Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 15

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Conversation conclusion The 2004 DOE panel reached similar conclusions to the ones reached in 1989. The panel recommended further research using rigorous scientific methods. It did not recommend a major federally-funded program. Main arguments: The DOE panel addressed 2 questions: "are the evidences of cold fusion convincing ?" (Charge Element 1), and "are the evidences convincing beyond doubt ?" (Charge element 2). It was divided on the first question: 2/3 of the reviewers did not find the evidences conclusive, 1 reviewer was convinced, and the remainder were somewhat convinced. (see the concluding paragraph of the "Charge Element 1" section of the summary) The majority of the panel responded negatively to the second question (see the concluding paragraph of the "Charge Element 2" section of the summary). See also the Conclusion chapter of the report. Sources: 2004 DOE report See also the discussion titled "DOE Panel conclusion" (January 2007)

Relevance of Todd Rider thesis

When protection is lifted, could someone please explain the relevance of Todd Rider's study to cold fusion? And/or how the "nonequilibrium systems" he studied are related to CF? Neither connection is plain (to me, the non-physicist); is the study an explanation of some physical phenomena related to CF? Or does it explain a phenomenon previously thought to be evidence of CF? Or is it postulating a new possibility for CF? Or is it something else?

That minor matter notwithstanding,... kudos to the editors of this informative, coherent, well written, and pleasant article. Well done. -- Fullstop (talk) 22:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Todd Rider's study is not relevant to CF as far as I know, but to hot fusion. This had been removed from the CF article some time ago (e.g. in this version), but was reinserted when some editors decided to go back to an older version of the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with PCarbonn, although I'll speculate that there's a little bit more to the sociology of putting the reference in the article. Basically, you can make finer distinctions than just "hot" and "cold" fusion. There are "locally hot" schemes such as the Farnsworth Fusor, and Bussard's schemes. These varieties of fusion are mainstream when it comes to their nuclear physics, but fringe when it comes to their plasma confinement physics. Bussard died this week, and there's a YouTube video that is supposedly very popular of a "tabletop fusion" device. I can imagine that a proponent of these schemes inserted their mention, in an effort to portray them as "look, we're less wacky than the cold fusion guys", and a mainstream hot fusion type countered with the Rider paper which explains why these schemes are still fringe. JohnAspinall (talk) 05:39, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

We know you agree with Pcarbonn, but your opinion seems to be as far off WP:NPOV as his does. Please discuss this on the mediation page. Guy (Help!) 09:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)

Um. :) So, if I understood this right ...

a) the Rider-para is just dangling in mid-air because the paragraph once stood in relationship to something else, but that "something else" has since been removed.

b) the Rider study influence how all non-hot research is perceived

Is my summary of the purpose of that para correct?

-- Fullstop (talk) 20:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Not renewable

The article currently states that if cold fusion worked "...then a major new source of renewable energy would have been found." This statement either needs to be removed or cited, preferably the former. Renewable energy, by the definition in our article, uses "natural resources which are naturally replenished. Further

1. While our page on Renewable energy makes no mention of fusion, it states that "nuclear fission is generally not regarded as renewable."
2. The department of energy states that nuclear energy is NOT renewable. [1]
3. Here's a statement from the Sustainable Energy Network signed by a hundred or so environmental agencies saying the same thing. [2]

Being "cold" does not turn nuclear energy from non-renewable to renewable.

Unfortunately this page is protected. Can someone with edit privileges make the change, or remember to do it once the article is un-protected? — James 14:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree we should fix this. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:19, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Peer Review

Laughter

Regards,

Roger Williams —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.44.32.71 (talk) 09:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Patents Filed Days after Newspaper Articles

I recall that MIT filed 5 - 10 patents, mostly theoretical, on Cold Fusion within a week of the news releases. Those would be interesting to find (uspto.gov) and reference. Provisional patents are thrown away after one year if there is no further office action, but I recall that provisionals were developed later than these experiments. Publishing USA utility applications was also not a practice at that time. So, there is something to be found at the patent office unless these applications were abandoned before examination. There is a possibility that patents were foreign-filed, even by USA .edu type institutions. The records and law on that procedure are unclear to me, but it would have been motivated by the desire to create a 'submarine patent' that would surface long after the technology was fully developed and licensed.Nukeh (talk) 02:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The Faraday-efficiency effect

{{editprotected}}

Please add the "The Shkedi et al. Experiment" section below, to the article, following the "Experimental set-up and observations" section.--Rabbiz (talk) 15:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. While interesting, I'm not in favor of including your proposal in the cold fusion article. This is because it would give undue weight to one view that has not been widely accepted by scientists. As evidence of that argument, it has not been cited in the 2004 DOE review, nor in any other review that I'm aware of. The "Faraday efficiency" explanation may be correct (or incorrect), but until widely accepted, it should not be highlighted more than any other explanations. Let's see what others are saying. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Fleischmann is a talented electrochemist. When he received a preprint of the Shkedi et al. paper, after visiting Shkedi's lab at Bose corp., he immediately realized his embarrassing mistake. Consequently, he left the field despite abundant Japanese funding for his new lab in France.

Here is an excerpt from shkedi's letter to Fusion Facts (Dec. 1995):

"Famous cold fusion scientists have served as consultants to Bose Corp. throughout the research. Many more, from around the globe, have either visited the Bose cold fusion laboratory or were visited by one of the Bose team members. The authors have included in the list of experiments every advice given them by the most famous and successful cold fusion researchers. In addition, manuscripts of the publication were sent out for comments and suggestions to many researchers with whom the authors kept close contacts. All the recommendations have been implemented, yet, the end result was no real excess heat.

For the heavy-water experiments the authors have tried all known sources of "hot" palladium; spent unlimited resources to have custom lots of palladium and palladium/silver manufactured for them according to successful researchers specifications; had single- crystal palladium cathodes custom grown; palladium grain size ranged from a few microns to single crystal; D/Pd loading ratios were consistently in the range of 0.85 - 0.95; yet, again, no excess heat.

The authors have offered to some of the most famous scientists in the field to try their cathodes, cells, and loading protocols in the Bose calorimeters, at Bose expense. All offers have been declined despite the fact that the Bose calorimeters were the most accurate and stable calorimeters reported in the field."

Fleischmann, like all others, also refused this offer. He was not the only one who left the field, following the discovery of the embarrassing mistake. Many others, including Shkedi himself, also left the field. Those who remained had a very strong interest to avoid the issue of "Faraday efficiency", or else, they lose their funding. This is probably the reason why the DOE panel was not made aware of the Shkedi et al. paper. If this was a criminal case, the avoidance of the Shkedi et al. paper would be sufficient cause for a retrial, with a very different outcome.--Rabbiz (talk) 18:04, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Jones presented his research at the DOE panel, according to E. Storms (p. 18), so he could have raised the point easily. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Since we are an encyclopedia, not a review panel, we need to be carefull at isolating true science from "hope to get funding" considerations. Not an easy task. --Rabbiz (talk) 21:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Another consideration to take into account: Of all the other "positive" experiments which claim to have achieved excess heat, I don't recall a single experiment in which the source of the excess heat was verified and validated experimentally. (Please correct me if I am wrong) All other authors speculate as to the source, or say nothing at all, other than "yes, there is excess heat." Except for possible calorimetric errors (which are very common) the ONLY source of excess heat which was verified and confirmed experimentally is Faraday efficiency less than 100%. I should be somewhat surprised to find out that experimental results which were independently duplicated are considered "undue weight" compared to a long list of nothing but speculative theories.--Rabbiz (talk) 01:18, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I still don't see any reason for presenting the Faraday effect in the CF article. Please provide a source showing that this hypothesis has notability. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

