context, it's what's called a "non-sequitor". It in no way address my point that "There may be ways to lower this "cross-section" through known (or possibly unknown) physical effects." Kevin Baas^talk 02:08, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Like I said: "every time...". Hint: if you want more reactions, you have to raise, that is increase, the cross section. JohnAspinall (talk) 23:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Thus, to say it is "impossible" to have thermodynamically cold fusion is to disregard the possibility of ways to lower the cross-section, AND to mistake K (temperature) for MeV (electron volts). Not to mention, to hold a belief that is contradicted by empirical evidence, which is - in a word - unscientific. Holding current mainstream scientific thought as gospel and immutable is also, by the very canons of science, unscientific. But I digress. If K = MeV, then Cold fusion would = IMPOSSIBLE, but K <> MeV. Kevin Baas^talk 17:01, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The conversion from Kelvin to electron volts is simply a matter of multiplying by Boltzmann's_Constant. There is a larger point here that there is a difference between a thermal distribution of energies, and a single energy, but the units in which you measure energy have nothing to do with it. Cross sections, since they are usually measured most accurately by particle beams hitting cold targets, are usually published as a function of energy, but to convert to cross sections in thermal distributions is simply a matter of doing an integral. JohnAspinall (talk) 17:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't refute anything that I said. While it is true that energy is a function of temperature, that does not imply that the two are interchangeable. energy is a function of lots of things, not just temperature. it is a linear combination of a number of terms. while you can't have low energy with high temperature, you CAN have high energy with low temperature. So you see, the relation isn't bijective. a implies b does not mean that b implies a. That's another logical fallacy. Kevin Baas^talk 02:08, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Then I suggest you go edit Temperature accordingly. JohnAspinall (talk) 23:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything in the temperature article that needs changing. Kevin Baas^talk 18:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way,...

This isnt called a controversial article for nothing, so yeah, Im gonna bring it sometimes.I AM JOHN SMITH (talk) 22:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The DoE did recommend further research

The last part of the statement was deleted: "This and a second panel of 2004 did not find the evidence convincing enough to justify a federally-funded program, though they did recommend further research." Why would that be POV ? The panel was evenly split on the evidence of excess heat, and only 2/3 rejected the nuclear origin. We need to represent fairly those that did accept the evidence. The panel did say that they recommend further research in their conclusion. Where is the POV ?Pcarbonn (talk) 22:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It isn't related to cold fusion per se. Including it makes it seem like the DOE panel wanted there to be further research into cold fusion which is something that they explicitly avoid saying in their conclusions. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Wrong. They did say this in their 2004 conclusions: "The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods." The second one is clearly about nuclear reactions. It complements the following quote on the same page of the report: "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV.". Pcarbonn (talk) 23:25, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

You appear to be reading this as support for cold fusion, when actually most of the reviewers consider cold fusion to be bunk. Resolving the controversy, to my reading, means showing what non-nuclear process is producing the anomalous results, not recommending more cold fusion research. "Specific issues" is pretty much the polar opposite of trying to reroduce the cold fusion experiments, in this context. Guy (Help!) 01:30, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Your unsourced opinion and interpretation is irrelevant in this context. The quoted statement simply says that cold fusion is a valid area of scientific research in order to determine whether it is real or not. This clearly shows that CF is not pseudoscience, nor that it is absolutely rejected by scientists. Hence, both sides of the scientific controversy deserve to be presented properly. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Let's put it this way. Because the panel was divided, some of its members believe, like you, that further research will show that the excess heat has a simple explanation other than fusion; other reputable scientists believe that it will show it is real. That's why the panel called it a controversy: different people have different opinion on it. Just as I accept that some scientists believe that CF is not real, please accept that a significant number of reputable scientists in the panel believe that it could be real, and that both views should be presented in this article to reflect the divided nature of the DoE panel's conclusion. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:21, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

And a handful of scientists have signed a petition saying they believe evolutionary theory is wrong and the universe is God's creation. But that, like the views of those who believe in cold fusion, is a minority view, a tiny minority view, and not supported by the evidence. The DoE investigation says, in pretty much as many words, that the CF experiments are a waste of time, there needs to be new basic science demonstrating the proposed mechanism before they will be taken seriously. And I agree with that. I said so up front, not least because a friend of mine told me this is his view, and he is an expert in the field, a full professor workign in the field of electrochemistry, has patents and extensive publications on surface effects, and took part in the original experiments. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; thus far, they are repeating the same evidence (or not repeating it in many cases) and demanding that people change their minds. Science does not work that way. Guy (Help!) 15:03, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The statement "The second panel found the claims of cold fusion to be no more convincing than they had been 15 years previous" comes from "Cold Fusion Gets Chilly Encore" Physics Today, Jan. 2005. We should not quote tertiary sources talking about one secondary source. Instead, we should quote the secondary source directly. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:20, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The statement "The second panel found the claims of cold fusion to be no more convincing than they had been 15 years previous" is a paraphrase of the first sentence of that mainstream press article summarizing the 2004 DoE finding. That article is a secondary source on the topic of the conclusions reached by the 2004 panel. That particular quotation is a paraphrase from the primary source of the 2004 review document- the first paragraph of the conclusion section (What would appear to me to be a fine place to look for the summary): "While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review." That is the substance of the conclusion the panel reached. To avoid skewing the results by selective quotation, it is best to use a secondary source (such as the mainstream press Physics Today article) to summarize the results of the 2004 panel rather than having individual editors cherry pick sentences from the primary source that reflect their views. --Noren (talk) 01:24, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

To be workshopped

Wow, was this ever terrible! I removed it here for triage.

== Experimental reports ==

===Measurement of excess heat===

The cold fusion researchers presenting...

Anyone notice how many goddamn paragraphs in this article presently begin with this phrase? This obviously indicates a problem. Did anyone other than cold fusion researchers present to the panel? Why should only their views be described? This is a major issue we need to address immediately.

This is done in accordance with WP:NPOV, which says that all sides of the controversy should be presented, with proper attribution. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Feh. WP:WEIGHT seems to indicate that we are giving too much credance to cold fusion believers. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Again, the 2004 DOE panelists were evenly split on the evidence of excess heat, so it is legitimate to present this evidence. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

their review document to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion said that the possibility of calorimetric errors has been carefully considered, studied, tested and ultimately rejected. They said that over 50 experiments conducted by SRI International showed excess power well above the accuracy of measurement. Arata and Zhang said they observed excess heat power averaging 80 watts over 12 days. The researchers also said that the amount of energy reported in some of the experiments appeared to be too great compared to the small mass of the material in the cell for it to be stored by any chemical process. They said that their control experiments using light water never showed excess heat.

This is ridiculously detailed for the claims being made: "We didn't make a mistake. We have produced energy. Our experiments have been properly controlled." Yes, I get it, that's the argument. So why are we allowing this kind of soapboxing? Answer: we shouldn't.

This is done in accordance with WP:NPOV, which says that all sides of the controversy should be presented, with proper attribution. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Except, we have overly weighted the pro-cold fusion side inappropriately. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It would be so if the panelists unanimously rejected the evidence of excess heat. They didn't. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

When asked about the evidence for power that cannot be attributed to an ordinary chemical or solid state source, the 2004 DoE panel was evenly split. Many of the reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented to the DoE panel. The reviewers who did not find the production of excess power convincing said that excess power in the short term is not the same as net energy production over the entire time of an experiment, that all possible chemical and solid state causes of excess heat had not been investigated and eliminated as an explanation, that the magnitude of the effect had not increased after over a decade of work, and that production over a period of time is a few percent of the external power applied and hence calibration and systematic effects could account for the purported effect.

This is supposedly the "counter" to the pro-cold fusion side. Only it isn't. It is simply a summary statement made by the DOE. This is a good source for describing why cold fusion is rejected, but our article does not need to detail the ins-and-outs of how the panel voted, for example. Not useful to the reader, you see.

