Talk:Cold fusion

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Lecture by Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan, the scientist who was asked by 60 Minutes to look at a cold fusion lab, gave a lecture at the Missouri Energy Summit on April 23 about the scientific method and cold fusion. A video of the lecture is here. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It's a 100 MB file, I downloaded it and watched it, the Duncan lecture -- which is quite good -- starts in the middle. There might be another way to access just the Duncan lecture, but I couldn't find it. Duncan is really emphasizing the scientific method, which is about an ongoing process and which does not involve fixed conclusions. Ever. He reports one incident after the CBS special where a physicist called him up and was very angry, and his report shows the problem. When he asked the physicist to sit down (metaphorically, I suppose) and go over the evidence, that was angrily rejected with a comment that summed it up: something like "We already did this (i.e., in 1989-90) and you charlatans won't give up." The physicist obviously was so angry he forgot who he was talking to. Duncan isn't a charlatan, he's a reputable physicist, and simply looked at the evidence (new evidence! plus, probably, a revisitation of the old evidence, which was never properly analyzed) and came up with conclusions that were already creeping up toward majority opinion in 2004. Our resident skeptics managed, for a time, to keep the fact out of the article that half the 2004 review panel considered the evidence for excess heat "compelling." One-third thought similarly (perhaps not so strongly) about evidence for nuclear reactions. This isn't "fringe science," at least not any more. It's "emerging science," breaking through, supported by a huge amount of research of increasing clarity. If we simply follow reliable source guidelines, and apply the concept of undue weight in a neutral fashion, as recommended, we'll be fine. But if we cleave to either extreme, we'll have an unbalanced article. Right now, it's unbalanced, in my opinion, toward the skeptical side, but I reverted the re-addition of the POV tag because I believe we are working on and can resolve those issues, and since the imbalance is simply a matter of delay in reporting a shift in opinion, it's not as serious as would be, say, imbalance in the other direction, treating cold fusion as if it were a proven and accepted phenomenon. It's not. It's emerging science, with controversy remaining, lots of it, and we can and should report the nature of that controversy as shown in secondary sources like Simon. And if this makes the "pseudo-skeptics" -- the ones who confuse their own negative certainty with skepticism (certainty is the opposite of skepticism) -- look bad, let them generate reliable source to defend themselves. I don't think it's there. Good example of a genuine skeptic: Hoffman (1995). --Abd (talk) 15:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The University of Missouri link above has apparently been edited to remove Dr. Duncan's lecture. Dr. Duncan's lecture is now available on Youtube in three parts, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Krellkraver (talk) 06:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

The U. Missouri link is back, as cited by Coppertwig, above, and no explanation has been given, to my knowledge, of why it was removed, but it's easy to guess. The YouTube links appear to be up, still, and may be more convenient, in the place of downloading that huge file that is both speeches. --Abd (talk) 14:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The collapsebox doesn't render well on my phone, and that text appears to be discussing important sources. 208.54.4.50 (talk) 13:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Sources

Abd writes in his edit summary "Please negotiate consensus in Talk." I think that editors who are not Abd and aren't challenging the validity of WP:RS on this article have come to a consensus that Storms and Front. Phys. China were not reliable sources. If anyone disagrees with this (aside from you, Abd, I know you disagree, and you Objectivitst, I know you have stated that WP:RS is depreciated on this article), I'd like to know why, exactly, they consider these sources reliable. Hipocrite (talk) 17:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite mistakes an unclosed discussion, with very low participation, for a "consensus," and neglects other discussions that approached the issue more objectively. Storms (2007) is published by World Scientific. Front. Phys. China is published by the largest publisher in China, Higher Education Press, one of the largest in the world (45th largest), in cooperation with Springer-Verlag, and is peer-reviewed. Further, these sources are not being used to claim scientific fact, but only claims, i.e., "proposed explanations." Hipocrite, you are on thin ice, and someone following you should be aware of the history. It will come out. V. didn't state what you claim, but if he did, he'd have been wrong. WP:RS applies, not your opinions and point of view. --Abd (talk) 17:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Abd. Hipocrite, what I've previously written here are words to the effect that strict-RS is an inadequate rule for this and other articles. And you have consistently failed to specify why, if this article can contain statements that are marked as being claims, those claims can only come from strict-RS material. Also, with respect to speculative explanations for CF, since practically none exist in strict-RS material, you have failed to explain why such speculations must be excluded. What makes an "RS" speculation superior to a non-RS speculation? By definition, BOTH are just guesses! V (talk) 15:29, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

An RS speculation has been validated as notable in some way, a non-RS one hasn't. However, if it's been quoted in a reliable secondary source, it's been validated as notable. Sometimes, however, we can point to sources not normally considered reliable to attribute claims or opinions. The usual requirement is that the person expressing the opinion is notable in the relevant field. In the case under discussion, Storms is certainly notable in the field. But he is also RS, and claims that he isn't are essentially proposterous, and are based on the kind of anti-fringe judgment that ArbComm has rejected, and Hipocrite knows that, and I believe that he does not respect that decision. Or does he? He's welcome to tell me I'm wrong. It's preposterous to have an article on cold fusion, and a section on proposed explanations, i.e., how those working in the field explain the results, and not mention any of the explanations because they are allegedly "frimge," but only source secondary comment that the explanations (what explanations?) are "ad-hoc." And the only reason that Storms would be deprecated as reliable source would be a claim that he's fringe. The publisher is independent, and not a dedicated fringe publisher, it could be much worse than World Scientific and Storms would still be RS. --Abd (talk) 03:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Storms is neither notable nor reliable. His bald speculation is not verifiable for the purposes of our articles. Hipocrite (talk) 03:48, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Prior discussion of the FPC paper: Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_24#Holy_Grail_Found.3F_--_2007_Review_article. --Abd (talk) 18:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC). There was certainly no consensus there. Further, discussion of a source without actual text being backed by it is exploratory, preliminary, and of no conclusive value, even if there had been consensus. --Abd (talk) 18:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

To make the point clear, relative quality of reliable sources only comes into play, for balance, when there is contradiction of sources. What reliable source contradicts the information provided in the text Hipocrite has been edit-warring, with blind reverts, to take out? Is there reliable source claiming that these explanations aren't being proposed? I don't think so! Is there reliable source rejecting the proposals? Then balance the text and cite it! Otherwise, this is all just an attempt to exclude reliably sourced material (by objective standards) from Wikipedia based solely on the claim that it is from a fringe source, and following a clear POV agenda. Which is not allowed. --Abd (talk) 18:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

By my count, both of us are at 3RR on the section sourced to Storms and He Jing-tang in Front. Physics China, so it's time for other editors to make this decision, ad hoc. And if we can't settle, we can look forward to the pleasant vista of dispute resolution, though there is the possibility of Arbitration Enforcement on this. There really are two disputes: a long-term one with editors like Enric Naval, where ordinary DR is likely to find consensus, and a short-term one with Hipocrite, who arrived here quite recently with no experience in this topic, based on politics elsewhere, and began asserting an extreme anti-fringe position, the kind ArbComm has rejected. --Abd (talk) 18:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow! Do you realize what you just did right above Abd? You painted a perfect picture of yourself. The only difference is that for Hipocrite we talk about 2-3 weeks, while with you we talk about 2-3 months! ROFL!

For the record, the Storms book is an impressive listing of positive 'cold fusion' results, with two glaring ommssions of recent negative comments/results. It is clearly biased, but could be used by Wiki readers advantageously if they were alerted to the bias. I agree the Jing-tang paper is not useful. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:05, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh and one other thing, Storms does not assess the quality of the papers he cites. He just cites everything. He carries this problem into his data tables as well. What this does is mark his book as a second-class review. First class reviews always try to bring sense to a field by pointing out the best work and the not-so-good stuff. That argues against inclusion again, but adequate warning could overcome that. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the main problem I have with Storms. He uncritically lists everything, from reasonable to crackpot without making distintions. He can't be used to decide what is relevant. I'd agree on a brief mention that makes clear that a) it doesn't represent mainstream b) it represents the viewpoint of the small group that continues holding that the evidence is good against the majority opinion that it has lots of deep flaws. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you are utterly unqualified to determine what is crackpot and what is not. Further, you confuse popular opinion among scientists -- who get their news from fields in which they don't specialize from the media, just like the rest of us -- with expert opinion. We have no good guide to current scientific opinion among those qualified to judge the matter. For 2004, we have the DOE review, which does not support the kind of extreme view that Hipocrite has been pushing and that you have been supporting. "Small group." How large? Wikipedia doesn't care, we do not assess scientific consensus by taking polls. We rely on reliable sources, with preference given to peer-reviewed reliable source and other academic sources. We know due weight by the weight of publication. You are rejecting sources that are reliable on the face because of allegations of "fringe." And that is circular. It's fringe because there is no reliable source supporting it. And if you reject any source that supports it as fringe, well, there you have it. Now, there is media source that cold fusion is generally rejected. But there is also recent media source that the topic is "hot" again. "A funny thing happened on the way to oblivion," the announcer said in the recent CBS Sixty Minutes documentary. I'm not asserting that cold fusion isn't generally rejected, so our article needs to be clear that cold fusion is not generally accepted. But treating it as proven to be experimental error? That's way beyond the pale. That's not supported by the DOE reviews, especially the 2004 review, where we have more detail.

In order to impeach a reliable source, there must be contradiction with other reliable source. In rejecting Storms as a reliable source, you have not shown one single contradiction in anything sourced from Storms. Rather, you simply reject it out of hand, which totally subverts Wikipedia's method of gauging balance. You are excluding fringe instead of reporting it neutrally and in a balanced way. What's "crackpot"? I can think of two things that you might have in mind: hydrino theory and biological transmutation. How do you know that hydrino theory is crackpot? It certainly does challenge existing theory, but that doesn't make it crackpot, in itself. I think perhaps you should read the sources. Myself, I have no idea if Mills is a genius, an innovator who saw beyond the limitations of existing theories, or an expert con artist. I've been thinking of trying to visit Blacklight Power, they aren't far from me. But would I know the difference? (If they even let me visit, they are very secretive, which is an absolute necessity in what they are doing, since the U.S. Patent Office refuses to grant patents in the field. Think about it.) All I know is that the theory is widely known and considered to be one possible explanation, and it seems Storms may favor it. And, no, he doesn't work for them!

I'd like to interject a remark regarding my first impressions when I first encountered "hydrino" descriptions. I was aware that in Quantum Mechanics electron orbits are "mapped" in terms of whole numbers; the circumference of the lowest orbit is basically equal to one wavelength of the electron; the circumference of the next-lowest orbit is equal to two wavelengths, and so on. Well, if hydrinos are real, the only way it could make sense in terms of QM (to me, anyway) is if the first orbit smaller than the QM-standard-lowest-orbit was such that twice its circumference equalled one electron-wavelength; in other words, the electron orbits twice while doing one "vibration". Obviously the next smaller orbit would have the electron orbiting three times while doing one vibration, and so on. The PROBLEM I have with that is an orbit is itself a type of vibration (cyclic); we would be saying that the electron can do two or more orbit-vibes at the same time it is doing one (ordinary) vibe, and there is something contradictory about that. So, I cannot much support the hydrino hypothesis, until that contradiction is resolved. But I can keep a somewhat-open mind about it, on the off-chance that the contradiction has been resolved in a way about which I am simply currently ignorant. V (talk) 15:43, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The other possible "crackpot" idea would be biological transmutation. Why is this crackpot? Well, it just seems impossible! But how do we know it is impossible? Well, because nuclear reactions take energies that couldn't be managed by a biological organism. Er, wait a minute. If a palladium lattice could manage to do a little nuclear stuff, why not a protein? Sure, not necessarily! But if you are a cold fusion researcher, you've seen heat-after-death other effects, time and again, you aren't quite so skeptical about other possibilities. I winced, myself, when Storms speculated about human combustion. But it seems to come with the territory, Simon writes about the phenomenon in Undead Science. Since you and everything you work with has been rejected and considered pseudoscience or worse, you aren't quite so ready to reject other strange ideas. But the biological transformation work has come to the attention of cold fusion researchers through the steady and persistent work of Vyosotskii, who seems to be quite an established scientist, with a long history of publication in many areas (not just weird stuff). And the evidence that Storms shows for biological transformation is actually spectacular (and it's clearer in the original paper, which I've seen). This is work that is crying out for replication. So why hasn't it been replicated? I think that's a really good question; all I know is that I've looked for any sign that anyone has even been trying and found nothing. It should be a cheap and easy experiment.

However, Storms notes it. Sorry, Enric. That's a reliable secondary source (reliable because independently published by a reputable publishing company) reporting on a primary source (Vyosotskii). That makes it notable and usable. How it's used is another question. "Not accepted by mainstream science." Sure. But that doesn't mean that we don't report what is in reliable source, with proper attribution and framing.

And Storms was not the only source cited in what was reverted by Hipocrite today. Takahashi's Be-8 theory was also described by He Jing-Tang. I think it's in other reliable source as well, but I had He Jing-Tang handy. There is no way that this paper isn't reliable source, and He Jing-Tang isn't some fringe lunatic. The paper is weird, to be sure, but it's a secondary source, showing notability, and it was in a peer-reviewed journal. Sure, you can claim that this is a journal of lesser quality, perhaps, but ... that only matters if there is contradiction. What contradiction? Show something from a better source that it contradicts!

You seem to have missed, Enric, that these sources were simply being used to show two theories that have been proposed. Do you disagree that they have been proposed? What do you require, if these sources aren't adequate? --Abd (talk) 05:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I already gave my arguments, others added other better arguments, and you don't seem to remember them. Or, rather, you discarded them completely. I think that your suggestion to go to mediation is good. However, before spending a sizable effort in compiling the arguments in one place, I would like you to reply to my question here. I want to have assurance that we don't find ourselves in the same situation after the mediation, with you discarding the result of the mediation. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:20, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Prot (again)

Protected, again. Ah well. Complain here William M. Connolley (talk) 20:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

No complaint. Possibly not necessary, since both editors engaged in reversion said, before the protection, that they were stopping. But it's gone in a week, nothing in the long view. Naturally, Bill, you protected the The_Wrong_Version. (Seriously, the version you protected was one where my last edit was reverted, but that meant that half of the important stuff I'd put in was left, so this was progress over the pre-revert-war version. What had been done with that, by the other editor was to balance it, after having taken it all out twice, which is what I'd been suggesting our policies would require instead of blindly reverting out material sourced to publications meeting WP:RS. I took a certain risk, a risk that I almost never take. As far as I recall, the last time I hit 3RR was in 2007.) --Abd (talk) (talk) 21:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Gone in a week? It seems to be June 4th, and it is still protected. Titanium Dragon (talk) 02:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It was gone in a week, then an editor repeated his edit warring and it was protected again. See the protection log. See also discussion below, [[1]]. I complained about this to no effect, so far. If I really cared, I'd be compiling diffs for reports, etc. But I'd rather work on background and developing consensus here, and I can do that with protection in place, and I didn't see anyone else trying to get the article unprotected. Care about it? Do something about it, or help those who are trying to do something about it! --Abd (talk) 03:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

sections reverted

Proposed explanations

According to Storms (2007), no published theory has been able to meet all the requirements of basic physical principles, while adequately explaining the experimental results he considers established or otherwise worthy of theoretical consideration.[1]

The source:

1. <ref>{{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=173}}</ref>

I assert that Storms is reliable for a statement like this. Is there any contradiction to it in any other reliable source? Besides, it's attributed. Why was this removed?--Abd (talk) 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
I have to agree with this statement I would also like to point out that Julian Schwinger proposed that phonons were able to bridge the atomic to nuclear scale gap and explain how the energy is converted to heat. Official editors of this section should read some of his papers see http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Julian+Schwinger+%22A+Brief+History+of+Mine%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=1mZ_-PL2Zjc I submit that it is possible for phonon interactions to cause an energy spike exceeding that required to cause electron capture events in hydrogen atoms / ions with in natural systems. That conversion only requires 0.782MeV for a proton and a maxim of 3MeV for a deuteron. See "The Two-site Problem" starting on page 24 of Energy-related Problems - 29 RLE Progress Report 145. Even though Professor Peter L. Hagelstein was not invistigating the idea of neutron accumulation at the time it does point out the possibility of creation of low energy, perhaps even cold to ultra cold neutrons. I actually have written an entire paper on the subject and am raising see money to fully test my hypothesis. If some one is willing to read my hypothesis please contact me.

Regsoft (talk) 06:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC) Regsoft

Theory of ⁸Be intermediary, not simple d-d fusion

(this section edited to expand consensus)

Outside of mainstream-accepted explanations , cold fusion researchers have proposed a number of different possible fusion pathways other than deuterium-deuterium fusion, but most of them produce too little energy per resulting helium nucleus to explain the excess heat claims of 25±5 MeV/⁴He.[1] One that predicts this energy has been advanced by Takahashi, that four deuterons condense to make ⁸Be, which quickly decays to two alpha particles, each with 23.8 MeV.[2][3] --Abd (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The sources:

1. <ref>{{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=180}}</ref>

2. <ref>Takahashi, A., Deuteron cluster fusion and ash, in [http://www.iscmns.org/ ASTI-5], Asti, Italy, 2004, cited in {{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=180}}</ref>

3. <ref>He Jing-tang, ''Nuclear fusion inside condense matters,'' Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96―102</ref>

above edited per suggestion from Enric Naval. Version before edit at [2]--Abd (talk) 21:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

---

What, specifically, is the problem with this? There are a number of theories that have been advanced to explain cold fusion, (besides the null hypothesis of experimental error!) While it can be argued that Storms is fringe, or that He Jing-Tang is fringe (harder, perhaps, I think he's a nuclear physicist), the publishers aren't fringe! these sources are being used to establish notability within the field. If cold fusion is a widely rejected field, i.e., if the general belief is that cold fusion is not a real phenomenon, then it should go without saying that theories to explain it would also not be generally accepted! What is the problem with stating this proposed explanation? It's not being asserted that Be-8 is formed. The decay of Be-8 to two alpha particles, though, isn't controversial, that's what would happen, it's a very unstable isotope, see Beryllium-8. What we say here is not that deuterons fuse to form Be-8, but only that Takahashi has proposed this. And, of course, I assert that because it's cited both an independently published volume on the science, and in a peer-reviewed journal, it's notable. --Abd (talk) 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Why is this theory important? Well, if that kind of fusion could occur, it would explain: the lack of neutron radiation, the low levels of tritium, the conservation of momentum problem, the branching ratio difficulty, the finding of helium correlated with excess heat, the extreme sensitivity of the effect to exact surface conditions, and possibly more. What would this theory predict: alpha radiation. And this is found and confirmed. "Catching" the fusion "in the act" would be extremely difficult, but only one "miracle" is required for this theory: quadruple deuteron fusion. That some effects might exist with multiple deuterons is indicated by the transmutation work of Iwamura et al. The claim that no theories have been advanced is quite misleading. Please remember that Quantum mechanics is inadequate to predict behavior in the nuclear environment when three or more bodies are involved. That requires, I understand, Quantum field theory or Quantum electrodynamics, and Fleischmann's work was intended, not to discover "cold fusion" as an energy source, but to test the limits of quantum mechanics. From our article on Quantum mechanics, which matches my memory of the subject from Feynman: It turns out that analytic solutions of Schrödinger's equation are only available for a small number of model Hamiltonians, of which the quantum harmonic oscillator, the particle in a box, the hydrogen molecular ion and the hydrogen atom are the most important representatives. Even the helium atom, which contains just one more electron than hydrogen, defies all attempts at a fully analytic treatment.

None of this indicates that this actually happens. It only shows that the claims that theory conclusively prohibits cold fusion, or that there is no theory explaining it, are false and easily shown to be so, with reliable source, and only by rejecting reliable source because it's "fringe" can this be blocked, so that the reader remains unaware of it.

We now have in the article, hydrino theory, but not the much more mainstream Be-8 theory. Why? Well, the New York times has covered Blacklight Power, that's why. The Be-8 theory is only covered in peer-reviewed publications (I think I can find more than just the Front. Phys. China article, though that should really be enough), and the independently published, but not mass-market, Storms (World Scientific, 2007). --Abd (talk) 15:17, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

On the ⁸Be thing, I would agree on this wording with two tweaks:

a) replace that "however" with "one of them that would produce enough energy", as the sentence before says "most of them" not "all of them"

b) the start of the paragraph should read something like "Outside of mainstream-accepted explanations , cold fusion researchers have proposed a number of different possible fusion pathways other than deuterium-deuterium fusion,(...)". I think that this is mecessary to address the issues raised by Phil153 about weight [3] (fourth paragraph). That's an introduction that makes clear to readers that this part is describing the POV of the group of CF researchers outside of mainstream that is described in other part of the article, so it would satisfy WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE.

--Enric Naval (talk) 21:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to edit the proposals above to reflect your changes, Enric, since they seem reasonable to me. Thanks. Uh, "explanations"? Okay, there are two. One is actually very reputable, might still be a majority or close: "unexplained anomaly, probably not nuclear in origin." "Experimental error" is the other. The "experimental error," for excess heat, is probably a small minority position now, among those who know the research. From 2004, already one-third of the DoE reviewers were inclined to a nuclear explanation. My guess is that "experimental error" is down below ten or twenty percent of those who look at the research. There are a lot of scientists who long ago decided to stop looking. --Abd (talk) 21:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC) 21:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The 2004 Takahashi paper has been discussed previously on this talk page, and the conclusion at the time was that it does not support the ⁸Be claim. User:JohnAspinall had read the paper and indicated that it does not address the claim of a ⁸Be intermediary that Storms(2007) alleges that it does. Please address these concerns prior to adding material that has been previously considered on this talk page and rejected for cause. --Noren (talk) 00:54, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Can we have another tweak to appease these concerns? Something like adding at the end "Mainstream theory predicts that the fusion of four d nuclei has a much lower probability than the fusion of 3 nuclei, which already has a much lower probability than the fusion of two d nuclei." --Enric Naval (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Got any source for that, Enric? I don't know of any, in fact, and don't know that it's true. It would be true in free space, obviously. "Much lower" would be an understatement! But under conditions of confinement, the relationship would be complex. On the one hand, as you add deuterons to a confined space, the probability of fusion increases. On the other hand, the "space" starts to resist the addition of deuterons, and deuterons will be expelled; in addition, the stress on the chemical bonds holding the space together increases. There may be a peak, a level of maximum fusion rate, and it might be sharp. I.e. fusion of two deuterons might be rare, of three a little more, but not much more, and four high enough to see effects before the increasing rarity of the conditions again reduces fusion probability drastically. I'm not aware of any reliable source showing the claim about lower probability, but if you can find one, of course! I have already addressed the concerns previously expressed below. They were misplaced as applied to this text, which is only about a proposed theory. The mainstream response? Mostly none. You want to say that, I don't think I would object, but making up a mainstream theoretical response is beyond the pale. We could say, "There has been no mainstream response to this proposal." Negatives are a bit tricky because they are clearly synthetic, unless based in a source, but sometimes this kind of thing is done as a compromise, and all it takes is someone to find one mainstream response, and out that goes and in goes the actual response. --Abd (talk) 14:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Hum, Takahashi said in one paper[4] said that he had observed fusions of 3 nuclei happening 10⁴ less times than to 2 nuclei fusion, when conventional physics predict 2³⁰. We can assume that 4 nuclei fusion will be at least as unfrequent in respect to 3 nuclei fusion, so mainstream theory would predict that they would be at least 10³⁰⁺³⁰ = 10⁶⁰ less frequent than 2 nuclei fusions. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:14, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Noren. The reference at that time was to a 2001 paper by Storms hosted by New Energy Times that has been moved to [5] The paper is worth reading. For our purposes:

The insistence that gamma emission must accompany helium production is based on how this fusion branch behaves in a plasma. Because the reaction d + d = 4He has two nuclei producing one nucleus, gamma radiation must occur to conserve momentum. On the other hand, suppose the following reaction occurs in a lattice where the d concentration is very high[119] [120]: d+d+d+d --> ^8Be --> 2 ^4He. Such a reaction would not require gamma emission because 8Be would promptly decompose into two particles, each having 23.8 MeV. Other, similar reactions can be proposed to avoid the need to emit gamma radiation. This suggestion shifts the problem from requiring gamma emission, to accepting that such reactions can actually occur. Evidence for such multibody interaction has been reported by Takahashi et al.[121] based on the energy of tritons emitted when titanium is bombarded by D+.

Notes:

119. Chubb, S.R. and T.A. Chubb. Quantum Mechanics of "Cold and "Not-So-Cold Fusion". in The First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion. 1990. University of Utah Research Park, Salt Lake City, Utah: National Cold Fusion Institute.

120. Takahashi, A., Some Considerations of Multibody Fusion in Metal-Deuterides. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 451.

121. Takahashi, A., et al., Detection of three-body deuteron fusion in titanium deuteride under the stimulation by a deuteron beam. Phys. Lett. A, 1999. 255: p. 89.

The analysis at our Talk page was largely original research, which is, in my opinion, acceptable for our purposes in discussion, though, obviously, not for article text. To cut it short, JohnAspinall criticized the theory based on evidence for it, specifically note 121, being allegedly insufficient. That is not a denial of the fact that the theory has been advanced. Storms only used that paper as evidence for multibody reactions occurring. However, to understand how the multibody theory might work, imagine a box with openings in each side; the palladium lattice is an array of such boxes. One deuteron into the box: very happy, a little heat is released (the heat of formation of palladium deuteride). Another in: it begins to get tight, probably one deuteron is expelled thorough one of the faces into an adjacent box, but this takes time. Another in: tighter, faster expulsion, or the box ruptures. Another in: this can't last long, but it might be tight enough for long enough that the four deuterons realize that "It will be much more comfortable in here if we get together." So they do. Take this rough explanation and do the math on it. Warning: the math is probably too difficult for present-day analytical techniques, at least using classical quantum mechanics. But, for certain, it's beyond me. There is much other work by Takahashi, referring to the hypothesis, in conference papers.

Googling source 120 should ice it. 120 is cited in the Mosier-Boss Naturwissenschaften (2009 96:135–142} paper, Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons, with explicit reference to the multibody hypothesis. Here is what they say:

The multibody reactions proposed by Takahashi (1994) involve deuteria occupying the tetrahedral and octahedral sites in the metal lattice. In the proposed 3D and 4D fusion reactions occurring in the metal deuterides, high-energy α particles are formed that dissociate deuterons in the system to produce neutrons with a continuous spectrum in the 0 to 10 MeV region. These high energy α particles are also expected to produce Bremsstrahlung X-rays. Experimental data that support this mechanism are evidence of recoil carbon and oxygen atoms on the backside of the CR-39 suggestive of 1.25–8 MeV neutrons (see discussion in “Electronic supplementary material”) and Bremsstrahlung radiation that has been observed in the X-ray and γ-ray spectra obtained during Pd–D co-deposition (Szpak et al. 1996).

Mosier-Boss is leaning on the Takahashi hypothesis to explain why she found a low level of energetic neutrons. They are proposed to be secondary products, which is why they occur at such low levels. However, any other mechanism that allows fusion and predominantly results in energetic alpha particles at the 24 MeV level would likewise explain the neutrons. However, I'd expect those other mechanisms to show more evidence of the other pathways, as JohnAspinall noted. He apparently didn't consider that lattice confinement with less than four deuterons might be insufficient to produce significant fusion. Good thing, too. Otherwise, load palladium with deuterium, disturb it to create a shock wave in the deuterium causing local compression, and bang! there goes the lab and maybe the whole city block. --Abd (talk) 12:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The 8Be theory, and other notable proposed explanations, should definitely be included, IMO. If the section gets too long, it can be made into a new article and briefly summarized here. In a brief summary, many explanations can be mentioned: a couple of them in a sentence or two each, perhaps, plus some more perhaps listed as one word or phrase each (to show people what they can find out about at the other article). ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:06, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability of Storms (2007)

Mathsci kindly provided me a way to read a review of Storms, The Science of LOw Energy Nuclear Reaction, World Scientific, 2007.

E. Sheldon, An overview of almost 20 years’ research on cold fusion, Contemporary Physics, Vol. 49, No. 5, September–October 2008, 375–378.

Some editors, above, had been claiming that Storms had attracted no attention from the mainstream. The review shows otherwise. From the review:

... this timely ‘compilation of evidence and explanations about cold fusion’ as the first such detailed synopsis of nearly 20 years’ intensive experimental and theoretical research worldwide to provide a comprehensive up-to-date overview. Within its 312 pages the book features, among its 16 tables, a nine-page summary of experiments (up to 2004) as Table 2 on pp. 53–61 that lists some 181 studies reporting anomalous power production on various systems; the text concludes with a 77-page bibliography which cites more than 1060 publications, followed by a fairly detailed seven-page index, to make this a worthwhile, informative acquisition.

[...]

Storms writes in an informal style devoid of polemics or gullible advocacy, although a degree of caution is advisable in regard to uncritical acceptance of some results and hypotheses in his compilation.

[...]

Whatever is to be the outcome of objective professional consideration by protagonists and antagonists of ‘cold fusion’ phenomena there is no doubt that the latest descriptive accounts, including especially Storms’ book and the Web site, offer an inducement to re-examine the extensive experimental and theoretical writings with an open mind. As for myself, I remain sceptical: I cannot accept the notion of the process to be any form of true ‘fusion’ and am even unable yet to accede to its being dubbed a ‘nuclear reaction’ – I’d be much more at ease to designate this as an ‘unclear reaction’.

Yes, Sheldon writes what was stated about hydrino theory, and this merely establishes more notability for it. The reference was not to Storm's citation of the theory, but was Sheldon's own recounting of his history with cold fusion, and was in reference to Mills' 1991 paper, with only a passing reference to the 2007 theoretical tome written by Mills, with no detail at all on the latter.

So, once again, thanks, Mathsci, this source establishes, clearly, notability for Storms, which was already reliable source, usable with appropriate caution. (As Sheldon notes in what I quoted above.)

As to Sheldon's expressed skeptical position, it's quite understandable, but many physicists started to revise their opinions this year, as the Mosier-Boss neutron results came to be widely known. I'll see if I can contact Sheldon, I live in Massachusetts. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the "web site" mentioned is lenr-canr.org, currently blacklisted at meta. Real physicists who have taken the trouble of becoming a bit more knowledgeable than the norm, on this topic, seem to have a different opinion of that web site than non-physicist editors and pseudoskeptics, ready to shout "crackpot!" and "kook!" at the appearance of something they don't understand. --Abd (talk) 15:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The review is actually an essay by a retired physicist, trying to be impartial and keep an open mind, but neverthless concluding that the explanations for lenr involving physics are unconvincing. Instead of "nuclear physics", Sheldon suggests "unclear physics". The article dismisses hydrino theory completely, as stated before. It's interesting that Abd is planning to contact Eric Sheldon to see whether he has changed his mind. I had no idea that was how wikipedia articles on science are written. Mathsci (talk) 22:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, you haven't a clue about this field and what's been happening over the last couple of years. I'm not personally interested in hydrino theory, and Sheldon's mention of it in the review -- which had nothing to do with Storms -- didn't add anything that we didn't already know from other sources. Sheldon's objections to LENR probably have a basis which has recently been undermined, and I'm interested in contacting him for personal reasons, though I would indeed, like to hear his reaction to certain recent work, particularly the Mosier-Boss neutron findings. Interesting about how Wikipedia articles are written. Maybe this is part of the problem. Used to be, writers and editors at encyclopedias would talk to experts in the field. Now, apparently we don't. I know what happens when newspaper writers don't discuss a topic adequately with those who know it: garbage. Certain facts may be right, but it gets put together in a way that shows a lack of understanding, and which simply confuses the reader, if the reader doesn't know enough to take it apart and put it together. Come to think of it, I have noticed this in some articles. Such as this one. I've still been unable to get Cold_fusion#Reports_of_nuclear_products_in_association_with_excess_heat to show "association." The picked example doesn't show association of any strength. (That is a blatant error in the DoE report, the result of a misunderstanding of the McKubre report they considered. I'll examine this in its own section, since I just figured out what happened, where the error came from.)