THIS IS NOT A HYPOTHESIS. This is the only experimental evidence in this field which actually measures the Faraday efficiency and shows how it accounts for the entire amount of observed apparent excess heat. Did you read the publications? If not, I suggest you do. Kevin Baas was kind enough to display the references below. Fleischmann left the field after realizing that this was his mistake. Is this notable enough? --Rabbiz (talk) 17:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

You have not given a written reference showing that it is notable, nor that Fleischmann left the field because of it. So, this is just original research as far as I'm concerned. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:23, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I follow your logic on this one Pcarbonn. If we consider the Shkedi and Jones et. al. papers to be genuine academic papers, then their findings can be included. We should not elaborate any further than their authors do about their significance in the debate. We don't have a source saying why Fleischman left the field, so it can't be included. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The logic is that we can't report on every paper written on the CF subject : there are 3,000 of them. Many claim to explain the effect. I don't see what's so special with this one. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Forgive me if I've inserted a response in the wrong place in this thread. I noticed my name was mentioned. ("Kevin Baas was kind enough to display the references below."). Rabbiz was referring to the next section on this talk page. The text I put in there, italicized, is directly from the wikipedia article on Faraday efficiency. I added the bold emphasis to highlight what seems to contradict Rabbiz's assertion. In any case, it shows that the contributors to that article do not consider the cited papers to be representative of mainstream scientific thought. They were cited, in fact, as "rare" occurances. That's what I meant to point out by copying that text. I don't really know anything about faraday efficency, save what I've read on this page and in the faraday efficiency article, since it was mentioned on this page. But I do notice that, as it stands, the article on faraday efficiency does not support the POV that the faraday efficiency of light water is substantially less than 100%. And if the observed faraday efficiency is different for heavy water, then there's clearly a nuclear phenomena involved (since they're molecularly identical), which makes the point moot. Kevin Baas^talk 01:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

For the benefit of those who try to avoid the painful reality by sticking to their (speculative) theories, here are a few quotes from a 1996 CF discussion page.

 http://ftp.wayne.edu/ibiblio-academic/physics/Cold-fusion/fd-latest/thruFD4919 

"I should note that the conclusions of the Shkedi paper, in particular, no real excess heat, agree entirely with our experimental results, published in:

J.E. Jones et al., "Faradaic efficiencies less than 100% during electrolysis of water can account for reports of excess heat in 'cold fusion' cells," J. Physical Chem. 99 (May 1995) 6973-6979.

--Steven Jones"

"The conclusion of the work was NOT that excess heat has not been found in the ligh-water cells. On the contrary, excess heat WAS FOUND AND MEASURED in all the light-water cells."

As I understand it, the measurement method and calulations showed excess heat, but further analysis proved that this result was specious. And furthermore, the reason for the specious result was specified and explained. And finally, that an energy balance showed that there was NO EXCESS HEAT.

So you are grasping at straws. Another professional has debunked this nonsense, and the TB's avoided an opportunity to bring their work to the test.

Arnold Frisch Tektronix Laboratories"

--Rabbiz (talk) 20:26, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Pcarbonn, on 10:19, 9 January 2008, you said on the mediation page: "I hope that wikipedia will continue to present a scientific view of the topic, rather than a sociological one." So, why do you object to augmenting the scientific presentation with additional facts and data which have no representation yet, while allowing a disproportionate amount of sociological and political talk talk talk...? --Rabbiz (talk) 21:27, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

When I said that, I meant that Wikipedia should represent the scientific consensus, not the consensus of scientists that know nothing of the field. Wikipedia should be based on scientific reviews of the field, such as DOE, not on particular articles, even if peer reviewed. We cannot be the judge in place of the experts in the field. None of the reviews I have seen are talking of the Faraday effect, although it was published in 1995 and thus had plenty of time to be read. The DOE does not talk about it, although Jones made a presentation to them. Wikipedia is not the place to advance a theory that has not been recognized elsewhere. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

1) Pcarbonn said: "Wikipedia should be based on scientific reviews of the field, such as DOE, not on particular articles, even if peer reviewed." It looks like you have invented a "private censorship policy". Is it the consensus around here? looks more like the equivalent of "original research". can you provide a written widely-accepted source for this policy? Is every user authorized to invent private policies? Readers like to make their own judgments of information presented. But, if some of the information gets censored, we might as well all move back to communist Russia.

From WP:DUE: NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth does not mention modern support for the Flat Earth concept, a view of a distinct minority. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

2) "Wikipedia is not the place to advance a theory..." obviously you did not read the articles, since you keep referring to it as a theory. There is no point in discussing a topic with someone who is not interested in the experimental facts, or is afraid that the readers will find out the experimental facts. --Rabbiz (talk) 17:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If these papers are only about experiments, they are saying that they did not observe excess heat. So what. Many experimenters did not find excess heat, so this is not news. This only proves that obtaining excess heat is difficult. The paper becomes interesting if it says that all successful excess heat experiments can be explained by a Faraday effect. This becomes then a theory. Such a theory has no notability though. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Here exactly is your mistake. The conclusion of the work was NOT that excess heat has not been found in the light-water cells. On the contrary, excess heat WAS FOUND AND MEASURED in all the light-water cells.

The difference between this work and all other published research in the field is that once excess heat was found, the researchers did not pause to celebrate but continued the research to identify the source of the excess heat. To everybody's surprise, including the authors', the source of the "excess heat" was identified as unaccounted internal recombination of hydrogen and oxygen. In other words, the common assumption that underlies almost every "successful" experiment, i.e. that the Faraday efficiency is unity, was experimentally - not theoretically - proven to be wrong.

When the "excess heat" data were analyzed, taking into account the actually measured Faraday efficiency, all "excess heat" disappeared and the energy balance turned out to be exactly zero. The data, the methodology, and the analysis, are all presented in the Shkedi et al. paper.

By contrast, it is interesting to note that in the Mills and Good paper published in the same issue of Fusion Technology, the excess heat claimed to be found by Mills and Good is predicated on the assumption stated following equation (7): "The net Faraday efficiency of gas evolution is ASSUMED to be unity." This is only one example of a "successful" experiment where the "success" is based on a mistaken assumption.

In summary: Shkedi et al. did find excess heat of about 21% (which is more than many others); measured the actual Faraday efficiency; and found that the internal recombination of hydrogen and oxygen is exactly the source of the excess heat, with an experimentally measured accuracy of 0.13% +/- 0.48%. --Rabbiz (talk) 17:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You have still not proven me wrong. I said that this explanation of all positive experimental results has no notability. Pls provide a source otherwise. This is not the place to give it notability.