This is important to show the level of consensus that the panel had. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

And why is that important to go through such detail? ScienceApologist (talk) 08:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Other reported evidence of heat generation not reviewed by the DoE included the detection of infrared hot spots (see picture), the detection of mini-explosions by a piezoelectric substrate, and the observation of discrete sites exhibiting molten-like features that require substantial energy expenditure.

Complete and utter original research. We cannot probe that the DOE panel had no awareness of this so-called "evidence".

Some of these papers were published after 2004: the DOE could not have awareness of this. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

That's just an unwarranted synthesized insinuation (as though if the DOE could redo their panel, they'd come to a different conclusion). ScienceApologist (talk) 08:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

===Nuclear products===

A CR-39 detector showing possible nuclear activity in cold fusion experiments at SSC San Diego.

This image itself looks to me to be original research as it is presented as a slide at a conference and was not published. ScienceApologist (talk) 00:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

The cold fusion researchers presenting their review document to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion said that there are insufficient chemical reaction products to account for the excess heat by several orders of magnitude. They said that three independent studies have shown that the rate of helium production measured in the gas stream varies linearly with excess power. Extensive precautions were taken to ensure that the samples were not contaminated by helium from the earth's atmosphere (5.2 ppm). Bursts of excess energy were time-correlated with bursts of ⁴He in the gas stream. However, the amount of helium in the gas stream was about half of what would be expected for a heat source of the type D + D -> ⁴He. Searches for neutrons and other energetic emissions commensurate with excess heat have uniformly produced null results. Although there appears to be evidence of transmutations and isotope shifts near the cathode surface in some experiments, they said that it is generally accepted that these anomalies are not the ash associated with the primary excess heat effect.

Again, this is ridiculously detailed for a simple claim: "Cold fusion supporters believe that the reactions that they attribute to cold fusion have created helium nuclei." That's it. Why there's all this excess garbage seems to me to be simply pandering.

This is done in accordance with WP:NPOV, which says that all sides of the controversy should be presented, with proper attribution. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Unduly weighted. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Not undue weight in view of the fact that a significant number of panelists were somewhat convinced by the evidence. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

For a nuclear reaction to be proposed as the source of energy, it is necessary to show that the amount of energy is related to the amount of nuclear products. When asked about evidence of low energy nuclear reactions, twelve of the eighteen members of the 2004 DoE panel did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence, five found the evidence "somewhat convincing" and one was entirely convinced.

Too detailed an accounting for our readers. The point is that the majority of the DOE reported that there wasn't conclusive evidence for nuclear reactions. This, however, is totally unrelated to nuclear products, per se, unless you allow original research.

Same point as above. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Same response. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

In 2007, Pamela Mosier-Bos and her team reported their observation of pits in CR-39 detectors during D/Pd codeposition experiments in the European Physical Journal. They said that those pits have features consistent with those observed for nuclear generated tracks, that the Pd cathode is the source of those pits, that they are not due to contamination or chemical reactions. They attributed some pits to knock-ons due to neutrons, and said that others are consistent with those obtained for α particles.

Total soapboxing. This paper is not widely cited and has not received enough secondary-source recognition to belong in the article.

Your to-do list above says that the article should be adding some findings on SPAWAR work. This is what this paragraph does. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It does a poor job of it. I would rather have a report from an independent source to explain what's going on. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Though also not a good enough source for inclusion here, this report points to a chemical or possibly a mechanical source to the pits. This report is from a corporation that has a primary goal of energy generation from ZPE- itself quite the fringe concept. The cold fusion true believers perhaps thought that an 'allied' free energy theory would be a safe option to 'test' their protocol but instead glaring flaws and alternative explanations were found. For the most part, cold fusion isn't notable enough to generate many critical publications from reputable scientists- there's little point in refuting something nearly no one believes. --Noren (talk) 06:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Note that the article cited above is a reply to that critique. MigFP (talk) 07:24, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

It didn't appear to be a reply to me, as it does not address the mechanical explanation of pit formation. If it is a reply, it is a poor one. The mechanical explanation predicts that if the substance electroplated is dendritic, then pits would be created, causing the large pits as reported for electroplating of CuSO₄ as well as PdCl₂. If the plated metal is a 'soft mass' such as CuCl₂ they report no pits. Mosier-Boss et al. do not reply to this at all, but merely present the lack of pits in CuCl₂ and do not address pit formation in CuSO₄ at all. --Noren (talk) 14:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The paper by earthtech says that there are strong indications of chemical or mechanical pits, something that is not disputed. But they stoped short of saying that there is no nuclear pits: they recognized their ignorance at recognizing them. So, I would not say it is a critique, and besides, it has not been peer-reviewed. The APJ paper clearly says that, while some pits can be explained by chemical or physical effects, other pits had all the characteristics of nuclear pits. For example, some pits appeared after additional etching or were elliptical in shape, something that cannot be explained by mechanical or chemical effects. Also, some pits are on the back side of the CR-39: how can you explain them with a mechanical effect ? In any case, were are not here to do a peer-reviewed of the APJ paper. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you agree that the symmetrical pits on the front of the film (like, for example, the ones depicted in your preferred version of an experimental section) are as easily explained by mechanical effects as they are by fusion? I agree that we're not here to critique either report, that's the trouble with trying to include primary sources - both should be avoided for use in the article, as both are primary source. --Noren (talk) 01:52, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

In sum, there may be about three to four sentences worth of content to save here. The rest needs to be confined to the dustbin of the history tab.

ScienceApologist (talk) 00:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Vote

Could we have a vote on the following issue: should we keep the recently-deleted "Experimental report" section, possibly with some adaptation ?

Keep the Experimental report section

• Pcarbonn (talk) 07:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC). Our intro describes "most scientists as deeply skeptical, while noting the existence of a small and devoted coterie of researchers who continue to investigate the alleged effect." This can also be said of the pioneer anomaly. This does not prevent that article to present all sides of the controversy in detail. Also, the DOE panel had a large share of reviewers favorable to cold fusion: the corresponding view deserves to be presented properly. Finally, the to-do list above says that we should "Add summaries of both DoE reports". This is the summary of the 2004 DOE report. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep: The encyclopedia is supposed to be comprehensive. Half of the DoE panel agreed there were anomalous events. There is plenty of skepticism in this article and including this material is in no way undue weight. MigFP (talk) 04:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep: What is an emerging science without experimental evidence? What worth would this article have without it? "Oh it's some kind of theory, no work has been done about it, no experiments performed. Just some imaginary postulate of some imaginary results. Kinda like the tooth-fairy." If there shouldn't be an experimental evidence, then there shouldn't be a history section, because what is the history without the history of scientific experiments? Kevin Baas^talk 20:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The experimental report section was deeply flawed

• ScienceApologist (talk) 08:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC). I have no objection to an "experimental report" section in principle. I have many objections to the way this particular section went as I outlined above. Summary of the DOE report is already fairly adequate in this article, I'd say. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• The section reads as special pleading and an attempt to point out from our own researches by reference to primary sources why the dominant view in the scientific community is wrong. Guy (Help!) 09:11, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Not much there is worth saving. --Noren (talk) 06:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Since we agree that there should be a "experimental report" section, could you propose a better one, instead of deleting it ? Pcarbonn (talk) 23:18, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree that it is now necessary to decide by consensus how this material is to be presented. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:55, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Lack of parity and lack of controversy

There is an attempt by cold-fusion advocates to declare the existence of a controversy, even a scientific controversy. Clearly, there is no controversy as cold fusion has been relegated to the fringes of academia and respectable science. The attempts to "balance" the article with "pro" and "anti" sides are artificial unless it is recognized that the "anti" side, being mainstream and the assumed position of those in the relevant academic research communities, is the one that deserves most weight. Since the very idea that "cold fusion" is "controversial" assumes that the "pro" side has a point, trying to form the article into a "balance" between the two "sides" is a synthetic violation of WIkipedia's neutrality policy. In short, there is no parity between anti-cold fusion and pro-cold fusion: anti-cold fusion has the obvious upperhand. As well, there is really no "controversy" except that manufactured by the cold-fusion believers themselves. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I beg to differ about the meaning of controversy. Wikipedia is not endorsing the pro side, when it says that there is a dispute about the legitimacy of alleged phenomena. There is in fact a lot of disputation about whether anyone has achieved cold fusion.