"Unclear physics" is a reference to what we've been saying: there is no clear, coherent theory that explains all the experimental work.

In any case, the Sheldon review shows nothing but respect for Storms and his book, and validates this as a reliable secondary source, something that other editors here were objecting to. In other words, Mathsci, your generosity in providing that source sped up the process of acceptance of Storms here. --Abd (talk) 00:49, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The book of Storms is not a secondary source. It contains highly speculative material on possible theoretical physics explanations of experimental observations that are not properly understood. Sheldon dismisses some of these physical explanations, including hydrino theory. I understand that your stance is to rebrand lenr as an "emerging science". At present, much of it is misunderstood and speculative science that is not ripe for inclusion in an encyclopedia. At some stage Krivit's OUP book should be reviewed in the mainstream literature by heavyweight academics. It might be worth waiting until then to add further content, while secondary sources are so thin on the ground. BTW Sheldon used "unclear physics" to describe the current state of the subject: I don't believe he was referring to me. Please look for further secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 09:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

This is the relevant policy: Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources. Secondary sources may contain "highly speculative material." To quote the policy:

Secondary sources are at least one step removed from an event. They rely for their facts and opinions on primary sources, often to make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims.

Storms, The science of low energy nuclear reaction, World Scientific, 2007, is almost entirely secondary source. An exception could be Storms' autobiographical details, one chapter, which aren't relevant here at this point. There is no requirement that reliable secondary sources be reviewed to be usable, this has been made up by Mathsci in pursuit of an obvious agenda. We are not competent to judge, here, who is "heavyweight" and who is not, and to require this would make the editing of articles so cumbersome and contentious as to be impossible. We should, quite simply, follow WP:RS.

As to "emerging science," it is clear that from the beginning, there never was a scientific closure, but only a very successful political campaign to make it appear closed. Scientific RS in the fields of physics and chemistry never showed the topic as closed, nor did the DoE reviews in 1989 and 2004; but they have been widely framed as having done so. It's impossible to read the individual reviews in 2004, and the summary report, and still hold a rational opinion that this is a closed topic by scientific consensus (as distinct from individual opinion), as would be the case with pseudoscience, and the level of respect shown in the 2004 report is such that, yes, it is probably more reasonable to consider this emerging science. However, we face the fact that there is still wide opinion among "scientists" -- not necessarily those informed about the current research -- that cold fusion was debunked twenty years ago, hence it is still necessary to report research in this field maintaining that context.

Mathsci seems to look for reasons to disagree. Yes, Sheldon used "unclear physics" to "describe the current state of the subject." That's what I said, writing, "There is no clear, coherent theory that explains all the experimental work." "Unclear" doesn't mean "rejected." It means, "Not understood." That's characteristic of emerging science, and the solution, as recommended by the DOE both in 1989 and in 2004, is more research. Because there is no clear evidence that cold fusion will ever be a practical power source, even if what is happening is actually fusion, there has been no recommendation of a massive program, only work to clarify the science; but that recommendation makes no sense with fringe science or pseudoscience. --Abd (talk) 14:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Mathsci wanted to mean something like "is not a reliable secondary source (so it shouldn't be used as a secondary source in the article)". --Enric Naval (talk) 15:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

You can gloss it that way, but that's not what he said. How do we determine what is "reliable secondary source," such that we can use it in articles? I'd say we follow WP:RS! We use the existence of independent publication from a standard publisher (as distinct from a publisher who can be alleged to be fringe, such as Beaudette's publisher). Storms meets that. If sources are to be rejected on simple allegations of "fringe content," we have a circular definition, because it's fringe if there is a paucity of reliable source, but we have excluded the reliable source because it's allegedly fringe. Further, there is a middle ground between "not usable" and "fully reliable." That is, use with attribution, and that is what would be suggested in this situation. Attribution should be an easy solution to much of this, but some editors seem hell-bent on total exclusion, which clearly violates WP:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science. The fact is that material even from fringe publishers can be used with attribution, if there is some evidence of notability. --Abd (talk) 16:19, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd's contributions here seem to be extremely skewed. Any source that is actively promoting a universally rejected pseudophysics theory, like hydrino theory, is primary and questionable. In view of his poor namespace editing record, my advice to Abd is to attempt to edit a non-controversial article on science in order to get more experience in handling scientific sourcing in a completely neutral context. That might be a valuable eye-opener. Mathsci (talk) 21:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Eye-opening is definitely something you need, Mathsci. Hydrino theory is not "universally rejected," and if you can't write sound text on ordinary subjects, where the facts are easily and plainly verifiable, how in the world would you be expected to write on complex subjects? WTF are you doing here? I haven't noticed any article writing.

Storms does not "promote" hydrino theory. However, have you noticed that the section that was kept by Hipocrite was the one on hydrino theory? Have you wondered why? Could it have to do with the fact that there is plenty of reliable source on it? It strikes me that you are searching for criticisms to make. It's transparent.

Enough. --Abd (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Would you please provide a source for the document that purports to be the individual reviewers' DOE 2004 comments? It is inconsistent with the official report, and the only source it of which I am aware is the personal website of banned user JedRothwell. --Noren (talk) 01:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You are right that it is inconsistent with the official report, but that's actually not the core of this. The official report is inconsistent with the document that was reviewed, and that document was published by the DoE together with the report, so we don't actually need to see the intermediate documents. The individual reviewer documents were, however, made available to McKubre et al, and that's how we came to have copies available. At least that's what I recall reading. There is a comment that they were published on a DoE site that doesn't have them any more, you can find it in the lenr-canr.org document linked below. Basically, we have Summary <> Reviewer <> McKubre paper. You can take the middle out of that, it's still the same inequality.

That isn't a mere "personal website," it's actually a reputable document repository, its entire reputation, which is considerable in the field, is based on its reliability. We don't use it as reliable source, itself, because it has an associated POV, but there is no evidence at all for document forgery. But I think there is a corroborating source. First of all, the lenr-canr overall page: http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm and then there is, cited from there, http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEtheusgover.pdf published in 21st Century Sci. & Technol., 2005, by Storms. Which refers to lenr-canr.org for copies of the individual reviews, thus validating that those copies are there, in a published source. You are welcome to challenge the reliability of that source, but do consider this: if lenr-canr.org was hosting altered copies or forgeries, don't you think it would have been noticed by now?

The documents are also available at http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/government/DOE/DOE.shtml . That's not the "personal website of a banned user."

Speaking of banned user, do you really want to get into that here? I'd be happy, but this isn't the place. That has nothing to do with this information and its reliability --Abd (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The pdf with the individual reviewers was put in the DOE website at the same time as the final report. Someone should ask Jed about the original URL of the document so that we can retrieve it from archive.org --Enric Naval (talk) 20:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

How about you ask him, Enric? Look, I've taken a lot of flak, and do I remember correctly that some of it was from you, over communicating with Rothwell and Krivit? So I'm tempted to let you be the one to convince him that he should respond to your request. I think you have a long history of insulting him and working to exclude his simple comments from this Talk page. You could try apologizing. It might work.

I'll ask him if we need it. We don't. You can read them if you want, or not if you don't want. I believe that they are accurate, there is no evidence ever of lenr-canr.org altering a document in any fraudulent way. You know this, we've discussed this at great length. I will say this: I looked at the last archive.com scrape of the DOE site before the whole thing disappeared. The panel report was there and the Hagelstein paper and some other documents were there (the charge letter, in particular, maybe something else). The individual reviewer comments were not linked there. --Abd (talk) 23:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I did ask him, before he was blocked, and received a sarcastic and non-informative response. As to the DoE site, I did look around the DoE site while it was still up... several times, in fact. It did not contain that document that purports to be individual reviewer comments any of the times that I checked it. What is the basis for your claim that it was there, Enric? --Noren (talk) 03:15, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference to Rothwell's response. Yeah, classic Rothwell. I'd have pushed him to answer the question. His sarcasm was a tad justified, given several factors: lenr-canr.org is pretty badly described as "Jed Rothwell's personal web site," though he does manage it. It seems it was pretty much Storms who put it together. And you were effectively accusing him of fabricating documents. I might have taken it rather badly too.

I've seen the same thing that Enric has seen, I might even have written about it above somewhere. One of the reasons I write so much is that I can't remember anything if I don't write it down.... One of the sites, lenr-canr.org or newenergytimes.com, both of which host copies of this material, appears to claim that the documents came from the DoE web site. By the way, that answers your question about personal web site. NET isn't Jed's personal web site, and both Krivit and Rothwell have strong connections with the players and would have been able to get their own copies from them (Somewhere it says that the DoE provided copies of the reviewer comments to the researchers who presented, which would seem to be ordinary courtesy.) My conclusion is that the comment about the web site was referring to all the other documents: the charge letter, the review itself, the list of papers, and the review document, i.e., the Hagelstein paper, but not the individual reviewer comments. It is possile that there was some non-linked URL for a time. In any case, this is the kind of thing that I think Krivit in particular can be trusted for, accuracy of reportage, uncovering scandals and misrepresentations in the field, con artists, etc., is his forte and penchant. The idea that there isn't criticism within the field is preposterous if you've looked. And I've seen nothing that would remotely resemble fabrication of documents from either lenr-canr.org or newenergytimes.com. They have editorial viewpoints, to be sure, but they also have journalistic integrity. Noren, Rothwell was telling you that he didn't make up the documents, and that it was preposterous to imagine that he might have, or, in fact, that anyone might have. They'd have been exposed, there is a substantial group of people who had access to those documents, plus the reviewers themselves, eighteen of them. --Abd (talk) 04:49, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Based on Abd's description and the above excerpt from a book review, my opinion is that the Storms (2007) book is a solidly academic reference and a secondary source and can be used to describe the pro-cold-fusion POV and to establish notability of subtopics; it seems to me that this article (or subarticles, if split) could likely benefit from extensive citing from this book, which from the descriptions may be the most comprehensive academic book on this topic. (Reliable sources and academic sources can have POVs.) In general, however, given the current status of the field within the scientific community in general, pro-cold-fusion information can't be presented as fact. I'm under the impression that Storms considers himself a skeptic, given the title of his talk "An Informed Skeptics View of Cold Fusion" at a seminar yesterday ([6]). ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what Storms meant, I think you may have seen the talk, Coppertwig. There are skeptics and there are skeptics. The most important kind of skepticism is an approach, not a conclusion. But we also use the word "skeptic" to mean someone who has firmly concluded that some idea is bogus. This is not scientific skepticism, it is almost the opposite. Storms, if he's a skeptic, is the first kind. If he's the second kind, he'd be skeptical, in that sense, of the rejections of cold fusion. Clearly, he operates on the assumption that it's real, probably, like most researchers in the field, he saw one (or more) of those "miracles" which were so hard to come by initially. If you'd been Mizuno, pouring water in a cooling bucket every few hours to keep a shut-down cold fusion cell cool because of what later has been called "heat-after-death," you might also be convinced. It's a simple human reaction. This is why it is so important, for the advancement of science, to trust experimental reports and even anecdotes. That does not mean not being skeptical as to conclusions. It simply means, "Hmmm... maybe there is something to look into here." And if one has the time and resources, maybe this skeptic does investigate. Most won't, and that's okay. One must set priorities, and the theoretical concerns about cold fusion were very strong. There may come a point, however, where attachment to theory takes the place of the skepticism that should remain about all theories, and, if this happens, the theory has become a fixed belief and the individual is no longer functioning, in this area at least, as a scientist. --Abd (talk) 16:52, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

May 29 Video seminar organized by Robert Duncan (physicist)

May be of interest to some editors of this article. Discussion not needed now.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
[http://www.more.net/services/videostreaming/events.html Vice Chancellor for Research Seminar Series: Excess Heat and Particle Tracks from Deuterium-loaded Palladium] Friday, May 29, 2009 12:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Jesse Wrench Auditorium Memorial Union University of Missouri Program Schedule 12:30-1:00 – Robert V. Duncan, Ph.D., University of Missouri Welcome, Summary, and Observations 1:00-2:30 – Mr. Lawrence Forsley, President, JWK International Corporation Pamela A. Mosier-Boss, Ph.D., Advanced Systems and Applied Sciences Division of SSC-Pacific Frank E. Gordon, Ph.D., Head, Research and Applied Sciences Department, US Navy SSC-Pacific Twenty-Year History of Lattice-Enabled Nuclear Reactions Using Pd/D Co-deposition 2:30-2:45 – Break 2:45-3:15 – Edmund K. Storms, Ph.D., KivaLabs, LLC, Santa Fe, NM and Greenwich, CT An Informed Skeptics View of Cold Fusion 3:15-3:45 – Michael C.H. McKubre, Ph.D., Energy Research Center, SRI International Studies of the Fleischmann-Pons Effect at SRI International 3:45-4:15 – Peter L. Hagelstein, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Modeling Excess Heat in the Fleischmann-Pons Experiment 4:15-4:45 – Yeong E. Kim, Ph.D., Purdue University Theory of Bose-Einstein Condensation Nuclear Fusion 4:45-5:00 – Break 5:00-5:30 – Mark Prelas, Ph.D., Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute, University of Missouri A Review of Transmutation and Clustering in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions 5:30-6:00 – David J. Nagel, Ph.D., The George Washington University Scientific and Other Challenges of Lattice-Enabled Nuclear Reactions 6:00-6:30 – TBA 6:30-7:00 – TBA 7:00-7:15 – Robert V. Duncan - Wrap-up and Future Plans Enjoy. --Abd (talk) 04:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC) May I just ask - why is there here? - Bilby (talk) 06:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC) Because the fact that a physicist who was unfamiliar with the field failed to see the problems in a real world setup, and became convinced of the reality of cold fusion, which obviously proves cold fusion is real!  ;-} Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC) (unindent) It's here because there is a community of editors working on this article, and the more informed the community is on the topic, the better we will be able to understand it, and, in particular, to make judgments about due weight in the article. I can't say what the seminar will prove, I don't have a crystal ball, but the researchers presenting are well-known, so if you want to see faces and demeanor behind the abstract texts we normally look at, this is an opportunity. This video seminar would have been noticed here even if Duncan hadn't made a very public "conversion." He's much more familiar with physics than any of us, including Shanahan, and if he's unfamiliar with the cold fusion field, all the better. He'll learn. His conversion only proves that a skeptical physicist, who investigates, can come up with conclusions the opposite of the alleged mainstream. --Abd (talk) 12:30, 29 May 2009 (UTC) Ah. So it has nothing directly to do with the article, and instead you're just informing editors of an event happening elsewhere? Of which they may be interested? In that case it sounds like well-intentioned spam, which probably isn't appropriate here. - Bilby (talk) 12:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC) Bilby, at the bottom of the show/hide section you say that the section has "nothing directly to do with the article", but the whole section is marked "Nothing to do with the article". That sort of creeping POV cannot go unchallenged. Abd is perfectly correct in basically stating that knowledgeable editors will do a better job on this article than ignorant editors. If you are an editor of this particular article, which category are you in? And how thoroughly? Are you trying to imply that any ignorant or partly-ignorant editors should stay that way, that an easy way to become more informed should be censored? Well? Please explain your position in more detail! V (talk) 13:43, 29 May 2009 (UTC) Perhaps you should check the history - I didn't collapse the section, so the section header isn't mine. And yes, knowledge is good. However, advertising a forthcoming seminar on a discussion page is more than just a tad questionable, even with good intentions. - Bilby (talk) 13:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC) No problem with the archiving template, except I edited the reason. It does have to do with improving this article, but anyone who disagrees is welcome to ignore this, and discussion of this is not needed at this time. Some of the presentations, however, if made available for later viewing, may become sources. We'll discuss that later. This is also relevant to my observation of a shift in "mainstream" thinking on cold fusion, it's evidence that, at the very least, cold fusion is less fringe than it once was, making our determinations of due weight more complicated. --Abd (talk) 16:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed change to intro

It seems that Hipocrite wants me to select a specific edit to discuss, and to make a suggestion. OK, here goes: The 1st paragraph as written is misleading, per my suggestions above. I propose the following, appropriately tagged, etc.:

Cold fusion is a term originally used to describe muon catalyzed fusion. It refers to the fact that muon catalyzed fusion occurs at room temperature, instead of the millions of degrees normally required for ‘hot’ nuclear fusion. In 1989, two electrochemists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, presented evidence during a press conference that purported to show another method for obtaining room temperature (‘cold’) fusion reactions. Even though Prof. Steven Jones also claimed to have found evidence for such an effect, in the popular literature the term ‘cold fusion’ has come to be nearly exclusively associated to the Fleischmann and Pons claims. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Paragraphs 2 and 3:

Today, the field is viewed as a ‘pariah’ field by mainstream science. But a persistent band of scientists refuses to accept this verdict and continues to attempt to advance the state of knowledge about the field. A variety of effects have been observed and are claimed to support the contention that room temperature nuclear reactions have occurred in their apparati. Because of the pariah status of ‘cold fusion’, advocates have taken to calling this field “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” (LENR) or “Condensed Matter Nuclear Science” (CMNS) in an attempt to avoid the negative connotations of “Cold Fusion”. A recent book by E. Storms summarizes these claims with great detail. However, current objections to these claims are not as well treated.

Originally the FP claims focused on D + D fusion, which is known to occur at high temperatures. However, early mistakes coupled with lack of reproducibility and the fact that ‘CF’ has now been observed at roughly similar levels in light water FP-type cells has led to a general admission that the physics at work is completely unknown, and probably inconsistent with high temperature nuclear fusion.

Enough for now. You get the drift. Additional facts currently included in the Intro section can be added in later paragraphs if necessary. Let's discuss. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Starting with the 1st para first, are you sure that it was initially used to describe muon cat fusion? Also, I'm not sure if that should be the first para - perhaps the 2nd, moving the intro to something like:

Cold fusion refers to a postulated nuclear fusion process, widely considered to be pathological science, offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results first reported by electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. Supporters of Cold Fusion also refer to it as sometimes as low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) studies or condensed matter nuclear science

Cold fusion is a term originally used to describe muon catalyzed fusion. It referred to the fact that muon catalyzed fusion occurs at room temperature, instead of the millions of degrees normally required for ‘hot’ nuclear fusion. In 1989, Fleischmann and Pons, presented evidence during a press conference that purported to show another method for obtaining room temperature (‘cold’) fusion reactions. Even though Prof. Steven Jones also claimed to have found evidence for such an effect, in the popular literature the term ‘cold fusion’ has come to be nearly exclusively associated to the Fleischmann and Pons claims."

Interjection: There is a grammatical inconsistency between "originally used" and "refers". Since the past tense is correct, "referred" is a better word there. I'd also like to point out that the part about Prof Jones is a bit unclear. What experiment did he do that was different from the P/F work? Did it involve deuterium-saturated metal? If so, then technically there is little significant difference; today "cold fusion" is basically the description of a proposed explanation for the apparent appearance of heat in experiments that involve deuterium-saturated metal. Believers, of course, think that the heat is real and the proposal is the correct explanation. V (talk) 16:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I have changed the referred per your advice. I cannot speak to Jones vs. PF. Hipocrite (talk) 16:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

No, change 'It' to "Cold" in quotes and it retains the point that it is still so today. Please don't edit until consensus is achieved, even if it is just in the Talk pages..

It amuses me that estwhile editors of the article don't know the history of the affair. Jones and F&P were involved in semi-parallel research efforts. They both submitted proposals to a DOE office, and the DOE person in charge noted the similarities. He then advised each of the other's work. The rest is history as they say. Read the Kowalski ref below for a good angle on it. Many books from the early days detail this also. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:29, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, you have said something that does not make adequate sense across multiple posts. If Jones' work is so similar to the P/F work, then there is no reason to say that the DEFINITION of "cold fusion" is associated with the P/F claims; the fact is, the definition is associated with CLAIMS, regardless of who made them. V (talk) 18:11, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The definition of cold fusion that should be used is the one that causes the least con-fusion. As can be seen from the lack of information regarding the Jones version of CF in the article, the term has come to mean the F&P type cells, AND the stuff they are now lumping in with it, i.e. the Pd-CaO-Pd samdwiches, etc. (these are all the things mentioned in Storms' book). At the beginning, the similarity was that two separate research groups were claiming a new way to fuse D at room temp. Jones' claim was based on weak neutron signals, signals that were several of order of magnitude weaker than what would be expected based on F&P's claims. Jones' work was primarily derived from studies on Earth core simulants as I recall. In the end quite different set-ups. Also, Jones recognized his claims were not compelling, while never giving up belief in them, so he didn't fanatically push his ideas like F&P and the associated crowd. Jones never developed groupies like Rothwell either. In the end (i.e. today) his claims have been all but forgotten while F&Ps are still being pushed. 'Cold fusion' today means F&P-type cold fusion, and any other definition will confuse the Wiki reader. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:55, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree about avoiding confusion. That means any reference to either Jones or P&F can wait for later in the article, because the definition is not about people or events. So, try this on for size, as a first paragraph:

"Cold fusion" is a term originally used to describe muon-catalyzed fusion. It referred to the fact that MCF can occur at room temperature (and even much colder, such as in liquid hydrogen), instead of the millions of degrees normally required for "hot" nuclear fusion. But few knew of that definition in 1989, when the news media reported widely on a completely different discovery, so the phrase acquired a new definition. "Cold fusion" now typically refers to the idea that deuterium nuclei can fuse while inside solid metal. However, that idea has yet to be indisputably proved true; it is controversial, and even if true no one yet knows the details of just exactly how cold fusion could happen. This article will describe the 1989 discovery (among others), the controversy, and related information. V (talk) 07:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

(Interjecting to respond to the above suggestion)As I have pointed out, protium is also claimed to produce the effect. Restricting the definition to deuterium is incorrect. Further, the 'evidence' for D-D fusion is not compelling. The suggested version is technically incorrect. We may need to clarify in the original version that we are talking about all F&P type experiments. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:40, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion; I think there are some good ideas there. However, "has yet to be indisputably proved true" seems to me to give too much weight to the pro-cold-fusion POV. "inside solid metal" ignores the theory, widely accepted within the field I think, that the effect occurs on or very near the surface of the electrode. Also, I think Pons and Fleishmann should be mentioned in the lead, being very notable with respect to this topic. How about ""Cold fusion now typically refers to the controversial hypothesis that fusion of deuterium nuclei is responsible for the excess heat reported in the Fleischmann-Pons effect". (Except that we can't wikilink "Fleischmann-Pons effect since I don't think we have a separate article for that, leading to a circular definition.) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 19:05, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

"[Fleischmann] told Pelley he has two regrets: calling the nuclear effect "fusion," a name coined by a competitor,"[7]. I suppose that he refers to Steven Jones. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:27, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

A couple nights ago I replied to Coppertwig, but the message seems to have vanished completely (it's not even in the History). I suspect a systemic restore-from-backup due to some badly garbled Wikipedia pages I saw the next day. So now I need to try to reconstruct my vanished message, and reply to 2 other messages as well.

Coppertwig, can you clarify how the phrase "has yet to be indisputably proved true" is pro-CF POV, when in my mind the phrase "has yet to be indisputably proved false" would most certainly be pro-CF POV. I can try to explain a thought I had as I wrote that: Simply to say, "yet to be proved true" is inadequate because in the minds of CF believers, it IS proved true. Perhaps the best solution is just to drop that phrase and change the encompassing sentence to: However, that idea is controversial, and even if true no one yet knows the details of just exactly how cold fusion could happen.

Next, regarding the near-surface of the metal, your statement does not seem supported by those pictures of melted (erupted!) palladium that Robert Duncan showed in that "importance of doing Scientific Method" video. The data I've seen seems to me to indicate that near-surface events may be associated with stuff like CR-39 tracks, but heat production at greater depths in the metal is not. The implication is that the CF effect can occur throughout the metal (with different results in different places). If you think the phrase "inside solid metal" implies depth, then how about, "inside a piece of metal"?

Kirk, please note the proposed paragraph I wrote specifies "typically". It is certainly true that claims of heat production, when ordinary water is used, are rather rarer than claims of heat production when heavy water is used. I have no objection to mentioning all sorts of details in the main article, but the lead paragraph does not need many details. Next, whether or not something is "not compelling" depends on who you ask; remember the individual remarks behind-the-scenes of the 2004 DOE report. Saying that the idea is controversial should be adequate in the lead paragraph. And I disagree that electrolysis experiments should be stressed in the lead paragraph; there are enough reports of excess heat generation, when deuterium gas is brute-force pressurized into metal (not just palladium), to warrant more generic phrasing in the lead paragraph (which is what I did).

Enric, despite what Fleischmann said, when you play with deuterium looking for nuclear events, a very likely candidate event is fusion (deuterium simply doesn't have a lot of options!). I can agree that talking about fusion without more evidence (or even more-repeatable evidence) certainly led to a lot of still-persisting trouble with the Physics community. But I doubt he could have said "nuclear effect" without anyone jumping to "fusion". V (talk) 16:02, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Today, the field is viewed as a ‘pariah’ field by mainstream science. But a persistent band of scientists refuses to accept this verdict and continues to attempt to advance the state of knowledge about the field. A variety of effects have been observed and are claimed to support the contention that room temperature nuclear reactions have occurred in their apparati.

Originally Cold Fusion claims focused on D + D fusion, which is known to occur at high temperatures. However, early mistakes coupled with lack of reproducibility and the fact that Cpld Fusion has now been observed at roughly similar levels in light water cells has led to a general admission that the physics at work is completely unknown, and inconsistent with modern physics.

Thoughts? Hipocrite (talk) 14:06, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6345322 ref to paper by Jones and Rafelski entitled "Cold nuclear fusion". It discusses muon cat. fusion. I have no objections to your other changes. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:49, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Also see http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5628318 ref to a paper by E. P. Palmer on muon-catalyzed cold fusion, 1986. refers to S. Jones work. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

In the 9/17/08 version of the article, a ref is cited for the coining of 'cold fusion'. It is unpublished (http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/131history.html) but it seems to suggest that the 1986 ref I give above is probably the earliest RS for it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:36, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Much of this looks good, though I haven't compared, but there is one problem. And here is why I want to work on a rewrite. The present article is based on a background assumption of general rejection, reflected by "pariah field." It's clear -- we have plenty of source -- that it was so, though it's not quite clear that this indicated scientific consensus, but rather a dominant majority opinion that was able to enforce itself. As I've shown elsewhere, the publication ratio was 2:1 against cold fusion in 1989, about 1:1 in 1990, and positive papers exceeded negative papers every year after that. Total positive papers exceed total negative papers. Recent work is almost completely positive. "Pariah" reflects a very active and strong prejudice that represses work in the field, and we have source on this: how, for example, a graduate student who worked with Brokris was harassed and intimidated. But what is the situation now? There is quite a bit of recent source which shows a shift. "Cold fusion hot again" is the title of the CBS documentary. And now I'm reading the American Chemical Society LENR Sourcebook. Storms was somewhat of a turning point, as a major scientific publisher committed to a major review of the field, in 2007. The ACS Sourcebook, 2008, is even more. Many of the papers published in it are reviews of the field, detailed. Nothing like this existed before. The ACS is mainstream. For them to host an occasional one-day seminar, as they did previously, is one thing, but the publication of the Sourcebook last year, working with Oxford University Press, and the four-day seminar this year, with a press release calling great attention to it, this is new.

I'm certainly not proposing that cold fusion be presented as having been accepted by the mainstream, but we have to start discriminating more closely. Mainstream what? Mainstream physics? Mainstream chemistry? Mainstream media? --Abd (talk) 04:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, do you have any idea what "being decalared a pariah field" means in relation to RS? It means there won't be any past the declaration point. Why? Because it's a pariah field, and people who work in a pariah field are pariahs. No normal scientist wants to be labelled a 'pariah'. It means loss of funding and therefore often loss of job. So, no normal scientist continues to work in the field! No workers in the field means no papers! I.e. no RS!! However, in 20 years the CFers could have produced something to change that designation, if they participated in the normal scientific process. They didn't (as Goodstein noted). They circled their wagons and formed their clubs and carried on, all while ignoring standard scientific practice. So, normal scientists just had to look at that and say "Well, they're still at it." to justify not revisiting the issue. But, this also means the mainstream basically forgot about CF. The most normal response I get about this is: "Wasn't that resolved (badly) a long time ago?" So, the 'strategy' of renaming the field 'LENR' is paying off, because reviewers don't recognize they are dealing with cold fusion.

So, do you get the point? There literally is no RS past c. 1994-5, with a couple of specific exceptions. No mainstream workers meant no mainstream RS. The loss of critical review from CFers means no RS from their circles. And I will make the case that when a CFer publishes in a mainsteam journal, there is still an RS issue around the fact that the reviewers are likely uninformed on the field and thus not capable of critically reviewing the work. The only possible way I can see to get RS past 1994-5 is to present negative results that are fully conventional. Then, the reviewers are likely able to understand and follow the work described. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I get much more than you realize, Kirk. You have clearly defined the problem with "pariah." It's a POV, a very strong one. We can report that POV when it's in reliable source, but that does not mean that we report it as fact, and especially that we report as still being true. Note that some researchers have participated in the normal peer-reviewed publication process; these tended to be better-funded and supported. Shanahan tries to lump them all together, that's part of his approach. Yes, Shanahan, the response you get is quite normal. What's of interest, though, is what happens next, when these people become aware of the continuing work. That's why we rely upon peer-reviewed reliable sources, not non-reviewed secondary sources making conclusions about "pariah" or "fraud" or "pathological science" or "dead" or any of the rest. This is a science article, and, where it is reporting on the science, we place less reliance on non-peer-reviewed sources, which is where the "pseudoscience" label is found. Because these other sources are still reliable source, we don't exclude the opinions, but we place them in context and we don't attach to them.