In the past, a full section about experiments clearly showing nuclear transmutations in Pd/D systems have been rejected from the article (see here). And rightly so, because the experiments did not have notability. I happen to believe that these experiments were the definite proof of a nuclear reaction. Just as you believe that Shkedi is right. If we follow everybody who believes that an experiment is the final one, we won't get anywhere. We have to stick to the wikipedia rule that requires to show each view in proportion to their prominence. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Did you notice that everything I present is experimental facts which were independently confirmed, while everything you present is your own private political Point Of View? Your favorite earlier version of the article from November 25, 2007 is 100% biased in favor of showing details of only "favorable" experiments. Is this your idea of neutrality and balance? It is beginning to look like trying to convince someone to change his religion based on scientific evidence - a hopeless process. --Rabbiz (talk) 19:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I won't spend time countering all your points. I'll just say that it is perfectly OK to look at the successful experiments, because the 1989 report said: "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary." Negative experiments are thus not that important. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You are certainly entitled to your own political point of view. --Rabbiz (talk) 19:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I would like to add another point to the considerations: "Scientific consensus is not, by itself, a scientific argument, and is not part of the scientific method; however, the content of the consensus may itself be based on both scientific arguments and the scientific method." (a quote from Scientific consensus). Galileo Galilei, when he said that the earth is moving, not the sun, was in the extreme minority. If we were to use "scientific consensus" as a criterion in his days, we would not even mention his observations. It took the church 300 years to admit that he was right. How long will it take the wiki community here? --Rabbiz (talk) 22:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The DOE panel said: "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary." Isn't it amazing that after hundreds of positive experiments, no one can yet point to a single such "valid cold fusion period"? --75.75.157.139 (talk) 20:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Good point. Does it mean that, since 1989, of all the positive experiments, not even one is valid yet? (at least not in the eyes of the 2004 DOE panel)--Rabbiz (talk) 20:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The DOE indeed said that cold fusion is not conclusively demonstrated. A significant share of the panel was somewhat convinced by the evidence of nuclear reaction, and the panel was evenly split on whether the evidence of excess energy were convincing. Our article should reflect this ambiguous view. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to congratulate Rabbiz. He is the first wikipedian contributor to ever make a detailed reference to a anti-CF scientific paper. I welcome this scientific debate, and I encourage others to follow his example, as it can improve the quality of wikipedia. I only wish that his article had a little notability (it hasn't). I suggest that someone present it at the next American Physical Society meeting, so that we can mention it in the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:32, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

The Shkedi et al. Experiment

In the field of electrochemistry, it was common to believe that the release of hydrogen and oxygen gas during electrolysis of water has a Faraday efficiency of 100%. Pons and Fleischmann, and the other investigators who reported the finding of excess heat, all relied on this popular assumption. No one bothered to measure the Faraday efficiency in their cells during the experiments. Many publications reporting the finding of excess heat included an explicit statement like: "The Faraday efficiency is assumed to be unity." All publications, even if not explicitly stated so, included this assumption implicitly in the formulas used to calculate the cells' energy balance.

A group of investigators, headed by Zvi Shkedi, from Massachusetts, USA, built in 1992-1993 four well insulated cells and calorimeters which included the capability to measure the actual Faraday efficiency in real time during the experiments. The cells were of the light-water type; with a fine-wire nickel cathode; a platinum anode; and K₂CO₃ electrolyte.

The calorimeters were calibrated to an accuracy of 0.02% of input power. The long-term stability of the calorimeters was verified over a period of 9 months of continuous operation. In their publication, the investigators show details of their calorimeters' design and teach the secrets to achieving high calorimetric accuracy.

A total of 64 experiments were performed in which the actual Faraday efficiency was measured. The results were analyzed twice; once with the assumption that the Faraday efficiency is 100%, and, again, taking into account the measured Faraday efficiency in each experiment. The average Faraday efficiency in these experiments was 78%.

The first analysis, assuming a Faraday efficiency of 100%, yielded an average apparent excess heat of 21% of input power. The term "apparent excess heat" was coined by the investigators to indicate that the measured Faraday efficiency was ignored in the analysis.

The second analysis, taking into account the measured Faraday efficiency, yielded an actual excess heat of 0.13% +/- 0.48%. In other words, when the actual Faraday efficiency was measured and taken into account, the energy balance of the cells was zero, with no excess heat, to within an accuracy of 0.5%.

This investigation has shown how conventional chemistry, i.e. internal recombination of hydrogen and oxygen, accounted for the entire amount of apparent excess heat. The investigators concluded their publication (cited above) with the following word of advice:

"All reports claiming the observation of excess heat should be accompanied by simultaneous measurements of the actual Faraday efficiency."

Jones et al. have confirmed the Shkedi et al. findings with the same conclusion: "Faradaic efficiencies less than 100% during electrolysis of water can account for reports of excess heat in 'cold fusion' cells."

Another conclusion of the Shkedi et al. experiment is that the energy balance in an electrolytic cell can be measured with very high accuracy. Experiments with low calorimetric accuracy should no longer be acceptable.

Prof. Martin Simon from the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy commented on the Faraday efficiency effect: "with the correct Faraday efficiency, all the excess heat disappears. No excess heat, no cold fusion effect and nothing to debate anymore." --Rabbiz (talk) 00:15, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

--Rabbiz (talk) 15:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

In electrolysis of water (excluding electroplating), the Faraday efficiency of hydrogen and oxygen release is seldom less than 100%. However, there have been rare reports of reduced Faraday efficiency in such aqueous cells ( 1.) Calorimetry, Excess Heat, and Faraday Efficiency in Ni-H₂O Electrolytic Cells. Z. Shkedi et al., Fusion Technology Vol.28 No.4 (1995) p.1720-1731, (2.) Faradaic efficiencies less than 100% during electrolysis of water can account for reports of excess heat in 'cold fusion' cells. J.E. Jones et al., J. Physical Chem. 99 (1995) p.6973-6979) Kevin Baas^talk 16:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Response

For the record, and independently of the lack of notability of the Shkedi explanation, here is my response.

The excess heat over the full experiment can be fully determined when one knows :

• the electrical energy entering the system, I * V,
• the thermal energy leaving the system in the form of heat,
• the internal thermal energy (i.e. accumulated heat),
• for open cells, the energy of water added to the cell and the energy of gas and vapors leaving it
• and the internal chemical energy.

The first 3 quantities can be measured accurately and integrated over the duration of a power surge, or better, over the full experiment. Jones et al. argue that the last ones are incorrectly evaluated by CF researchers, because of the incorrect assumption of Faraday efficiency of 100%.

Most research are actually conducted in closed cells, which do not raise questions related to incoming and outgoing material. Still, concerning open cells, contrary to Jones' observations, the Faraday efficiency has been measured by Fleischmann and many others to be >99 % in open cells that show excess heat. They measured the quantity of H2 and O2 product gas generated by the cell, and it was in line with expectations in view of the input current, even during excess heat episode. (see: M. Fleischmann, S. Pons, M.W. Anderson, L.J. Li, M. Hawkins, J. Electroanal. Chem. 287 (1990) 293-348, "Calorimetry of the palladium-deuterium-heavy water system" ). Other researchers using closed cells consider that the chemical energy of the outgoing product is the same as the chemical energy of the incoming product, which is a conservative assumption when calculating excess heat.

Concerning the last element, the internal chemical energy of closed or open cells, an Ni electrode such as the one used by Jones can dissolve in the water as a result of the electric current, and less oxygen could then be released as gas, resulting in a lower Faraday Efficiency. Such experiment can result in a small apparent excess heat when the effect is not taken into account. However, this effect is easily avoided by not using a Ni electrode or by using high current densities, as most CF researchers do. In open cells, similar electrochemical effects are not possible when the Faraday Efficiency is measured to be 100%. In addition, reported excess heat are often well above the magnitude that such effect could create. Finally, the excess heat detected in some experiments is 100 to 1000 times bigger than what could be explained by a chemical reaction in an electrode.