With all the research funds at stake, we'd do humanity a better service to indicate just what sorts of people are claiming they can get this process to work. You know, "consider the source." And then let readers decide if those guys seem reputable or not.

I think most Wikipedia readers are smart enough to discern whether cold fusion is a reproducible phenomenon or not, even if a US president get snookered into it way back when. --Uncle Ed (talk) 00:43, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

The 2004 DoE report clearly says that there is a controversy: "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV." You cannot make it more clear than that, I would say. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:51, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

We can all agree that cold fusion is 20 years away (and always will be); no controversy there. Antelan ^talk 08:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

ScienceApologist's statement seems suspiciously absolutist, and clearly false. Here is the abstract from the March, 2007 review by the head of the Materials & Sensors Branch in the Materials Science and Technology Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, published in the peer-reviewed Surface and Coatings Technology journal:

There are more than 10 groups world wide that have reported the measurement of excess heat in 1/3 of their experiments in open and/or closed electrochemical cells with a Pd solid metal cathode and deuterium containing electrolyte, or D₂ gas loading of Pd powders (see Table 1 of the main text). Most of these groups have occasionally experienced significant events lasting for time periods of hours to days with 50–200% excess heat measured as the ratio between electrical input energy and heat output energy. Moreover, these experimenters have improved their methods over time and it is to be noted that the reported excess heat effect has not diminished in frequency or magnitude. This paper cites selected data generated over the past 15 years to briefly summarize what has been reported about the production of excess heat in Pd cathodes charged with deuterium. A set of new materials experiments is suggested that, if performed, may help to reveal the underlying mechanism(s) responsible for the reported excess heat.

S&CT was chosen because it is the one journal that concerns electroplating and similar deposition technology most closely, and that is the technology used by Szpak and Boss in their SPAWAR work, which has produced the most promising results so far; many of the recommendations in the review involve similar kinds of research. Note also that there is an active dialog between the critics and SPAWAR researchers.

I ask ScienceApologist: What would it take for you to believe that there is, indeed, a legitimate controversy with two sides to it? MigFP (talk) 05:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Please don't ask SA this - we are not interested in his/her views. We need to get back to the article content and to refer closely to WP policies and guidelines in all cases of disagreement. SA, clearly there is a disagreement about CF, therefore there are two sides. Everyone editing here agrees that the article should make it clear that the anti-CF side is mainstream at this time and the pro-CF is a minority view. What we now need to do is to write up each side summarising the best sources. Not rocket science (er perhaps it is rocket science, but never mind). Itsmejudith (talk) 11:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't get caught up in the idea of a false dilemma. If I say that black is white, up is down, and right is left, does that mean that there are two sides to the issue? No. It means that I have a view that opposes reality. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:23, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The idea that cold fusion is real is a notable minority view, therefore we present it accurately as such in the encylopedia. Else, would it even be worth having an article on the topic? Itsmejudith (talk) 14:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Let's put it this way: cold fusion was a notable view a decade-and-a-half ago. People were trying to work out the details of what was being claimed. Since then, the cold fusion enterprise has been moving more and more towards the wacky territory of not deserving mention. The problem is that the people here who are presenting the "pro-cold fusion" side are more or less current advocates and are not as interested in the historical nature of the subject (which is, indeed, where cold fusion derives its notability). If we could reposition the conversations in that vein then we would be cooking with gas. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'm inclined to agree. Back in 1989 tis was really big news, and published in Nature; now, they seem to be scratching round for any journal to publish in, it's completely ignored in the major journals, the mainstream, even in Pcarbonn's preferred sources, is described as dismissive and even derisive, and we'd need a really powerful source to say that this is anything other than a fringe field right now. If that changes, all well and good, but Wikipedia is not the place to make that change happen. Guy (Help!) 20:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The "really powerful source to say that this is anything other than a fringe field right now" is the 2004 DoE report: "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV." It clearly shows that the field is a valid scientific research topic. In a past discussion, we did recognize the DoE as a reliable secondary source, so why don't we simply represent their view ? We don't need to throw our own interpretation in it, we just need to quote them. That's what the deleted section on experimentation was trying to do. If it needs adapation, it can be done; but I don't see any reason to delete it. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:59, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

So, Guy, Surface and Coatings Tech. isn't a major journal? The U.S. Office of Naval Research is out of the mainstream? What do you mean by a "really powerful source"? MigFP (talk) 23:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it is not. You'd be looking for publication in a top tier journal, as with the original Fleischmann and Pons publications. Small journals may well publish things tat are interesting but where their reviewers do not have sufficient specific expertise to spot problems which a bigger journal's peer review would spot. And of course peer review is no magic talisman, some complete twaddle has been published in some really important journals - I can point to a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in which elementary statistical errors were completely missed. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Surface coatings tech. is scarcely the place most physicists and electrochemists will be looking for thought-leading publication on something which, if proven, would be of huge significance. Guy (Help!) 11:30, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, what kind of evidence would you need to see to believe that the controversy is legitimate and not a false dilemma? It sounds like you have made up your mind and are not open to new information. Is there anything that would change your mind? MigFP (talk) 23:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Replying for myself: coverage of the controversy as a controversy in a top tier journal; the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry or some other body whose journal makes a habit of covering interesting debates in the field. Guy (Help!) 11:33, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

As much as I question the value in asking this of someone who thinks there is such thing as "the" journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (there is not), how do you define "top tier"? Would you agree that Fusion Science and Technology (published by the American Nuclear Society; formerly Fusion Technology) is a reputable journal in the field? They published at least three articles on Szpak and Mosier-Boss's findings.[19][20][21] MigFP (talk) 12:47, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The requirement for a "top tier" journal is a complete red herring. A second or third tier journal is exactly what would be expected for a notable minority view. As I said before and please note carefully because I won't say it again, extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence, true. Which is why CF won't be presented here as uncontested fact. I don't personally have a clue whether CF is fact or fiction BTW - I don't have the background to be able to read the papers. But what I do know is that WP disputes are best resolved by looking at what the sources say and then summarising them fairly. Anyone willing to put aside differences and start doing just that? Itsmejudith (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

"A second or third tier journal is exactly what would be expected for a notable minority view." Really? You have a source for this opinion? Or is it just one you made up? Admittedly, you don't have a background in the subject and so are not familiar with peer-review processes, but I've seen plenty of notable minority views published in top-tier journals. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:39, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

So is Fusion Science & Technology reputable enough, in your opinion, to make the SPAWAR work a "notable" minority view, and therefore the controversy is legitimate? I'd like to see you try to name a more reputable journal focusing on fusion. There isn't any. MigFP (talk) 04:41, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Absolute bollocks, MigFP. The pre-eminent fusion journal is [[22]]. JohnAspinall (talk) 17:33, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Joshua, let's assume that cold fusion is about as real as the flat earth. We'd still need to write about the research claims. Why not focus on how elusive the phenomenon is? You're an expert on science, so let's shed some scientific method light on it.