What you are doing is making hosts of personal assumptions, such as a claim that, effectively, the review panel for Die Naturwissenschaften, which is put together by the Max Planck Society, somehow doesn't have experts available to review the papers. Read the article on the Society! Your approach would leave us with nothing but unsupported editor opinion by which to determine RS, with research required to research the research. And no consensus would ever be found, so edit warring and other pathologies would continue. We can and should present "negative results" that are present in peer-reviewed journals, with appropriate weight, and how do we determine that weight? By the weight of publication in peer reviewed journals! (And by consensus.) And the fact that there is very little "negative" publication beyond 1994 (beyond 1990, when negative and positive papers were equal in number, positive papers, every year, outnumbered negative ones, entirely setting aside conference papers. The numbers declined until the middle of the first decade of this century or so, they have been increasing since then, a little, with some very high-quality work being published.

When there is contradiction of sources (which is actually rare with peer-reviewed sources, they are pretty careful, normally, so you may disagree with their conclusions, but when they say that they measured such and such, and, according to their instruments and how they interpreted them, they found this or that, it is normally trusted that it's true. And then we can look at possible mistakes. I.e., some artifact may have caused the results. The later report doesn't actually contradict the earlier report, except as to conclusions, perhaps. The experimental reports themselves are not generally impeached, and when they are, in a serious way, that's it for the career of that scientist. It's like editors here misrepresenting sources, that is a quick way to get banned. It's very serious, because it can cause a great deal of harm. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I have commented before that calling the ACS session a 'four-day' session is incorrect. At best it was a two and one-half-day event that was really a stetched 1-1 1/2 day event. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

If I'm correct, the press release and the press reports called it a four-day session. You might be right, Kirk, but it's beside the point. Previous sessions were one day or maybe even part of a day, I'm not sure. This was more than a token, and put it together with the publication by the ACS of the Sourcebook, there is now evidence for a shift, in spite of how hard you are pushing for it to be a myth, based on your own POV and personal arguments not rooted in reliable source. I defend your right to do that here, so far, but I also recommend that you understand our guidelines and accept them, it will be more efficient. You do come up with good points, and that's why I want your participation. --Abd (talk) 15:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

extended discussion

Looking at the page with info about today's U. Minn. seminar, I came across this as a paper just published by one of the presenters: Theory of Bose–Einstein condensation mechanism for deuteron-induced nuclear reactions in micro/nano-scale metal grains and particles. Where published? Naturwissenschaften. Mainstream. And that's where Mosier-Boss published her triple-track paper. (And there is much more from her in the Sourcebook, and a far more detailed discussion of the Takahashi Be-8 theory, Fleischmann describing what he was looking for when he stumbled upon the excess heat. The book is chock full of secondary source reviewing aspects of the field that have been well-known from conference papers, New Energy Times, etc. From Excess Heat and Calorimetric Calculation: Evidence of Coherent Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter at Room Temperature" A. De Ninno, E. Del Giudice, and A. Frattolillo, p. 128-129: The debate on cold fusion has been sometimes represented to the public as a quarrel between "true believers" (supporting the cause of this peculiar kind of nuclear phenomenon out of an attitude of rebellion against the prevailing paradigm) and the "true unbelievers" (Acting as "defensores fidei", struggling against the people who try to subvert the scientific rationality). This misrepresentation has obscured the real scientific roots of the research approach that has brought some scientists to conceive the point of view that nuclear reactions could occur inside condensed matter, in particular within metal lattices at room temperature. And then this paper gives the most coherent explanation of the problem that I've seen: The usual objections against cold fusion are based on the tenet that physics of nuclei embedded in a lattice should not differ from the physics of nuclei in vacuo, in the empty space. This statement is known as the Asymptotic freedom. As a matter of fact, the space-time scale of nuclear phenomena is smaller by six orders of magnitude than the space-time scale of the lattice. Let us assume that nuclear reactions among deuterium nuclei d could occur within the lattice as physical events localized at definite sites. Consider in particular the reaction d + d -> compound_excited_nucleus_4He -> final_products. The energy release from the compound nucleus in order to relax to a stationary state should follow the Heisenberg uncertainty principle delta E times delta T =~ Plank's constant. Since delta E =~ 24 MeV, then delta T =~ 10-22 second. Actually the lattice could play a role in the decay of the compound nucleus only if the energy released by the nuclear reaction should involve several lattice components within the decay time delta T. However, this is impossible since the velocity of the energy transfer required to overcome the distance between first neighbors in a metal lattice, about 3 Ao, would exceed the speed of light by a factor of 104. This consideration would rule out any possibility of a nuclear reaction occurring in a lattice according to a dynamics different than in vacuo. But then they proceed to approach the problem with Quantum field theory, leading to this statement: Quantum electrodynamics (QED) implies that nuclear transformations of deuterons compressed into a palladium lattice would substantially differ from the reactions observed in diluted plasmas. This intuition was largely shared by Julian Schwinger. And, of course, by Fleischmann. That's what he's described in a number of papers, that he was searching for examples where ordinary Quantum mechanics would break down and where the more sophisticated QED would be required. He writes that he didn't expect to succeed, he thought the effects would probably be too small to measure. --Abd (talk) 04:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Response to Hipocrite's suggestion of 14:06, 29 May 2009: I don't think "lack of reproducibility" is NPOV. Many labs have reported reproducing the excess heat results and some other results (helium, neutrons) have also been reported as reproduced at more than one lab. Maybe you mean that reliable methods of predicting or controlling the effects have not been developed; this would need to be made more clear, and also may not be NPOV, as I think a couple of labs have said something about having developed recipes with 100% reproducibility (or something like that), e.g. SPAWAR's codeposition method.
It may be OK to say that there's a general acknowledgement that the physics at work is unknown but I don't think it's NPOV to say that it's inconsistent with modern physics. A lack of explanation is not the same thing as a contradiction of laws of physics, per Goodstein: "It proved that there are still genuine surprises waiting for us that, once understood, don't violate conventional physical laws." [8]. Also I wouldn't say "completely" unknown, since the idea of combining D + D and getting energy out is in itself understood.
What's this about it being observed at similar levels with light water? Could you provide a source, please? The graphs I saw had controls using light water producing no excess heat. At Friday's seminar someone mentioned Tritium, I think, produced in a cell with light water, but in much smaller amounts than in the cell with heavy water, and they explained this by pointing out that there's some deuterium in ordinary light water. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:39, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Go to the Dieter Britz Cold Nuclear Fusion Bibliography (http://www.chem.au.dk/~db/fusion/biblio.html). Select the journal articles with abstrat link, then search for 'nickel' in that. You will end up with at least 5 or 6 sources, and note Dieter only lists peer-reviewed publications. All RS. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan is correct about this, generally. "Cold fusion" isn't a scientific term, it's not what the researchers usually use, except colloquially, and it's not what the 2004 panel called it. There are results with ordinary water and metals other than palladium. However, as to heavy water vs light water, with palladium, it's well-known that F and P did do light water work and found, to their surprise, a little excess heat, and they held off on publishing this, it was apparently a mystery to them. However, ordinary water does contain some deuterium, and that might possibly explain the results, though that leads to other mysteries with other experimental results, such as the poisoning effect found with a little ordinary water added to the heavy water in a cell that otherwise would generate excess heat. But it's also possible that hydrogen does fuse in condensed matter, and, basically, we can't rule it out; i.e., once one has established that it rains pigs and fishes, it wouldn't be surprising if it also rained squirrels or even polar bears. Light water controls are still used, as with the Mosier-Boss work, because, even if some fusion takes place with light water, the levels are way below that found, with heavy water, in a palladium-based experiment, so it's still a form of control. Simply not an absolute baseline.

Shanahan is also right about Dieter Britz. We used to link to that archive, and there is no reason not to do so now. I believe that it was taken out on the theory that anything to do with cold fusion was fringe, necessarily, and therefore biased, and therefore contrary to some interpretations of WP:EL policy. Though, in fact, it satisfies EL policy, quite handily. It's really almost the same as the lenr-canr.org bibliography, they cooperate and share new sightings. Both of them aim to be complete, but only lenr-canr.org also hosts actual papers when he can get permissions. Britz, on the other hand, also puts up his brief summaries of the content, which I've always found useful. He's an electrochemist, he knows what he's doing.

Notice that in describing Dieter's archive, Shanahan considers everything there RS, but the same papers, here, he denies it. What this implies is actually sad. Rothwell's chart of peer-reviewed publications is an analysis of Dieter's classifications. Rothwell then criticizes the classifications a bit, and that's more debatable, though he makes a good case. I'll put that link here if anyone requests it. --Abd (talk) 16:40, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, a fish to the bait…Abd caught my little innuendo, although I don’t think he knew what it was. So let me be clear. We are spending inordinate amounts of time debating pointless topics here. Is so-and-so RS, is such-and-such? Why don’t we work on producing an article that the average Wikipedia reader would like to read. One that points out, simply, what cold fusion is, gives a little history, makes clear there is a controversy around it, and presents _both_ sides of the controversy fairly. I can make a good case, using Wiki policy and the sources that have been accepted by both sides, that most CF claiming papers are not RS, even if they have been published under a peer-review system. This is because the peer-review system is a) lenient, and b) flawed. But would that led to a good article? Hardly. Likewise, Abd’s voluminous writings do not significantly contribute to the article yet he won’t stop. I have taken to the tactic of Hipocrite, where I condense things that don’t contribute. Neither do I care if Abd doesn’t like my condensing comments. The vast bulk of what he (and V) have written do not contribute. Let’s focus on the article folks. Storms is good for it because he gives us a framework for the CF case to work with. I haven’t even read Krivit’s book, and I don’t think I will, it will only present more of the same. If there was any earth-shaking information in it, we would have heard the CFers trumpet it loudly. So, I say no on it for the article. It adds nothing of import.

Let’s also remember the CFers have a vested interest in promoting their POV, and they have routinely ignored what they don’t like. Light water cold fusion, cold fusion with platinum (which does not hydride, meaning it MUST be a surface reaction), the ‘best’ lab of the bunch having samples of air where they thought they had hydrogen with helium, etc. Let Abd and V (and PCarbonn) make their case, but let the oppositionmake its case too. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:41, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Not SPAM!!!

Collapsed off-topic advice to IP editor, per WP:TALK. Please see also MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3)

Why will this site not let me add *[http://lenr-canr.org Comprehensive index of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions papers] (cannot even link it in this forum? sheesh!)? LENR-CANR.ORG is the best site on the internet for explaining real, observed cold fusion phenomena, and contains links to print resources and other hard-to-find materials. I have been using that site for years and never found a virus or been spammed or found anything besides accurate, truthful information. Omitting this link is a MISTAKE, or, dare I suggest it?, an intentional slur by wiki editors against honest, dedicated researchers pursuing our best hope to end global warming and the energy crisis. Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter. 70.88.48.118 (talk) 17:20, 31 May 2009 (UTC) There is a discussion taking place now at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3) on this. You are welcome to comment there, but it may be better left to editors very familiar with guidelines and policies and the history of this affair, and please avoid general accusations -- or even specific ones -- of editor bias, it will just confuse the issue. The blacklisting was originally added here by a particular administrator who was recently found by the Arbitration Committee to have done so improperly due to his involvement with the article and who was thus using his administrative privileges in support of his particular point of view. While delisting was requested here, in January, and was being discussed, he went to the global blacklist page at meta, which covers all wikipedia projects, and requested blacklisting there. As a trusted administrator, it was quickly granted, making our local discussion moot. Reversing a blacklisting at meta is not necessarily easy; the first step could be to gain whitelistings here, and that's what some of us have been pursuing. The Arbitration Committee did rule that the blacklist was not to be used to control content, only to control linkspam, which is misnamed "spam," but we are stuck with that name for historical reasons. "Linkspam" refers to the massive addition of links, not controllable through ordinary editorial process, and the links themselves might even all be legitimate, but the volume is too great. There was no linkspam. However, ArbComm doesn't make specific content decisions, so that did not automatically reverse the blacklisting; in any case, ArbComm doesn't have authority over meta, only over this project, which is why whitelisting of the site, or of specific links, is being requested here. When this discussion and process has come to a reasonable point, my plan is to go back to meta and request delisting. I agree that lenr-canr.org is one of the two best sites on the internet to find information on cold fusion or low-energy nuclear reactions. There is reliable source to that effect, in fact, and one source is cited in the whitelist discussion, a recent review of Storms 2007 book by Sheldon. However, getting it used here is, at this point, a fairly tedious process. I will look at the link above and note it in the whitelisting discussion if I think there is some merit to the usage. --Abd (talk) 17:39, 31 May 2009 (UTC) (ecX3) See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3). Apparently the site has been blacklisted at meta, [9] which means the computer won't let it be used on any Wikimedia project unless it's also added to a whitelist. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:41, 31 May 2009 (UTC) (edit conflict with above) However,, IP editor, your attempt to add this link to many pages was, arguably, an attempt to linkspam. Don't do that. Indeed, those attempted additions show that, if not for the blacklisting, there would be at least one editor attempting to add a link to many articles, which could, indeed, lend weight to arguments for continued blacklisting. I really wish you hadn't done that! Suggesting a link in Talk is fine. Adding them to articles might also be okay, but .... it can also trigger the antispam volunteers, who do not make content decisions, they would simply look at your edit history and see many links being added without discussion, and, bang! they'd revert and you could be blocked. Normally, this level wouldn't lead to blacklisting, but ... some editors are already a bit tetchy about this! --Abd (talk) 17:47, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The 1989 DoE review and the 2004 review.

extended discussion

collapse by Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC), modified by Abd (talk) We say, in the lead, In 1989, the majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) had found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached conclusions that were similar to those of the 1989 panel. While that statement is in the 2004 review conclusions, it drastically misrepresents the differences between the two reviews. We have a lot of material on the 1989 review. Krivit, in the ACS LENR Sourcebook, writes about Norman Ramsey's threatened resignation from the panel if the following preamble wasn't included: Ordinarily, new scientific discoveries are claimed to be consistent and reproducible; as a result, if the experiments are not complicated, the discovery can usually be confirmed or disproved in a few months. 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. This is Krivit's version. Storms has the same version. Huizenga reports a version that is the same, but goes on. Huizenga calls his version the demanded preamble as modified by the committee and actually used. Taubes doesn't refer to the above statement, but to the rest of what was cited by Huizenga is below, and I've bolded what Taubes cites: 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. Nonetheless, on balance, the Panel has reached the following conclusions and recommendations. What's clear from Taubes is that only a small minority of the panel supported Ramsey's position, which both Taubes and Huizenga deride. Ramsey had just won the Nobel Prize, though, they couldn't just let him resign, or, worse, file a minority report. In 2004, however, the panel was evenly divided on the crucial issue of excess heat, and one-third of the eighteen members were "somewhat convinced" of the origin being nuclear. The summary that the panel's conclusions were similar to those in 2004 was that of whoever wrote it, which we don't know. However, it's true in one way. The actual recommendations, as written, were the same, and the practical effect was the same. In both cases no major program of research or funding was recommended, but further research was recommended, as was modest funding. We have, though, source to the effect that Huizenga actively shot down all proposals, and it's clear what his opinion was, from his book, Cold fusion: the scientific fiasco of the century, and it's entirely possible that whoever was advising the DoE in 2004 on funding decisions in the field held the same opinions. I.e., "We had to say this nice stuff, but, really, I'm certain it's bogus." No funding from the DoE is known to have been provided, so, again, the result was the same. But not the implications which concern us: the level of scientific consensus on the topic. There isn't any. The panel gives us guidance as to what a sample of scientists thought in 2004 of the field, when informed. And in 2004, it's clear, it was emerging from the coffin, following the metaphor that Simon uses in Undead Science. For the moment, my concern is how we present the 2004 panel report. We do provide more information deeper in the article, but, in fact, presenting the panel conclusions as we do, in a science article, in the lead, strongly biases the article toward rejection. I believe we should cover the history of the controversy in more detail, and possibly the lead should be shorter. Nothing controversial should be in the lead, we shouldn't even have citations there, everything from the lead should be covered in detail deeper in the article, where citations are to be found. We should also be covering the threatened resignation of Ramsey, it's quite notable, and I have four sources sitting on my desk which cover it: Huizenga, Taubes, Storms, Krivit (in the Sourcebook), and I'm sure there are more. By the way, we actually have three Nobel Prize winners who have favored cold fusion in some way: Ramsey, as above, Julian Schwinger, who resigned from the American Physical Society over rejection of cold fusion papers, our article claims he wrote 8 papers on cold fusion theory; Huizenga also writes disparagingly of Schwinger; and Brian Josephson. Storms writes that Josephson sponsored a 2002 review paper for arXiv, which was nevertheless rejected (Storms, 2007, p. 38). The rejected paper is at [10]. --Abd (talk) 02:46, 1 June 2009 (UTC) Is there a proposed change to the article or is this just more pointless discussion? Hipocrite (talk) 02:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC) There are proposed changes, yes, but it may also be one more pointless discussion as long as there is pure revert warring against changes, no matter how neutral and well-sourced, Hipocrite, see below. --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009 (UTC) Have you considered proposing your changes before edit-warring them back in? Hipocrite (talk) 03:44, 1 June 2009 (UTC) What edit warring? The changes made today were proposed above, in the section you collapsed as supposedly not containing any proposed changes. Right at the beginning, where you couldn't miss it. Nobody objected. The only one edit warring today, truly, was you. One editor beside you did two reverts; that's because edit warring invites edit warring, and what you'd done was totally outrageous, he saw you take out clearly sourced, verifiable, balancing information that allowed the patent office information to remain in spite of the objection he'd raised in taking it out. So he didn't restore his version, he restored mine, sourced to the patent, which you took out with a spurious wikilawyering misunderstanding of sourcing guidelines. I didn't do any reverts today, you did three, thus rejecting my edit, his original edit, and Coppertwig's edits, plus you mangled the lead right after the third revert, did you know that protection was imminent? WTF are you talking about? --Abd (talk) 06:17, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Reversions again by Hipocrite

(started section --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009)

The patent issue

• [11] (Further developments: Absolutly not - OR by synth)

The edit reverted is almost a direct quote from the patent. What it shows is, indeed, a contradiction to the claim about the patent office, but it doesn't actually contradict what the article states, because the office may intend to reject claims but overlook that one claim (and a similar one before in a patent from the same inventors in 2004 that is referenced in the NET article). I'd say that explanation is a bit thin because the two patents were four years apart, and if the first patent was an oversight, someone surely pointed it out. However, the essential source here is the patent itself, and this is an example of how to deal with apparent contradiction between a secondary and primary source. Contrary to what Hipocrite asserts, this wasn't synthesis. Synthesis would have been to state a conclusion of contradiction, for example. We don't; instead, we present the evidence and let the reader decide. The article says what it says, and the patent says what it says. There may not actually be a contradiction.

The edit above was in response to an edit that Hipocrite had just reverted from another editor, which mentioned the patent in the edit summary, removing the sourced text, which wasn't proper. But the intention of that other editor should have been respected, and that's what I did. --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009

Interjection here because the comments at this point are extensive and I simply want to note that Abd seems to feel it is OK to edit the article without getting consensus first. Please stop this Abd. Propose your changes on the Talk page and we will discuss. If a consensus can be reached an edit can then be made. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. What does noting the patent office issued a patent for a 'disguised' cold fusion gizmo add to the article? I suggest nothing, and therefore my vote would be to not add such comments to the article. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:57, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

As the other editor in question, I replaced the deleted text. As it's entirely sourced and only reports on the language of the patent claims, I don't see how it could be either OR or a synthesis. GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 03:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

It's OR by Synth because the patent, a primary source, does not mention Cold Fusion at all, and because longstanding agreement across the encyclopedia has determined that patents are not reliable sources for anything, including what the patents themselves claim to be true. Hipocrite (talk) 03:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That's a total misunderstanding of what can be sourced from a patent. In this case, the patent itself is the subject, i.e., we have on the one hand a claim that the Patent office doesn't issue patents that claim cold fusion, and this is actually a common assertion, but there is also quite a bit of discussion in the field that Miles has managed to get around this. And there are two patents that do exactly that, one in 2004 and one in 2008. I'd actually thought that they simply didn't mention cold fusion, as with another Navy patent issued to Spzak in the 1990s, and certainly they didn't mention it by name (and their long list of peer-reviewed publications also don't mention "cold fusion," nor do most publications in the field), but when I looked at the patent, there it was, i.e., energy production from palladium and deuterium. We should let our readers do the same. What does this mean? I don't know, but I could probably find some secondary source on it, but it might be New Energy Times. That's what they do, report on the news in the field, and that may be where I read prior discussion of this issue.

The newspaper article is secondary source, the patent is primary source, and this kind of apposition is exactly how we handle contradictions between reliable secondary source and primary source. Primary source clearly satisfies WP:V for non-synthetic statements about what's in it. What it doesn't do is establish truth of claims. The patent does not -- at all -- establish that energy can actually be generated from the apparatus, but only that this was claimed. That it was claimed, though, does say something about the confidence of the Navy researchers, that they would risk rejection of the patent for this. But I certainly wouldn't say that in the article, that would be original research. Note that I did not state in the edit that the patent "mentions" "cold fusion." It mentions energy generation from palladium and deuterium electrolysis. If that's not "cold fusion," sure, but we will need a new article to cover what it is. Not a bad idea, actually. --Abd (talk) 03:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

What other articles where patents were used as sources have you edited, Abd? My understanding from, you know, having edited a lot of articles is that they were not acceptable. If you have some counter example, that would be great. Hipocrite (talk) 03:57, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

"Cold fusion" is a colloquial term. The text of the patent says it's a method of generating heat by the electrolysis of heavy water on a palladium-plated cathode. If you don't think that fits the description of cold fusion, why not? And for what reasons are you claiming that the text of the patent is an insufficient source for the claim that the patent office issued it? You haven't explained how your edit summary "OR by synth" could possibly apply. GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 04:36, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

There are tons of sources saying that the USPTO rejects cold fusion patents. I can cite, for example, "How to write a patent application" by Practising Law Institute in 1992 and Patent law essentials by Professor of Law Alan L. Durham in 2004. Also, as a curiosity, a self published book from Cosimo editorial featuring an interview with Storms [12] published in 2004.

See, I remember some source saying that cold fusion patents slip through the cracks by not mentioning cold fusion anywhere and obfuscating the jargon. That's the source that should be used (so I'll have to search for it again...).

Some notes: Dardik, the guy who later theorized Super Waves, tried to patent a cold fusion cell shortly after F&P announcement, the USPTO "denied 'because there is no evidence that cold fusion is a reality, [therefore] no patents will be granted.'"[13]. Patterson also got two patents, but he always distanciated himself from cold fusion to avoid the stigma [14], I suppose that his patents also avoided any association. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:17, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

What's your point, Enric? There is no controversy over there being reliable source that the U.S. PTO rejects cold fusion patents. However, it is also true that the Miles patents say what they say, which is blatantly a claim that the device is useful for cold fusion, though it's arguable that we can't -- based on the patent -- state that, as such, because it involves a level of synthesis. But we can quote the patent, for sure. It's a patent from a well-known LENR researcher. And I believe I've seen discussion of this patent. So they reject patents, as a rule, and then researchers with commercial interests, and many have these, follow the alternative, which is to keep work secret, thus hindering the resolution of the whole field. Be that as it may, they do deny some patents, apparently, and we can report it, and I think it is pertinent as part of the history of cold fusion, as are the patents that have been granted which blatantly mention cold fusion, as the Miles patents do. There is a Spzak patent from the 1990s that doesn't mention an energy generation claim. If we can find secondary RS which discusses the contrast between the alleged policy and the reality, that would be great. As it is, we can source to any one or more of the RS mentions of the Patent Office stated policy (or, more precisely, who said that, how do we know it's true, or was it just a statement that got blown out of proportion and reported from one source to another. Which happens, you know.) and we can cite exact text or allowed minor synthesis (that's what I did) from the patent; basically, normal Wikipedia rewording that doesn't change meaning or implications. The patent is a primary source, and can be used if it's done without synthesis. The 2004 and 2008 Miles patents, however, did *not* avoid association with cold fusion, they openly stated the claim, they just didn't call it cold fusion and, in fact, in their research papers, they don't call it that, either. Nobody does. Take that literally? Sure, they reject cold fusion patents, but they accept patents claiming energy generation from loading palladium rods with deuterium using electrolysis. Do they do this generally or were these two patents a fluke? I'm guessing that it wasn't a fluke, because if it was an error in 2004, I'm sure they took flak for it, and they wouldn't make the same mistake in 2008. No, what I think is likely is that our reliable sources have misunderstood what's going on at the Patent Office. But I surely don't know. --Abd (talk) 23:12, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

None of the patents (7381368, 6753561, 5928483) describe fusion processes, so they should not be mentioned in this article. Olorinish (talk) 01:05, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Lots of matters relevant to cold fusion don't "describe fusion processes," but are relevant to some aspect of what we've stuffed into the article (the whole field of condensed matter nuclear science, for a start). If we have a statement that the patent office doesn't grant "cold fusion patents," or whatever wording we use, then we can have a statement that a patent that claims what amounts to the Pons-Fleischmann effect -- the generation of heat by electrolysis of heavy water with a palladium electrode -- has been granted, and, in fact, Miles has two of them, one in 2004 and one in 2008. --Abd (talk) 11:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The patents describe fabrication processes and, as they put it, "electrochemical processes" but no nuclear processes, and do not assert that fusion is taking place in the devices. Yes, they are related to fusion, but since they do not describe fusion, the fact that patents were issued indicates nothing about the USPTO policy toward cold fusion. Therefore, including them in the present way gives the patents undue weight.

Perhaps those two sentences could be replaced with "However, cold fusion researchers have been granted patents describing materials used in their experiments." Olorinish (talk) 11:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The two patents do more than that. The first patent, by Spzak, in the 1990s did that. This patent has Claim 14:

A method of generating energy comprising the steps of:

Providing the electrode of claim 13,

Connecting the electrode to a cathode,

Immersing the electrode and the cathode in water containing deuterium, and

Applying a current to the electrode and a cathode.[15]

Sure. It doesn't say "cold fusion." But that's what it would almost certainly be if it "works." If not for cold fusion, this procedure wouldn't generate energy, it would just move it about, from electrical energy to Joule heating or to chemical potential energy in the evolved deuterium and oxygen gases, or other forms of chemical potential energy. This could possibly be energy storage, but not generation.

The 2004 patent was a bit less bold, but still referred to cold fusion, very clearly, though not in the actual Claims:

Further, the demand for energy increases each year while the world's natural energy sources such as fossil fuels are finite and are being used up. Accordingly, the development of alternative energy sources is very important and a number of potential new energy sources are under study. Although there have been many attempts to develop a palladium compound which can be utilized in processes to generate heat, such as through the introduction of aqueous deuterium, none of these attempts have been successful or repeatable, and there is thus a distinct need to develop palladium alloys which can be utilized for the generation of heat as a potential energy source.[16]

To the point, we could say that "However, cold fusion researchers have been granted patents describing materials used in their experiments[ref Spzak], or claiming the generation of energy using the materials, without using the words "cold fusion."[cite Miles, both patents]--Abd (talk) 17:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

OR by synth. Hipocrite (talk) 17:25, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd said "If not for cold fusion, this procedure wouldn't generate energy..." This is not true, since this device would generate heat energy, which is a widely considered to be a form of energy. The patents do not teach how to create nuclear reactions, and do not include nuclear reactions in the claims. This is why the USPTO did not reject the patent for, in their terminology, "enablement" problems. Any implication in this article that the USPTO granted a patent on cold fusion would be POV-pushing. Olorinish (talk) 17:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Tricky, actually. You are correct that we can't say "The USPTO granted a patent on cold fusion." That would be synthesis. However, could we say that the USPTO granted a patent that "claimed the generation of energy through electrolysis of water containing deuterium, using a palladium electrode?" I'd say we can, without synthesis; this is exactly what they did in the 2008 patent, quite explicitly, and a little more indirectly in the 2004 patent. The argument re generation of heat energy from electric energy is bogus, because all usage of electric power, if it doesn't result in forms of potential energy (such as battery storage, or elevation of a weight or the like), generates heat. Does the patent "teach how to create nuclear reactions?" Well, it does say what to do to create one, if cold fusion is real, though lots of details are missing, and if it isn't real, what it teaches wouldn't be "generation of energy," my electric heater does it and nobody would say that it "generates energy," though it certainly generates heat from electrical energy. It seems that some are going to great lengths to exclude what should be an uncontroversial fact from the article. It's verifiable from primary source, and the notability arises because of the apparent contrary claim in some reliable sources. We should always note when a claim from reliable source is verifiably contradicted. If a reliable source shows someone was born on a certain day, and someone looks at the birth certificate and finds that it gives a different day, we would report this, assuming that we trust the report, because the date on the birth certificate is verifiable. (And if a Wikipedia editor lies about what's on the birth certificate, there goes that account.) We would not report that one report or the other was the true one. Birth certificates can contain errors. So can any reliable source. Ideally, we find a later secondary source that looks at both facts and finds an origin for them, that explains both. Or that confirms one of them from independent evidence, such as a review of hospital records, which would ordinarily trump a birth certificate if the child was born in a hospital!

I delivered quite a few babies that were registered later, by the parents, we arranged that, by agreement with the Health Department, because our midwifery was quasi-legal, and if we had filed a lot of birth certificates, we could then have been prosecuted, as "habitual" unlicensed midwives, under the law at the time in Arizona; in the end, my wife got licensed, so did others; I didn't and I stopped assisting deliveries because there were now plenty of people with more training. My point: mistakes could have been made, we didn't have clinical records for these births that would be as time-critical as hospital records. Our primary concern was health of the mother and child, and we were not professionals at that point, we were not paid. Wikipedia isn't the first project I've volunteered for and served without compensation! We report what we find in reliable source, and when there is contradiction of reliable source, we report the contradiction without any more impeachment than the sources directly support without our comment. If there is no standing controversy, we can go with what has become non-controversial, we don't have to report every error that has been made on a topic, nor should we, unless the error became notable, in which case we do report the resolution.

--Abd (talk) 19:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You are wrong about birth certificates - see WP:BLP - "Exercise great care in using material from primary sources. Do not use, for example, public records that include personal details—such as date of birth, ... unless a reliable secondary source has already cited them." I don't see how your argument has any relevence given that you misunderstand how we apply primary sources in other articles. Hipocrite (talk) 20:10, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I would not use a birth certificate to establish a birth date for an article, but if a reliable source cites the date of birth, and it came to my attention that this contradicted the birth certificate, and there was no source covering the discrepancy, and I had access to the birth certificate and so did the general public (if they go to the trouble), I would, indeed, cite the birth certificate; but it is quite possible that there is some exception that has been carved out for BLP policy. Birth certificates do include confidential details, but these would not be revealed in citing a birth certificate, and we would not link to some web copy of the birth certificate; this is the kind of thing that would be a matter of editor testimony, as with any obscure source, or by reference to reliable source, in which case we'd cite the reliable source. What I wrote was general about WP:V and the use of primary sources, which sometimes can be difficult to access. If birth certificates are confidential (I've never tried to obtain one that wasn't mine or that of my children!) then what I wrote would be incorrect, because, then, any reader could not verify the information. This, then, would be a wrong example, but not a misunderstanding of WP:V and how we apply it to primary sources.