In conclusion, the paper of Jones only shows that they did not obtain excess heat, not that all experimenters claiming excess heat are mistaken. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

If you read this paper: Response to "Comments on 'Calorimetry, Excess Heat, and Faraday Efficiency in Ni-H₂O Electrolytic Cells' ". Shkedi Z., Fusion Technology Vol.30 (1996) p.133 You will see how easy it is to get a nearly infinite ratio of excess heat with a Faraday efficiency which is only slightly less than 100%. When this was shown to Fleischmann during the CF conference in Hawaii, Fleischman's face turned red, he got very upset, and promised to find the mistake by the end of the conference. He never did. (this is behind-the-scenes private information - or "original research". Don't worry, there is no intention to add it to the article, but, it's worth knowing.) --Rabbiz (talk) 03:31, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a non-sequitor. Kevin Baas^talk 16:14, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Infinite ratio of (apparent) excess heat ? It looks like you have reinvented free energy. Surely you are confusing absolute and relative values somewhere. I can't check the article, but would be happy too if I could. As said before, Fleischmann did not leave the field, and Steven Jones, a co-author of the article you mention, did not convince the DOE when he presented his findings to them in 2004. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

That's right, a near infinite ratio of apparent excess heat can be obtained by ignoring a very small reduction in the Faraday efficiency. Obviously, this is only apparent excess heat - a numerical artifact - not real energy. But, when researchers, including Fleischmann, ignore this pitfall, they end up claiming fantastic excess-heat ratios. The mathematical formula for excess heat ratio which ignores the Faraday efficiency includes a division by a very small number - near zero - which can give rise to a very large number. When the actual Faraday efficiency is taken into account this numerical artifact disappears. --Rabbiz (talk) 17:01, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The deonominator is presumably "input energy" which isn't small, and the numerator is "output energy", which is pretty close to the input energy. If Shkedi was getting "near-infinite" ratios, as you suggest, for any configuration, he was clearly doing the math wrong. Kevin Baas^talk 17:11, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I advise looking at the publications before criticizing. The denominator is (V-1.481). If V is only a little above 1.481, you end up dividing by zero, or near zero. That's why Fleischman and so many others got fantastic excess heat ratios. This denominator includes the built-in mistaken assumption that the Faraday efficiency is 100%. Once you take into account the real Faraday efficiency, the denominator changes, and it is no longer possible to divide by zero. Only those who use the wrong formula (V-1.481) get excess heat, which is really apparent excess heat. The complete math is in the Shkedi paper. Fleischmann, Hagelstein, and McKubre were given preprints of the Shkedi paper for review long before the paper was published. They are the best peer reviewers anyone can imagine. McKubre and Hagelstein approved it. Fleischmann tried for months to find mistakes in the formulas and experimental protocol and did not succeed. After he gave up on finding mistakes, the journal editor accepted the Shkedi paper for publication. So, it is better to be a little careful before accusing Shkedi et al. of "doing the math wrong". --Rabbiz (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Again, it's a welcome change to have a discussion based on scientific papers published in peer reviewed journal rather than on hearsay. On the other hand, I would suggest that we quote directly from the articles in questions, rather than translate their arguments in our own words, because it's too easy to make a mistake, to add our own colorful flavor, and to mislead readers.

One reliable source is the book from Ed Storms (2007). Appendix A presents the theory of calorimetry. It includes the following quibble on the Jones' paper that we discuss:

The values attributed to Jones et al [ref] in the figure are from a paper that gives a good example of biased reasoning. They measured the recombination fraction at very low currents, where [uncertainty] is high, and used these values to dismiss all measurements using open cells, without acknowledging that most successful studies used much higher currents or closed cells where this correction is unnecessary

So, it was easy to find a mistake in Jones paper, cold fusion results from closed cells or open cells with high currents are not invalidated by it, Jones did not convince the 2004 DOE panel (assuming that he dared present this idea, something we don't know), and Fleischmann is still working in the field. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:49, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

a) It is interesting that Storms is critical ONLY of Jones , not of Shkedi. This is particularly interesting because Shkedi visited Storms in Los Alamos and he had a first-hand familiarity with the Shkedi work. So far, nobody could find anything wrong with the Shkedi work, not even Fleischmann, Hagelstein, and McKubre. b) Storms is not critical of the Jones experiment or results. He is critical only of the application of Jones' conclusion to closed cells. The term "high current" is meaningless unless the electrolysis over-voltage is specified. Cathodes with a high surface area can have a high current at a low over-voltage, which triggers the singularity (divide by zero) in the formula shown above. c) The Faraday efficiency issue is applicable only to open cells and to closed cells which have a vent for unrecombined hydrogen and oxygen. It is not relevant, and nobody ever claimed relevance, to closed cells which are completely sealed. So, Storms' criticism is nothing but his own style of pushing a POV. --Rabbiz (talk) 22:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

So, we agree that Shkedi and Jones did not challenge the results obtained by the many careful experimenters using closed cells or open cells containing a recombiner. Thus, many observations still stand valid. Fleischmann's face had no reason to turn red, and he had no reason to leave the field, as you suggested without sources, and in contradition to reliable sources. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You have a mistake. Fleischmann's cells were all open without a recombiner. There is no such thing as open cell with a recombiner. Once you add a recombiner and prevent gases from entering or escaping, it becomes a closed cell. Fleischmann was upset because he always believed that the Faraday efficiency is 100% (or 99% as he claimed in one of his publications.) He never measured it during the excess heat events, and he never disclosed how he measured it, if he ever did. If he were to measure it during the excess heat events, he would have discovered the same thing that Shkedi and Jones discovered. Shkedi's equipment was much more sophisticated and accurate than Fleischmann's. (to the tune of a budget of $1,000,000 per year, probably more than any other CF group in the world at that time) Fleischmann visited Shkedi's lab and was shown exactly how to do it, yet he didn't. (Fleischmann never used a recombiner, at least not before 1995.) Shkedi invited him to repeat his experiments in Shkedi's lab at Shkedi's expense, yet he refused. (see letter published by Shkedi in Fusion Facts and copied in one of the CF talk pages.) It is unheard of in the scientific community that a scientist refuses an all expenses paid invitation from another scientist. Unless, there is something to hide.

Now, regarding the applicability of the Faraday efficiency findings, they apply as said above, to open cells and to vented closed cells, but not to sealed closed cells. How many sealed closed-cell experiments do we know of that show excess heat significantly higher than possible experimental errors? (calibrating a closed cell calorimeter is very difficult. It requires two calibrated heat sources, one in the electrolyte and one at the location of the recombiner in the air space above the electrolyte. I have never seen a report of such a properly calibrated calorimeter before 1995. I don't know if anyone did it after 1995, I hope somebody did.) --Rabbiz (talk) 17:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't presume to know all of the experimental setups Fleischmann used in his research, and whether or not he ever used a closed cell, but I do know that other scientists have performed CF experiments with a closed cell, which produced phenomena not explained by current theory. I believe that that is what Pcarbonn was refering to, as it invalidates the criticism that he was responding to.