Is there a theory? Does this theory lend itself to making of predictions? How often do these predictions come true? Who says so? Who says it's a crock of hooey? --Uncle Ed (talk) 00:46, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the article as it currently stands does a decent job of answering your questions, Ed. ScienceApologist (talk) 01:25, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I updated the intro accordingly. [23] --Uncle Ed (talk) 01:43, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

In response to Science Apologist above: I don't have a background in physics but as it happens I do happen to know something about peer-reviewing. I came here to help after you placed a message on the fringe theories noticeboard. I have absolutely no POV to push on this question but am going to stick around to help editors achieve consensus about this controversial topic. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:18, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

familiarity straw poll

Just to get a sense of people's relative degrees of knowledge on the subject, who here has read and feels they are familiar enough with the papers/research to be able to discuss them seriously?

• Szpak, Mosier-Boss, et. al., Pd/D co-deposition

• Iwamuri, Y., loading Pd w/a deutuerized gas

And to top it off, a few special questions to test people's knowledge here: what is the significance of Pd? can other elements be used in place of Pd to produce the same effects experimentally that have been found with Pd in relation to nuclear science? Has evidence of LENR been found in experiments that did not use electrolysis? And finally, what are some of the difficulties in producing evidence of LENR through electrolysis? Anyone who has any idea of what they're talking about should at least be able to answer some of those questions right, IMO. Kevin Baas^talk

What the hell does this have to do with improving the article? ScienceApologist (talk) 23:38, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

It determines whether one should "improve" the article in controversial ways or not. People shouldn't edit (or debate) things that they're not knowledgeable about. Kevin Baas^talk 17:00, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

No, that's not true. People who consider themselves knowledgeable should instead ensure that what they propose is understandable to the general reader. Otherwise we'd exclude non-believers in all kinds of pseudoscientific gibberish from venturing an opinion because they are not "experts". The idea of expert-only editing has been soundly rejected several times. Guy (Help!) 20:19, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Apparently you didn't understand me. I am not proposing "expert-only editing". As I pointed out directly above your reply, people who consider themselves knowledgeable have a greater responsibility than just ensuriing that what they propose is understandable to the general reader. They also have a responsibility to ensure that the content is verifiable, NPOV, accurate, thorough, and balanced. Kevin Baas^talk 15:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Note that Wikipedia:NPA, in a nutshell, is "Comment on content, not on the contributor." This section appears to bave been created to discuss contributors rather than content, and thus is in violation of that policy. --Noren (talk) 20:09, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm just concerned that false statements will be put in the article and true statements removed by people who can't tell the difference between them because they haven't put in the time and effort to find out. Kevin Baas^talk 01:56, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

While you may be correct that only some of the editors here understand the truth, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. --Noren (talk) 05:08, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me, I don't appreciate your tone. Obviously I'm referring to verifiability and my concern is valid. Kevin Baas^talk 15:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I also do not appreciate your tone. You were addressing contributors rather than content in direct violation of Wikipedia:NPA. My concern is valid and supported by official Wikipedia policy. --Noren (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Baas, why do you think that familiarity with those two papers in particular is at all required for making sensible edits to this page? Michaelbusch (talk) 05:25, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Did I say that? No, I didn't. Please read more carefully. Thank you. Kevin Baas^talk 15:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

There is much that a non-expert can do to help an article forward. I can correct spelling, for example, and can comment on whether an article is accessible to lay readers. I would never attempt to summarise a scientific paper that I did not understand. Assuming good faith, I don't think anyone editing here would. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I never said that there wasn't a bunch of different areas one could contribute in. But admittedly, I don't have the same faith as you. Though I do have faith that everyone is trying to make the article better, I don't have faith that everyone has the same metric for learning before speaking. Some people are more thorough and careful than others. It's important to remember that on a forum such as wikipedia, one has to be much more careful in this regard. And I appreciate the fact that you are. Kevin Baas^talk 15:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

misleading edit summaries

In a recent edit summary, Michaelbusch said "reverting reversion of JzG's changes - Baas, I do look at the changes and not just the edit summary". I'm glad he does. I do, too. Which is exactly why I reverted JzG's changes. In his change, he replaced quotations from the DoE report with interpretation, while in the edit summary, he wrote: "This is what the conclusion actually says, their words are probably better than ours.". In my native language and vernacular, (american english), his description of what he did is pretty much the opposite of what he actually did. In reverting his edit, I wrote in the edit summary "This is what the conclusion actually says, their words are probably better than ours.", because I replaced an interpretation ("our words"), with an exact quote from the report in question ("what the conclusion actually says"). I know that it's exactly the same thing that JzG wrote in his edit summary, but I believe that, while it may not accurately describe the change that JzG made, it accurately describes the change that I made in reverting that change. Kevin Baas^talk 20:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• Your edit summary was clearly misleading and was blatantly incivil, parroting mine, so please don't do that again. We are discussing the DoE review and its conclusions, therefore we should quote its conclusions, not an editorialisation thereof. I cannot see any possible justification for using someone else's description of what the DoE conclusion says rather than the conclusion itself when we are discussing the conclusions of the report. There wa sa dispute about the wording, so I went to the report itself and put in what the report's conclusion says about areas for future research; that is 100% accurate and therefore neutral in a way that quoting someone's editorialising (even that of a good source) is not in the context of discussing the report's conclusions, which is what is being described. Adding the editorial comments in a way that suggests the minor commentary made the final conlusions of the report is simply not on.

These are the exact words of the conclusion, in full:

While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review. The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods. The reviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

What you and Pcarbonn are inserting is an editorialisation of that, subtly different, and implying, in a way that the report does not, that this is still an active field of research. It isn't. The best that can be said is that there are some related areas of basic research that merit investigation. And I'm pretty sure the comment about "archival journals" is actually a criticism of the journals in which the cold fusion mob are currently publishing, not an encouragement to publish more. Archival journals means, as has been noted above, the major journals like Nature and respected review journals that summarise the state of mainstream research. Guy (Help!) 21:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

My apologies, JzG. If that is the exact words of the conclusion, then I would say that the conclusion is rather uninteresting and uninformative. But that's just my opinion and it's not very relevant. If any wording is implying that there's active research in the field, well, that's because there is active research in the field. (What you might call "the cold fusion mob", while other, less blatently biased people call simply "scientists".) As regards your selection of journals, any scientist that selective would be a rather poor scientist. An extremely and pathologically uninformed one, if you will. And compared to what it is now, the state of science, from bioinformatics to geology, would be, well, really bad. Kevin Baas^talk 22:08, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

One minor point - I think the reference to archival journals was meant to say, "Last time we reviewed this field, we suggested you start using peer review processes, including submission to agencies and archival journals." The implication is that, despite this recommendation, this has not happened. The subtext is likely that nobody has found anything that would survive the process, but that is just my editorializing. Antelan ^talk 21:58, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

If that is the implication, it is certainly incorrect, as much CMNS work has been published in peer-reviewed journals. Kevin Baas^talk 22:08, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

But minor ones, not benefiting from the rigour of the high profile journals. That, I think, is the point. Guy (Help!) 23:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I concur with Guy on this one. Antelan ^talk 02:53, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Could we discuss the status of each of the journals which has published relevant papers since 2004? From the WP entries of die Naturwissenschaften and European Physical Journal they would seem to be top-ranking, but I appreciate that that is not the whole story. Is anyone disputing that these are peer-reviewed journals? Are they reliable sources? Itsmejudith (talk) 16:06, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

US federal funding

did not find the evidence convincing enough to justify a federally-funded program

found the claims of cold fusion to be no more convincing than they had been 15 years previous, and not convincing enough to justify a federally-funded program,

Neither of these dueling versions seems good to me. Both sound like they are making an argument, and encyclopedia articles should not argue (see NPOV).

Perhaps we should mention that there are certain groups trying to get funding for their research, and maybe even certain other groups trying to withhold funding from them.