Let's take this out of BLP territory, since that not where our question is. The person in question has passed on, maybe they live a hundred years ago. One sees a birth date in a reliable source, but happens to see the original birth certificate, available to the public. What, then?--Abd (talk) 22:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

a secondary source for how some CF patents are granted

I found the source, it's from Simon's "Undead science": "Alternatively, the research may be more visible but not identified as "cold fusion." The scientist might instead be studying 'anomalous properties of deuterated metal hydrides.'¹⁹"page 193 (see footnote 19 below)

"19. This is a basic strategy for CF researchers seeking grants and patents for their work. In the United States, the strategy seems to have met with little success. In the case of patenting, the very claims that make the research patentable in the first place are the ones that identify it as being related to cold fusion. For legal reasons most of these patents must mention Fleischmann & Pons's 1989 paper, and this serves to tip off the reviewing patent officer."[17] (footnote 19 of chapter 6, page 233)

I propose this text:

Some researchers have obtained patents on some CF processes by avoiding any identification with "cold fusion" and using descriptions like "anomalous properties of deuterated metal hydrides", although some patents can't avoid mentioning Fleischmann and Pons' original research for legal reasons.^{Simon, 2002, pages 193, 233 (footnote 19 of chapter 6)}

--Enric Naval (talk) 18:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

That's not bad. Good find, Enric. The text proposed above, which really says much the same thing, though without the secondary source detail from Simon (which is quite a good source for this, Simon heavily researched the field and talked or corresponded with most of the major players). But Simon is only talking about strategy of cold fusion researchers, and not about the actual existence of patents which do make a claim quite equivalent to cold fusion. The"Anomalous properties" articles generally don't claim fusion, they claim experimental results that might require fusion to explain. This isn't what is done in the patent case ("anomalous properties" isn't found in the patents, I think). In the patents we know, what is being patented is not exactly cold fusion, but something useful for cold fusion. The fact is that such an invention is useful and marketable even if cold fusion doesn't work, because it could be sold to people who are researching cold fusion; perhaps it more reliably shows the elusive Pons-Fleischmann effect that even our resident skeptical scientist, Shanahan, considers real. But not fusion. Patenting the electrode, how the electrode is fabricated, need not reference Fleischmann, just as if I figure out how to make better glass for incandescent lights, I don't have to mention Thomas A. Edison. I do believe we will come up with something interesting on this for the article, with complete consensus from all editors interested in the best possible article.

Just to follow up on one idea, someone could patent a material, claiming use in research into "anomalous properties of deuterated metal hydrides." That use doesn't depend on cold fusion "working." At all. It would be useful for debunking cold fusion, don't you think? It would probably have to show an appearance of excess heat in some way, perhaps by making Shanahan's explanation reproducible and verifiable. --Abd (talk) 18:59, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The proposed explanations

• [18] (rv to coppertwig, this has been discussed and rejected scores of times)

What has been rejected?

This is discussed above. Rather than split this up, discussion should continue there. These discussions had been collapsed by Hipocrite.[19] (If there was a rejection of proposed edits there, as he seems to be claiming, why did he collapse it on the claim that this didn't have to do with edits to the article?) Before making the edit, I uncollapsed that part.

See Talk:Cold_fusion#Proposed_explanations for the intro to the section sourced from Storms.

See Talk:Cold fusion#Theory of 8Be intermediary, not simple d-d fusion where some level of consensus was found for including this theory. I also added new source, because there is a detailed Takahashi paper on this theory in the ACS LENR Sourcebook. Discussion of this should continue in the previous section. --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009

What's been rejected is using the primary sources complied in that handbook to state that specific theories are notable at all. But, of course, you know you're not just edit warring that back in - you reincluded your Storms paragraph also. Hipocrite (talk) 03:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That is preposterous, Hipocrite, a shallow rationalization pretending to be an argument. The Sourcebook wasn't there before, so it couldn't have benen rejected before. What was there before were two secondary sources. The primary source in the Sourcebook was added because its inclusion there shows a kind of additional notability due to its selection for the book, which is the first totally clear mainstream coverage of the field in depth, if we somehow think that World Scientific publishing Storms wasn't mainstream. You've picked the wrong battle here, Hipocrite, you are effectively anti-science now. This isn't homeopathy, not even close. Putting pseudoscience or pathological science in the lead? Come on! That's been rejected by consensus here for a long time. Because of widespread opinion, it's still possible to claim Cold fusion is fringe with a straight face, but rejecting sources because they are fringe because there are no mainstream sources because any source that supports cold fusion can't be mainstream is circular. --Abd (talk) 06:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

"No objection was raised in Talk to this. This shouldn't be controversial."[20] Abd, hum, are we reading the same page here? Remember this discussion about giving a lot of weight to Storms by placing him at the start of the "proposed explanations" section[21]? You already edit warred about that same paragraph in the same place with the same wording[22], how can it possibly be said that it "shouldn't be controversial". --Enric Naval (talk) 23:19, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The issue of Storms' reliability, particularly in comparison to other sources, is separate from whether or not we cite him as a source for his statement on the general status of cold fusion theories. The statement he made is not controversial, and nobody has asserted, here, any contradiction to it, and unless and until someone has a notable theory to propose that contradicts it, that situation will remain. Enric, you are confusing substance (what we say in the article, the fact) with process (whether or not we agree on inclusion). The fact is not controversial. Weak sources may be used for non-controversial facts and, in fact, they can be included, sometimes, even without sourcing, though sourcing is preferred. It seems to me that we have editors, here, fighting old battles without looking at the present situation. I.e., someone thinks Storms isn't "reliable," even though he is thoroughly reliable on the point of what cold fusion researchers believe or think, so they want to keep anything related to Storms out. "Undue weight" isn't an argument to exclude a non-controversial statement from a controversial figure, unless it implies some undue conclusion. That is not the case with this edit. No undue conclusion is implied. --Abd (talk) 13:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The section on theory should include an overview. If not from Storms, where from? The only recent RS with an overview of theory in the field is like Storms. The sources cited below with, for example, the "ad hoc" comment, is ten years old, weak, and prejudicial. There has been twenty years of work on theory in this field, ten or almost ten since those sources, and I'm not sure what "ad hoc" means here, but it surely does not apply to the Takahashi work, for example, in the ACS Sourcebook, which predicts 100% fusion to Be-8 on theoretical calculations in the event of double D2 confinement by the lattice, and that does, indeed, satisfy most of Storms' criteria, though, still, not necessarily all. (Basically, the high-energy alpha particles resulting from prompt Be-8 decay might be expected to generate more secondary reactions than are reported, this is the objection of Storms himself -- expressed elsewhere -- but that is completely unclear, I've seen no careful analysis of this. It's possible that the reported level of elemental transmutations, X-rays, etc., are about right.) Further, Takahashi's theory hasn't been generally accepted, nor have other theories, some of which are also not "ad hoc," but have developed theoretical foundations (even if some of them involve new physics, and are quite controversial, such as hydrino theory). It's not at all clear to me that Takahashi's theory involves any new physics, by the way, merely a more sophisticated analysis than what was done before, on a possibility that was previously neglected, the effect of the lattice on deuterium molecular confinement. If I'm correct, Takahashi also predicts practically no fusion from double or triple deuteron confinement. More about this, perhaps, in the relevant discussion section on the Be-8 proposed explanation. --Abd (talk) 13:26, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Only that you weren't using Storms to source the opinion of cold fusion supporters, you were using it to make a blanket statement about the state of the art at the very start of the section, as if that was the main view about the field.

Goodstein made an overview, and so did Park, Huizenga, Close, Simon, etc. And I mean an actual overview of state of the field, not a compilation of unconnected theories. Several media have done overviews of the field Wired[23] and Physics World[24], and some made new overviews in the 20th anniversary, like Wired, a blog in Scientific American[25] and others that were cited here and are now lost in a sea of verbiage. Also, I'll link for the Nth time here and here where I list like two dozens of mainstream sources, including frigging six university press books, written by people who, unlike Krivit or Storms, are either Professor Emmeritus of Physics, or Director of Public Information of American Physics Society, or received (several) scientific awards and medals, or been Fellows in (several) universities and/or scientific societies, or founded scientific journals, or been made board director of scientific journals, or made didactic work divulging science, or several of the above along their carreer. So pick one of those overviews. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Addition of the American Chemical Society Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook to the bibliography

Hipocrite, with the revert above ([26] ) also reverted this addition. This is the most important recent publication in the field, though Storms (2007) is a more comprehensive overview. It's important because the American Chemical Society is as mainstream as it gets, the book was peer-reviewed (see the discussion above that was also claimed to have nothing to do with the article), and it's very recent, last year. This book has not been rejected by consensus, there has been hardly any discussion of it at all, except for the brief one above. The discussion of that book should continue in the section above on it.

See Talk:Cold_fusion#American_Chemistry_Society_Symposium_Series:_Low_Energy_Nuclear_Reactions_Sourcebook --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009

There's been no discussions of it at all because you can't express yourself concisely so anyone can understand anything you want done to the article till you and your tag-team editwars it back and forth. Hipocrite (talk) 03:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Tag team? Pot calls the kettle black. The only one edit warring today was you, Hipocrite, with outrageous edits not supported by consensus. There doesn't have to be a discussion to add a source to the bibliography, but this one was discussed, and not at impossible length. The source itself explains its importance, you shouldn't remove a relevant text from the bibliography, even if you hadn't seen the discussion. It's notable and reliable on the face. --Abd (talk) 06:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, lets's look at that section Abd. It says: "to provide a mechanism for publishing symposia quickly in book form". "Symposia" = "Conferences". "Publishing symposia"="Publishing proceedings". In conference proceedings accuracy and fact-checking are done by the editors, i.e. Krivit and associates. Per Goodstein, they stopped doing critical review a long time ago. Conclusion: The referenced book is not RS. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:48, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Yup. It says that. But you omitted what else he says, and if this is how you use sources, you should be out of here, quickly, your expertise would be, then, dangerous. We have lots of stuff in the bibliography that isn't "reliable source," technically, that is just the opinion of an author, notable only because it was published, sometimes not even indpendently, as these were. For example, Goodstein, which you just quoted. Goodstein is a good source, but that was hardly a peer-reviewed journal.

What did the "section" say, in addition to the quote that Shanahan proceeds to OR into his apparently desired conclusion?

Before agreeing to publish a book, the proposed table of contents is reviewed for appropriate and comprehensive coverage and for interest to the audience. Some papers may be excluded to better focus the book; others may be added to provide comprehensiveness. When appropriate, overview or introductory chapters are added. Drafts of chapters are peer-reviewed prior to final acceptance or rejection,

What part of "peer-reviewed" is hard to understand? And why did the ACS decide to publish a sourcebook on low energy nuclear reactions, if the field is truly a pariah field? Pseudoscience? Pathological science? Fringe? Indeed, why did the DOE in 2004 go to the trouble of putting together a review panel, if the matter was closed? And that review panel certainly did not conclude that it was closed, so where does the idea come from that that old conclusion stands? Where was that conclusion made? I can think of only one body, and, as we know, there is quite a bit of reason to believe, and reliable source on it, that the majority on the body that probably did, indeed, conclude that there wasn't any evidence -- but didn't actually say that in the report -- made that conclusion prematurely, before there was time to actually gather the evidence on what Ramsey noted could be a rare, elusive effect, as it turned out to be until how to find it was much better understood, which took years.

Goodstein doesn't cover Krivit, for sure, and probably not Marwan. Krivit I know had no involvement in cold fusion at that time. What Shanahan is doing is what he's been consistently doing, he's got a "they" in his head which defines everyone involved with cold fusion as being some kind of nutty monolith, closed-minded, ignorant, and stubborn. --Abd (talk) 15:51, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Who do you think peer-reviewed it Abd? An unbiased crowd of people who had no preconceptions about 'cold fusion' or the typical crowd of CFers? Who picks the reviewers do you think? The editor of the volume maybe? The organizer of the Symposium? Or an uninvolved but competent scientist on the staff of the ACS publications organization? Get real.

Goodstein is just the icing on the cake so to speak. We have numerous books from that period declaring the field a 'fiasco', etc. We have the abrupt change in the makeup of the ICCF conferences between ICCF4 and 5, where, suddenly, all the negative publications vanished. Mainstream science setermined c. 1995 that CF was bad science, and the rest follows naturally from that. There is no evidence that that has changed. And my personal experience confirms the pathological, psuedoscience stigma that goes with the field.

The DOE went to the trouble because Eugene Mallove and friends got their New Hampshire Congressman to pressure DOE into it. I firmly believe that's why they did such a poor job. It was just for 'show' to satisfy the Congressman. That's also why they concluded essentially the same thing they did in '89, to point out that no progress has been made since then. Unfortunately, if they had done a better job, they could have really coame down on the CFers. Instead, we have another 20 years to look forward to.

"We have lots of stuff in the bibliography that isn't "reliable source,"" - You're just figuring that out?? Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:01, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I was not born yesterday, Shanahan. World War II had not ended. It would be another year. Self-published material, for example, isn't generally reliable source. I was speaking generally. However, some publications that aren't generally reliable can be reliable for certain purposes; a self-published document by a notable expert, in the field of notability, as an example, can be considered reliable for showing the opinions of that expert. Attribution would generally be necessary. Kirk, lots of stuff has been tossed at you by wikilawyers who wanted to get rid of something from you, or by good-faith editors who didn't explain the rules completely. The rules make much more sense than you might think. If you spend a couple of years meditating on how Wikipedia might run, practically, as a user-edited encyclopedia with some necessary standards, you might realize that the theory is quite good, it's not as stupid as it might seem. But there are practical issues of implementation that are still unresolved. Gradually, we get there.

I predict the demise of mainstream resistance to the cold fusion experimental results, within a year or so. It's really already ended, but the news hasn't spread. That's why we have increasing reliable source that is positive. 2004 was the tip of the iceberg, showing what happened when you got a representative panel together and showed them the research. Given how brief it was, that the Hagelstein/McKubre presentation wasn't the best designed, that as many were reasonably convinced as actually were is striking. (I'm starting to think, it was too academic, actually, too much dependent on normal academic assumptions, i.e., that reviewers would actually check out sources, and actually absorb what was stated, instead of depending on memory biased by prior judgments; McKubre et al didn't sufficiently factor for how brief the actual meeting would be. One day isn't usually enough to change deep-seated beliefs, I'd have been shocked at such a change in 2004, the ground had not been prepared. I'd have tried to postpone the actual meeting, have some round of communication before, so way to establish time to think about the stuff, and probably a longer meeting. What was expensive was getting the experts together in one place (the nine?). Extending it to three days, say, would have been relatively less expensive. And the result might have saved the world a lot of money, in the end. Or not. At least we'd have seen a deeper review. Then, the final reports should have been subject so some kind of back and forth, so that the blatant errors, like the one I found and report on above, would have been caught, and maybe even more subtle errors of interpretation. And, yes, your POV should have been better represented. That could have been done by having a period of public comment and a report prepared condensing it.

However, my predictions are only for the purpose of disclosing the opinion I have formed from almost five months of researching this topic, buying many of the major books (including those by critics and skeptics); I read every day on this. I would never put this in the article. And I pay attention to what critics say, like Shanahan. And if I don't understand it, perhaps it hasn't been well enough explained? Or perhaps I'm dense. My friends tell me otherwise, but maybe they are just trying to make me feel good. I hope not. Friends, if I'm dense, help me out, don't let me live in a dream world without warning. -Abd (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

A POV-pusher manifesto if I ever saw one. And based on 5, count 'em, 5 *months* of light reading. On the other hand, I've spent 14 years *studying* the issue, and _I'm_ a kook. Right... Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:39, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Tempting. The 5 months of (heavy) reading, plus my early education in physics (Richard P. Feynman) and chemistry (Linus Pauling]], both of them in person, both of them mavericks who didn't accept the status quo as authoritative, plus debate and discussion with others, some of whom (as to off-wiki discussion) are world-class experts on the topic, recognized as such (Shanahan is not so recognized, and his opinion outside calorimetry is of no notability at all, and his narrow calorimetric work is of questionable application, but PR published and therefore notable), places me, probably, among the most knowledgeable Wikipedia editors on the topic. And with that and twenty-five cents, I could get a ride on the subway, back when. --Abd (talk) 16:52, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You have real credentials in Physics and or Chemistry, or you were just an undergrad when they were teaching, insulting people with, you know, actualy phD's as being not "experts?" Wait, don't answer that. Hipocrite (talk) 16:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I have no credentials in Physics or Chemistry, just personal contact with the two mentioned. Freshman and sophomore physics with Feynman, plus he visited Page House and told the stories that were later published. Freshman Chemistry with Pauling. I remember Feynman much more clearly, and his attitude is what stuck with me. I've had some similar experiences as he did. As to "experts," that must refer to Shanahan, and I haven't insulted his expertise and I've repeatedly referred to him as an expert. Here is what I see, Hipoocrite. You can't see what's in front of your nose, but you presume to judge what others can see. Sorry, too late. If you don't want me to answer some of your brief but intensely biased ravings, don't post them. When you write that "don't answer that," take it as a sign you should close the window and not save it. --Abd (talk) 11:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

(can't resist...can't resist...) he must of got his science by osmosis... Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

If I gt this straight, the book is a collection of unpublished papers and conference papers? And we don't know who peer-reviewed the papers? --Enric Naval (talk) 23:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Not straight. Generally, like most review publications from the ACS, and, in fact, like most peer-reviewed publications, it is a collection of papers not previously published, and it is peer-reviewed. As is common, we don't know who the exact reviewers are. (Sometimes we know the "review panel" for a journal, for the 2004 DoE panel are anonymous, and I've never seen "so-and-so reviewed this paper." What we have is the clear statement from the ACS that the papers are peer-reviewed as part of the selection and editing process. There are one or two papers, I forget, in the book, that were previously published as conference papers; their inclusion in the book moves them from the class of "conference papers" -- which isn't any kind of negative, it merely means that they haven't yet been peer-reviewed -- to "peer-reviewed papers," for our general purpose. Lots of junk gets presented at conferences, and also lots of very good and careful work, work likely to pass a fair peer review. What's been happening for almost twenty years is that papers would be rejected without being submitted to peer review, because the entire field was effectively blacklisted. This isn't a wild claim, and it affected negative work as well as positive. We should mention this in the article, I'll dig up some RS for it. --Abd (talk) 11:30, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe, but might be wrong (anything in the book to contradict?), that the 'peer-review' is set up by the editors. Both are confirmed cold fusioneers, and I have serious doubts about them getting anyone but other confirmed cold fusioneers to do the reviewing. This is *standard* with conferences and symposia. The papers usually get circulated to the conference participants for review, and there is often time pressure to get the review done quickly (don't know if that's true in this case). That's why in the hierarchy of things, 'proceedings' are not considered as significant as regular journal articles. Now, one problem with psuedoscientists is they don't participate in the normal scientific progess. The extreme of that is some guy who hides out in his garage and then rants and raves from there. A less extrme form is evidenced by the cold fusioneers, in that they have set up their own journals and conferences, and they don't hold to the same standards of how to do peer review. As Goodstein wrote, they have stopped any critical review, and that's what peer review is supposed to be. So, unless there is evidence to the contrary, we should assume the book in question was 'reviewed' in this fashion, i.e. inadequately. RS policy seems to me to require critical review, not a non-critical review. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

What is missed here is the role of the publisher. The publisher approves whatever role there is for the editors. I agree that the publication process is not exactly the same as with, say, a peer-reviewed mainstream journal. However, it is close enough, and the details obscure enough, in both cases, that we must consider this as reliable source. Note that "reliable source" isn't equivalent to "unbiased." It is still subject to general comparison with other reliable sources for balance and due weight, but we have clear guidance from ArbComm that the balance should not extend to exclusion of reliably sourced content, and the book is definitely reliable source in this extent. "Reliable" in "Reliable source" doesn't mean that citation to the source proves a fact, where there is controversy, it should not be confused with the ordinary meaning of "reliable," we are using a technical Wikipedia meaning here. Shanahan is probably correct that peer review is set up by the editors. Is this not true for any peer reviewed publication? The publisher selects or chooses or accepts the editors, just as a standard book publisher does the same with authors. That's why I've been saying that the nature of the publisher is critical in any determination of "reliable source." --Abd (talk) 12:29, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

That's not what Wikipedia:RS#Scholarship says. Hipocrite (talk) 12:47, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's look at that guideline. Citing a guideline without going into detail as to exactly what part of the guideline applies and why is a classic POV-pushing technique. Here is the guideline text cited: My comments are in italics, interspersed:

Further information: Wikipedia:Verifiability § Reliable sources

Many Wikipedia articles rely on scholarly material. Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources when available. However, some scholarly material may be outdated, superseded by more recent research, in competition with alternate theories, or controversial within the relevant field. Reliable non-academic sources may also be used, particularly material from reputable mainstream publications. Wikipedia articles should cover all significant views, doing so in proportion to their published prominence among the most reliable sources. The choice of appropriate sources depends on context and information should be clearly attributed where there are conflicting sources.

So far, so good. This is confirming what I've been saying. What is below actually doesn't deal with reliable source, but with how to handle balance, in the event of conflict of sources, so it begins to discuss relative reliability.

• Material that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses.

Here the guideline confirms my claim, that the identity of the publisher is very important. If we are addressing conflict of sources, then we look to indications of the quality of the source, and they point, first, to the kind of publisher. How about Oxford University Press and the American Chemical Society as publishers? And we can also ask if World Scientific is a "well-regarded academic press." I really don't know, but I do know that unless we have conflict of sources, it's disruptive to make wild claims -- or even reasonable claims -- that are really about relative source reliability.

• Items that are signed are preferable to unsigned articles.

Example of unsigned source: the individual reviewer comments and the summary issued as the 2004 Department of Energy report on low energy nuclear reactions. Again, it's clearly notable, but if there is a problem with conflict of sources, we need to be very careful about how we use it.

• The scholarly acceptance of a source can be verified by confirming that the source has entered mainstream academic discourse, for example by checking the number of scholarly citations it has received in citation indexes. A corollary is that journals not included in such indexes should be used with caution.

Again, we look at this if there is contradiction. When a source is attributed, contradiction issues actually don't arise directly, but do remain important as to balance and due weight, which balance does not extend to exclusion of reliably sourced information but only to how we balance it.

• Isolated studies are usually considered tentative and may change in the light of further academic research. The reliability of a single study depends on the field. Studies relating to complex and abstruse fields, such as medicine, are less definitive. Avoid undue weight when using single studies in such fields. Meta-analyses, textbooks, and scholarly review articles are preferred to provide proper context, where available.

Once again, this substantiates what I've been claiming. "Isolated studies" would refer to studies that haven't been confirmed, or that haven't seen secondary review. Storms and Marwan are secondary sources reviewing primary sources. They are, where they are analyzing work in the field, are the kind of sources we should prefer. Because the field remains controversial, my present position is that what they report, if a reported fact is controversial, we should still attribute and report any balancing information, if available in other reliable source of similar (or better) quality, being careful about how we handle conflicting sources of lower quality. I'm not convinced at all that a 1998 secondary or tertiary source, originally qualifying as RS, making claims that can now be seen as obsolete, should now be cited at all, unless we are covering the history and the source is important to that, when we have much more recent source that is based on wider information, not available when the earlier review was written.

As an example of unconfirmed studies, Vyostoskii's work on nuclear transmutation has not been confirmed. Its inclusion in the Sourcebook shows notability and interest in it, but how this would be reported in an article would require great caution to not imply that the work is valid. It's of interest, and I believe we should note that it exists, but not with any implication that, for example, biological transmutation is real, unless we can find more extensive sourcing (it's possible; Vysotskii wasn't the first to report biological transmutation, but I'm simply saying what we can do based on Vyosotskii's paper in the Sourcebook. Its inclusion means that the work appears interesting, probably worthy of replication efforts, on the face, but isn't enough, at all, to consider the results to be factual, only the existence of the paper, its text for reference, its conformance with basic standards (they would not include pure junk or nonsense-on-the-face, which would needlessly damage their reputation; rather, I conclude they felt more or less forced to include the paper because Vyosotskii submitted it, is a well-known scientist, the conclusions seem reasonable from the experimental evidence presented, and the only reason to exclude it would be political, and these people are understandably averse to that, they have all suffered from it), and its notability are established by the Sourcebook.

--Abd (talk) 18:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The base problem Abd, is that the CFers have withdrawn from participation in the normal scientific process. They have difficulty getting their pubs past knowledgeable reviewers in the journals that traditionally deal with 'CF' issues, so they go places where they have never gone before and rename their field to hide what it is from the novice reviewers (in CF technology) in the previously untouched journal they are now trying to get to publish their work. Or, they just self-publish (as a group), as in the proceedings of such-and-such CF conference. The Wiki RS guideline is supposed to be applied using common sense. The 'common sense' of this field is that CF is pariah science, bad science, pathological science, and anyone claiming to have discovered 'proof' of it must necessarily be subjected to extremely close scrutiny. There are clear signs the CFers don't do an adequate job of conforming to base scientific standards, thus all their publications are suspect, *especially* when a layman to the field tries to interpret them, such as you do, because they are psuedoscientists and *their work _looks_ like real science to an untrained eye*. In order to present both sides of this controversy fairly, we will have to allow a bit of questionable material in, but not the scads of stuff you want AND you also must let some of the mainline points in as well, and not Wikilawyer them to death, as you have been doing. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:01, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, I've considered you an expert, and would generally defend your participation here, it can be quite valuable. But much of what you say is highly misleading and not based on your expertise, and this is a real problem. The "CFers" have not "withdrawn from participation in the normal scientific process." Rather, those standing at gateways in that process decided, in 1990 or so, to exclude anything on the topic. Yes, this damaged the field, because without that process, and the vigorous back-and-forth debate that it encourages, the quality of the work suffers, because negative work can't get published either, and positive work, even though it answers the previous objections, doesn't even make it into peer review. However, some researchers did, steadfastly, pursue publication in peer-reviewed journals, most notably and effectively, the SPAWAR group, whose work you have most noticeably avoided mentioning. Your "common sense" is simply your personal opinion and is not supported by recent reliable source; what reliable source we have on it is not peer-reviewed review of the field, at least as far as anything I've seen. If you want us to rely on this, you will need to assert reliable source for it, and the only reliable source that I know on this is non-peer reviewed non-academic source; for example, newspaper reports of the massive rejection by physicists at the notorious 1989 APS meeting, where the tradition of academic courtesy was totally abandoned. On the other hand, we have plenty of recent reliable source, both popular and peer-reviewed or academic, that treats low energy nuclear reactions as a viable field, with active research and publication in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, a notable example being Naturwissenschaften, and as to book publishing, most recently (and therefore most authoritatively!), World Scientific and Oxford University Press and the American Chemical Society. Indeed, the older 2004 DOE review also treats it this way, quite clearly. Sorry, but your "common sense" flies in the face of what we have as reliable sources.