I recall having read multiple papers about closed-cell setups. And, as they provide a more controlled environment, they often provide better accuracy in heat and energy measurements than open cells. I recall at least one experimenter who used flow flow calorimetry in a closed cell to measure enthalpy. In general, a variety of calorimetry methods have been used (and properly calibrated), in closed as well as open cells, some very basic, and some very sophisticated. Kevin Baas^talk 17:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

And regarding the "math" of Shkedi's (V-1.481) denominator: why is there a constant in the denominator of the reduced equation, as an additive term rather than a cofactor? Besides the fact that "1.481" doesn't correspond to any known physical constant, I've never seen a constant alone like that, and can't fathom any physical explanation for it (i.e. how it could be physically meaningful). That denominator: a variable minus a constant, strains credibility, and, in fact, enhances my skepticism. But, as you said, lacking the mathematical proof and justification for the starting equations, I can't falsify it - nor can I verify it. Suffice it to say that I remain as unconvinced as before. Fortunately, we're moved on to a more fruitful angle of analysis: experimental setups and applicability. Kevin Baas^talk 18:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I did some googling and found some sources saying that 1.481 volts is the voltage threshold at which electrolysis of water starts to produce heat. The "V" in the equation would thus refer to the voltage between the cathode and the anode. I presume they were using a voltage source sufficiently in excess of 1.481 volts in their experimental setups to make V-1.481 much greater than zero; I don't imagine anyone's used a watch battery to power an electrolysis cell and expected useful results. Kevin Baas^talk 18:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

(undent)Here is what F. Will (at one time president of the Electrochemical Society) wrote about Jones paper (Will, F.G., J. Electroanal. Chem., 1997. 426: p. 177."Hydrogen + oxygen recombination and related heat generation in undivided electrolysis cells."):

The fraction of 0 2 recombining with H 2 decreases significantly with increasing current density. [...] On the basis of their results at low current densities, a group of researchers recently concluded that H 2 + 0 2 recombination is the source for the "excess heat' reported by other groups and attributed by some to 'cold fusion'. However, reported excess heat values, ranging from a low of 23% at 14mAcm -2 to a high of 3700% at 6mAcm -2, are much larger than can be explained by recombination. Whatever the explanation for the large amounts of excess heat reported by various groups, H2 + 02 recombination must be rejected as a tenable explanation.

Pcarbonn (talk) 07:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

To answer Kevin's question: The units of (V-1.481) are volts. 1.481 is, as noted above, the threshold voltage for water electrolysis. When 1.481 volts are subtracted from the input voltage, it accounts for the energy invested in electrolyzing the hydrogen and oxygen and releasing them out of the cell (in an open cell). By doing so, the input energy is NOT V*I but (V-1.481)*I. This is less input energy and all excess heat is calculated as a percentage of this reduced input energy. For example: Let's say V=1.581 volts, than the input energy is: 0.1*I, not 1.581*I. So, if we assume either excess heat or a measurement error of 10% of the total electric energy input (that's a very realistic number in open cells), i.e 0.158*I, then by dividing it by 0.1*I we get: (0.158*I)/(0.1*I)=1.58=158% a phenomenal number. In other words, an experimental error of 10% looks like excess heat of 158%. All of this is based on the assumption that the Faraday efficiency is 100%. If the Faraday efficiency is less, then this entire calculation is different. Shkedi second paper shows all the exact math. By the way, increasing the electrolysis voltage leads to a very large increase in the calorimetry errors. For a discussion of errors in calorimetry, see Shkedi's first paper [3] page 1723.

Talking about current density without specifying the actual electrolysis voltage is misleading at best. --Rabbiz (talk) 01:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, Rabbiz. I imagine that any serious scientist is mathematically competent enough to plug the error margins (variances) of their measurements through the math and translate them into an error margin of the result/prediction. In the example you provided, that amounts to simple multiplying the margin of error in voltage by 10 (the ratio of voltage to heat).

Again, I can't imagine why anyone would use voltages that low. When someone is trying to study effects of a phenomena (such as electrolysis) to high precision, they generally try to get as much of the phenomena to occur as possible (while keeping certain parameters in certain rages and keeping it controlled and safe), so that they can get the most precision out of their measurement devices, as well as having the law of large numbers in their favor.

you go on to suggest a "very realistic" ratio of measurement error of heat to total electric energy input. I don't see how the accuracy of the calorimeter would at all be correlated with the amount of electrical energy being put into the system that it's measuring (assuming there's negligible crosstalk between the circuit that's supplying electricity to the calorimeter and the circuit that's supplying electricity to the electrolysis cell). It seems much more reasonable to me that the calorimeter's accuracy would be sensitive to the average temperature of the system, it's physical placement with-in the system, whether it's a closed or open cell, the specific heat of the solution, etc.

Regarding faraday efficiency, again, the faraday efficiency of water is usually very close to 100%, only rarely (shedki, for example) have faraday efficiencies significantly lower than this been reported, and that was using a nickel cathode. Furthermore, pcarbonn has already pointed out that some experiments have measured faraday efficiency while the experiment was running on took it into account, and the results were basically the same. In science, hypothesises are proved or disproved by experiments, and in these experiment that hypothesis was disproved.

Re: "By the way, increasing the electrolysis voltage leads to a very large increase in the calorimetry errors." again, heat and electricity are two very different types of energy, and consequently do not impose significant measurement errors on each other. If you increase the voltage, you increase the amount of excess heat, and thus decrease the amount of precision loss in your measurement; i.e. it is easier to tell the difference between a 10 degree vs. 20 degree temperature difference, than a .1 degree vs. .2 degree temperature difference, quite irrespective of any voltage gradients in the source material. Kevin Baas^talk 20:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

You'll have to read the Shkedi paper [4] to understand all the issues involved. This is not the place to teach the science of calorimetry. (calorimetry is one of the most difficult measurements to perform with any degree of accuracy.) Fleischmann never measured his Faraday efficiency during his excess heat events. He did it separately on the side. He only says 99% but does not show actual measurements. So, his claims have no scientific significance. When he visited Shkedi's lab, he refused Shkedi's invitation to repeat his experiment in Shkedi's lab at Shkedi's expense. Something unheard of in the scientific community. What did he have to hide?

Regarding the low voltage: too high a voltage in an open cell will cause so much bubbling that the electrolyte will splash all over. It will also upset the calorimetric measurements. The water level in the electrolyte will drop fast and you will have to keep adding fresh water which will destroy the calorimetric measurements. --Rabbiz (talk) 00:41, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I read the shkedi paper. And I understand the issues involved. I am not trying to teach the science of calorimetry. I never said that fleischmann measured his farady efficiency during excess heat events. Your unverifiable anecdotal accounts, speculation, and begging of the question have no argumentative weight. And once again you seem to make scientists out to be idiots, basing your arguments on extreme conditions and scientific negligence that would never be present in any reasonable experiment. Kevin Baas^talk 17:05, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Question: Can anyone point me to publications of high-excess-heat experiments measured in a closed cell? --Rabbiz (talk) 01:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

You could check the report submitted to the 2004 DOE panel: "The SRI group quoted a value of 45 MJ/mol for a measurement in a closed cell flow calorimeter, which is about 450 eV/atom of Pd. There are a great many reports of energy production at this general level, and some at much higher levels as well." I suppose that their reference section will lead you to the full articles. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:41, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The new lead

I strongly object to the use of a story in Wired magazine purporting to represent the entire scientific community. If peer-reviewers have been passing hundreds of articles, then that part of the scientific community (which should count for more in this instance than scientists in other fields) should not be construed as "meeting the claims with skepticism," which implies substantial doubt. A lot of people in the scientific community didn't give it much thought (I know because I am one.)

I recommend saying instead, "Some in the scientific community met these reports with skepticism."