Maybe even say that X offered Y as justification for federal research funds. Then say that Z argued that the justification was not sufficient and/or that Q turned down the request. --Uncle Ed (talk) 21:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• See above for the exact words in the report's conclusions. The closer we get to that, in discussing said conclusions, the better. Too long to go in the lead unedited, unfortunately, but amenable to a two sentence precis I think. Guy (Help!) 21:56, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

As a read the DOE report, it states that none of the reviewers suggested a federally-funded program, but they were basically unanimous in accepting the idea of federally-funded research into CMNS. Kevin Baas^talk 23:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Wishful thinking. What it says is, they were almost unanimous in being unconvinced by the cold fusion proponents, they conclude that the position has not changed in the last 15 years, and they effectively told the cold fusion proponents to go away and get published in some proper journals. Politely, but firmly. Guy (Help!) 00:38, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I really don't see any support in the report for your statement that "they were almost unanimous in being unconvinced by the cold fusion proponents". Please explain. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:11, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Quite right, they were simply unconvinced. The conclusion can be allowed to stand on its own merits. "While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review." Guy (Help!) 12:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

We should be careful not to put words into the report. Too much interpretation can be dangerous. It is not our job to try to read between the lines of the report and doing so often leads to contradictory results, depending on who's doing it. Kevin Baas^talk 18:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

dispute: intro wording

• diff: [24]

Both versions quote directly from last page of the DOE report. Both versions are verifiable and, in my opinion, contain little, if any, editorializing. To me, it is simply a question of balance; that is, of accurately/proportionally summarizing the report. The full last page, +2 lines of the previous page (the section heading) is:

Charge Element 3: Determine whether there is a scientific case for continued efforts in these studies and, if so, to identify the most promising areas to be pursued.

The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review. No reviewer recommended a focused federally funded program for low energy nuclear reactions.

Reviewers identified two areas where additional research could address specific issues. One is the investigation of the properties of deuterated metals including possible effects of alloying and dislocations. These studies should take advantage of the modern tools for material characterization. A second area of investigation is the use of state-of-the-art apparatus and techniques to search for fusion events in thin deuterated foils. Several reviewers specifically stated that more experiments similar in nature to those that have been carried out for the past fifteen years are unlikely to advance knowledge in this area.

Conclusion

While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review.

The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods. The reviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

Attachment 1: Review document submitted by requesters, "New Physical Effects in Metal Deuterides."
Attachment 2: Charge letter to reviewers

Now, that first paragraph, as I read it, says that the reviewers agreed pretty much unaminously that the government should fund research into CMNS when given a well-formed proposal, but none of them suggested starting a government program for the sole purpose of researching CMNS. That is certainly a remarkable statement. But I'm not reading that from some of the people on this talk page. Some of the people on this talk page seem to be arguing the contrary; they seem to be arguing that the reviewers determined that there was not "a scientific case for continued efforts in these studies". But perhaps I'm misinterpreting them. If so, then another reader of the article may be likely to misinterpret their language, too, so we should focus on developing language that isn't so easily misinterpreted. Now ofcourse I don't mean by this that this should be the only thing communicated to the reader, just that we should strive to avoid leaving the reader with any misconceptions. Kevin Baas^talk 22:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• You are missing one crucial fact: one is the charge document, the other is the conclusion. Fifteen years, no change. That's the overall message. Guy (Help!) 23:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that the DoE report contradicts itself ? That the conclusion is contrary to the section in Charge 3 ? This would be an extraordinary claim, and you would need a quote to support it. In the meantime, let's assume that both the conclusion and charge element 3 are correct. Please note the "similar" in the final conclusion of the report: this is not the same as "identical". So, there is little you can infer with certainty from "the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review".Pcarbonn (talk) 12:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I would phrase a summary of the second paragraph of the conclusion of the report along the lines of 'Some research in basic science in these two areas that are not cold fusion but are somewhat related would be appropriate, and might explain away some of these results, but the actual field of cold fusion will not be funded. To become more credible, cold fusion researchers would need to publish in better quality journals.' --Noren (talk) 02:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Why would they propose to search for "fusion events" and "particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils", if they were sure that cold fusion is not real ? Don't you think that they would propose to search for chemical products or calorimetric errors instead ? Pcarbonn (talk) 12:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Read it again. "the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods." This is absolutely not an implicit acknowledgement, still less an explicit one, of any nuclear process. Guy (Help!) 12:38, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I've not claimed that they accept cold fusion, only that they keep an open mind on it. You have claimed that they flatly rejected it, and that they do not recommend further research to resolve the controversy, because you say there is no controversy. That is clearly contrary to what the report says. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:53, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Wishful thinking. The text is pretty clear: "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review. No reviewer recommended a focused federally funded program for low energy nuclear reactions." On its own that might be encouragement, but in the context of fifteen years and millions of dollars spent, including on programs which have been abandoned due to lack of results, it says to me "go away and don't come back until you got the fundamental science right". The conclusion is not ambiguous, it specifically does not endorse trying to reproduce the experiments, it's about telling them to go back and do the fundamental science to see if there is even a theoretical possibility it could work. Back to basics. Guy (Help!) 17:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The fundamental problem here is that is opinion and speculation. What the article needs to do is represent what the report says. You can italicize things to try to dimunize it all you want, but it's written in plain english. Really, your italics seem pretty arbitrary to me. relevant to? Would you really expect them to study things not relevant to it? well-designed? would you really expect them to fund poorly-designed experiments? should meet accepted scientific standards? would you really expect them to say "should not meet accepted scientific standards" or "doesn't have to meet accepted scientific standards"? I don't feel I should have to repeat myself here: "we should strive to avoid leaving the reader with any misconceptions." We should also strive to avoid injecting are own opinion, speculation, and above all putting words in the DoE's mouth! Kevin Baas^talk 18:17, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

We must faithfully represent the report with the minimum possible spin in either direction. I don't think we'll be able to do that without including some direct quotes. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Protoscience or pseudoscience

Two issues are cited as being problematic: the lack of consistently reproducible results and the lack of a theoretical mechanism.

Aside from that, there is no problem. Clearly, more research should be done. It sounds like a very promising area. But the big question is who ought to pay for it.

I suggest that scientists approach someone with deep pockets who is interested in long range results. But don't use Wikipedia to whip up support. All we can do here is *report* on the various efforts, pronouncements and funding requests.

Anomalous phenomena happen all the time. Didn't penicillin get discovered because someone forgot to wash a dish or something? So many discoveries came about because someone noticed something strange and tried to figure out how to make it happen consistently. (Like a programmer trying to "reproduce a bug".) You gotta ferret out the cause.

It's not "science" until they can make it happen on demand. Like faith healing, cold fusion is going to have a bad rap until they can do it by turning on a switch. For a great sci-fi story about a new and incomprehensible energy source, go read Robert Heinlein's Waldo (short story). --Uncle Ed (talk) 02:40, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, for a bit of perspective it may be informative to read [[25]], which is brimming with optimism for the great strides that cold fusion is making, predicting a car battery recharger within a year. The only problem is that it was written in 1996. Note that the "$100 million" research program in Japan that it mentions was shut down in 1997 with the announcement that they couldn't replicate the original CF results. --Noren (talk) 03:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I would argue that once they can make it happen all the time, it is no longer science. At that point, it is engineering. Kevin Baas^talk 22:52, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

And the mention of faith healing is a false analogy if there ever was one. Faith healing does not use empirical methods, or any other canon of science, for that matter. It certainly doesn't employ the scientific method. Kevin Baas^talk 22:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Experiments

I asked you guys before to split the article, but everyone said keep one big page. Now you got it locked. Anyway, you're welcome to join me at cold fusion research. I intend this child article to be merged into the parent cold fusion article as soon as the edit war ends.