In spite of the strength of this, I have done nothing to exclude the alleged mainstream position that was asserted in sources long ago. Please show one example of my action to exclude something reliably sourced, other than possibly as a transient effort to find balance. (I can think of an example you might claim: in the section on Proposed explanations, we have text on about cold fusion theories that claims that all such theories are "ad hoc," or the like. That is an old source, and it can be argued that it might have been true when written (though I think not, Preparata's work wasn't "ad hoc," and the original Fleischmann work did have a theoretical basis for investigation, it wasn't a total stab in the dark, though Fleischmann though that the reality would turn out to be so close to classical quantum mechanics that the difference would be undetectable, that part was a long shot, and he knew it), but it clearly doesn't apply, for example, to Takahashi's work on the Be-8 hypothesis, which starts from studying, mathematically, the behavior of deuterium molecules at the edge of lattice confinement.) (Behavior inside the lattice would presumably be the same, except that deuterium dissociates inside the lattice, and exists only as deuterons there.) Still, I only took that out once, I think, then left it in, because I believe that the priority at this point is getting what is reliably sourced, from academic peer-reviewed publications, into the article, not taking out negative material that might be reliably sourced, but that is weak or obsolete by comparison.

extended response to Abd, contains some 'relevant to article' material

”much of what you say is highly misleading and not based on your expertise” – Unless you can specify examples, this is a personal attack. I have repeatedly pointed out that you are a ‘newbie’ to this field, and I do that because you show clear signs of being completely suckered by the CF propaganda machine. Further, when I try to explain it, you don’t comprehend, indicating that in your personality, you find ‘conspiracy theories’ satisfying. Please stop the personal attacks or specify exactly what you are talking about so I can correct you. “those standing at gateways in that process decided, in 1990 or so, to exclude anything on the topic” - more CF propaganda. The fact that you write this shows you have taken it in ‘hook, line, and sinker’. But, as you have pointed out many times, there are lots of peer-reviewed publications post-1990 (or so). What did happen is that scientific journals with a reputation for publishing ‘hot’ topics gave CF its shot, and then decided that the topic had moved from ‘hot’ to ‘warm’ and thus was no longer appropriate for their journal. Meanwhile, lots of other journals whose topic list included ‘low energy nuclear reactions’ continued to publish papers. However, the CFers decided that being named a ‘non-hot’ topic was an insult, and they started refusing to take the criticisms leveled against them to heart (actually this was true thoughout, and part of why the big name journals moved them to 'non-hot' status), instead blaming ‘bias’ and ‘pathological skepticism’. That’s when the withdrawl began. It continues today. They formed their own societies, published their own papers, and generally thumbed their nose at ‘the Establishment’. That’s called ‘withdrawl from the scientific process’. You don’t quit and run away to your own little corner, you do the work necessary to earn the respect for your work, and _you_ don’t get to decide what that work is alone, the rest of us participate. Case in point, the CCS problem. Another case in point, the 4He measurment issue. “However, some researchers did, steadfastly, pursue publication in peer-reviewed journals, most notably and effectively, the SPAWAR group, whose work you have most noticeably avoided mentioning.” – What are you talking about?!! Do you have any grasp on reality?? My second pubication is a direct response to a paper from that group, with Fleischmann and Miles as co-authors, that denigrated my CCS proposal. I showed how it applied to THEIR WORK and how it was reasonable by taking their excess heat claims apart, just as I did with Storms, except S, M-B, M, and F didn’t publish any calibration data, so I coundn’t be as prescise. I suggested here and on my talk page many times that the CR-39 stuff is JUNK. Let me be perfectly clear. Read my lips. The SPAWAR stuff is no different from the rest! It is also psuedoscientists calling out “It’s Nuclear. It’s Nuclear.” with little to no thought about alternatives. Is that clear enough for you?? “Your "common sense" is simply your personal opinion and is not supported by recent reliable source” – Incorrect. HYour unwillingness to count my 3 per-reviewed publications, and Clarke's specific one (out of many), plus as I reacll Enric pointing out that the Clarke companion paper to the one they referenced in the DOE white paper also pointed out how badly they do 4He, as RS clearly shows your bias. “On the other hand, we have plenty of recent reliable source, both popular and peer-reviewed or academic, that treats low energy nuclear reactions as a viable field,” – No you misread most of what you are referring to, or assign far to much notability to it. When a cold fusion fanatic writes a review, it _automatically_ is less notable than any other source. All reviews I’ve seen recently were by CFers, i.e. not reliable in any real sense. Or, you are citing newspaper articles. Hint: newspapers don’t define scienctific advances. In fact, one of the great signs of the CF psuedoscience is F&P’s announcement of the ‘discovery’ via press conference *before they ever published a word on it*. Even today, ‘science by press conference’ is a derrogatory term. “On the other hand, we have plenty of recent reliable source, both popular and peer-reviewed or academic, that treats low energy nuclear reactions as a viable field, with active research and publication in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, a notable example being Naturwissenschaften, “ – As I’ve said, this is junk. It is also recent, and thus it might be expected that there would be further publications on it, but I suspect not. The point is that it is RECENT. It is giving it undue weight to seriously consider it for the article. “and as to book publishing, most recently (and therefore most authoritatively!), World Scientific and Oxford University Press and the American Chemical Society.” - “ – and we’ve been discussing these haven’t we. You are the only one so far that seems to think these are 100% trustworthy, seminal pieces of scientific breakthrough research reporting. The rest of this say ‘non-RS’ but possibly useful for specific purposes (as per RS policy). To base your whole worldview on these books is to suckered by the CF propaganda machine. Look for and examine the alternatives with as much vigor. “In spite of the strength of this, I have done nothing to exclude the alleged mainstream position that was asserted in sources long ago. Please show one example of my action to exclude something reliably sourced, other than possibly as a transient effort to find balance” – I can’t, because you have never let me get that far. You might go back in the Archives to around Sept. 17, 2008 and then pick up where I tried to explain why my additions were all RS to Pcarbonn, but that’s probably too much work for you. So, let’s take something a little more recent. When I made my proposed suggestions for change to the article, you wrote: “Some of what you assert seems false and not supported by sources.”. So, did I get an opportunity to explain why you were wrong? No. You have already decided what should and shouldn’t be in the article based on your 5 months of light reading. For that reason, you didn’t even find it necessary to pinpoint what ‘seems false and not supported by sources’. Real unbiased editing there Abd. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:46, 3 June 2009 (UTC)\ This has, indeed, gone way beyond what's appropriate here. I'm responding, first, to the last paragraph. "You never let me get that far." I have no power over you, you can go as far as you want in telling me what you think, I can't stop you, I'm not an admin, and even if I was, I certainly would not touch you with admin privilege. I'm not Pcarbonn, so how what Pcarbonn may have done or not done is related to my possible exclusion of mainstream opinion is beyond me. What I wrote was correct, i.e., about "some" of what you assert. This is a common problem with experts: they write from their own experience, which may very well be quite true, but we cannot base our article on that. I solicit opinions from experts because, when they do explain the topic well, and when they do point to sources, we can end up with much better understanding, and, I know that while some editors imagine it's possible to write a good article without much understanding of the topic, simply by following "reliable sources," it's actually hit-or-miss. Yes, you have every opportunity to "explain," Kirk, but it seems you spend your time complaining about how dense other editors are, instead of actually explaining clearly, a common problem with. You are an expert, probably on calorimetry and the palladium deuteride system (its ordinary chemistry) and you have, of course, a general background expected of someone working in your field, but this is also true of many of the experts you deride so freely. It's our job as Wikipedia editors to sort through this and try to make neutral decisions, and, it's quite obvious to me, if we simply did what you wanted, we'd have an article biased toward your point of view. Your knowledge and skills are not pedagogical. Your point of view is not "science," it's your opinion; people informed about subjects still have opinions, and some of them become quite attached to them and go to their graves that way. As to your general knowledge of the field, you have longer exposure to it than I (though my interest was high in 1989, I dropped that interest, as did most people, with the general rejection, which I more or less thought was correct, and I did -- incorrectly -- assume that if there was some major development, it would all come out and, of course, everyone would recognize it and say, Gosh, we were wrong, this really is sound research. Naive, in hindsight. I imagined that scientists were somehow different from other people, and they aren't. Except a few.) You want me to specify what seemed false or not supported by sources (those are separate issues, and the one that is really important is the "not supported by sources" part? Sure. I don't recall where that discussion was, can you point me to it? You see, Kirk, I don't challenge, personally, unsourced text that seems clearly true to me. Others may, but I don't do it. I don't assert such text myself unless I believe that finding reliable source will be easy, and it can come later. Wikipedia was built this way, as people wrote articles based on personal knowledge (which is much easier than writing a fully sourced article) and the wiki theory is that this gets corrected if it is wrong, removed if it's controversial, and eventually, if there is the slightest doubt about it, it gets sourced or removed. That works with articles where there aren't opposing interest groups. There is so much garbage on the project that I'm not going to worry about matters of common knowledge to those who know a field. You have also confused, Kirk, exclusion of material with my not personally accepting it and asserting it. I cannot exclude your material; rather, this is a community decision. I could act to exclude material, but I can be reverted and, in the end, the decision is made by consensus, it is not mine. I'm not going to assert an edit that I don't agree with, personally, unless it's clearly supported by reliable source. (Note that "reliable source" doesn't make something actually reliable, RS guidelines really prove notability, not truth or actual reliability. I don't see that you have ever understood this, but if it's any comfort, neither do many Wikipedia editors. The debate over "reliable sources" is mostly based on a misunderstanding of what it means to be RS; thus you can talk about some publisher being deluded by a fanatic author, as if this were relevant to RS. It isn't. If a publisher puts the money into it, that indicates notability, and, yes, sometimes the book was published because somebody knew somebody, or even worse. If it's independently published, it's notable. To explain how that works, first of all, we don't usually consider self-published works notable. (Almost all Wikipedia guidelines have exceptions, because Rule Number One is ignore all rules, which is worthy of meditation. People sometimes think this is some New Age radical idea, but it's actually an ancient common law principle, Public policy. The view you push, if accepted, would create an inescapable circular definition, creating huge hysteresis in our feedback loop between source and text. Essentially, it seems, you'd want us to have different reliability guidelines for sources which supposedly support cold fusion and sources which supposedly impeach it. If the source -- we judge -- supports cold fusion, it's "fringe," ipso facto, and can't be reliable. It can't be reliable because it's "not mainstream." We know what is "mainstream" by the weight of reliable sources, and, since we have now, by definition, excluded all reliable sources that seem to support cold fusion, we have a solid basis for asserting that the field is fringe and the sources therefore not to be used. It's perfect. And very much not science. In normal scientific inquiry, all peer-reviewed sources would be considered reliable. Which isn't at all the same as "true." Mistakes are made. More to the point, though, experimental results may appear to support conclusions, whereas actually, they represent something else, such as artifact, analytical error, or premature conclusions. It's very clear now, that negative replications in 1989-1990 were simply results of not setting up the conditions to show the P-F effect. The recent Bayesian analysis presented at ICCF in 2008 showed that finding excess heat was perfectly correlated (to my memory of it) with four characteristics of the research reports, which are connected with setting up what later became known as the necessary conditions (such as high loading ratio). All that negative work was accurate. Do what they did, with what they worked with, predictable: no heat. Where the field went astray was in assuming from that that the reports of excess heat were false, that was unwarranted. It was in some ways an understandable error -- and you know, yourself, that the P-F effect only shows up under certain circumstances, you merely explain it differently than most. Your argument is quite convincing with respect to some reports, as to a possible non-nuclear explanation of the P-F effect, but in other respects it seems quite a stretch. You've acknowledge elsewhere that you don't know how to apply your ideas to, say, an Arata cell, where the ongoing generation of sufficient heat to maintain the cell temperature difference from the environment, with a double-cell (i.e, inner experimental cell containing nanoparticle palladium alloy and deuterium gas under pressure), and an outer cell, and with no energy input other than the heat of formation of palladium deuteride, which completes rapidly and with controls settles to ambient temperature within a few hours at most, whereas the ongoing heat lasts at least 3000 hours, showing no decay even that far out. You've long criticized the CR-39 work, asserting artifacts as speculations that, if you read the fuller publication of that work, you'd see have been covered by controls. Sorry, the pits found by the SPAWAR group and confirmed by others simply don't match what a burn would do, the would not have the conical shape, and burns definitely don't create triple-tracks on the back of the CR-39 or in areas not contacting the cathode, and they would not create tracks on CR-39 outside the cell (through a thin plastic window, the cathode being next to the window). They would not create the lower levels of tracks found in an Oriani experiment, with the CR-39 suspended above the cathode, not in contact with it. And they definitely would not create neutrons, which were long found at very low levels (suspiciously close to background), but only conclusively demonstrated as shown in the Mosier-Boss paper. We still won't report that finding as conclusive, but only as highly notable, due to all the publicity about it, but ... Kirk, it's conclusive. This is very solid research, with a history of avoiding wild claims, of building up their publication history in mainstream publications even as they also presented to conferences. You can criticize the individual reports of helium, and the individual reports of excess heat, but what will be much more difficult for you, if you are willing to face it, and I've seen no sign of that, is the correlation between the alleged helium error and the alleged excess heat error. Errors generally don't correlate unless they have a common cause, and that these alleged errors, in multiple reports using multiple methods, somehow conspire to come up with a Q ratio of what Storms estimates at 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4, is quite a coincidence, if it's based on double errors. That could be off by a large factor and still be quite striking. This is the issue of "associated with," in our article, and that you, as a scientist who should well understand this and support what I've been saying on the importance of association, and that our article is way off by presenting, as "association," unassociated results (following the DoE error, actually, without balance), shows me that you are pushing a point of view here, not seeking balance as well as accuracy. That's why you are properly considered as having a conflict of interest and not to edit the article in any controversial way. You are, as a published expert, with your publications focused on this field, likely to have a bias toward your own work and approach. To me, you are quite valuable here, but that value is reduced or even lost if you consistent and with fervor push your own point of view, without caution and balance. You have a PhD, for sure, but if you were my doctor, I'm afraid I'd fire you -- unless I couldn't find someone better. It might be important to point out that you are the only published expert in this field, on the skeptical side, who has participated here. I think that means something. We've banned the only expert from the other side, Rothwell. (He's an expert of a different kind, to be sure, but he's published books and is widely known, mentioned in reliable source -- much more widely known than you --, and you have, of course, been quite aware of him at least as far back as 1995.) --Abd (talk) 15:22, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that there is nothing necessarily wrong with the standard approach to peer review of conference proceedings described above by Kirk. Yes, the reviewers are typically drawn from the conference participants (and especially from those who have themselves submitted a paper for review), but this group is also highly likely to have knowledge of the field, its practices, and the relevant literature. I have certainly needed to rework conference papers based on the comments from the referees, and that is as it should be. The smaller referee cohort and the generally more limited length of such manuscripts means that quality results will likely ultimately go on to publication in relevant journals, and as sources those journal publications are superior and supercede any preceding conference publication. Nevertheless, there is (and should remain) a presumption that peer review of conference proceedings makes those sources reliable. The problem which Kirk describes arises because any presumption can be rebutted. Conference publications become unreliable if the integrity of the peer review process is compromised, such as when the conference organisers deliberate shun the mainstream, or deliberately seek out sympathetic referees. As Kirk noted, in such situations the review becomes inadequate and the presumption of reliability becomes unwarranted. In an area where there is considerable controversy, any conference proceeding where it is unclear that both (or all) sides were represented at the conference (and thus amongst the referees) automatically raises questions of reliability. EdChem (talk) 12:52, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) It's a false assertion that "the publisher determines whether a source is reliable". Storms is banned from the Cornell arxiv. That is a problem; fairly rare for a retired academic formerly attached to the institute where the archive was originally hosted. Storms' theories have been criticized in print by Kirk himself. And World Scientific has a patchy publication record: in my own subject they have published encyclopedic tomes on operator algebras which are by total unknowns. These publications could not be recommended; a fortiori they could not really be used as principal references for a wikipedia article. How many times does Abd be need to be told these things before it sinks in? Dogged persistence in repeating the same false arguments will not him an argument (cf his endless comments on the whitelist page, until he was trumped by a sock of Jed Rothwell). Mathsci (talk) 12:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The ban says more about how the cold fusion work was moved outside the mainstream and set up as being in apparent opposition to it, and I'd say that if we have reliable source on the ban, we should report it in the article. But that is irrelevant to WP:RS determinations, and this is well-established. Likewise any publisher may have published something that was later found to be totally bogus; the source remains WP:RS and would be used in an article, if sufficiently notable for the topic of the article, which is a topic by topic consideration, it would then properly be balanced by other RS. If the bogus work is no longer controversial, then it's probably not notable except in a report on the history. That Mathsci is strongly opposing this shows merely that this editor hasn't accepted the fundamental basis on which Wikipedia RS is established, reliance on decisions by responsible publishers, who have a stake in publishing what is notable, because if it isn't notable, they will lose money and reputation. We depend on the mass of those decisions; our judgments of reliability and notability should not be our own synthetic conclusions, and Mathsci's position, if confirmed, would create mass chaos on Wikipedia, as editors debate each source from their own POV. It happens, to be sure, but this is almost all actually in violation of WP:RS. WP:RS determines inclusion, and we should confine our debate to balance, which should not involve exclusion of fact based on reliable source, but rather the placing of such fact in context, with emphasis on the mainstream.

So what's the mainstream view? Is this something that we determine by how many editors are on one side vs. the other? No. It's determined by the weight of reliable source; if a view is not mainstream, it will not be reflected in most available reliable source. For a science article, we rely on the scientific mainstream, which is, again, found by examining what is in peer-reviewed publications and other academic source (by which I mean publication where the audience is itself academic, not what are popularizations and tertiary sources, intended for general readership, non-technical, and where gross generalizations may be made for simplicity, and which happen to have been published by some academic institution; these publications, like print encyclopedias, may reflect a general consensus that existed much earlier. They may still be reliable source, but only as to the consensus at some earlier time). With academic sources, in cases of contradiction, later sources should trump earlier ones, because later sources will generally show the current state of the field. Outside, just as with Wikipedia, consensus changes.

As an example of conclusions that were published, and which were rejected and which are no longer controversial, we need look no further than Fleischmann's original radiation report. It was experimental error, Fleischmann retracted it, it was widely lambasted, and nobody is defending it. He was wrong; it was an easy mistake to make, though, because his excess heat work was solid and everyone, including him, expected that if the excess heat was real, there would be very significant radiation of that kind, so when measurement later shown to be defective showed it, he reported it. It's quite clear that the P-F effect, whatever is causing it, doesn't produce much radiation, beyond alpha radiation which was not detectable using external detectors because of the short range, until experiments were designed that specifically looked for this. Nobody expected significant alpha radiation because the theoretical basis hadn't been developed; the known reaction d + d -> He-4 plus gamma would have produced massive gamma radiation unless some new mechanism of lattice absorption were hypothesized, and the field hadn't gotten to that point at the time. The known hot fusion branching ratio predicted 50% of the fusions would produce neutrons, and only a tiny percentage, nearly insignificant, would produce gammas. That level of neutrons, as expected from the reported heat, would have produced the "dead graduate student" effect. Nobody thought of, for example, double-deuterium molecular -> nuclear fusion caused by lattice confinement at the surface, which, indeed, would predict He-4 generation at levels commensurate with the excess heat, heavy alpha radiation, the helium being generated at the surface, not deep in the bulk palladium, the absence of neutrons except at very low levels resulting from secondary reactions from hot alpha particles (i.e., hot fusion), and many other aspects later found and confirmed, and the work to validate this specific theory, probably by measuring exact alpha particle levels and energies, has yet to reach publication, to my knowledge, except that Mosier-Boss (Naturwissenschaften, 2009, does some level of work on this, and this is, with respect to that theory, a reliable secondary source. --Abd (talk) 14:04, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Techhnically, we are discussing Krivit's book, but your confusion is understandable, as the Storms book has a similar problem. In that book's case, we have a single author who has convinced a publisher to publish it. It is a compendium of results, with the problem that no quality assessment is done on those sources. My quick perusal of the references of one chanpter (over 600 refs there) showed about 60% were to 'Proceedings of the xth ICCF'or an equivalent type of conference. Further, his misrepresents my work, concluding he has rebutted it when in fact I rebutted his rebuttal point by point, and he knew this. And, he ignores the Clarke, Oliver, Bos work that shows He measurment is still unreliable in this field. That makes his book 'unreliable' in the scientific sense. For Wiki, in the end, it seems to be consensus. As I've said before, we should/could use Storms because it is a compendium of non-peer-reviewed stuff (which implies inadequate peer review of most CFer conference proceedings) and it provides a framework for discussing the claims for the CF article. However, the Krivit book adds nothing new, therefore we shouldn't use it. 13:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirk shanahan (talk • contribs)

This has, unsurprisingly, been driven wildly off-topic. The discussion was the reliability (or lack there-of) of the Steven Krivit conference proceedings. I believe that the commens were wildly in agreement that the source was not reliable. Is that an accurate read of everyonebutAbd? Hipocrite (talk) 14:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• Not conference proceedings. Published book by major mainstream publisher, collecting edited and reviewed papers, only one of which was previously presented at conferences (Fleischmann, 2003, ICCF10, published by World Scientific, 2006), and which we'd be able to cite anyway because of the notability of the author (we have actually cited a less well written paper presented a previous year, this one is more definitive). The other 15 chapters or papers are original, copyright 2008 by the ACS.
• Lead editor is Jan Marwan. Krivit is co-editor, and contributed an overall review of the field as the first chapter, Introduction and Overview.
• WP:NOTAVOTE. The claim of unreliability has only come from yourself, with all that this implies, and from Shanahan, who is COI on the topic and highly biased. As to Shanahan -- and yourself, probably -- the "Reliable" in Reliable source has been confused with the ordinary meaning of the word. RS doesn't establish freedom from bias, it establishes notability and verifiability of properly attributed text. Other editors have asserted or accepted that Storms is RS, we have many other references to Storms, which were generally accepted until you arrived, and this book is even more solid. I don't accept claims that World Scientific is a shoddy publisher, they are irrelevent, but, even if we accepted that, a book published by the American Chemical Society, the largest scientific society in the world, has been accepted as worthy of discussion by the mainstream, just as the longer seminar held in 2009 by them shows exactly the same thing. --Abd (talk) 16:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Jan Marwan... Has he ever even been a professor of anything, anywhere? I'm interested in hearing from the people who haven't already expressed themselves, though, Abd. We know you can drown us in text. Hipocrite (talk) 16:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Go to Google Scholar and do a search on "jan marwan". Seems he was at Univ of Southhampton (Fleischmann's old stomping grounds in 2003, from then till ~2007 he was at U. of Quebec, then he seems to have become self-employed and set up his current situation. No guarantees this is exhaustive. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Totally irrelevant. Publishers choose editors based on their own lights. I'm interested in hearing from others as well, and I'll take steps to make sure that all of us have the opportunity to see that: me, other editors here, and, especially, you.

However, Oxford University Press says about Marwan:

Jan Marwan, who built up his own research laboratory in Berlin, Germany, to deeply investigate cold fusion processes, is a specialized electrochemist and focused his research on the electrochemical properties of metal hydride systems.

There is a self-bio at: [27]

Krivit is a journalist, editor of New Energy Times, widely noticed because of major media reports, quoting him, about the recent ACS seminar.

I'm not asserting professional notability for Marwan. Krivit is actually more notable, as a journalist covering the field, who has interviewed most major involved figures, including as many critics as were willing to talk with him, and who has been noticed by major media.

--Abd (talk) 17:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

"The claim of unreliability has only come from yourself, with all that this implies, and from Shanahan, who is COI on the topic and highly biased"[28] Erm, you are forgetting other people that have expressed doubts about the reliability of this source, namely myself[29] and EdChem[30]. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:43, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

(noindent) Abd seems to be in a minority of one about these sources. He doesn't appear to take any notice of what anybody else says, particularly academics. It is indefensible that he pushes Krivit as notable: what is true is that Krivit has some notoriety in making defamatory statements on his website about scientists; otherwise he has no scientific notability at all (which is what is relevant here). Likewise Abd is desperately trying to push Storms as a mainstream scientist, which is evidently not the case, because of his lack of government funding. If this disruptive "last stand" by Abd continues, it might be an idea for a topic ban. I can see why Kirk Shanahan can speak here with some authority; this does not appear to be the case with Abd, despite the disproportionate number of kbs he contributes here. Mathsci (talk) 21:09, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Academics aren't editing here, to my knowledge, and I'm not sure I'd consider Shanahan an academic, though he has a PhD, apparently, and has, indeed, published, several papers or replies on cold fusion calorimetry in Thermochimica Acta, outlying analysis, unconfirmed. It appears that he is or was employed by the United States government, at Savannah River National Laboratory.i.e, he is part of the U.S. Department of Energy establishment.[31]. From googling his name, I see that he's been active in opposing Cold fusion for quite a while, possibly a decade or more. I found an interesting page at [32], which refers to an attempt to measure excess heat from "Kirk Shanahan's beads," the linked heat record has a date of June 30, 1996. This is a 1996 report by Shanahan, on some cold fusion work. Mentions Rothwell. And this appears to show that he's been promoting his "bubbles" since 1995. (I.e., the theory that his calibration constant shift is caused by bubbles of deuterium gas that oxidize at the surface of the electrode, causing a hot spot.)

Now, as to editors supporting Storms or Marwan as reliable source, see Objectivist (V), Kevin Bass, Coppertwig, and, of course, myself and Wikipedia guidelines on reliable source. Now as to the other barrage of cheap shots -- it takes a few words to fire off a cheap shot, and many words to refute it, which is why, in the end, sometimes we topic ban editors who debate as Mathsci is, it stimulates huge amounts of wasted text and time -- nobody has been asserting here, what "academics" say in reliable source, except for me; for example, Mathsci kindly provided an academic source that describes Storms in detail and recommends the book. That academic remains a skeptic, but that is irrelevant, and the skeptic seemed to me to be maintaining an open mind. He's not going to be knocked over if it turns out that cold fusion is real. Mathsci, apparently, will, I suggest sitting down when reading recent reliable source on the topic. I DGAF, what I care about is hewing to balance as determined by what's in reliable source, and as interpreted by ArbComm in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science, which I suspect, with some evidence I could provide, that a few editors here have not accepted. What does government funding have to do with the definition of "mainstream science"?. Scary if it did, I'd think. However, most some of Storms original work was indeed governmentally funded, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory. As to Krivit, I assert he is notable, not for the reasons Mathsci claims, but because (1) he's described as an expert on the topic in plenty of media source in March of this year, (2) his on-line newsletter, New Energy Times, is given as a resource in reliable source, and because I personally find that resource invaluable for finding stuff on the topic. I can even read some content there for free that I couldn't read elsewhere, because he's bold enough to host a few recent and important papers under a claim of fair use, which he can do, probably legally, i.e., without legal consequence, as a nonprofit, he simply has to take it down on request. We can't link to those papers by our policy, but, nevertheless, it's been quite useful to me. He has also been nice to me, which is more than I can say for the other side, here. So I'm prejudiced, get over it. I'm not asserting anything outside of propriety, and that a subject has been nice to an editor doesn't establish a COI. Indeed, we should encourage good relationships with outside experts, we need much more of this, from all sides. Could anyone get Gary Taubes to post here? It would be fabulous, I certainly have a lot of questions to ask him. --Abd (talk) 00:22, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Storms was not funded by LLNL. He worked for Los Alamos Nat'l Lab. for many years. He did his first CF work there during the '89-'93(?) timeframe. He retired c.'93 or '95, (can't quite remember) and retired under their first big retirement push. Krivit is a journalist, and any referenceing to him should be only on this basis. No different from any other journalist. NET is a pro-CF magazine, not reliable. (potentially useful, as I and others have noted, but not RS). Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:46, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Go to Google, enter "Google Scholar" , enter "Kirk Shanahan". read and enjoy. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:52, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

<off-topic> You've written a lot about Kirk Shanahan. Do you have a Ph.D.? I'd assume Verbal is an academic with a Ph.D., like me. I know Cliff Taubes, Gary's brother, but why should Gary have any interest in interacting on the internet with someone like you? </off-topic> Mathsci (talk) 09:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I've written less about Shanahan than he has written about me, and I finally decided to look him up. No, I don't have any advanced degree, I dropped out of Caltech as a junior to pursue other interests. Maybe it was because Feynman only taught undergraduates when I was a freshman and a sophomore. As to Taubes, he wrote a major book on the topic, heavily researched, still quite valuable because of the depth of his research, apparently quite reliable on facts and awful when it comes to his inferences about people's motives, but it enabled him to tell a compelling story. Much more interesting than Huizenga, though Huizenga is deeper on some of the pure science stuff, I think. Haven't read all of either. We also have quite a bit of source about how Taubes did the work, and he seemed to have assumed that some of the research was fraudulent, and he is the one who stirred up the probably false misbehavior charges against Brockris. Basically, the assumption would have come from a belief that cold fusion was impossible, therefore the evidence indicating it must be fraudulent if not experimental error. Understandable, but very mistaken. He's written a totally excellent book, Good Calories, Bad Calories on another major scientific error that arose in the 1970s. Maybe he'd see the similarity. As to why he'd want to communicate with me, that would, obviously, be up to him, but I find that the smarter people are, the easier it is for them to understand what I'm saying and to either get it and agree, or tell me exactly where I'm wrong. Sometimes it takes two words from such a person, and I go "Oops! You're right, why didn't I think of that?" In person, sometimes all it takes is a glance. "Magnetic deviation." Ask me on my Talk, and I'll tell you the story. Already too much for here. --Abd (talk) 11:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• It probably won't help much, but in my experience, in academia journal papers in top tier journals are considered the most reliable sources, due to the extensive peer review process that is generally followed. (anyone who's looked into the submission process for a top tier journal would know how difficult it can be). Other peer-reviewed journals come next, followed by conference proceedings using double-blind peer review. So conferences can be high, but only if the peer review process is considered satisfactory, and that relates to both process and the quality of the reviewers. Collected papers are a bit more iffy, but are probably rated above non-peer reviewed conferences. The problem there is the peer review process, which tends to be more narrow than the bigger conferences, and depends a lot of the publication of the review panel and the standing of the authors (Krivit would be quite low on this side, but Marwan would certainly be of higher standing, academically). Books and non-peer reviewed (or "by abstract") conferences are down the bottom in most fields I've worked with, because of the lack of peer review, but I know a few fields which rate books a tad higher (such as archaeology and philosophy). The point being, I guess, that it isn't a matter of saying "conferences are bad" or "the publisher is the main determining factor". I'd rate Storms pretty low, on that scale, as it is a non-peer-reviewed work, but the sourcebook would be higher. - Bilby (talk) 14:59, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• It won't hurt. Yes. I agree with all of this, except maybe "Storms pretty low," but that's actually moot. He's lower on the scale than Marwan and Krivit, but because the ACS is probably a more reputable publisher. On the other hand, Storms is highly knowledgeable and credentialed, highly experienced. If you read the actual book, it's quite solid, with some speculation in it that is clearly set off as such, not reported as fact. "Most reliable" is a comparative rating, and only comes into play for Wikipedia for source conflicts, or for otherwise unknown and extraordinary claims with no extended support. For general Wikipedia purposes, the basic determination of source reliability is made based on the publisher, not the author; the author may be, for example, otherwise unknown, not notable. If the publisher is independent and not some fringe focus publishing house, the publication becomes reliable source. But that doesn't mean that it would stand against, say, a peer-reviewed journal in a conflict. The problem, Bilby, is that "unreliable" is being asserted here for publications that would routinely be considered reliable and without there being source conflict. The sources are being asserted as unreliable based on the content, that's blatantly clear, and it is that which is directly contradictory to what Arbcomm has ruled with regard to fringe science. The very determination that cold fusion is fringe science is contaminated by failure to hew to the best sources, which show, not fringe science, but a highly controversial field, one clearly with some level of respect in academia, as well as a lot of rejection that, itself, is largely based on old opinion, and not on review of recent work. I'm not claiming that cold fusion has been "accepted" by the mainstream, but I'm really not clear as to how we'd determine that. That it was rejected twenty years ago, we have plenty of source on that. (Not, by the way, peer-reviewed reliable source, but sources of lower quality, but still reliable source for our purposes, such as media sources.)
• So what do we do if we have sources of low relative quality from 1990, say, that on the face show a contradiction as to the present state of the field, with sources from 2009 that show an emerging science, beginning to gain recognition. The guidelines are actually fairly clear, in general, but they don't make specific decisions. We do. The overall weight of publications in peer-reviewed journals shows support for cold fusion: further, the recent publications, though definitely reduced greatly in number, show an increase over the last five years and the weight is almost unanimously support of cold fusion. Normally, we'd use the weight of such publication to gauge due weight. These are publications, many of them, in mainstream journals, such as Naturwissenschaften. Why should we make an exception here? It's a question, not rhetorical. I'm quite willing to allow the article to continue to show a general rejection of cold fusion, because I think that is still true. But I'm not sure how much this affects the science we report. That general rejection is a social phenomenon, not actually a scientific one, where it is the opinions of those familiar with the research that would count, not "scientists in general." --Abd (talk) 16:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the book should be included in the bibliography. Wikipedia presents all significant POVs; it doesn't mean Wikipedia endorses those POVs. The book contains extensive information on the cold fusion topic. I see no reason for excluding it except the argument that its POV is not mainstream: not a valid reason, since the collection of POVs to be presented in the article depends on what's in the reliable sources, and not the other way around. This is an article about a topic which is not mainstream, so non-mainstream sources need to be used to describe it. The book is published by a respectable publisher and peer-reviewed; there's no reason to exclude it. Steven Krivit has been called an expert in the field in the press release from the American Chemical Society in March. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 18:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Page protection

I've fully protected this page again, this time for two weeks. I hope you guys can use the time to either sort out this dispute, and failing that, find it in yourselves to stop using reverting as an editing technique. After this protection is lifted, it will not be protected again, and disruptive editors will be blocked. Use dispute resolution. Thanks, --causa sui ^talk 03:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Ryan. Please. --Abd (talk) 04:00, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Two reverts is an edit war? This isn't on article probation as far as I can see. Now I remember why I stopped editing here. GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 04:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not. But maybe it should be. --causa sui ^talk 05:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Ryan, there was edit warring here about a week ago. This time it hit 3RRfor Hipocrite. What's been going on is that Hipocrite has been using bald reverts as an "editing technique." He's been doing it for some time, to the point that I said I wasn't going to edit the article substantially until the situation cleared, because I'd spend several hours researching and writing and formatting references and it would simply disappear in a minute. And I mostly have done little since then, except to modify text he'd been removing to satisfy his stated objections about sourcing. So a bit more than a week ago, I replaced text he'd removed, with additional reliable source, he removed it, and we ended up each hitting 3RR, and if my first edit -- which was not a revert, in my opinion -- is considered a revert I was at 4RR. In fact, some progress was being made, some text and changes were accepted. The article was then protected. This time, Hipocrite hit 3RR, nobody else did more than 2RR, there were multiple editors with Hipocrite alone against them all. I didn't do any reverting this time, though I was quite tempted, he's basically trolling for it, it looks like to me, with the edit summaries and other behavior. He hit 3RR, then massively modified the lead, not with consensus, just before you protected. I think that a review of his editing will show consistent edit warring here, and it's just been the restraint of others that made it appear that there wasn't edit warring. This article wasn't nearly as contentious before he showed up, though there were certainly problems, but it was possible to negotiate text. Hipocrite showed up here after ScienceApologist was banned, and appears to have considered it some kind of obligation to carry on SA's work. For which he was banned. Hipocrite's edits here are consistently violating Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science by attempting to totally exclude alleged fringe sources, even when the publishers clearly meet RS requirements. --Abd (talk) 06:05, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

See comment in above section. Krivit's book is not RS. Nor is Storms' really. I recommend it only because it lists a lot of non-peer-reviewed sources, which the CFers use liberally. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:51, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Given ArbComm's related ruling on Fringe science, which was partly about editors active with this article, it's not going to be enough to simply assert that a source isn't reliable. Rather, decisions about reliability will have to be made objectively, and, in the absence of issues of contradiction of sources, a source is then either reliable or it isn't. That still doesn't make a fact stated there true, but it does make it notable and usable for verification, even if attribution is needed. I could take the position that if there is no contradiction of sources, attribution isn't needed, but, hey, this is a wiki and we must work to get along. Attribution is often a simple way to move beyond POV conflicts, when editors are reasonable. After all, Storms did say what was attributed to him. It's verifiable, it's notable, and it violates policy to arbitrarily exclude it, or to exclude it on the grounds that it is fringe. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

As notification, I should put this here. permanent link for ease of reading diffs, etc., and for seeing response. I've informed the protecting administrator of the circumstances around the protection, which should not be discussed here, I suggest, this isn't about the article, or even the topic, it's about editorial behavior. --Abd (talk) 16:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Specific edit requests

I suggest that as soon as this page is off of protection, the discussion of exactly one patent, the 4body fusion explanation and the "According to Storms (2007), no published theory" section be removed from this article, the tags I added be removed and the intro returned to the old version. This is the status-quo ante. Storms is not a reliable source (this is settled, above), patents are not reliable sources, and the two papers on 4body fusion are far from reliable sources, regardless of the fact that they were reprinted by Krivit. While, of course, I actually engaged in discussion regarding the intro, I was happy to you know, finish that discussion before reverting back the changes I wanted over and over again like some others may have done.