I'm not participating in mediation, so I'm posting this here and ask that someone involved in mediation will please take this up in the event that this is a controversial suggestion. 76.240.231.102 (talk) 17:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The statement "Cold fusion gained a reputation as a pathological science after other scientists failed to replicate the results." is not entirely accurate; is misleading. It suggests that ALL scientists failed to replicate the results, when in fact, some scientists reported success in replicating the results. I think the wording should be changed to reflect this fact, for the sake of accuracy. Kevin Baas^talk 17:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

76.240.231.102, I believe that you challenge "The scientific community, however, has met these reports with skepticism." I agree with you when you say "A lot of people in the scientific community didn't give it much thought": most scientists have not heard of cold fusion, and most have not read any paper or review of the field.

Unfortunately, this controversial statement is well sourced. For example it has been published by Toni Feder from Physics today ("most scientists remain deeply skeptical that it's real."). According to Wikipedia policy, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. ". So, for the time being, we unfortunately have to keep this statement. We may want to adapt it to say "Some journalists say that the scientific community has met these reports with skepticism", but that is an awkward sentence. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:59, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

How about saying "most scientists" instead of "the scientific community" then? Also, isn't there a requirement to also include the point of view of scientists who accepted the phenomena? 76.240.231.102 (talk) 08:53, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that "most scientists" would be better. Would anybody object ?

We include the "the point of view of scientists who accepted the phenomena" by mentionning the peer reviewed journals. Ins't it enough ? Pcarbonn (talk) 09:53, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Make that "many" or "a number of" scientists" - except if you have a relaible source that did an opinion poll! Harald88 (talk) 20:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

"Most scientists..." would be the best way to present it. --Rabbiz (talk) 02:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I have no objections. I think we have a consensus preferring "Most scientists..." over "the scientific community". Kevin Baas^talk 21:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I am confused by Pcarbonn's statement that "The scientific community, however, has met these reports with skepticism." is controversial. Are you saying that the term "scientific community" is not useful for controversial topics in general, or are you claiming that a "large" fraction (by some definition) of scientists have not met the results with skepticism? 209.253.120.198 (talk) 01:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The source quoted for that sentence is not using the word "scientific community", so why should we ? Let's stick to the word they are using. Yes, I believe that a large fraction of scientists have not met these results with skepticism, because they have not heard of cold fusion in any details at all. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

new lead: "other scientists failed to replicate the results."

I suggested the statement "Cold fusion gained a reputation as a pathological science after other scientists failed to replicate the results." be made more accurate, without offering an alternative. Just to throw a possibility out there to give an idea of what I'm thinking:

• ""Cold fusion gained a reputation as a pathological science after attempts to replicate the experiment produced mixed results."

Kevin Baas^talk 21:37, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

• • PF claimed heat, tritium, and neutrons from a single setup and claimed that fusion was taking place. No other group has claimed heat, tritium, and neutrons from a single setup, and no group has convincingly demonstrated fusion produced by electrolysis. That means that the statement that other scientists have failed to replicate the results is correct. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 00:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

    I believe you are confusing "results" with "claims". you said "PF claimed ... and claimed ... No other group has claimed ... [therefore no other group has] replicated the results ..." results and claims are two completely different things. Besides, you've got your history wrong: PF never claimed tritium or neutrons. They tried to measure neutron count and tritium production and didn't find amounts commensurate with the heat production. Thus, they concluded that if the excess heat was caused by a nuclear reaction, it was not the conventional reaction pathways probabilities (which produce a lot of helium3, tritium, and neutrons), but rather that d+d->he4 was strongly favored. Their measurements agreed with this (they measured a lot of he4, and a little n,t, and he3). So you see, no group AT ALL has claimed heat, tritium, and neutrons from a single setup, including PF. The "results" referred to are "excess heat", which was reported by other scientists in the time period in question. And finally, with regard to your statement: "no group has convincingly demonstrated fusion produced by electrolysis": that is what's called a "straw man argument"; nobody is suggesting that any group has convincingly demonstrated fusion via electrolysis. That's a very difficult thing to demonstrate, and everybody here agrees that no group has done so. What is being claimed is that some scientists reported excess heat in their experiments that attempted to replicate a PF cell, which is much easier to demonstrate. That is what the sentence is talking about. Kevin Baas^talk 17:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

In the early FP article (J. Electroanal. Chem. 261, 301 (1989)), Fleischmann and Pons do indeed claim to have observed heat, neutrons, and tritium. On page 305 they state that "2.45 MeV neutrons are indeed generated [by deuteron fusion]". They state on page 307 that "[deuterium-tritium-oxide] accumulates in the cells." On the topic of other researchers observing excess heat in the similar electrochemical cells, it is true that some have reported excess heat. However, considering the complexity of the calorimetry and the unimpressive data I have seen, the data would have to be much more convincing before I would agree that the article should state that other researchers reported "mixed results." On a different topic, "pathological science" might not be the best label. Perhaps it should be changed to "voodoo science or bad science" since there are books by Park and Taubes which use those labels. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 00:28, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I would recommend that you have a look at the 2007 book from Ed Storms : it does a good job of reviewing the literature, and discusses excess heat, neutrons, tritium and helium4 production at length. The word "pathological science" has been used first at the 1989 APS meeting, and many times afterwards. It is a better defined concept than voodoo science, which only Park uses, as far as I know. As a personal opinion, even if the experimental data is not bullet proof, there is enough evidence to justify more research, in a world where energy becomes a critical issue. Such science should of course be conducted with very high quality standard. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:09, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

When I wrote: "PF never claimed tritium or neutrons.", I was over-simplifying. What I meant, made clear by the next sentence: "They tried to measure neutron count and tritium production and didn't find amounts commensurate with the heat production.", was that they never claimed measuring an amount of tritrium and neutron production that explained the excess heat via conventional fusion reaction pathways. Rather, when they found that the neutron production rate was much too low, they proposed an alternative theory, that the lattice-structure of the palladium somehow favored a d+d->he4 reaction. In addition to missing this, you also missed my point: "What is being claimed is that some scientists reported excess heat in their experiments that attempted to replicate a PF cell". And thsi is verifiably true. Whether you are convinced by these reports or not is quite irrelevant, as it is your personal opinion and thus constitutes original research. Kevin Baas^talk 16:52, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I did not miss your point at all, I just thought it was irrelevant that they had stated their neutron and tritium numbers were inconsistent with their heat numbers. What is relevant is that their claims of neutrons and tritium played a big role in bringing attention to the field, and the subsequent lack of confirmation played a big role in the field's negative reputation. Also, my opinions matter a great deal since they determine what I write on wikipedia edit pages. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 01:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

If you didn't miss my point than perhaps you should have responded to it in your first reply. Their claim of excess heat and that its origin was nuclear is what brought the attention to the field, and it was the lack of consistent reproducibility that played a big role in the field subsequently losing that attention. Your opinions may matter a great deal to you, as they are your opinions, but encyclopedias are not an appropriate place to express them. Your recent edit summaries for this talk page can be construed as personal attacks, baiting, and trollish behavior. Kevin Baas^talk 16:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Please note that, while the emission of neutron or tritium is found to be inconsistent with heat numbers, they are often reported at level significantly above background, indicating that something nuclear is happening. I can try to find sources for this if needed. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

other kinds of fusion - polywell and dense plasma focus are missing

polywell fusion (an extension of the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor idea) is absent from the "other kinds of fusion" section, and so is focus fusion (a.k.a. dense plamsa focus or DPF). Kevin Baas^talk 20:40, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

hatnote

The hatnote is unorthodox and contains a word which has a pejorative meaning. This is unneccesary and reeks of battles behind the scenes which should not be reflected in article space. If we cannot do better, we should simply remove the attempt to distinguish this subject from others and simply leave the second sentence, directing people to Adobe ColdFusion if they come here expecting an article on software. 86.44.26.69 (talk) 21:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. This is fixed in the draft version coming out of the mediation. You can find it here. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:05, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, but since the mediator had copied over a version of a lead, it seemed he had neglected the hatnote. Defeats the purpose of starting at the top if you don't actually start at the top ;) 86.44.28.245 (talk) 04:42, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I fully agree: mediation has been going on for a very long time, and seems to be dwindling. The current mediator's version should be copied into the article, including the hatnote. 76.225.156.160 (talk) 17:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Y Done, sort of. I copied over the hatnote from the mediation draft. I did not copy anything else. Although the mediation draft version seems much better. (Just took a quick look at it.) So, are there more people that think that the mediation draft should be copied over here? --David Göthberg (talk) 01:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I planned on copying it over a day or two ago, but I've been out of town a lot and haven't been able to do so. But I see no reason why it cannot be copied over, and if it's not done by the morning, I'll do it myself. If there are no objections. It's always open for discussion post-copy, so it's not one of those "finalized forever" versions. seicer | talk | contribs 04:33, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