Let's list all the major experiments and describe their results, shall we? --Uncle Ed (talk) 03:38, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the point of locking this page is not to encourage editing in the main namespace under different article names, but to work out the issues on this talk page. Antelan ^talk 03:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I know that. This is not a rose by another name that smells equally sweet. This is a section of the article which has not had enough attention before and is *not* part of the edit war. --Uncle Ed (talk) 03:45, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I've redirected cold fusion research back to this page. I don't like POV forks or spreading the mayhem. Ed, if you want to work on the article while the page is locked, you can copy the source into a user-subpage sandbox. Michaelbusch (talk) 04:33, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually that's no better as an idea. Better by far to propose a change, gain consensus and then use {{editprotected}}. POV-forks anywhere are not the way to resolve the dispute. Guy (Help!) 12:35, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand in what way you or others regard the sub article as a "POV fork". I assume a POV fork would be in violation of NPOV in some way. Is this assumption correct? If so, please point out the violation so I can correct it, if only in my user space.

Or is a POV fork something other than an NPOV violation? If so, does this mean that what I wrote was neutral but that's not your objection to it? If you think what I wrote was neutral, then what was your objection? (Try not to give a circular answer like "It was neutral but my objection was that it was a POV fork" ;-)

This is important to me, because I'm on probation for "creating POV forks" but I've never understood what that means specifically. Anybody want to help me out here? --Uncle Ed (talk) 16:18, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is the definition of a POV fork. I do not know if it applies here. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:32, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, Ed, I have the irresistible urge to point out that your inability to understand is precisely the problem that led to your probation! Forgive me, please, I am a bad man. Guy (Help!) 23:31, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm willing to entertain the possibility that (1) the definition is crystal clear and (2) I am simply unable to understand it. I will sing to it, and offer it beer and pretzels (to entertain it ;-) while relying on my peers to alert me to any "POV fork" violations.

But while I am relying on your judgment and trusting you, please from time to time make the effort to awaken my understanding with a cue stick or fish slap? For example, is a POV fork an article which itself is a NPOV violation? Or is it just a case of trying to break apart a large article when others simply don't want to have a parent article and one or more child articles? --Uncle Ed (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Assuming the cold fusion research article maintained a neutral point of view - which no one has contested, so I assume it did - and was not created to avoid NPOV, then it is not a "POV fork", but merely a "content fork". "A point of view (POV) fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines" The two are not synonymous, and it helps communication to use the correct term. Feebas_factor 02:25, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Sadly not. It was another of Ed's POV forks, see this [26] - a tiny summary of the experiment and one quote from a true believer. Unambiguous, that one. Guy (Help!) 16:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Error of fact

I was looking at the cite for the DoE report and spotted an error, which I have WP:BOLDly corrected as an uncontroversial and unambiguous correction of a simple mistake. In referencing the conclusion of the DoE report we had inadvertently quoted instead a paragraph higher up in the report; I have replaced this with the (similar in sense) wording from the conclusion itself, less the two examples which seemed to me to make the quote too long this is the diff. If people think the two examples should be in, then I will add them, it's no big deal. Guy (Help!) 12:52, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The fact that the quote was not in the conclusion but in the paragraph above it is not a valid reason to remove it from the article. Please put it back. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:29, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Would you re-read what I wrote, please? We said "conclusions" but included text that was not the conclusion. Simple mistake, I fixed it. Can you give me a good reason from policy or guidelines for restoring an inaccurate statement instead of an accurate one? Guy (Help!) 17:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Umm, yeah: WP:NPOV. Kevin Baas^talk 18:38, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

JzG, you are not meant to be editing the page while it is protected, even to correct an error of fact. You really have to self-revert your edits straight away as there is no consensus for them. Meanwhile I am requesting an immediate move back to semi-protection. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:42, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

It was a simple, and no doubt innocent error of fact. I don't know which editor included that citation, but he para was not from the conclusion, as the cite said, but from the response to the third charge. There are three possible fixes: remove the quoted text; the original editor to clarify what he actiually meant; or to leave it. Any of these is fine by me, all I did was correct an obvious error. Guy (Help!) 19:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

JzG (Guy), you know full well that that text is in dispute as you yourself were (and are) involved in the dispute. Everybody here knows that. When a page is protected, disputed text is off-limits, regardless of whether or not JzG feels it is a "factual error". Please respect wikipedia policy and wikipedia's contributors by self-reverting. Thank you. Kevin Baas^talk 19:42, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Guy, I inserted the citation you deleted, and I did not do this by error: it was the sentence that most clearly described the fact that the panel did recommend further research to help resolve the controversy. Looking at your comments in the last discussions, it's easy to understand why you would want to remove it. You have abusively used your admin right, and I'm checking what corrective action can be taken. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:26, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

See also JzG misuse of page protection Pcarbonn (talk) 20:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Hang on, you mean you deliberately used a misleading link summary? I hope not. There was clearly an error here, it didn't occur to me that it would be a deliberate misrepresentation of the source, so I hope I was not wrong there. It said "conclusions", but the quoted text was a detail form the reply to the third charge. I just assumed that whoever it was had got their cpoy-and-pastes mixed up. Per my comment above: either we can remove the quotation (perfectly reasonable IMO), or you can clarify what you meant to put and we can talk about that, or we can leave it as-is,. which is accurate. Any of these is fine with me, it's no big deal, this is after all only a summary in a reference, not text in the article. Guy (Help!) 20:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I did not say I deliberately used a misleading link summary. I said that I deliberately quoted the statement that you deleted. I request that you put that statement back, and I propose that you replace the link summary with "DoE report" instead of "DoE conclusion", as you point out correctly but addressed incorrectly. Thanks in advance. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:55, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

It may well be that it is the sentence you would select to represent your views, but that does not mean that it is the best sentence to summarize that report in a neutral fashion. I believe that the Conclusion section of the report is the obvious, NPOV place to look for a quotation to summarize the findings. (Using a secondary source seemed like a reasonable alternative to me, but there was disagreement about that.) It might be reasonable to include that sentence, placed in proper context, in the body of the article. In my opinion only a summary of the 2004 panel is appropriate for the lead, rather than the inclusion of select sentences plucked from the body of the report. To clarify, I do not wish to delve into the details of the current process and am not making a comment here about the appropriateness or timing of Guy's edit, but rather am attempting to look forward to discuss what the lead should be. --Noren (talk) 21:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I could possibly agree with you if we were talking about a sentence in the article itself. Here we are talking about a quote to support the statement made in the article.

Concerning what the lead should be, I maintain that Physics Today's quote is not appropriate as it is an interpretation of the DoE report that has no notability. Furthermore, it implies that no progress has been made, while the DoE said that progress was made in calorimetry. I propose the following lead :"This and a second panel of 2004 did not find the evidence convincing enough to justify a federally-funded program, though they identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not an interpretation of the DoE report, it's an article in a popular and respected science journal which discusses the background of the DoE report before the report was published. It was written in April 2004, the DoE report was published in December 2004. And although it was prompted by the DoE report, it is mainly a summary of what the mainstream view is on cold fusion, so it's exactly what's needed in the lead: a summary article in a journal with a decent reputation, showing the mainstream perspective. I know you don't like the mainstream perspective, but I'm afraid we can't fix that, and I'm sure you;re not going to suggest that the journal of the American Institute of Physics is anything other than a solidly respectable source. This [27] is Physics Today's report of the DoE project, and it's interesting that its view of the report emphasises "Reviewers were split on whether the experimental evidence for excess power production is compelling. But, the report says, most reviewers, even those who accepted the evidence for excess power production, "stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented."", while noting that the pro cold fusion guys put a "rosier spin" on it. Exactly as we've seen here, in fact! Guy (Help!) 12:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

You are mistaken: the Physics Today statement "cold fusion to be no more convincing than they had been 15 years previous" comes from the article published in Dec 2004, not in April 2004. That article is exclusively about the 2004 DoE report. The DoE report has much more notability than the Dec article of Physics Today. I'm not challenging the quote on reliability, but on the notability of that statement. It's much better to stick to the DoE report. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