I further suggest that we construct an article RFC, submit that RFC, and NOT PESTER THE RESPONDERS TO THE RFC, such that we can see what people who have not previously edited this article think about the entire mess. By NOT PESTERING, I mean no responding to the individuals who have not previously edited this article, and no responding to the RFC ourselves. Thoughts? Hipocrite (talk) 03:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

There is only one editor here consistently using reversion as an editing technique, and he signed above. No basis has been asserted for the removal of the section from Storms. The claim that Storms is not reliable source is preposterous; Storms is certainly notable, from the paper Mathsci was so kind as to provide to me and to Enric Naval, and possibly others. If we are going to have an RfC, the questions must be agreed upon, otherwise it is essentially editor harassment, because one RfC is created which asks misleading questions, then another one is needed to ask different questions, and sometimes even more is needed. So we need to work on an agreement on an RfC first. It can easily be done. I tried to ask the most important and simplest version above (which version was better) rather than a non-comparative, absolute question (is a source reliable), because the latter actually asks for an abstract judgment absent specific situation, and reliability of sources varies with what is being sourced.

There can be some merit to the suggestion of not responding to the RfC ourselves; however, the editors who actually know this field are the editors of this article, for the most part. So a middle path is needed. By the way, nobody is harassed because someone responds to a comment, because there is no obligation to respond to comments. But I do understand that it can feel that way.

For RfC to work, the evidence must be laid out coherently and simply, and likewise the arguments and the questions. All of them, presented neutrally. User RfC process can be a guide, likewise ArbComm process.

I don't think that Hipocrite gets that the Takahashi paper wasn't reprinted by Krivit. Krivit was merely an editor of the book, the Low energy nuclear reactions sourcebook. It was published by the American Chemical Society in cooperation with Oxford University Press. Definitely not a fringe publisher. It is the publisher which determines what is reliable source, not the author. So we had three sources on the Be-8 theory: secondary sources being Storms (World Scientific and the Chinese paper, effectively published by Springer-Verlag, and primary source being the 2008 Takahashi paper, notable for being included in the ACS Sourcebook. And against this, it appears that Hipocrite wants to assert passing mention in old secondary or tertiary sources as being adequate on the topic. It's obvious what's going on.

There are also issues here that might not be resolvable at this level, but we will cross that bridge if we come to it. Most important is [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science#Prominence|]] and Advocacy. Generally, we judge prominence by preponderance of publication in reliable sources, and, in a science articles, by publication in peer-reviewed or other academic sources. The problem is that by this standard, the predominant view in recent years would be that cold fusion is real. Negative papers on cold fusion have not outnumbered positive ones since 1989; in 1990, they were in balance, and every year after that, positive papers outnumbered negative ones. I'm not proposing that we present cold fusion as scientific fact, don't worry. It's clearly quite controversial. But my point is that we should be very careful about supporting one side of the controversy over the other, and, in fact, once we open up, we will see that there are intense controversies within the field.

I oppose any more individually-initiated RfCs unless we have consensus on holding one, and, please be aware: if an RfC isn't propoerly formed, it will inhibit consensus, and if we can't find consensus, the matter will escalate until some final decision is made. --Abd (talk) 04:29, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

So to summarize, you have no comment on my proposed return to the status quo, and you oppose seeking outside advice through RFC. Hipocrite (talk) 16:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No, not a summary. Here is my brief statement: We should negotiate specific changes here, from the article as it exists;given how much dispute there is from a few editors, we should work on the smallest and simplest changes first. We should request those changes if we can find sufficient consensus to convince an admin to edit the article. If we are going to use RfC, because we can't find consensus, we should design the RfC to ensure that all reasonable evidence is shown, that all arguments still standing after discussion are included -- I'd say that any argument should ideally be seconded to be included, i.e., not just one editor's position, but I also think that solitary arguments can be included if someone really insists -- and the RfC itself should then present all this coherently and concisely (if longer arguments or evidence is needed, this can be done through references or collapse boxes.) In other words, we want to resolve the issue, having insured that all reasonable arguments and evidence are easily accessible to any new, neutral editor. And, then, if further process is needed, there is a clear basis, already compiled. Probably it won't be necessary if we do our work well. POV-pushers usually give up at this point, if they haven't before, because they see what will happen if the matter escalates. It's more work, perhaps, than BRD, and certainly than simply revert warring, but, in the end, the results will stick. --Abd (talk) 17:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

So, to summarize, you're finally going to propose changes to the article on the talk page instead of just making them over and over again? And your thoughts on returning the article to the stable status quo? Hipocrite (talk) 17:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, above you noticed what could be taken as a leading question and you objected to it with the standard "When did you stop beating your wife" remark; I then looked down and saw many leading questions from you, like the one above. I'm going to do what I've been doing all along, improving the article through seeking consensus by various means, sometimes by discussion before editing(which you don't like) and sometimes through actual edits that incorporate improvements as a suggestion when I think it possible they will be accepted, even if not discussed in advance (which you also don't like). A little while ago, almost all these direct, non-discussed edits were accepted. That changed when you arrived.. In the end, it's not about you and not about me, it's about the community. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I support reverting the article to a stable version and the discussing these changes individually on the talk page. Verbal chat 17:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That's okay, it's better than the intro Hipocrite mangled just before protection, having exhausted 3RR and it wouldn't be considered a revert, I assume. We can still do the rest, then. I'm not attached to any changes I made yesterday. I propose we each pick a version to revert to, because then we can compare and say, "This is best," or "That is best." If we can find consensus on a version, it will be trivial to find an admin to make the change. Every disagreeing editor is likely to make it more difficult, and we should ideally aim for unanimity, but, here, I don't know how possible that is. We'll see. Maybe it will be the first time that we all agree on something. After all, just about any recent version would be better than the way it was left. This could be fun. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I wouldn't have said this before, but now I will. Hipocrite rushed to make the changes because he knew the protection was coming, because he requested it. I wasn't edit warring, I didn't make any reverts, rather I added some material that had indeed been there before, so it could, by some, technically, be called a single revert, but it had been discussed, most of it. The one edit warring was Hipocrite, hitting 3RR just before changing the lead, and he played it well here, except for one thing: his move was blatant, because after I wrote the above, I thought, what if this was deliberate? So I looked at his contribs, and there it was. Someone can ping causa sui|causa sui, I don't know if he realizes what happened. And this is also noticeboard material, if anyone has time. I don't right now. "Skeptical" editors, be careful of this editor, his goal is to disrupt this article, that's what he started doing a month ago, and, indeed, from what I'd seen before, his goal is to disrupt Wikipedia over the Fringe science arbitration. I can, and will, establish this with evidence in the appropriate place, I'm through discussing it here, and his Talk page is already prohibited to me. --Abd (talk) 17:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Your assumptions of bad faith are galling. "This shouldn't be controversial." reverted back in the highly controversial highly controversial Storms-as-arbitor-of-theory sectionm, and your "based on talk discussion" revered back in the highly controversial 4-body fusion claims. If you were able to actually discuss article changes on a talk page without drowning everyone in reams of text, you'd know you didn't have consensus for either of those changes. But, you know, keep right on threatening to take me here, take me there, noticeboard this, report me to that, whatever. It's exactly what you were told to stop doing in your last ArbCom fiasco, and it's exactly what you'll be told to stop doing in your next ArbCom fiasco. Hipocrite (talk) 18:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No threats, I'm done here. A threat is an attempt to alter editor behavior through intimidation. I now care nothing about what Hipocrite does here, and I'm not asking him to change. The comment above was for the information of editors of this article, who should know what was done, because I think it likely that the article will be unprotected shortly. The poll below is still a good idea, we simply include the present version and we could even make it a standing poll allowing us to monitor the progress of the article toward full consensus, which is my goal. I'll do what I do, beyond this, and it really has almost nothing to do with this article any more, it is not a content dispute. That's why it would be inappropriate to discuss further here. If someone thinks I've done something wrong, my Talk page is thataway --> --Abd (talk) 18:23, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd has inserted a comment above out of sequence. But I answer it here:

Abd is really giveing a biased interpretation of the events. If you check the revision log of the Cold Fusio article for June 1 for example, you find multiple non-minor edits by Abd. And I emphasize here and now, *this was done without ANY concensus to do so*. properly, all those edits should be deleted, and were. And then Abd has the gall to clain the reverter was violating Wiki policy. Abd, YOU are the problem here, with your POV-pushing. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:18, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The last stable version I recall was before the then current crop of editors decided that the article needed some mainstream viewpoint to get NPOV. That's when they emailed me and asked for my input. I did that on Sept. 17, 2008. Unfortunately, that's when all this garbage started, because the then current and today's current crop of editors were pro-CF biased, and they didn't like my input. I recommend we go back to then, with the understanding that we are going to be adding mainstream view, and start editing there. We also need to ignore all the trivial pursuit-like junk that had dominated the Talk page since that time. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Pick a revision, Kirk. Make it your best shot, but do try to consider what other editors might accept, you might be more likely to get it. Or, for efficiency, pick the best revision, in your view, and then also pick a compromise that is at least better than the status quo. Maybe at the end we would compare those two! Presumably either would be better than the present. Or you can pick the present version as one choice. I propose using Range voting for polling (not to make the decision, just to judge how it's going): each editor can rate each proposed revision on a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing the worst and 10 the best, and 0 would be presumed (i.e., you can vote just for your favorite. You can also vote Yes or No to each version, which I'd interpret for my own use as 10 and 0, respectively. (There is debate among range voting advocates as to whether or not to count abstentions as 0 or to exclude them from the average, but because we aren't necessarily making an actual decision by this, it's purely advisory at first, it really doesn't matter, and we can present results both ways for final review. This could be very quick, actually, we should probably not debate it, but just propose revisions and rate other ones that have already been proposed, then, hopefully, later, come back and rate any overlooked, and maybe change the !votes. I'm not proposing a revision yet, I don't have time to research it. --Abd (talk) 18:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone else here understand how poorly Abd reads??? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Poll to find quick rough consensus for change under protection

Comments on process

[this next comment preceded the poll in the original poll subsection. Then the poll followed, and then some attempt to correct errors that got thoroughly confused (on my part), then the comment from Woonpton below. --Abd (talk) 14:18, 5 June 2009 (UTC)]

Above, I suggest we poll editors as to a reversion to return to pending unprotection of the article. I have requested unprotection of the article based on a review of the history, see discussion there Unprotection was not granted. This poll, however, was supported as a good move. I'm going to suggest two revisions, one preferred by me and one rejected. Beyond a brief statement from the one proposing a revision as to why it's proposed, which is optional, I'm suggesting we do not debate this in this subsection, because the goal here is to quickly find some reasonable compromise so that we can fix the article, which has been protected into a state with a mangled lead. Please !vote on these revisions, and suggest new ones if you prefer some other revision to what is already listed. Please !vote using a number, 0 to 10, with 0 indicating unacceptable, and 10 indicating the preferred version. You may vote 0 to 10 for more than one, in which case it will be taken as rejection of all of the 0s and full acceptance of all the 10s. These numbers will not, in themselves, determine the outcome, but may be used by any of us to quickly seek the most acceptable compromise. You may change your !votes at any time, it's not necessary to strike out the old one, since there should be no discussion of specific !votes, the whole point is to avoid debate. --Abd (talk)

I call shenanigans. Please do not remove this comment. The version I chose as the better of the three and !voted for, as you can see by the diff of my !vote, was the version of 19:54 September 17, 2008 My !vote has been moved to the version of 15:48 September 18, 2008. I have struck my !vote for the moment, but after people have an opportunity to see what was done here, I will be removing my !votes entirely. I will not participate in a poll where the options keep changing and people move !votes around; this is not okay. Woonpton (talk) 03:48, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I apologize, Woonpton. The link in the place where you voted was to the Sept 18 version, accidentally, not the version suggested by Shanahan. My move was entirely intended to represent your intention, so I don't know why you struck the vote. There was an error made, Woonpton, maybe two. Let's get it clear:

:19:54 September 17, 2008, as you specified it as being the version you preferred, is actually the revision of 15:48, 18 September 2008, which was the Pcarbonn edited version of Shanahan's proposal of September 17, as you can see. If you look at the version now shown for Shanahan's version, and you can look at the diffs in the matrix below to compare any two versions, I think you will see that v4 is substantially better than v3, Shanahan is a COI editor and simply wrote in his POV, and wasn't experienced at avoiding POV text. It's quite hard to compare the 1&2 versions with the 3&4, because there have accumulated such massive changes.

Please, AGF. I have no intention here other than to gauge editorial consensus, and I apparently made a mistake in setting up the reference to the Shanahan version and linked it to the next reversion, by Pcarbonn. I think your !vote is in the correct place now, and if you want to restore the comment you struck and I then deleted, that's absolutely fine with me. If I'm wrong about the place, move your vote to the right place. I want your !vote to represent your intention, and nothing else. I will point out, however, that with Range voting, to not vote the full range is to cast a weak vote, which is your total privilege. It's appropriate if your opinion is weak and you wish to defer to the opinions of other editors. Otherwise, I'd recommend that you !vote a 10 for your favorite and a 0 for the worst, and what you do wtih the rest is up to you. You can vote 10 for the favorite and 0 for all the rest, or whatever. There are two ways to analyze range votes: one is simple sum-of-votes, and the other is average vote. With sum-of-votes, abstaining on voting for a version is the same as voting 0 for it. With average voting, an abstention doesn't affect the average. My plan is to look at both figures.

(ec) And this is even less okay, especially the edit summary "Woonpton seems to have accepted the move of the !vote." after my strong objection to the move had already been registered. And this is likewise not okay, removing my struck comment and leaving the vote intact. You do not have permission to (1)move my votes, (2) remove my comments or my !votes. (3) edit my comments. Please cease and desist.Woonpton (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

(after reading intervening edits) You're simply wrong about the links. If you'll look at the link that was there when I voted, the link I voted for, it is the version of 19:54 September 17, 2008, just as I have said, not the version of the next day that you moved it to. Anyone looking can see that this is the case. Do not take any more action on my edits, please. I will do with my edits what I think is appropriate at the time I decide to do that; you may not. Thank you. Woonpton (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Woonpton, please AGF, again. When I wrote the "Woonpton seems to have accepted the move," that was when you had struck the text of the vote, which implied to me that you did accept the place of the vote, so I deleted that struck text, because in the poll section, there is no back and forth, no debating with comments, and, at that point, nobody had responded to your comment, so no reason to strike rather than delete. The goal here is consensus, Woonpton, I apologise for any offense. It can all be fixed if it's wrong, this is a wiki. The point is for the poll to show a simple result, and what's important is the most recent !vote in it, not how we got there. This is a little different from discussion process. Any of my edits touching your vote, you could have reverted, no problem, not edit warring. I almost put "revert if I'm wrong" in the edit summary but thought, no, that is implicit.

By the time I read the above request, I'd already moved Woonpton's vote back to where it's been said it should be. I'm not going to touch it again! This is a poll where !votes can be changed (by the editor who made them). Because, for a time, I believed that I'd made a mistake (it was a misunderstanding of how version numbers are used in certain contexts), I was totally confused about which version was which. The two versions are contiguous, so Pcarbonn's version can be referred to by the number of Shanahan's version with a paradoxical (counterintuitive to me) oldid reference, and I missed it. Won't do that again! --Abd (talk) 05:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Woonpton ended up removing the !votes entirely. (Quick summary: v1 and v2 -- both recent versions -- were rated 0, v3 was rated 7, there was no rating on v4.) That's up to that editor, but it's a bit mysterious to me why a transient problem with some confusion over version numbers and intention resulted in total removal, but editors in the poll subsection are completely free to change their !votes, including removing them , because !voting in that section is not debate, please delete rather than strike, or just change the rating number if you change your mind, and not only do you not have to explain, it's preferable that you don't. The status of the poll at any given time will show the sense of our opinions at that time, and, while there may be some trickiness to interpreting the poll, I think that after a couple of days, it will be obvious enough to ask an admin to make the reversion to prior version. This is much simpler, I expect, than trying to debate specific changes at this time. (If we had polling software, typically a user might change a vote at any time, and it would be the vote at close that mattered, not the intervening history.) If it were up to me, from universal practice in Parliamentary procedure, there would be no comments with !votes, they would be pure Yes or No votes, which has here, for polling purposes, been made more flexible by allowing intermediate ratings.

I added the matrix of diffs so that editors can quickly compare any pair of versions. It's quite sensible to give the same rating to versions, even if your opinion of them is different, perhaps doing what's called "bullet voting," i.e., yes or 10 for your favorite, and 0 for all the rest, but we will find consensus more quickly (usually) if there is more flexibility, either by fully accepting more than one version, or by giving an intermediate rating that is better than the worst and worse than the best. In real practice with Approval voting (all 0 or 10), there are usually rounds until some proposal has a majority. We'll have to feel this one out as we see how it goes, but one result is already obvious, both from the poll and from the prior discussion: nobody has been willing to acknowledge that they favor the article as it is. --Abd (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

[moved from being a response to the poll in the poll subsection to here. This subsection has also been moved up to precede the poll itself to give it prominence --Abd (talk) 14:11, 5 June 2009 (UTC)]

This is a totally ineffective way to progress on the article. Abd is not the person to lead discussions here. Mathsci (talk) 06:54, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Verbal chat 07:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Expected. Mathsci and Verbal, both of you have consistently pushed an anti-fringe agenda here of exactly the kind that got ScienceApologist banned. You do not appear to be here to improve the article, only to complain about an editor. The article is under protection due to edit warring from an editor with whom both of you have aligned in discussion. Nobody else was trying to deal with the protection, and I think you like it, because the article then says what you want, something that the community has rejected, the claim and bald statement that cold fusion is pseudoscience or pathological science. Definitely, there is old source that makes that claim, and it's part of the social history of cold fusion, but it's also clear that there is no peer-reviewed reliable scientific secondary source that claims this in recent years, and there is plenty of reliable source of all kinds, from this period, to show the opposite. Stop it, or properly seek editorial consensus. Don't like the poll above? You are not obligated to participate, nobody is. But please stop trying to disrupt efforts to determine consensus here. The poll above is nonbinding, and is not an RfC. It will be used to make a quick request for a change to a prior version, and the number one proposal was to a version that Hipocrite edited after proposing page protection. I'd allow the tags, to, but since he mangled the introduction, first, I pointed to the best available version that didn't toss all the prior work that he had, at least provisionally, accepted. All this does is to undo the gaming of protection. Please help or go away. --Abd (talk) 14:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, stop moving other people's on topic comments, you just confused the hell out of me. Also, don't forget to assume good faith. You can't just discount opinions because you term them "anti-fringe" - which I'm not, but it's hardly an insult. Verbal chat 14:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It's time for you to drop the stick and back away, again, Abd. Your proposed methodology is terribly complicated, and moving peoples votes is in poor form. I'll show you how we do things at the bottom of the page. Hipocrite (talk) 14:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, please try to avoid speaking for me. I accept no version that includes 4 body fusion or the Storms quote, currently. That I self reverted a misclick does not mean I accept something. Hipocrite (talk) 14:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• Agree that this poll is ineffective Abd is acting as if he owns this poll, moving others' comments and even their votes about. This is no way to run a poll, the results would be meaningless. --Noren (talk) 14:34, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• Agree that this poll should be closed and following the recent arbcom decision made against Abd's editing style he needs to stop filling this page with kilobytes of irrelevant material which is stifling discussion and often off topic. Verbal chat 14:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• Moot. Poll cannot be closed except by neutral admin, I'll stand with that. Noren, this poll is quite integrable with the alternate poll started below by Hipocrite. There was an error made by me in the revision numbers while I was working on the matrix, and, in the confusion it appeared to me that Woonpton had been looking at one version when !voting for it, when the permanent link had led the editor to another. I'd actually started out with the right permanent links, so that Woonpton's !vote was indeed in the right place, and it ended up back there, but after that Woonpton removed the !vote, reason not really explained. As to editing style, if I'm verbose, it's rejected. And if I'm succinct -- the poll itself here is ultra-succinct -- it's rejected. Instead, I'll let ArbComm speak for itself. I wasn't sanctioned for verbosity, and a host of editors, including Hipocrite and Verbal, tried their best to get me topic banned. It didn't fly. This whole process to find consensus on a version was occasioned by Hipocrite edit warring, requesting article protection, and then making a highly controversial edit that nobody is supporting, including Hipocrite, and you want to complain about my behavior? Your POV is showing, Noren. This poll is not an RfC. As to ownership, I asked, with this poll, a very specific question, and expect to be able to manage the process to get specific answers; no repression of comment has taken place, only organization of comment into sections, and I'll again, stand with that. I'm not going to reorganize Hipocrite's poll or try to remove or close it, even though it's the fox polling the chickens. Refactoring of Talk content for clarity is allowed. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• WP:NOTDEMOCRACY. Wikipedia doesn't work by making complicated polls that editors find themselves uncomfortable with, polls that have the explicit goal of "avoid[ing] debate"[33][34], polls that are WP:OWNed by one person who keeps moving stuff around, moving "!votes" from one poll to other, removing options that have no support when only one day or two have passed (I'm sorry, Abd, but "your poll" is a total mess). Wikipedia works by WP:CONSENSUS, which includes discussing arguments based in sources and policies. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
• Oh come on guys, whine whine whine. This is a little survey that you don't have to participate in if you don't want to. It serves as a nice, concise way to show people's opinions on the different versions under discussion, and for that it is helpful. But apparently it pains you too much to appreciate that -- instead it's an opportunity to attack - in rather creative ways i might add - and for what? Well I'm a little better informed about where a few people stand, and a little more annoyed and tired at all the pointless vitriol I've had to read in this comment section. I don't understand why such simple things must be made so difficult. Kevin Baas^talk 15:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Poll, reserved section

Please do not use for general comments or debate, only to propose additional revisions (please follow form already used) or to rate proposals. Comments or debate, beyond brief specifics about a version, should be in reserved comment subsection above.

Note that an alternate poll was started by Hipocrite below, at Talk:Cold_fusion#A_poll_to_determine_a_working_starting_point_for_this_article. This alternate poll does not include versions 1 or 2. Editors may !vote in either poll, or both, we can sort it out when analyzing !votes. Votes here are in the form of 0 - 10, with 0 indicating "worst" and 10 indicating "best." One may vote 0 or 10 or any other number for more than one version. In comparing this poll with the other poll, "Acceptable" will be interpreted as 10 and "unacceptable" as 0.

Editors may change their !votes here, as alternatives shift, what was the best version at one time may become the worst, by comparison.

v1. [35] proposed because it was an edit where Hipocrite accepted Coppertwig's edit, by self-reverting back to it after reverting, but before he changed the lead. --Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• 10. Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Krellkraver (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Kevin Baas^talk 14:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

v5. [36] this version was proposed by Hipocrite, and is the prior version as protected, 21 May, 2009. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• 5. Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Hipocrite, as reported by Abd (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 10. Verbal, as reported by Abd (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 10. Krellkraver, as reported by Abd (talk) 03:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 7. Kevin Baas^talk 15:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

v6. [37] version of 31 May also proposed by Hipocrite, plus Hipocrite added a single-word change, "most scientists" to "most physicists," per the source. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• 8. Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Hipocrite, as reported by Abd (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 10. Verbal, as reported by Abd (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 10. Krellkraver, as reported by Abd (talk) 03:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 8. Kevin Baas^talk 15:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

v7. 15:19 version of 14 May 2009. This is the current version as protected by William M. Connolley, restored at suggestion of GoRight, except that WMC added a POV tag to it. --Abd (talk) 01:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

• 0. Abd (talk) 01:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC) (votes are relative. this version is much better than what it replaced).
• 5. Krellkraver (talk) 17:52, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
• 5. Kevin Baas^talk 15:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

deprecated proposals, withdrawn by Abd

v2. [38] version as protected, proposed for comparison. --Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Clearly not NPOV, containing numerous opinionated statements without attribution or sourcing. Krellkraver (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC) [add !vote here} v3. [39] proposed by Kirk shanahan with the version of Sept. 17, 2008 is very much better than we have today, but certainly is not a finished work. --Abd (talk) 18:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Abd (talk) 04:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC) [add !vote here} v4. [40] above version involved substantial edits by Kirk shanahan. Pcarbonn accepted part and removed part, particularly unsourced POV. --Abd (talk) 01:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Abd (talk) 04:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC) [add !vote here}

Matrix for comparison of versions

Please fix any diff errors found here.

Extended content

This matrix is often innacurate at this point in time. Individuals who would like a corrected dif should feel free to approach me either here or on my talk page and I can provide them. Hipocrite (talk) 16:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC) I think maybe Hipocrite is correct, I'm checking it. Correction of errors is appreciated, but if there is an error in the top row, it may have been replicated down (this would have been part of the confusion over Woonpton's !vote). I'll fix it ASAP --Abd (talk) 16:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC) I believe all errors have been fixed, if not, please fix them! --Abd (talk) 17:33, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

version/version diffs	v1[41]	v5[42]	v6[43]	v7[44]
v1[45] 2009-06-01 02:54	*	[46]	[47]	[48]
v5[49] 2009-05-21 19:01	[50]	*	[51]	[52]
v6[53] 2009-05-31 16:51	[54]	[55]	*	[56]
v7[57] 2009-05-14 15:19	[58]	[59]	[60]	*

matrix edit signatures/notes: Abd (talk) 04:05, 5 June 2009 (UTC) created table.
Abd (talk) 16:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC) added v.5 and v.6.
Abd (talk) 17:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC) fixed errors and removed v. 3 and v. 4 for simplicity, no maintained support.
Abd (talk) 01:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC) removed no-support v2. added v7, current version (excepting POV tag) as restored from May 14

reference to add

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v106/i2/p330_1

thanks... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.86.201.173 (talk) 14:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Why? has nothing to do with 'cold fusion'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that's not true, Kirk, and you know why. But this article isn't the place for that source, it belongs with muon-catalyzed fusion, which is certainly fusion and it is certainly cold, but we keep the topics separate, largely because MCF is accepted and other forms of low energy nuclear reactions aren't, at least not generally. There are, in fact, other known LENR reactions that are accepted, such as the modification, sometimes drastic, of isotopic half-lives by the chemical environment, as with Be-7. We will have a bit of a problem here until we more accurately classify parts of the topic. MCF is a low-energy nuclear reaction, albeit not chemically catalyzed, as would be the claimed Pons and Fleischmann form. "Cold fusion" is a popular and colloquial term, with rather plastic meaning. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this guy said that everyone interested in cold fusion should read that paper, and therefore reference might be useful for this wikipedia article. 93.86.201.173 (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Duncan is not writing a Wiki article on CF, he is promoting a new idea he just discovered. Hopefully, with more study, he will discover his mistake. Time will tell. However, I repeat, no relevance to 'cold fusion' except one historical tidbit. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Hahaha, I wondered why you provided such an emotional response, and then i stumbled upon the paper titled "...to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion". 93.86.201.173 (talk) 15:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

No idea what you are talking about. Please explain. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Robert Duncan (physicist) didn't simply "discover" cold fusion, he was asked by CBS as a neutral physicist (skeptical, actually), to investigate the topic, and he read the literature and travelled to Energetics Technologies in Israel to see their work. (Note that a paper where Michael McKubre precisely replicates Energetics Technologies cold fusion work is included in the ACS Sourcebook. The idea that cold fusion experiments aren't reproducible is squashed old hat.) --Abd (talk) 00:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Dardik et al, of Energetic Technologies have slides from ICCF12 and a paper from ICCF14 (2008) posted on Rothwell's web site. In both, they show an artist's drawing of their calorimeter, which contains the thermocouples, which are designated Tcell and Tjacket. The drawing and these designations are for what is known as isoperibolic calorimetry. In the text of the ICCF14 paper, the claim to be using a flow calorimeter, but what they show is NOT that. Isoperibolic calorimetry is what F&P originally did and were critcized about in the '89 DOE review. Storms has written several times that flow calorimetry is superior to isoperibolic, and he even admits that iso. calor. 'might' be affected by the CCS (while flow certainly isn't, nevermind that his flow calorimetric data is what I analyzed to find the CCS.) And you expect me to believe them? And you even more expect me to trust the opinion of someone who is new to the field and thinks ET is a great company?? What planet do you live on? Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Earth. Why do you ask? Are you unfamiliar with our customs? There is a mailing list response to the above from Jed Rothwell and from Edmund Storms, quoted by Shanahan at permanent link, together with Shanahan's comment on that, which I found fascinating, in a perverse sort of way. It reveals the nature of this controversy, quite clearly. --Abd (talk) 17:54, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan writes as if it were simply Duncan being deluded by Energetics Technologies. However, I'd pointed to a 2008 paper by Michael McKubre replicating the ET work. Perhaps Duncan is new to the field. That cannot be said about McKubre, I think he started working on cold fusion in 1989. --Abd (talk) 17:54, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

A) MuKubre is as deluded as Duncan - how's that? Actually, he's worse, as he's been in the field for a long time and done lots of measurements. He is another of those people who have a highly vested interest in NOT accepting my explanations. He's spent millions of EPRI and other funder's dollars looking for CF. B) Where is this paper? C) My position on Duncan is that he is an unknown in the field, at least to me, and I follow the field somewhat closely, therefore he is unlikely to be aware of the controversy, especially since the CFers have actively suppressed my and Clarke's contributions in their propaganda. (See the comment by Storms in the section that Abd finds 'perversely' interesting.) What are Duncan's qualifications that makes him an 'expert' in this arena? D) The CCS arise from real causes. If one scientist sees a response that might be a CCS and calls it something else, I would *expect* someone trying to replicate to have a reaasonable shot at partially reproducing it. However, exact replication, the gold standard of science, is going to be nearly imposssible to attain if you don't understand what is going on. There, you end up trying to control the wrong things and not controlling the right. The upshot is that if you manage to get the effect, it likely will not be at the same levels or behave similarly to the work you're trying to replicate, which is a perfect description of CF research results. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan shows his colors clearly. Michael McKubre and Robert Duncan (physicist) are "deluded." Who the hell is Kirk Shanahan? Conspiracy theory? Here is one: they don't accept Shanahan's wild theory about CCS (CCS is a real possible problem, that's why his several papers were published, but Kirk makes it into a General Theory of Everything Wrong with Cold Fusion -- which has not been published) because they are the "vested interests."