As discussed here, there is still one major issue to be mediated. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The word "proposed" should be inserted in the hatnote. The current hatnote version does not communicate the level of disagreement in the field. Does anyone object to that? 209.253.120.198 (talk) 12:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Palladium

There needs to be a mention early on that palladium electrodes were used by Pons and Fleischer and by most? nearly all? all? researchers since, as well as the fact that palladium combines with hydrogen in electrolysis. I'm not sure of the best way to do this. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

This sounds reasonable, as palladium was as essential of an ingredient as heavy water was in the original cells. Not all of the researchers since have used palladium. Other metals have been used with positive results. Interestingly, at least one experiment claimed a positive result with light water using - if i recall correctly - a silver cathode. This is hard to believe. But it is actually predicted by a theory proposed by a reputable scientist whose name i unfortunately forgot - hsi theoryhad something to do with the periodicity of the lattice. But to answer your question, I would say most, not all, experiments used palladium as the loading material. Scientists have experimented with different cathodes, with some success using cathodes other than palladium. Kevin Baas^talk 14:40, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

lenr-canr.org

No thanks. It's not a reliable source, and most of the links to it were blatant copyright violations (hint: when you cite the international journal of so-and-so, the url is not lenr-canr.org). Also, it has been shown to editorialise rather than simply republish material. It is a ocmpletely inappropriate source for this or any other article.

As a side issue, the bibliography is a laundry list of "see? we are right!" papers by cold fusion advocates and needs to be massively pruned. Guy (Help!) 10:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

What were the opinions on excluding lenr-canr.org during mediation? I am inclined to say that they should only be included in the article if a source meeting the reliable source criteria has described them. --Why? (Why not?) 10:52, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, but I do know that no amount of mediation will ever allow us to link to offsite copyright violations. Guy (Help!) 12:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I reverted JzG's changes. I'm willing to rediscuss these issues under mediation, if we reopen it. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:44, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

JzG, Noren, do you accept that we resolve this issue under the mediation of Seicer ? Seicer, do you accept to mediate this issue ? Pcarbonn (talk) 16:32, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Let's discuss this further. Until then, to prevent edit warring and etc., I've protected the page. seicer | talk | contribs 16:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Here are some issues with JzG's edit:

• Noren said in the past that we should avoid repetition in the text. The first sentence that JzG added in "ongoing controversy" is already quoted in the "Experimental reports / Nuclear products". I see no need to repeat it in Ongoing controversy.
• I don't see the need to quote "Physics today"'s opinion on the 2004 DOE report in "Ongoing Controversy": Wikipedia readers are smart enough to make their own judgement.
• Replacing "cold fusion researchers" by "cold fusion advocates" is unnecessary POV pushing.
• please re-explain the issue with lenr-canr.org. Lenr-canr.org contains copies of articles published by other reliable sources: I don't see the need to remove these urls that are provided for the convenience of the reader. Why is it not reliable as a repository ? What evidence do you have of copyright violations ? Why should it be treated differently than arxiv (which is often used for citations, see here)?
• citations have been incorrectly removed: lenr-canr.org is not the publisher of these papers, it only has a copy of it, with authorisation from the author. For example, the proceedings of the 10th ICCF conference was published by World Scientific Publishing is (you can buy it here).

Pcarbonn (talk) 16:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

• And here are some issues with your edit: WP:OWN, WP:NBD, WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT and so on. Sure, you spent countless hours chipping away at the neutrality of the article and skewing it your way, and I don't have that much time to waste and am in any case not so very obsessed with legitimising cold fusion, but there is no doubt that LENR-CANR hosts offsite copyvios. And to be honest I can quite see why a CF advocate would hate the Physics Today analysis, but it is accessible to a general readership and explains in very vivid terms why the field is considered controversial. The edit was small, explained on talk, and calling it a "POV push" was not exactly a helpful or productive thing to do. Guy (Help!) 17:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Pcarbonn changed the intro paragraph to ongoing controversy four hours prior to it being copied over to here, not four months. Let's not pretend that that last minute edit is a result of mediation- it's simply that that particular edit happened to occur just prior the move from draft to here rather than just after. Let's just move most of the current the first paragraph back to 'moving beyond the initial controversy', where it belongs and where it was for 99% of time of mediation, and revert the intro back to the version agreed to originally in the mediation.--Noren (talk) 01:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

If there was not enough time to discuss this point, let's do it now. I do believe that the current version of the "ongoing controversy" section is better than the one originally in the mediation, or the one proposed by JzG, because it clearly and briefly addresses the topic of that section without duplication with other sections: "is cold fusion an ongoing controversy" ? Let's hear the opinion of others. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe the original without the digression into a quote from the body of the 2004 report does a much better job of clearly and briefly introducing the topic without delving into the details of the 2004 report with this quote. The overall story of the 2004 report was that a group of people applied for federal funding for their research, their evidence and proposals were found lacking, and they were flatly denied any funding. That's what actually happened, the fact that the reviewers indicated in the body of the report that people were free to seek federal funds elsewhere for other proposals is obvious, but was included to emphasize that any new proposals should be "well-designed", "address scientific issues", "meet accepted scientific standards", and "undergo the rigors of peer review"- unlike the proposal they were evaluating. This was an emphatic 'no' to the request with a few kind words indicating how different from the proposal any new requests for funding would need to be in order to have a chance at acceptance. The quote cherry picked here is attempting to make a few kind words (intended to soften the "no funding for you" that was the actual result of the panel) into some sort of blessing for CF. It wasn't. --Noren (talk) 14:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't see any evidence in the 2004 DOE report that the researchers "applied for federal funding" (they only requested "that the Department revisit the question of scientific evidence for low energy nuclear reactions", see [5]), that they were "flatly denied any funding", that they received an "emphatic no to the request", or that they should seek funding "elsewhere". On the contrary, I see the report as much more open, although it's clearly not enthusiastic. The Physics Today article, "Cold fusion gets a chilly encore", also supports that view, saying that they can seek funding with the DOE. Now, it's perfectly OK that you have a different interpretation of the same disputed sentence. By quoting it properly in the relevant section of the article, we allow the Wikipedia reader to make his own judgement. This is not cherry picking, as it correctly reflects the panel response to charge element 3 of the report, "Determine whether there is a scientific case for continued efforts in these studies" (see page 4-5). Using one interpretation of the sentence to justify its demotion does not seem acceptable to me, as it is special pleading. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:13, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