In any case, would you consider reverting the change that you did despite the protection of the page ? Pcarbonn (talk) 12:53, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The statement in the lead is cited to the April edition. And no, per consensus on ANI that the change was a correction of an unambiguous error, making it wrong again makes no sense. And no, the 2004 report does not have more notability than Physics Today. What Physics Today says is of great importance as a statement of the mainstream view on the subject, and indeed as a statement of the scientific establishment's reception of the report - which seems to differ from the spin you want to put on it, pretty much as the Physics Today article states. Guy (Help!) 13:25, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

While it is true that the statement that is currently in the lead is from the April 2004 edition, the sourced statement that I was referring to Pcarbonn has twice deleted and is thus no longer in the lead is from the January 2005 edition. That statement is a paraphrase of the first sentence of that article which itself is a paraphrase of the first sentence of the conclusion section of the DoE report.--Noren (talk) 13:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. There are indeed 2 statements from 2 different Physics Today articles. The one that I dispute is from the Jan 2005 article. I do not dispute the separate statement from the April 2004 article. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:52, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

You dispute the text from the 2005 article, or you dispute its inclusion? Of the two, the Jan 2005 reads to me as the more thoughtful, so I'm wondering why you'd prefer the other. In any case, the DoE report is the thing being discussed, and Physics Today is a secondary source in respect of the report itself, an authoritative journal commenting on the report. I don't see a problem with quoting that, it seems to me to be exactly the kind of thing we want included to show how the report was received by the scientific community. Seems entirely reasonable. Guy (Help!) 15:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd say from its WP entry Physics Today is OK as a source, but not fantastic. As you'll have seen I made a query on the RS noticeboard and had just one response. That said that some of the journals I had listed were high-status ones (still waiting to hear your views on die Naturwissenschaften and the European Physical Journal) but that we had to exercise caution in the case of the New Scientist. Physics Today may be better than the NS, but if we are going down the road of using coverage in non-refereed science news outlets, then we have to decide where to draw the line. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

New Scientist is a pop science journal, a bit of a curate's egg, but Physics Today is the journal of the American Institute of Physics; as a source for what the scientific establishment thinks about something I would argue that it is authoritative, and that's what we're using for. EPJ and Naturwissenschaften both seem to be from reputable publishers but the impact factors are not high - which EPJ was this in? There are five aren't there? One of them is markedly higher than the others. Guy (Help!) 16:03, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be OK to include the conclusion of the 2004 report, saying that "While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review.", but that would be too long, and the second part would be meaningless to the WP reader. The DoE report is a secondary source on the subject of cold fusion research because it is "one step removed from an event", it "creates a general overview", and "make analytic or synthetic claims." (see WP:PSTS). The Physics Today article is 2 steps removed from cold fusion research, and represent the view of the physics community in America, as you say, not of the international scientific community at large. The DoE panel was composed of scientists with backgrounds in experimental and theoretical nuclear physics, material science, and electrochemistry, which is a better representation of the scientific community to asses the evidence presented by the researchers (otherwise, why would the DoE requests material and electrochemical scientists ?). Pcarbonn (talk) 22:06, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, please note that the sentence you propose does not make sense: "This and a second panel of 2004 found the claims of cold fusion to be no more convincing than they had been 15 years previous". Only the 2004 panel could have found claims to be no more convincing than they had been 15 years previous. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Condensed matter nuclear science

This page, which I and others interpret to be a PoV-fork, had been a redirect to here for some weeks. It was recently reverted to its previous state by Kevin Baas. --Noren (talk) 14:40, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Fixed. POV forks are simply not the way to fix editorial disputes, all they do is spread the misery. Guy (Help!) 14:51, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I think you mean broken. Page blanking and insinuation is simply not the way to fix editorial disputes. It's imperative that you follow due process. If you feel the article should be deleted, file an RfD. You do not get to decide what articles should exist and what articles should not. Other people have different opinions than you do and they are equally valid. That is why we have a process for this in which we vote. Show some respect for your fellow contributors by following it. Kevin Baas^talk 18:23, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Oh, and for everyone's information, and since it's a matter of public record anyways: JzG (Guy)'s "fix" involves full page protection. (diffs: [28] [29]) Kevin Baas^talk 18:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
  • And JzG, please read the definition of a POV fork more carefully. I don't believe that the CMNS article meets the definition. And it's certainly not an "extreme case of repeated vandalism". Here's an excerpt from the page that is especially relevant:

"Since what qualifies as a "POV fork" is itself based on a POV judgement, do not refer to forks as "POV" — except in extreme cases of repeated vandalism. Instead, assert the application of NPOV policy — regardless of any POV reasons for making the fork, it still must be titled and written in an NPOV-consistent manner. It could be that the fork was a good idea, but was approached without balance — or that the person making it has mistakenly claimed a kind of "ownership" over it." Kevin Baas^talk 20:14, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I have asked the opinion of another administrator on the behavior of Guy (see here). Pcarbonn (talk) 20:19, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

If you Google "Condensed Matter Nuclear Science", you will see that it is used as a synonym for "Cold Fusion Science". E.g. [30], [31], and [32]. If you look at Hagelstein's journal [33] titled "Condensed matter nuclear science" you will see that it "...focuses on the various anomalies in metal deuterides and hydrides". The evidence suggests that there is no content in CMNS that isn't cold fusion related. JohnAspinall (talk) 21:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Iwamaru's work is an example of CMNS that isn't fusion-related. You can justify any story you want by looking at only part of the evidence. 21:33, 1 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevin Baas (talk • contribs)

The referenced paper by Iwamura is about Palladium and Deuterium. If that's not cold-fusion related, it's very close. This pro-CF reference [34] says "... renamed their subject more appropriately, “Condensed Matter Nuclear Science"". That's a point-blank statement, from pro-cold fusion types, that CMNS is a rename of CF. JohnAspinall (talk) 23:18, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, John. So the redirect is a good idea, and we should leave it at that. Thanks, Ed, for noting the variant title, please use {{editprotected}} to propose an appropriate paragraph in this article to cover the terminology issue. Guy (Help!) 23:29, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

That does not mean that CMNS is CF. It means that CF is CMNS. That's another logical confusion, the same confusion i mentioned earlier regarding temperature and energy. I believe it's called affirming the consequent. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not neccesarily a square. CF is a subset of CNMS. It is a popular name given to a phenomena of a particular experimental apparatus: the pons-flieshman cell. It is not the name of a science. CMNS is the name of a science, given by those who study it. It is the study of nuclear reactions in condensed matter and at low energies. "Cold Fusion" is not the study of anything. It is a phenomena observed in certain metal lattices under certain conditions. Kevin Baas^talk 00:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Platinum can also be used for the cathode. It turns out pretty much anything in the same column of the periodic table can be used. (Which suggests, as is believed to be the case, that the structure of the metal lattice is an important aspect of whatever's gone on.) One might also that it's the study of "deuterons in metal lattices". there's also LENR and CANR. What's in a name? The thing is, when people think "cold fusion", they usually think fusion-in-a-jar, i.e. a pons-fleishman style fusion cell; electrolysis of heavy water. But there have been many other experiments that used completely different setups and measured completely different things. You're right, all of them used deutrium, and most of them used pallidium. They also used an abundance of different elements, such as lithium, chloride, strontium, cesium, etc. But it's a far stretch to suggest that they were all just repeats of the same experiment, or even all just an examination of the same property. Some of the experiments deal with transmutations, for example, and only some of them are concerned with excess energy. Such experiments clearly can't produce any results that could be used directly as a power source, as the title "cold fusion" implies to most readers. That is why they re-named it, because they wanted to broaden the scope, and the scope was broadened, and the words "cold fusion" just doesn't accurately describe many of the experimental setups, like the transmutations discovered by iwamaru and others, for instance, where there is no fusion. I'm not saying they're not related. Obviously they're related as they're both interested in nuclear reactions at low energy. But see, that's why they came up with the name "Low energy nuclear reactions" to describe what they were studying, because that's how they're related. Not all of them are fusion but they're all nuclear reactions. Kevin Baas^talk 23:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Most people understand "cold fusion" to refer to the pons-fleishman setup. But there have been a lot of experiments that don't use this setup and don't even examine fusion. Wikipedia shouldn't use it's own definitions for words. We should use the mainstream definitions, i.e. what people understand the words or phrases to refer to. Kevin Baas^talk 23:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