So certain is he that he expresses his opinion without even seeing the research. Opinion precedes knowledge, that tells us exactly what we are dealing with. He's an expert, it's a shame, but his opinions are so heavily contaminated by his fifteen-year commitment to debunking cold fusion that he's worse than useless to us. The paper is published in the the peer-reviewed (according to the ACS) Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, Marwan and Krivit, published by the American Chemical Society, 2008, it's in the table of contents I put up here. "Replication of Condensed Matter Heat Production," Michael McKubre, with Tanzella, Dardik, Boher, Zilov, Greenspan, Sibilia, and Violante, pp 219-247. Dardik, I imagine, he might recognize if he knows current activity in the field. Sorry to say, Kirk, they don't mention your work. They do reference Storms. There are other papers on calorimetry in the book. And they likewise don't cite you. Is it because they are being unfair or biased, or because your work isn't important? I'll leave that question unanswered. I don't need to know.

Duncan? You really don't know why Robert Duncan (physicist) is considered important? I throw up my hands. He's not an "expert on cold fusion," if he were, you'd be claiming he's biased! he's a reputable physicist who was asked by CBS to look into Cold fusion, to get the view of a physicist, since it was rapid and strong opposition by physicists which created the whole image of junk science that plagued cold fusion for almost twenty years. The material Shanahan refers to was deleted by Verbal, someone who might, supposedly, agree with him -- I'd say it was entirely too embarrassing -- but here is a permanent link to it. I understand Shanahan's concept of CCS, and, frankly, that this is sufficient as an explanation for the body of work is preposterous; it's is truly fringe, it's not accepted by the mainstream and it's not accepted by the cold fusion researchers. He's not just alleging calorimetry error, he's alleging an anomalous phenomenon, I think he's theorized unexpected recombination at the surface of electrodes, plus a whole boatload of coincidences; he's consistently avoided the issue of correlation of results, i.e., correlation of helium with excess heat, radiation with excess heat, and he has many quite competent researchers being bumbling fools. All in the service of maintaining that he's right. I know, now, the research he criticizes well enough to know that his theories are bogus, he has developed a possible explanation for a certain class of CF experimental results, but of no relation at all to the rest of the work, which is now the bulk of it, and thus he simply resorts to whatever ad hoc explanation he comes up with, and frequently they make no sense. He has the pits on CR-39 detectors being burns (underwater) from bubbles of deuterium oxidizing. Except that the pits are conical, and CR-39 placed outside the cell, the other side of a thin window, shows the pits in reduced quantities (as expected for alpha radiation), and there are neutron "triple tracks," on the other side of the CR-39. If there is a layer of plastic over the CR-39, again, the levels are reduced, but the pits are still there. Pits from alpha particles have a characteristic appearance, pits from surface burns wouldn't look like this at all.

Shanahan imagines that nobody here understands his proposal for an anomalous effect that produces the localized heating, but that's part of his vision: the world doesn't recognize his work. --Abd (talk) 04:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This is Duncan speaking at the Missouri Energy Summit. Yes, he mentions the paper, and recommends it as one of the best papers he's ever read. We do need to mention muon-catalyzed fusion when we mention the Coulomb barrier as supposedly insurmountable except through the brute force of high temperature. That much, certainly, is relevant here. There are some theories of cold fusion that assert other forms of catalysis or intervention that may also lower or bypass the coulomb barrier. Hydrino theory, for example, with the reduced electron orbits that are hypothesized, could allow electrons to serve for the same kind of shielding of the repulsive forces that muons accomplish. Normal electrons can't do it. Others assert some kind of distributed electron effect, if I understand it. Hydrino theory is sufficiently notable that we can mention it. Still, we wouldn't cite this article here, but at muon-catalyzed fusion. We would simply refer to MCF here, where it's appropriate. MCF is generally mentioned when considering this topic. For example, Hoffman mentions it in 1995 (see our bibliography, it's page 10. --Abd (talk) 17:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the speech is excellent, going over the history and why cold fusion was so vehemently rejected so quickly. Basically, he notes that the P-F announcement by press conference diverted maybe 60% of the NSF research budget, immediately, into cold fusion verification work. But P and F, when they exhausted their original supply of palladium, and got more, found no excess heat. Oops! And other researchers, using different palladium as well, found the same. No results. They were pissed, quite understandably believing that they'd been duped or deceived, maybe deliberately, or at least by very bad research work. However, buried in the noise was other replication by a few researchers, and that continued, and the researchers learned what conditions work to generate excess heat and what ones didn't, to the point that many groups are now reporting very high reproducibility, even 100%. The P-F method remains difficult, I don't think anyone is asserting 100% following the P-F method, but other methods do seem to reach that, such as codeposition, which avoids the whole problem of reaching deuterium saturation in bulk palladium, or nanoparticle palladium alloy gas-loading, as in Arata's work in Japan. Peer-review published, by the way, all of it. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Peer review doesn't prevent fraud, nor does it prevent people who are sympathetic to a viewpoint from putting in something awful. The reality is that peer review isn't really designed to detect sloppy science, so if you make a mistake, but make it impossible to tell that you made that mistake on cursory examination, chances are you'll pass peer review. The REAL peer review is when everyone else in the world reads it and criticizes it. People stretch their results all the time in papers which pass peer review. The reproducibility, as far as I'm concerned, is 0% - nothing useful has come of it, it hasn't done anything useful, and no one useful has reproduced the result. People report effects all the time, but unless and until they build something out of it, it remains nonexistent. This may sound harsh, but as someone who has read numerous papers claiming genes do various things, I can tell you that many, perhaps most papers making such claims are in fact wrong, and publication bias, as well as the bias of the authors of the paper, play a huge role in this. People doing such research have great vested research in the effect being useful, and I see scientists convinced that something which is obviously worthless will someday pan out, despite seeing math myself which demonstrated that what they're working on will never pan out, either being already inferior to what exists or simply not being feasible to do in the first place.

Anyone who is interested in science has to gain the ability to read papers and see whether or not they're useful. This stinks of uselessness, and ergo, I don't think it is particularly worthwhile. You can publish about claimed effects all you want, but until you or someone else makes something based on the effect, it almost certainly doesn't exist. Titanium Dragon (talk) 02:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we should put a note in muon-catalyzed fusion that it doesn't exist, based on this argument. There has been tremendous confusion over an assumption that the reliable source guideline means that particular sources satisfying it should be actually true or actually reliable. No source is infallible, peer-reviewed papers can be based on fraud, may have errors large or small, etc. However, the assumption in the guideline is that papers published as described establish notability. Notable facts should be in the encyclopedia; how we handle fraud would be to balance the fraudulent publication with other reliable source showing the fraud. If there is a fact asserted in a reliable source, as defined in our guidelines, then we have something potentially notable. Some RS peer-reviewed research is primary source. But when there is coverage of these primary sources in a reliable secondary source, then we have clear notability, it's no longer isolated primary source. Encyclopedias are about knowledge, not necessarily practical application. It is possible that there will be no major practical applications for low energy nuclear reactions, the effects may be too fragile; on the other hand, I wouldn't bet on it. I can already think of one application for the existing LENR technology. Secret, of course, though it's not rocket science. If I actually start to do something with it, I'd immediately become COI (and I would disclose this).

(Plenty of things have been made based on the effect, such as the co-deposition cells of the U.S. Navy SPAWAR group. What are they used for? For demonstrating the effect! Reliably. They are nifty devices, also, for pitting CR-39 plastic in patterns that certainly look like those of alpha particles, and, as well, a few neutrons, and for fogging X-ray film, in case you want to do that.) I think that something should be made very clear here: this article is about science. Fleischmann's research wasn't about solving the world's energy problems, it was about exploring the boundaries and limits of quantum mechanics. He found an example where standard QM, apparently, is inadequate to deal with the complexities of the condensed matter environment, to more accurately predict nuclear behavior, Quantum electrodynamics may be needed. It was pure science research, not engineering, but his discovery pointed to what might become, with a lot of work, an engineering reality. He estimated that it would take a "Manhattan-scale" project to realize this. It is not simple to scale up the effect he found. My concern is the science, not hype about free energy or whatever. And here, my concern is what we can present based on reliable source, by the Wikipedia definitions.

There are plenty of anecdotal reports of "heat after death," often with very substantial amounts of heat generated, but nobody has found how to make this happen reliably, so far, it's not reproducible. If it could be figured out how to control this, there would be something quite practical. But there are other forms of generating heat (and radiation, and helium) from palladium deuteride that are reliable, but low-level, not useful for anything but demonstrating the effect, and we have not only the primary sources, but reliable secondary source on this. Excess heat from palladium deuteride has been confirmed in 153 peer-reviewed papers, and those publications have continued. We are, here, working on building an encyclopedia, not in arguing over the reality of cold fusion. Quite simply, that's irrelevant. What's relevant is what is in reliable source; we sometimes discuss the "reality" here, but only for background, and editors can cheerfully disregard it. If it doesn't go in the article, and if it doesn't help editors understand the topic, it can quietly disappear into the archives, and it doesn't matter. --Abd (talk) 03:18, 5 June 2009

Thing is, the reliable source guideline is often misinterpreted in the way you are misinterpreting it; just because something appears in a reliable source does not mean that Wikipedia should include it, should include it uncritically, or even that it is notable. I understand what a reliable source is; it is a criteron for usability as a source. Being found in a reliable source doesn't mean it is NPOV, though (it seldom is), which means we have to adapt it, or consider whether it is useful at all for our purposes. If something is highly dubious or controversial, even if it does show up in a reliable source, that does not necessarily mean we should include it on Wikipedia; typically speaking, we shouldn't, as Wikipedia isn't a Crystal Ball, and if we are unable to write a NPOV entry about it (as something which is new, incredibly dubious, but obviously hasn't been specifically disputed yet because it is new or simply isn't noteworthy in the first place, as cold fusion articles tend not to be as they are seen as pathological science and therefore receive relatively little attention) we shouldn't be writing about it at all, as most likely it actually isn't notable. Just because a paper has been written about it, or a newspaper article, does not mean it is actually notable. Recentism is bad, and there's a reason there are so many junky articles about recent events and so few about random events in 1893. This is not to say we cannot include new papers or research on Wikipedia, but we should be very cautious in so doing, as we have to keep in mind that it may not really be noteworthy or worthy of inclusion. This is particularly true in this case; cold fusion is not viewed as plausible by most scientists, and as such a random article about cold fusion is unlikely to be specifically rebutted but is very likely not to be worthwhile at all, because it probably isn't notable in the first place, and probably doesn't contain useful content. The consensus of the scientific community is that cold fusion is nothing more than bad measurements, and as such papers about cold fusion are very unlikely to be noteworthy at all because no one comments on them but a small community convinced that the effect is real. There are parapsychologists, but that doesn't mean that scientists consider that science either. Our ultimate goal is verifiable accuracy. Claiming that cold fusion is science is the opposite of that. Titanium Dragon (talk) 08:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on the statemant "cold fusion is not viewed as plausible by most scientists" --so what? The article can say that, fine. BUT that is no excuse for anyone to try to prevent CF data from being included in the article. Data has precedence over theory, for any REAL scientist. My biggest issue here is that almost all the anti-CF data is about 20 years old and despite that, constantly keeps getting referenced, while new data has been steadily accumulating since (some of it in ways that specifically address some of the "bad measurements" claims). Since when, in any scientific field, does old data ALWAYS trump new data? (Note to Kirk S: this is not about interpretations of the data; we are both agreed that lots of new data has been collected, right?) V (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

TD, you've made several mistakes. First, no claim has been made that just because something appears in a reliable source, it must be permitted. However, if something appears in multiple independent reliable sources, exclusion starts to look like it's POV motivated, and your continued argument shows a very clear POV that isn't something we can have in the article; it's there now because it was asserted by an editor who requested page protection, then immediately added it. And when there is a secondary source, a peer-reviewed review of the field, excluding it becomes almost certain to be POV-pushing, and when there are multiple secondary peer-reviewed sources, and they are all being excluded, it's certain. The only argument for exclusion in this situation would be multiple sources of equal or better quality rejecting these reviews as junk. And in that case, really, inclusion of both would be warranted, with proper balance. Do not mistake "inclusion" for "presenting as fact."

But this isn't the situation. The situation is that we have a pile of secondary sources, peer-reviewed, plus independent academic source, treating cold fusion as a scientific reality, with no sources of equivalent quality that are recent, I know of nothing in the last six years. Your previous engineering argument is totally bogus, the existence of practical application is not relevant. The alleged consensus of the scientific community, taken as a whole, might be as you state. It's probably not the consensus of chemists, at this point -- unclear -- it might be the consensus of physicists, but we have some notable defectors, and, remember, three Nobel prize-winning physicists supported cold fusion, two directly, one supporting that research should be done. The 2004 DoE review very definitely treated cold fusion as science; that is, the field of research is science. That is not the same, in general, as agreeing that low-energy nuclear reactions actually take place, aside from a few accepted examples (muon-catalyzed fusion, alteration of isotopic half-lives by chemical environment, and one might classify the Mossbauer effect as related). But if we only based our text on recent secondary peer-reviewed source, many reviews, last five years, we'd present cold fusion as a fact. In 2004, the DoE review, with all its problems, still showed 6/18 experts concluding that evidence for nuclear reactions was somewhat persuasive, half concluded that evidence for excess heat, anomalous, unexplained by accepted theory, was "convincing." This isn't pseudoscience. It is controversial science. You seem to be triply confused. Please reconsider. --Abd (talk) 11:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Links available for article, mostly convenience copies.

Some additional links have been whitelisted to lenr-canr.org, based on a list I came up with from pages there which could be used as convenience links. They are:

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BockrisJaccountabi.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BushBFheliumprod.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HublerGKanomalousea.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBpathologic.pdf
• http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html
• http://lenr-canr.org/DetailOnly.htm
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf

Beyond convenience links, the last three are direct links to the bibliography (two forms, the master set of frames, and then the detailed, complete bibliography -- the master, top-level set doesn't have all lead authors in the list, I've found). Rothwell actually recommended the DetailOnly form, thus actually breaking his prior claim that he didn't want to be helpful), and the final link is to Rothwell's study of peer-reviewed publications, largely based on the bibliography of Dieter Britz, which I requested for our use here in Talk, though the important stuff in it is quite verifiable. I expect I'll be adding the convenience links to existing references, if somebody doesn't beat me to it. After the article is unprotected, of course.

It was a bit of work to get these whitelisted, there are some editors who really didn't want to see it happen, the discussion is at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3)

If it is missing from the current reference, there is bibliographic date, DOI, etc., in the discussion there on the specific link involved, in the end, each link got its own discussion section.

I only requested the first half, alphabetically, of the possible convenience links from the current bibliography, so there will be a few more, I expect. --Abd (talk) 03:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

As you felt that the discussion of the use of these links was better handled here, I would oppose the use of Fleischmanbackground.pdf and HublerGKanomalousea.pdf as a general rule.

• Fleischmanbackground.pdf is a preprint version of the one published in World Scientific. It isn't too bad, but we're referencing the World Scientific version, not the preprint. Thus it would be incorrect to link to the preprint.
• HublerGKanomalousea.pdf is the slides of the presentation of the paper. The article references the paper. Therefore we can't link the reference to the slides.

I don't have any particular concerns with the other papers, though. - Bilby (talk) 11:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Bilby, I argued at the whitelisting discussion that content decisions weren't to be made by admins through the blacklist, unless that is clearly necessary, so whitelisting doesn't automatically establish that any particular use is approved. The Fleischman paper may technically be a preprint, but there are two possibilities for use: first, an explicit link as a preprint, or, second, that we verify that the preprint is an accurate copy of the original. With some publishers, such as Elsevier, it's prohibited to make copies of the actual publication and distribute them for general viewing without permission, but authors may upload preprints and make them available, and they may edit the preprints to match the actual publication. In the case of Fleischmannbacground, the paper has been independently published, in Low energy nuclear reactions sourcebook, edited by Marwan and Krivit, American Chemical Society, 2008, pp 19-36, and I have that here on my desk, so I can verify the preprint.

In this case, the paper is important to us as what was originally self-published, in effect, Fleischmann's own account of the history of the affair. The preprint recounts that history also directly from the author, even if it's not an exact copy. So we could link to the preprint itself, as a source. Probably the differences are moot, but I haven't actually done the detailed verification yet. Thanks for pointing out the objection.

As to Hubler, we would link to the slides as exactly what they are, slides prepared by the author to accompany a lecture based on the published paper. That's useful to our readers, I'd assert, and, as long as it is not represented as being the paper itself, it's not deceptive. Someone with a copy of the paper -- I could try to get one -- could also verify that the slides don't deviate radically from the paper, perhaps by introducing some wild idea that wouldn't have been supported by the editors of the actual publication.

And thanks for the general approval of the other links. --Abd (talk) 18:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I suspect linking to preprints will be generally problematic. One of the main reason preprints exist is to get around copyright agreements. The author is not permitted to distribute the final version, so they distribute the final version - 1. If they re-edit the preprint to match the final version, it is no longer a preprint. In terms of the slides, they are of no value. Linking to them will tend to be very problematic, as slides are designed to be given in the context of the speech. Take out the speech, and you don't know why the information was presented. I don't see them as a convenience, but as potentially providing incorrect information. - Bilby (talk) 19:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that slides are useless if the ref is to a paper. However, preprint versions are usually the final versions, but before the "camera ready" changes are made. I don't see a problem, in general, with using preprints - but each link needs justification, as does use of the problematic site lenr-canr.org. Verbal chat 19:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. I can cope with preprints - it's simply that academically I might use a preprint to decide if the paper is important, but as I would reference the final version it seems odd to link to anything but the final version. But I agree that they changes are going to be very minor, and mostly relate to layout and the like, so they will tend to be useful. And that's probably enough. :) - Bilby (talk) 19:53, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

A poll to determine a working starting point for this article

You may add simple history links along with a short description of the article you suggest. If there is some sort of hybrid version (prior protected version with paragraph x from current version), then please try to be clear an succinct about it. Try to avoid adding links that are obviously unacceptable to the "other" side, like ones that call Cold Fusion a pathological science or include explanations about 4body fusion, regardless of how absolutely correct that version might be.

Prior protected version

[61] Hipocrite (talk)

Acceptable

1. Hipocrite (talk) 14:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
2. Verbal chat 15:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
3. Krellkraver (talk) 01:30, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Prior protected version with some seemingly innocuous changes

[62] Additonally, changes in this diff are included. Suggested by Hipocrite (talk)

Acceptable

1. Hipocrite (talk) 14:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
2. Verbal chat 15:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
3. Krellkraver (talk) 01:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

I don't object to either of the two earlier versions. I do think the lead paragraph should be more about the definition and scope of the article (as I suggested/proposed/wrote on this page some days ago), than about conclusions, primarily because the topic is, indeed, controversial. V (talk) 18:09, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

No objection to either of these earlier versions. Both are clearly preferable to the current protected version. Krellkraver (talk) 01:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion on the poll

I object to this new poll as splitting and confusing work on this issue. This poll entirely duplicates the poll above. I will add the prior protected version to the poll above. (But when it comes time to assay consensus on versions, !votes from here might be integrated with what is above, it's easy to do that by considering support here, unless there is a more refined vote from the same editor above, as if it were a 10 above, and specific opposition to a version, or easily inferred opposition, as a 0. Hipocrite caused the protection first by edit warring, by requesting protection, and then mangling the lead while he knew protection was pending. Above, I proposed as v1 the version that he had accepted, except for tags he added after making huge changes to the introduction that he must have know wouldn't be acceptable, and he doesn't even propose his own final version here, and it is the current protected state. --Abd (talk) 15:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Your unique methology and percieved vote tampering (I decline to comment on the accuracy of that perception) has depreciated your odd experiment in polling. Hipocrite (talk) 15:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

And I told you above not to put words in my mouth. I accept nothing. My self-revert of a misclick should not be read to include me as accepting anything. Hipocrite (talk) 15:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec with below) It may seem like an experiment to you, Hipocrite, but this is only slightly more sophisticated than Approval voting, which I've seen used to rapidly find consensus in real life. Your edit record showed that you reverted an editor, immediately, next minute, then undid it two minutes later and did not remove the same material (had you not self-reverted, you'd have been at 3RR and much more likely to be dinged by an RfPP admin) and then you made massive non-reversion (?) modifications to the lead, pending protection, and then you added tags. Basically, v1 above undoes what you did after you requested protection. Didn't accept the changes that you tagged? If you had merely tagged, instead of editing in a way that you clearly know, from your comments above, would be provocative and unacceptable to most editors, you'd have your tags, even protected in, and we wouldn't be going through this exercise. Yes, there was "perceived vote tampering," but, remember, this is a wiki and all changes are visible, I apologized and clearly was attempting to handle the editor's vote according to the editor's intention. It's moot now; I hope the editor reconsiders and expresses an opinion. "I accept nothing." Interesting. Explains a lot. --Abd (talk) 15:36, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

You're going to have to try working with me, as opposed to against me on this, Abd. Please try to find a solution that everyone will be happy with - for instance, you suggest above that we revert to your preferred version, though you are fully aware that a score of other editors would be dissatisifed with that. I don't propose we revert the article to my preferred version (in fact, the article has never touched my preferred version), because I'm not trying to win a conflict with you, I'm trying to fix an encyclopedia article. Please try to refocus on the article, as opposed to your consistant drumbeat of discord against me. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 15:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Your personal position on that material isn't consensus, Hipocrite. I picked that one version because (1) if you had sincerely requested page protection to stop edit warring, you'd not have made massive new changes. That edit is the page as of your request for protection, just before your edits making changes you knew would be unacceptable. Sure, it's my preferred version of all the versions listed. You are trying to "fix" an article that reflected, when you started, a developed consensus that was still in process. You used reversion as an editorial tool to prevent the addition of sourced material to the article, asserting "unreliable source" for sources that do meet WP:RS, quite clearly, and without the kind of conflict between sources that would justify weighing source details, appealing to content judgement of sources; and you were clearly willing to edit war to maintain your position; the only thing that prevented earlier edit wars from arising was that other editors didn't oppose. They, including myself, started to insist, hence the two edit warring episodes. You misrepresented it at RfPP, I wasn't edit warring with you at all on June 1. An editor who hadn't been active here did hit 2RR, and if you had insisted on the 4-d fusion matter, you'd have hit 3RR, that's the only thing that stopped you. You gamed the system, it's blatant, and it's been seen and acknowledged. There is nothing wrong with me proposing that version; it's up to the community of editors rate it. It's not being pushed, my poll was deliberately designed to avoid debate and to focus on simple comparisons. This has gone beyond the pale, Hipocrite. I think you know that, and I think you don't care.--Abd (talk) 17:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Since a number of editors have objected to "Abd's poll", this one seems superior for many reasons. Verbal chat 15:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I've integrated them, above. You prefer to !vote here, your privilege. Polls will be interpreted by an admin deciding to look at editor consensus. --Abd (talk) 15:36, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Admins don't rule on content, Abd. Hipocrite (talk) 15:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

That's right, Hipocrite. They can interpret polls, though, judging consensus is indeed what an admin does in reviewing a request to edit an article under protection. --Abd (talk) 16:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

No admin is going to accept a {{editprotected}} that doesn't have all of the principal actors on the same page. Please try to come to some sort of agreement with the rest of us in a format we can understand, without cluttering things up too much. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 16:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Please don't jump to conclusions. I'm doing nothing to stand in the way of agreement. I accepted your proposal on temporary topic ban, you did not acknowledge. I wasn't involved other than making a single new edit in the last edit warring, Hipocrite, and the other editors who were haven't shown up yet. Give it some time. Your proposed versions are included in my version of the poll, so what is the problem, exactly? You don't like my poll, you can ignore it, editors can make their own choice. Or they can !vote in both. Doesn't matter. I think your starting a separate poll was disruptive, and that's, again, how I will proceed. But I'm not in charge. --Abd (talk) 16:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it too much to ask to post a diff between the two versions? Kevin Baas^talk 15:38, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

What diff would you like? Between what and what? Hipocrite (talk) 15:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

All the diffs between all six proposed versions are above in the original poll section, in the subsection Matrix for comparison of versions. --Abd (talk) 16:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I just want to say that I am abstaining from any polls unless one can be produced which is MUCH simpler to understand. In particular, it is confusing that there are so many differences between the versions in the table above. I am not saying I don't have opinions; rather I am saying I have no confidence that complicated polls like this will help build consensus. Olorinish (talk) 17:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Olorinish. In my section, you can just vote 10 for any version you prefer -- pick one or more! -- and 0 for any version you don't like. And you can abstain from any version you don't want to consider. It's complicated because editors suggested old versions, where the diffs are outrageously different. I'd have kept it much simpler, to just two or three recent versions.... but I was duty-bound to include whatever suggestions were made. You may just want to consider the four recent versions, in my scheme these are versions 1, 2, 5, 6. If a little more time passes, and there is no more support for 3 and 4, I might, with consent, eliminate those, which would make it all much simpler. Let me point out that this isn't an RfC. This is intended as a quick process to pick a version to revert to, to deal with the mess from the edit warring. It's gotten much more complicated because Hipocrite set up a separate poll. You could, if you like, ignore the table above. You could just !vote on the versions Hipocrite suggested, or any others. In my section, I voted on the Hipocrite versions, they aren't bad, so if people want to seek consensus here, I'm certainly not standing in the way. The Hipocrite versions simply lose a little work, that's why they aren't tens. What I'm really seeing here is that versions 5 and 6, which was the status quo before Hipocrite started edit warring again, have strong support. Nobody supports the version that Hipocrite created while waiting for RfPP to do the deed, so nobody supports the current version. Doesn't matter. Pick one, pick many, pick all.

In fact, I'm going to strike versions 3 and 4. No support has appeared for them, except for the withdrawn transient support from Woonpton. If someone disagrees, they are welcome to revert me. --Abd (talk) 17:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

The withdrawal of my vote did not indicate a withdrawal of my support for version 3; it indicated a withdrawal of my support for the poll itself and my faith in the possibility that the poll could yield a valid measurement of consensus, the way it has been conducted. I won't revert the removal of the option I voted for; I don't intend to get in an edit war over this, but I think it shows something about the process that the option has been removed as gathering no support, a mere day after it was added. I wish you all well with the mediation. I will not participate further here; I just wanted to register a final objection to this poll as deeply flawed. I hope that objection will be noted when an independent observer judges the consensus or lack thereof. Woonpton (talk) 21:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It indicates whatever Woonpton thinks it indicates, but it does not, withdrawn, indicate to the rest of us any support for that version. I was the one who put that version in the poll, just trying to be complete and be accommodating to Shanahan. It was a mistake, it's very difficult to compare the old version with the recent ones because of massive reorganization of the article. Further, when I examined it in detail, it's an utterly unacceptable version: it was Shanahan before he stopped editing because of his COI, and he was massively promoting his own work, unsourced, with quite controversial statements without sources. So, with the withdrawn !vote, there was no expressed support for it in the poll, so I collapsed it. It could be brought back, but it would just confuse matters here and I recommend against anything that makes this more complex than it already is. We now have four versions, including the current protected version that nobody is admitting to support, not even Hipocrite, who made it happen. All the other three are acceptable to some degree, and all three are preferred to the protected version, as can be seen by the !votes in the original poll and this one. With a bit more opportunity for editors to make a choice, I think it will be reasonably clear how to proceed. Hipocrite has pretty much declared "over my dead body" over the Be-8 section; only problem is, that section was supported by three reliable sources: one primary reliable source, the Takahashi paper itself, a fresh publication in the ACS sourcebook, which is peer-reviewed, by the secondary academic source Storms (2007, World Scientific), and by the peer-reviewed usage of the theory in Naturewissenschaften (Mosier-Boss, 2009). The latter paper was already accepted as reliable source for this article, and the only basis for rejection of the first two sources is quite clear to me as POV argument from conclusions. But there is no emergency about this, so what happens with regard to how much weight we put on the heels-dug-in position -- which is what led to edit warring and protection -- may depend on the status of the editor at that point.

Meanwhile, possibly to avoid an immediate block (suspicious interpretation) or in an effort to resolve the dispute quickly (AGF interpretation), Hipocrite offered to agree to, on the face, a mutual topic ban on editing the article. I accepted this, but Hipocrite has not replied acknowledging clarification of conditions, see User:Abd/0rr so I'm left with no clear idea if there is a topic ban or not, Hipocrite has not responded to questions about this, and does not allow me to edit his Talk page, and this is why I tend away from the AGF position. The idea of this was to assure unprotecting admins that edit warring wasn't going to break out again. It's a mess, folks. (I don't really need to edit the article. I don't edit war -- normally, try to find another example -- and I can efficiently propose content in a way that is described on my Talk page discussion of the mutual ban). Any banned or COI editor could do that. --Abd (talk) 22:50, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I have reported votes from this poll in the other poll, which compares not only the two versions above, but also the version at the point where Hipocrite requested protection, just before editing the lead, probably the most "advanced version" with some improvements accepted, and the version as currently protected, restored from May 14 by WMC at GoRight's suggestion and Hipocrite's consent. I have not, however, reported any !votes from that discussion, which was separate, meaning that we had three separate discussions going on the same topic, a tad irregular. --Abd (talk) 01:31, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Mediation process

I have been asked to mediate this content dispute. I have set up a separate page for this mediation here. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I've responded to the page, but when I finally looked at the request, it wasn't for mediation on a content dispute, and the level of content dispute that we have is small, actually, above there are two polls and right now they show a tentative consensus for reverting to the version of May 31. The request was for Cryptic to "mediate a discussion what method we should use to determine what stable version we can come to agreement on on the talk page."

This is mediating over transient process. It's possible that the purpose of the mediation will change and that it could become useful, but spending more time dealing with how to decide how we decide? We currently have enough consensus to choose a version, and an admin could immediately implement that. From a shallower and quick discussion below, we are now at a version better than the originally protected one, but some substantial work has been lost. I see one possible purpose: to find a method for continuously gauging consensus on the article.

I'm going to modify my poll to reflect the new present version, so comparisons can easily be made and polled. The poll was designed to do that, it could even serve as a standing poll. So maybe we will mediate over this general question, which would then be worthwhile. --Abd (talk) 00:30, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

AN/I report

I have reported the vote-moving incident to AN/I. Woonpton (talk) 19:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

A simple proposal?

I have not really contributed any content to this page, but by means of full disclosure I was involved in some of the ArbComm discussions regarding the Jed Rothwell "banning" and I have collaborated with Abd in the past on various topics.

I do not wish to start yet another poll, and I do think that neutral mediation would be of great benefits under these circumstances so I encourage those involved to engage in the process that is being proposed. In the interim, however, the content of the page as it has currently been protected is clearly controversial among those who are actively involved here, as is the version previously protected by wikipedia user WMC. This latter part is an assumption based solely on the fact that the page was protected in the middle of an edit war which never seems to leave things in a non-controversial state.

I would recommend reverting all the way back to 15:19, 14 May 2009. I selected that version for the following reasons:

1. It pre-dates BOTH of the most recent edit wars.
2. It was last changed by someone other than Abd or Hipocrite.
3. It somehow managed to stand on its own from a whopping 5 days (give or take).

Any work that is lost can easily be reapplied within the context of a mediation moving forward.

Thoughts from those actually involved here?

--GoRight (talk) 20:26, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Not ideal but acceptable as well. Hipocrite (talk) 20:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. Unfortunately if there was an ideal solution we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Either way, it was just a thought that tried to be even handed to both sides. --GoRight (talk) 20:37, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Shoot, GoRight. What you just did greatly complicated efforts here. There had been opportunity to fix any problems with prior protected version, nobody had complained about protection then, it was fine. Above, there is polling on four version. You just added a fifth. Without doing any comparisons, really. The version 1 above was last changed by *Hipocrite*. He now claims that this wasn't acceptance, but he claims a lot. There had been continual use of reverts from Hipocrite prior to 14 May, the revert warring on May 21 did result in some of the proposed material getting in, and consensus had settled on it. So you undid a lot of work. I wish you had respected existing process, any of the three versions above that weren't the current revision would have been better than what WMC implemented based on your suggestion

Nothing I have done is binding on anyone, Abd. It was just a suggestion to go back to what looked like the latest version prior to the edit warring, or at least what looked like the edit warring. If you don't like this suggestion, don't accept it. If there are better versions to revert to, then fine. You can still see how the voting goes but with two competing polls I'm not sure how you're going to be able to resolve anything. --GoRight (talk) 02:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

as is the version previously protected by wikipedia user WMC - slipped out of my memory. Am I involved? Anyway, I've done your bidding William M. Connolley (talk) 22:26, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I was merely referring to this. I don't think you were involved other than you were the one that protected the page. The edit warring was apparently with others. --GoRight (talk) 02:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

So I did, and indeed my notice is still on this talk page. How my memory fails me. I'll peruse this page a little William M. Connolley (talk) 19:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

WMC, this change could greatly complicate our process here. As you might recall, the last protection was due to edit warring between Hipocrite and myself. The current protection was due to edit warring between Hipocrite and other editors. He did revert me, but I didn't revert him. I didn't revert anybody this time. Please, we had high consensus, above, on *three* versions, looking at the two polls, where highest consensus on the version of 31 May as proposed by Hipocrite, where Hipocrite and Verbal both approved it and I rated it as 8/10. Now we'd need to compare the versions to an additional version, since you did not unprotect. I can assure you that I won't edit war, and there is an agreement between us that would nail that down at User talk:Abd#0rr, a section started on my Talk by Hipocrite. I recommend that you unprotect, immediately, the article, and I'd propose, then, that we -- any one of us can do it -- edit the article to the version of 31 May as proposed by Hipocrite, which has one more change to it that was made by me (that would be manually added.) --Abd (talk) 23:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see, wikipedia user WMC has already acted on my proposal. I hadn't really expected that since I am totally uninvolved with this page's content myself. My intention was simply to solicit opinions from others who are involved (meaning more than just Abd and Hipocrite), hence my query at the end. With such prompt response maybe I should make a few proposals on the global warming pages too while the iron appears to be hot?  :) --GoRight (talk) 03:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm amending the rating poll to show this current version, removing the original protected version as having no support, in spite of solicited opportunity to simply express it with a signature (doesn't that say something about the editor who created that version?) There is no mediation planned to deal with actual content, the request was only over process. I'm not abandoning mediation entirely, maybe the purpose will shift. --Abd (talk) 02:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I apologize, Abd, it was not my intent that this proposal be acted upon unless consensus had been reached here among those editors involved (more than just Abd and Hipocrite) prior to the change. I was only seeking to propose for consideration a version that appeared somewhat neutral relative to the recent edit warring.

I see no reason that the current polling can't continue but I do suggest that you stop removing options even if they have no support. Changing the options in real time while the polling is on-going is probably not a good idea. Adding additional options would be fine, removing anything not so fine.

If the polling or the mediation finds consensus on a different version it can easily be switched back to that before moving forward. --GoRight (talk) 03:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Removing options has only been done when there was no support for them. That's with my poll, which is intended as a running summary of results, and as a tool for comparing versions, because of the matrix, and editors were complaining about the complexity. Can't win, I guess. Basically, I "proposed" all the versions in my poll, I could have just asked for approval for my preferred version, which was simply what we'd have had if Hipocrite had simply stopped edit warring and making provocative edits, or if he'd have simply stopped when requesting page protection. Requesting page protection, then making new drastic changes to the article in a way that he knew and knows quite well would find little or no support, that's gaming the system, blatantly. H got the article his way for about four days as a result, and now he's still got the reversal of changes that had been accepted by consensus. There were only a couple of actually controversial parts.

The goal of the polling I started was to quickly find the most acceptable version without debate. So what did Hipocrite do? Started a completely independent poll that split up the !votes and created more debate. Why? Why couldn't he have just added those versions to the list in the original poll? The questions asked are really the same. So I've been copying !votes from the second poll to the first, so that there is one summary. If I make a mistake, someone please correct it. The original poll, though, was set up as a range poll, so that more sophisticated expression of preference can be made than just Accept/Reject. (In copying votes, I copy an Accept as 10 and a Reject as 0. If someone wants to shift their vote, please do. An explicit vote at the original poll supersedes a vote at the second poll. And because new versions can be added, it's okay to change one's own votes based on new comparisons.

The September versions were removed because the article had changed so massively since then that comparisons were difficult, and no support was maintained for them. The original version 2 was the current version at the time, as protected, and nobody supported that version, not even Hipocrite who edited it to that state.

(It shouldn't matter, in the end, where an editor !votes, consider those precincts. The earlier fancier precinct has a more sophisticated voting machine, but most people tend to vote the extremes anyway. Before we announce a consensus, there would be opportunity to clear up any misunderstandings.

I do think we might maintain some kind of running approval poll of a few versions, so that we have evidence of acceptance of versions by consensus, which would mean that if we run into article protection again, we have a quick go-to point that has been widely accepted.--Abd (talk) 03:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This reply grew to be more long-winded that I had expected, but ...

I believe that problem here, Abd, is that people expect the list of options to remain stable throughout the duration of the !voting. Again, adding new choices is OK but removing choices because they don't have support is not OK. Touching people's !votes in any way or even making the logical transposition you are between Hipocrite's poll and your equivalent versions will likewise be viewed as bad form. I'm not saying you are technically doing anything wrong, just that you are stepping into thin ice territory needlessly, IMHO. This will definitely color the credibility of your results regardless of whether your changes actually affected anything or not. That's just a reality.

So, for example, in your section which gathers the raw votes I would (a) expect to still see V2-4 in there with no !votes under them, and (b) I would not expect to see any votes transcribed by you from Hipocrite's poll into yours. Leave that for the !voter to do for themselves if that is what they wish. You can't make the weighted level of acceptance decision for them in the actual raw voting tallies. While logically what you have done is perhaps the best one could do without their input, it is not like these people are not around to speak for themselves. In short, the actual raw voting tallies should not be touched by anyone but the !voters themselves, at least IMHO, no matter how sensible your mapping might be.

Now, in your comparison matrix I don't have any problem with you only including comparisons between versions that actually have support in the raw tallies as a means of reducing the effort required. So not including V2-4 there is OK with me. Why the difference? Because the latter is a value added tool that does not affect the raw tallies.

Similarly, if you wanted to provide a running tally of the results in a table of some sort that merely summarizes things as they stand at any point in time, that table too could omit V2-4 without a problem. If support eventually showed up in those sections later then they should be added into the summary tally. This is generally how !votes are handled elsewhere on the project.

I, personally, also wouldn't have a problem with you showing combined results from both polls in one table as long as you clearly expressed the methodology used to map from one to the other (i.e. your 10 for acceptable, 0 for not). Why would this be acceptable here and not in the tallies themselves? Because it is a post-processing of the raw data that does NOT affect the clear choices and actions made by individuals as captured in those raw tallies. The raw data should not be changed from what the !voter indicated by their own actions, and this is the basis of the issues that people have been raising here.

Personally, at this point I am not sure the best thing to do with the tallies themselves. Putting them back is just going to look like more fussing with the !votes but leaving them as is also looks like fussing with the !votes regardless of whether anything was effectively changed or not. If I were in your position, personally I would restore all of the tallies to the exact state that the original !voters had put them in by their own actions and support that by including a diff and permanent link back to the original !vote by the original !voter.

Now, if you do provide a combined results table you have to be clear about what you do to handle the case where someone !votes for the same version in both places and their weighted !vote does not agree with your default mapping. For example, someone might choose to pick a given version in Hipocrite's poll as "acceptable" because they are forced to make a binary decision there, but only rate that same version as an 8 instead of a 10 in your poll because they have more flexibility there.

Please accept this commentary in the spirit in which it is intended. You often point out to others that their friends should "warn" them when they need it. I am not "warning" you about anything other than how your actions are being perceived by others and how that perception is likely to work against your overall goals. Do with this observation whatever you think best. --GoRight (talk) 15:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Decision (1 month topic ban of Abd and Hipocrite)

Polls are boring and inconclusive, especially when people start arguing over which is valid. The solution which will please no-one is: User:Hipocrite and User:Abd are both banned from editing cold fusion, and its talk page, for an arbitrary time of approximately one month, during which time we'll see if a stable version developes. Complain on my talk page if you wish to. Oh, and I'll unprotect William M. Connolley (talk) 19:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Harsh in some respects, but lets see where it takes us. Some decisive action was needed, and you have provided it. I hope that the remaining editors will show some restraint with the revert tool, and adhere to WP:BRD - perhaps without the Bold bit first? This is only a suggestion. Verbal chat 19:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[Deleted. Do this again and I block you William M. Connolley (talk) 20:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)] --Abd (talk) 19:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I would ask that the ban remains in force on the talk page, otherwise it would seem pointless. Verbal chat 20:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Such discussion should probably be moved to WMCs talk page, in deference to the ban. Verbal chat 20:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, finally, thank you very much. Let's see if I can put some stuff into the article without being drowned in wikilawyering and POV defending from both "sides". (also, I also ask that the talk page ban is kept) --Enric Naval (talk) 20:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah. I'll edit the article now. I haven't had the patience to keep up with the megabytes and megabytes of argumentation, pontification and such, so if I break any of the rules please slap me. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion in this ANI thread. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

• At the risk of sounding like a wikilawyer, is there some sort of "authority" (like WP:PSCI) or precedent for unilateral topic bans like this? II | (t - c) 07:18, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Since this is not related to editing the article itself, I have replied in User_talk:ImperfectlyInformed#topic_banning_by_a_single_admin. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:27, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Branching Ratio

In this series of edits in May, Abd changed the branching ratio section. I have reverted to the earlier version and then redrafted. I think the earlier version was unclear, but some of Abd's changes were inaccurate - for example, "Neutrons and tritium (³H) were not being detected" and "Neutrons and tritium (³H) were not being detected at levels commensurate with claimed heat" mean different things. Recognising that the article is controversial, any thoughts / suggestions / comments on my redraft? EdChem (talk) 09:52, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

It's now misleading: detection of energetic neutrons (Mosier-Boss) and tritium, at very low levels, has been reported in cold fusion experiments, but the wording you've changed to gives the impression that they have not. Yes, they mean different things; Abd's version seems to me to represent the situation more accurately. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 10:31, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

If I remember well, when that experiment was announced there were a couple experts saying that it looked good, but that they wanted to see the results quantified (see below). After the 20th anniversary passed, there were some scientific blogs reporting that the experiment had detected very few triplets of neutrons, and that they had "averaged" the gamma rays. No confirmations, analysis or replications from RS yet. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:10, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

"Johan Frenje at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an expert at interpreting CR-39 tracks produced in conventional high-temperature fusion reactions, says the team's interpretation of what produced the tracks is valid. 'I must say that the data and their analysis seem to suggest that energetic neutrons have been produced,' he says, although he would like to see the results confirmed quantitatively."New Scientist

"But that does not mean the results indicate cold fusion, said Paul Padley, a physicist at Rice University who reviewed Mosier-Boss' published work. (...) 'Nobody in the physics community would believe a discovery without such a quantitative analysis'," Houston Chronicle

--Enric Naval (talk) 18:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Good quotes. Let's put those in the article to illustrate the controversy.

The Mosier-Boss abstract says that neutrons were previously detected, but that theirs is the first detection of energetic neutrons. (I'm not sure if I can get access to the full text.)

Whether or not the neutron detections have been replicated, they've been commented on in published sources. We need to avoid directly contradicting the POV that neutrons have been detected. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 20:49, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd's version referring to neutrons at levels inconsistent with observed heat was unreferenced and appeared to me to alter the meaning of the text, hence my revert. I have no problem with modifying the section to reflect information in other reliable poublished sources. EdChem (talk) 21:27, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I added the two sources and also the ACS press release. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I've thought of an alternative wording: [63] I inserted "the expected" to give "but without the expected neutron or tritium production".

The first footnoted source for this sentence (Schaffer in Scientific American) says "But they could not be detected; if they were present at all, it was only at an extremely low level." It was not claiming that there was no production of tritium; only that it had not been detected, while explicitly mentioned the possibility of low-level production. My wording is attempting to achieve the following: avoid stating or implying that there was or that there wasn't low-level neutron or tritium production. Perhaps someone can think of a better wording which achieves that goal. Neutron and tritium production are mentioned in more detail elsewhere in the article; here I'm just trying to avoid directly contradicting any sources.

This solves the objection I raised above. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 21:56, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Good edit, Enric. I changed "he" to "they". ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:18, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Why is there even an entry on 'branching ratio' in the article. It falls under the 'miracles' required to get 'cold fusion' which is well explained in books and literature. It just clutters up the CF article. As I suggested (way) above, move all this stuff to a subarticle or delete it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Everything in the article is well explained in books and literature. And, in fact, anything that isn't should be promptly removed per WP:OR. One of the primary goals of wikipedia is to have everything in it explained in books and literature. We are an encyclopedia - our goal is to be a faithful copy of what is out there, not a source of original thought. And you asked why there is an entry on branching ratio in the article - well it's precisely as you describe: because it "falls under the 'miracles' required to get 'cold fusion'". Because it's interesting and important. And that, again, is a goal of encyclopedias: to touch on everything interesting and important about a subject. I believe that criteria is even mentioned in our guidelines. Kevin Baas^talk 14:54, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

And of course, we don't have room for or want 'everything' in the article, do we? The question you have to ask is what it brings to the wiki reader. Does it clarify the current situation? What does a long explanation add to the article vs. a short mention and maybe a side article? Etc. I have already said I feel the whole section on 'miracles' can be reduced to a paragraph total without impacting the article. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I somewhat agree; we want the article to be complete , one way or another, and one way to do that is for it to be detailed where it is immediately relevant, and well-linked to all other related details. In this "way" we could describe branching ratio stuff because it is part of the primary objections by mainstream physicists, to the idea that CF could happen in these experiments. Hypotheses attempting to answer those objections might be better placed in a linked article, partly because there are so many of them, and partly because they merely try to fill in the details to the broad explanation that "fusion did it", causing the excess-heat observations. V (talk) 13:00, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Something Awkward

One of the early paragraphs in the article is this:

There have been few mainstream reviews of the field since 1990. In 1989, the majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached similar conclusions.

It contains an inconsistency, since the first sentence specifies "since 1990" and the next sentence specifies 1989, which obviously is not since 1990. Perhaps this?

In 1989, the majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. There have been few mainstream reviews of the field since 1990. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached conclusions similar to the first.

Maybe the tail of that last sentence could be modified: ", but with a smaller majority." Does the American Chemical Society meeting of last year count as a "mainstream review of the field"? What about that recent symposium hosted by Robert Duncan (only a couple weeks ago)? V (talk) 19:43, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

No to both. Both were set up by cold fusion promoters and had no negative presentations to counterbalance the massive proCF POV. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:12, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, Kirk, but that's only two "No" answers to three suggestions. What of the first ("Maybe the tail ... could be modified")? V (talk) 21:40, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

V, a modification along the lines of your suggestion to reflect the reduced consensus on the 2004 DOE panel seems fair. Krellkraver (talk) 02:40, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. If no objection appears in the next few days, then I'll replace the paragraph as indicated above, and append that little extra detail to it. V (talk) 13:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:39, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm concerned about the "majority of a review panel" bit. In reading the Conclusions and Recommendations section of the report there are statements such as "the panel concludes", "the panel recommends" and the like, but no evidence of separate panel-majority and panel-minority findings (comparable to say, a Supreme Court decision). Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe Abd found some data regarding a breakdown of the votes. I'll probably have to ask him on his personal talk page for the link. (note the agreements above indicate I'm not the only one who saw some of that information.) V (talk) 13:43, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, Abd has responded to my request, but not with links per se. I quote: "Look at the report that we cite for 2004" and (for 1989) "Taubes, p. 422" --likely referring to links we already have. Read Abd's full account at the bottom of his talk page. User_talk:Abd V (talk) 20:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've implemented the change. I might mention that the main reason for specifying "a smaller majority" is simply that the first part connects a majority to a particular statement, moreso than it connects the majority to all the conclusions of the 1989 review. So, because it was true that a smaller majority was associated with that particular conclusion in 2004.... V (talk) 13:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

"excess heat observations" section

I restored some changes that were lost due to the reversion to an earlier version made by WMC during the protection. That section was the center of a short edit war:

• 13:31, 19 May 2009 Hipocrite "facts changed to allegations, observations. Mos says one space" [64]
• 13:42, 19 May 2009 Abd "Well, the observations are not only not challenged in the literature, they are confirmed massively. The open question is interpretation; the apparent excess energy could be artifact." [65]
• 13:42, 19 May 2009 Abd "add qualifiers to acknowledge that excess heat is controversial, is it real, or is it only apparent?" [66]
• 13:57, 19 May 2009 Hipocrite "excess heat is considered an experimental artifact. Replication failures do not make the fact that broken experiments break repeatedly meaningful - WP:SYN" [67]

Please feel free to review the change and update as necessary if it had problems that I didn't notice. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on that last one (by Hipocrite). I followed the links of the reference given for that quote. This is where I ended up: "Szpak, Stanislaw; Mosier-Boss, Pamela A.; Miles, Melvin H.; Fleischmann, Martin (2004), "Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by co-deposition.", Thermochimica Acta 410: 101, doi:10.1016/S0040-6031(03)00401-5"

I find it a bit difficult to believe that such an anti-CF quote could have been pulled from that particular article (I don't have access to the full text so cannot be certain). If I'm right, though, then either Hipocrite goofed in providing a reference, or some reference-scrambling has happened (I wouldn't be surprised, with all the editing going on) --or, worst-case-scenario, Hipocrite has posted a personal opinion and pretended to provide a reference for it (not good!). V (talk) 05:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

You mean Szpak 2004? It can be read at http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSthermalbeh.pdf.

Also, the first ref in that paragraf. Fleischmann 1990 ({{harvnb|Fleischmann et al.|1990|Ref=Fleischmann1990}}). is broken and I can't find any 1990 paper in the bibliography, can someone point out the paper for this ref so we can restore the lost reference?. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Hum, Szpak 2004 appears to be sourcing only the sentence "Similar observations [of heat after death] have been reported by others as well." Can you clarify what sentence in that diff is the "anti-CF quote" so we can check its refs? --Enric Naval (talk) 21:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Enric, I'm talking about this anti-CF statement: "excess heat is considered an experimental artifact. Replication failures do not make the fact that broken experiments break repeatedly meaningful" ---I'm saying that I doubt that statement can be found in the reference I traced/specifed. V (talk) 12:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

That's his edit summary, that's not part of the article. Could you point at specific sentences in the article? --Enric Naval (talk) 04:17, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Pardon me, I thought this section was about reversions to part of the article. I therefore retract any perceived complaint about Hipocrite expressing an opinion. Instead I can express a question, regarding heat production in the compressed-gas experiments (deuterium pressurized into metal): With two different ways of getting gas into metal, both types of experiment appearing to yield unexpected heat, and the "signal" is "clearer" and easier to reproduce in the pressurization method --no electric-resistance heat, no oxygen present for recombination; there is only some equivalent to "heat of solution" if the gas source is previously pressurized/cooled-- so why should the electrolysis experiments be considered uniformly flawed?

I know I have to wait for hipocrite's temporary ban to end, before he can reply to that. I doubt he has one. (I doubt Kirk Shanahan has an answer, either!) V (talk) 13:05, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Fleischmann1990

I restored Abd's ban-defying edit assuming it would fix the problem with this ref not linking properly, but it doesn't. There are several broken links to Fleischmann1990 and Fleischmann 1990. Could somebody who knows how please fix this, thanks. Verbal chat 14:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Apparently this can be fixed by replacing broken references with <ref name="FleischmannPons_1990" />. I have to go now so I can't do this until tonight at the earliest. Verbal chat 14:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Fix'ed. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

How to get patent story NPOV?

U.S. Patents 6,248,221, 6,764,561, and several others were in fact issued on cold fusion processes. Yet the text, as it stands after those who would edit differently have been disposed of by administrative action, says that no cold fusion patents have been issued by the USPTO. Why does this article quote a minor patent office functionary contradicting the standing administrative record of her own agency? Could anything be further from NPOV? When will the persecution of those who want this article to tell both sides of the story end? Why are so many editors willing to betray foundational issues such as NPOV in pursuit of an absolutist stance on the question of whether the phenomena are real? Have the editors here made a full financial disclosure of the extent to which their and their peers' funding depends on the continued funding of traditional fusion research? Splargo (talk) 06:03, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see it as a POV issue - at the moment it describes the situation with the US patents, and while you may argue that the description is incorrect, this doesn't then presuppose that this is a good or a bad thing. But be that as it may, it seems to me that neither of the two patents you refer to contradict the claims in the article: if I'm reading it correctly, the first describes a device for the testing of cold fusion, rather than for the production of energy, while the second describes the creation of an alloy that can be used in cold fusion experiments. Both therefore meet the utility requirements, as they don't claim to produce electricity in and of themselves. - Bilby (talk) 08:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It's like the Yellow article saying that the assistant commissioner of trademarks once said that the trademark office doesn't issue registrations of blue trademarks. Not only is it repeating a lie, in this case it's doing so in a very biased manner because some otherwise decent editor(s) with dog(s) in the fight to various extents started throwing hissyfits about accurately conveying the state of scientific uncertainty on the subject of this article. Since when are reports on the off-hand comments of individual government employees more reliable sources than the actual government documents which the comments are about? Splargo (talk) 11:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

There are more than 250 patents at present in Dr. Britz's bibliography. Do the editors here want to be known for their familiarity with the peer-reviewed literature on the subject, or for their oratorical skill at causing and defending the bans and blacklists that characterize the administrative interventions here? Splargo (talk) 11:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Dr Britz's list is of patent applications, covers multiple countries, and is not limited to patents for cold fusion, but includes inventions which are used in cold fusion experimentation. The discussion here is in regard to US patents granted for cold fusion itself, and the sources supporting the reluctance of the USPTO to grant applications are pretty good. I would have thought that this is not an issue in terms of cold fusion's viability - the issue is that the patent office is unwilling to accept that cold fusion works, which doesn't speak to whether or not it does function. Indeed, I note online a degree of anger from cold fusion researchers that the patents aren't being granted. - Bilby (talk) 11:57, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Will you grant that there is a difference between a patent official being quoted in a newspaper as saying that the office is unwilling to grant such patents, and the office actually being so unwilling? I would have no objection to merely stating a reluctance on the part of an individual official, if that official's name, title, or both are included. Splargo (talk) 12:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

While I'm happy in principle, there's a slight issue with the source: the Washington Post only ascribes to the (then) deputy commissioner the reason for not granting patents.

"The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has refused to grant a patent on any invention claiming cold fusion. According to Esther Kepplinger, the deputy commissioner of patents, this is for the same reason it wouldn't give one for a perpetual motion machine: It doesn't work."

Thus I'm a tad uncomfortable ascribing to Kepplinger the additional claim that the patents are refused. It does give us:

"The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejects any patent claiming cold fusion. Esther Kepplinger, who was the deputy commissioner of patents in 2004, argued that this was a result of the same concern that prevented patents being granted for perpetual motion machines: they do not work."

which is better, I think, in that it doesn't ascribe the "they don't work" claim to the patent office. I suppose you could date the Washington Post claim - "As of 2004, the ..." or something similar, but that's getting a tad unwieldy, especially for something that wasn't that long ago; or perhaps "traditionally refused" rather than just "refused" would help (if it isn't too weaselly). - Bilby (talk) 13:07, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I made a change based in your suggestion. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The reliable source criteria consider officials quoted in The Washington Post as less reliable sources about patents than the government-issued patents themselves. Splargo (talk) 19:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

"U.S. Patents 6,248,221, 6,764,561, and several others were in fact issued on cold fusion processes." These are patents on cold-fusion-related processes, not the combination of nuclei to form larger nuclei. The fact they have been issued does not indicate that the patent office is convinced they describe how to produce cold fusion. (Incidentally, I have no research funding and no financial stake in these issues except as a taxpayer.) Olorinish (talk) 20:45, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Even if what you write were pertinent or true or both, it would not change the fact that the article contains a newspaper source of an individual official contradicting the state of her agency's work product. That lie is not only in contravention of the reliable source criteria, it serves no other purpose than to advance the biased position of those who are convinced that the scientific question is settled instead of still open. If there were any secondary sources anywhere near to supporting such a resolution of the field, they would have been added a long time ago, but there can be none, because the academic literature, like the DOE panels, has remained split for two decades now. Splargo (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

So far I've yet to see any evidence that the US patent office has approved a patent on cold fusion. The claim isn't that patents related to cold fusion are denied, just that patents of cold fusion processes that produce energy are denied. That said, until there is a reliable source showing that a patent for cold fusion was granted, that claimed to be cold fusion, (as per the article) we're stuck with the basic principle of wikipedia - verifiability, not truth. The claim that the patent office refused patents on cold fusion until 2004 is verifiable. Right now, a claim showing otherwise is not. - Bilby (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd be fine w/just striking any mention of patents out of the article. I don't think it's very pertinent. There are probably TONS of patents for hot fusion reactors but not a single mention in the article - or any of the literature for that matter, either. Point is, this is a scientific article, not an engineering article, and certainly not a legal one. (not to say it's a crime) I don't think we need to mention anything at all about patents. Kevin Baas^talk 20:52, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this article would be far superior with no mention of any patents than the blatantly false and biased swill which it now contains, but our goal is to be comprehensive, is it not? What's wrong with good, old-fashioned balance? Splargo (talk) 21:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, hyperbole much? I don't even understand what you're saying! You seem to be contradicting yourself - do you want mention of patents removed or do you want balance? which one is it? if i couldn't understand due to sarcasm, keep in mind that sarcasm doesn't transfer well in writing. And also I believe someone just spoke strongly against using sarcasm here, when it wasn't even being used - and i believe that person was you, just now. So I hope you can see how I find this all very confusing. Kevin Baas^talk 14:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

And on a side note i'm working on a perpetual motion machine that uses wikipedia debates as a fuel source... (j/k) Kevin Baas^talk 20:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it too much to ask that people try to focus on improving the article instead of making sarcastic off-topic comments? Splargo (talk) 21:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes it is. I don't see how that was sarcastic, or to what the sarcasm would be directed at. But I do know that it was a joke. The purpose of jokes is to add levity. And it is considered good practice to joke or otherwise add levity once in a while to allay tensions in a group discussion. If you've ever been to a couple of business meetings you may have noticed this. I'm sure if one studied communication academically they'd come across it. However, when someone responds with an acerbic comment such as you did, it very much ruins it - per chance even makes things more tendentious as they were before. If this was a business meeting, that comment alone would have made everyone there very uncomfortable, and essentially turned it into a failure. Kevin Baas^talk 14:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

People saying that the USPTO accepts cold fusion patents should read the multiple sources for that statement, including a chapter from the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure the 2107.01 General Principles Governing Utility Rejections (R-5) - 2100 Patentability under "II. WHOLLY INOPERATIVE INVENTIONS; "INCREDIBLE" UTILITY" which mentions both cold fusion and the Swartz case, and 2164.07 Relationship of Enablement Requirement to Utility Requirement of 35 U.S.C. 101 - 2100 Patentability under "Examiner Has Initial Burden To Show That One of Ordinary Skill in the Art Would Reasonably Doubt the Asserted Utility" which cites the Swartz case. I also cited three books, two that deal with patents in general and one that deals with cold fusion in general, Simon's book.

Also notice that the article already says that researchers can get cold fusion patents by obfuscating references to cold fusion. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Invention Reaction

The title of this section is a bit of a play on words, because of the previous section, and because of what I actually want to talk about here, which is in the second-to-last paragraph of the "Reaction to the Announcement" section of the article. This particular sentence seems to me to have a one-word flaw in it (stressed): Nuclear fusion of the type postulated would be inconsistent with current understanding and would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process.

The flaw that I perceive has to do with the fact that if CF is happening, then the way it happens is a Natural thing, not something that Man actually causes, and therefore not an "invention". Properly, all we can do is figure out or discover the details of a Natural event. I remind you that even though we discovered nuclear fission and thought ourselves mighty clever to build reactors that used that discovery, Nature was first: Natural nuclear fission reactor. So I submit that the word "invention" should be replaced with "discovery", in that sentence. V (talk) 04:59, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I assume that the intent of the sentence is to say that it would require the invention of a new theory describing this as of yet misunderstood nuclear process. I agree that some wordsmithing is in order. (For what that's worth.) --GoRight (talk) 05:48, 19 June 2009 (UTC)