In [[35]] Kevin Baas summarizes "the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV." as "research into CMNS." Your own usage of that acronym in the past does not appear to draw a distinction between CF and CMNS. If CF were merely a subset of CMNS and the distinction between the two were significant and profound, I would not expect you to use the acronym CMNS to summarize a passage that explicitly does not refer to transmutations or non-palladium based systems. --Noren (talk) 04:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Firstly that was a quote from the DOE report, not me. Secondly, you seem to be having trouble understanding the difference between bijective and non-bijective. Even if I had said that, it would not be a contradiction. Kevin Baas^talk 22:59, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Cold Fusion = CANR??

Irrespective of what's behind the topic of the article: shouldn't the name instead be CANR? "Cold Fusion" is a term that variously has used for many kinds of nuclear reactions, that are just cooler than "hot" nuclear fusion. The article "Cold Fusion" would serve better as a disambiguation page directing towards a lot of "Cold Fusion" topics such as the Pons and Fleichmann CANR/LENR or whatever. Said: Rursus ☻ 09:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

(Besides, I've decided to make a reactor in my bathing tube, except that I've not found a shop where to buy palladium cheaply) Said: Rursus ☻ 09:48, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• Cold fusion is what it's popularly known as, following the Fleischmann-Pons experiments, which were by far the highest profile part of its history. A redirect to here from any variant title or likely search term is, of course, perfectly reasonable. Guy (Help!) 12:14, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Reorder

I would propose to reorder the sections as follows : experimental report, argument in the controversy, history (instead of the reverse order). The reason is that it reflects better the fact that cold fusion is still an unresolved controversy, rather than a long-forgotten footnote of history. Any comments ? Pcarbonn (talk) 12:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• Except that it isn't a controversy, other than in the minds of a very few. The mainstream view is, this is a sideline at best and likely a dead end. Why is it that every change you propose would have the effect of boosting the tiny band of cold fusion researchers while obscuring the mainstream view, which is dominated by the 1989 Pons-Fleischmann debacle? As far as the average reader is concerned, the first thing they expect to see is probably Pons-Fleischmann, since that was and remains the highest profile discussion of the concept. Guy (Help!) 13:20, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

It is a controversy in the mind of the DoE reviewers, as the DoE report clearly says. How can you claim the contrary ? I did not invent the word, they did. Furthermore, the panel was split on the excess heat issue and divided on nuclear evidence. They did recommend further research to search for further evidence of fusion events and emitted particles. The DoE report was much more cited than the Physics Today article you like to refer to, and has thus much more notability. In fact, most people have heard of it thanks to the 2004 DoE review which had wide news coverage, so this is what they expect to hear. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:48, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

See, I read the DoE report, and it seems to me to be saying very much what Physics Today says: this is essentially a dead field which raises a few minor but interesting questions that need to be addressed with some good solid basic science. It's only controversial in the way teach the controversy asserts evolution to be controversial. Guy (Help!) 14:24, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

You can think what you want, as long as your personal opinion does not get represented in the article. In this case, it is not the cold fusion proponents who say that there is a controversy, but the independent panel set up by the DoE: your comparison does not apply. You ask "Why is it that every change you propose would have the effect of boosting the tiny band of cold fusion researchers". I guess this is because, if I had been in the DOE panel, I would be one of those that found "evidence for excess power compelling", and "the evidence of low energy nuclear reactions somewhat convincing". This does not put me in the fringe of science, as you would like to put it, but instead in company of a significant number of the reputable scientists invited by the DOE to review the evidence. They deserve to be fairly represented in this article. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Gotta love that - you've spent weeks trying to mould the article more closely to your personal opinion, which is why I cam here in the first place, and now you're accusing me of that? Wow. I note that you never once complained about us linking to Jed Rothwell's editorialised version of the 2004 report, but you are terribly terribly anxious about our use of the conclusion instead of a cherry-picked paragraph form the body of the report. Do be careful that you don't cross the line from editor with an opinion to POV-pusher here. Guy (Help!) 14:50, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

No, I said that I spent weeks trying to mould the article to represent the view of the significant number of panel members who found the evidence convincing, which happen to be my view. I wonder whether we are speaking the same language, assuming that you read my post carefully.

For some reason, what you are reading from the DoE panel is not the same as what I read in it. Are you disputing the fact that the report says that the panel was evenly split on the evidence of excess heat ? Below is the full quote. Or are you saying that this sentence should be ignored ? If so, why ? The same question could be asked on the evidence of nuclear reaction. Please clarify your position so that we can resolve our difference. Also, comments from other editors would be greatly appreciated. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:36, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The excess power observed in some experiments is reported to be beyond that attributable to ordinary chemical or solid state sources; this excess power is attributed by proponents to nuclear fusion reactions. Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic.

archiving

Would anybody care to archive old discussions ? I have already done more than my share of this house-keeping task. Thanks in advance. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• Miszabot should do that. Guy (Help!) 13:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

It may be wise to allow a bot to do the archiving, to avoid accidentally archiving recent comments rather than responding to them. --Noren (talk) 13:57, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Editing protected page

For what it's worth, I've withdrawn my ANI. Let's just get the page unprotected, so we can all collaborate again. It's a bit embarrassing to have the page protected on the wrong version - substantially my intro - anyway. (I don't like using power to get my way. My new year's resolution is to respect the consensus! :-) --Uncle Ed (talk) 21:36, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Unprotected

I have unprotected this. But can those involved in the dispute PLEASE AGREE THROUGH DISCUSSION HERE before making edits they know are likely to be reverted. If an edit war breaks out again, I am prepared to block the guilty parties rather than protect the whole article. Just don't make controversial changes without discussion, and use the dispute remedies if necessary rather than edit warring. You have been warned.--Doc^g 22:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Experimental reports

In an above section #To be workshopped I detailed the reasons for removing the section on experimental reports. However, these issues have gone unaddressed and User:Pcarbonn has now twice reinstated the section. This needs to be rectified. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

For my part, I'm concerned at the hurdle you seem to be setting for the SPAWAR work. Quoting a peer-reviewed journal of high quality should be enough for use. I've never seen another scientific article of this caliber challenged because it hasn't been re-quoted by another source. You agreed earlier that the SPAWAR work should be covered, let's please stick with that agreement. Ronnotel (talk) 22:50, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I have responded to all your issues above. Saying that there is a consensus of the panelists when there isn't is misleading. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Consensus and the SPAWAR work

I'm curious whether the SPAWAR work has had any impact whatsoever on scientific consensus. For instance, I found this quote from Robert Park, perhaps one of the strongest opponents of cold fusion research: "there are some curious reports - not cold fusion, but people may be seeing some unexpected low-energy nuclear reactions", from RSC, March 2007. Certainly Park can be considered an opinion leader in the field - is it notable that someone of his stature is voicing equivocation? Ronnotel (talk) 22:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

This is a decent question. Right now, I think that the way to best describe the sentiment is one of "guarded skepticism". The only thing that has changed is that it is no longer "complete skepticism". Hardly a rousing endorsement. Of course, if something comes out of this, we have the ability to change the article as scientific consensus changes. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)