By the way, DARPA has recently financed research on cold fusion, according to New Energy Times. See here. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Any other comments on the issues I raised on JzG's edit ? Again, I don't see any reason to change the mediated version as he proposes (except for Lenr-canr.org). Pcarbonn (talk) 07:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

cold fusion research laboratory page...

http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00210/index.html

perhaps it could be integrated into the external links... --Emesee (talk) 05:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

uncat tag

also please someone add the uncat tag or put categories back in --Emesee (talk) 05:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

What categories was it in? Pseudoscience (there is no Pathological Science, apparently, it is all under Pseudoscience) and probably Physics? What else? Titanium Dragon (talk) 10:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

lenr-canr

The lenr-canr site has to go. For example, J. Electroanal. Chem., 304 (1991) 271-278 Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne at the head of www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BushBFheliumprod.pdf is, on its face, an admission of blatant copyright theft. Elsevier do not allow websites to host full text of their journal articles (I know, I have asked them). It's also been shown in the past to host supposed "copies" of material (specifically the 2004 DoE review) which started with editorial. It's also been spammed by the site's owner. Its main function is as a mirror of copyright material wrapped around with pro-CF advocacy. It fails abjectly as a WP:RS, and if the reliable sources aren't available online then we just use {{cite journal}}. Feel free to show any content it has which is hosted with permission and which comes from reliabel, independent, credible, peer-reveiwed sources, which are themselves not available online. Guy (Help!) 17:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Although you do not provide hard evidence for many of your strong statements, I agree that there is a reasonable doubt of copy violations by lenr-canr.org. I propose to remove the links, and to correct the citations that showed incorrectly lenr-canr.org as publisher (instead of removing them). OK ? Pcarbonn (talk) 09:14, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

You are reversing the burden of proof. Where a site hosts content it has not originated, the onus is on the site's owners to prove that they have a right to use it. No such assertion is made. All links to lenr-canr should be removed due to past spamming and present copyright violations and unreliability (WP:RS, WP:C). Guy (Help!) 11:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

2004 DoE CF documents that do not start with editorials: http://newenergytimes.com/DOE/DOE.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.194.190 (talk) 00:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

• Yeah, right. New Energy Times is also a pro-CF site. The DoE documents can and should be sourced direct from doe.gov. Guy (Help!) 11:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Our article does link directly to the report on doe.gov, so I don't see any issue here. The link to lenr-canr.org version of the DOE report has been removed a long time ago. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Given the risk of copyvio, we should avoid linking to it at all, even as a link of convenience. Everything that is reliable will have another publisher. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

But that publisher may not be online and if it is it may not be free -- that's the trouble with scientific journals nowadays. Kevin Baas^talk 14:23, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem in WP sourcing. See WP:V. For example, if I have a copy of A Brief History of Time and you don't, can't afford to buy it and don't live near a library, never mind. It's still a reliable source. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

But why link to content that no one can read when we can just as well link to the exact same content that everyone can read? Kevin Baas^talk 14:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Precisely because the original article is likely to be copyright and available only for payment.Itsmejudith (talk) 15:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Scientific papers generally aren't copyrighted, as far as i know - that would be anti-scientific. In any case, if the original article is copyright and available only for payment, then by definition, there wouldn't be the exact same content available for everyone to read. (w/o payment) Kevin Baas^talk 15:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

A lot of people would agree with that the principle is anti-scientific, but look inside a journal and you will see that the publisher regards the contents as copyright. Academics write the papers for no payment, then the publisher charges their university library a heavy subscription fee for online access that costs them nothing. Hence the growing support for open access journals. Just my tuppence-worth, my opinion not relevant to WP policy. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Scientific journals are frequently very expensive, and the restriction of copyright is the primary reason that they can charge thousands of dollars per year per journal subscription.--Noren (talk) 05:17, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Undisputed fair use claim

If a site like Lenr-canr.org makes a claim of fair use, and the publishers, for whatever reason, do not to dispute that claim, is Wikipedia policy really to consider them to be violating copyright? I am concerned that statments such as "U.S. Navy researchers have published more than 40 papers on cold fusion" have been removed in toto merely because they had a citation linking to lenr-canr. --Why? (Why not?) 11:02, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

On the first point, yes, that is the policy, because the likelihood is that the publishers have not been alerted. The rules for fair use are quite clear. You can cite excerpts of an article in order to illustrate a point but you can't put the whole text online without permission. On the second point, if lenr-canr is the only source for the statement, then I wouldn't support it being included, because it is not a sufficiently reliable source for this article. It is possible to continue with what WP calls "source research" and say the same thing on a better basis. By "US Navy researchers" I think Pamela Mosier-Boss's team is meant. The number of papers she has authored can be found in Web of Science or similar, and that would be an appropriate addition. An even better addition would be to say how that team's research has developed over the years, citing three or four of their most significant papers. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

faraday efficiency section

Some proposed changes (inserted text is in italics):

Lacking any other plausible explanation, the anomalous excess heat produced during such electrolysis was attributed by Pons and Fleischmann to cold nuclear fusion. It was discovered that, in some circumstances, such excess heat can be the product of conventional chemistry, i.e. internal recombination of hydrogen and oxygen. In some electrolysis cells running at low voltage, internal recombination of hydrogen and oxygen can create the appearance of excess heat. Such recombination leads to a reduction in the Faraday efficiency of the electrolysis. The Faraday-efficiency effect is the observation of apparent excess heat due to a reduction in the Faraday efficiency. This is called the "Faraday-efficiency effect".

In 1991-1993, a group of investigators[46][47] led by Zvi Shkedi, built in 1991-1993 built several well-insulated light-water electrolysis cells and calorimeters which included the capability to measure the actual Faraday efficiency in real time during the experiments. The cells were of the light-water type; with a fine-wire nickel cathode; a platinum anode; and K2CO3 electrolyte. A total of 64 experiments were performed in which the actual Faraday efficiency was measured. The results were analyzed twice; once with the popular assumption that the Faraday efficiency is 100%, and, again, taking into account the measured Faraday efficiency in each experiment. The average Faraday efficiency measured in these experiments was 78%. With this taken into account, the calculated excess heat was 0.13% +/- 0.48% of input power. If instead a Faraday efficiency of 100% was assumed, the apparent excess heat was 21%. The first analysis, assuming a Faraday efficiency of 100%, yielded an average apparent excess heat of 21% of input power. The second analysis, taking into account the measured Faraday efficiency, yielded an actual excess heat of 0.13% +/- 0.48%. In other words, when the actual Faraday efficiency was measured and taken into account, the energy balance of the cells was zero, with no excess heat. The investigators concluded their publication with the following word of cautionthat: "All reports claiming the observation of excess heat should be accompanied by simultaneous measurements of the actual Faraday efficiency."[48][page # needed] Jones et al. confirmed the Shkedi et al. findings with the same conclusion: "Faradaic efficiencies less than 100% during electrolysis of water can account for reports of excess heat in 'cold fusion' cells."[49]

Making the section read:

In some electrolysis cells running at low voltage, internal recombination of hydrogen and oxygen can create the appearance of excess heat. This is called the "Faraday-efficiency effect".

In 1991-1993, a group of investigators[46][47] led by Zvi Shkedi built several well-insulated light-water electrolysis cells and calorimeters which included the capability to measure the actual Faraday efficiency in real time. The average Faraday efficiency measured in these experiments was 78%. With this taken into account, the calculated excess heat was 0.13% +/- 0.48% of input power. If instead a Faraday efficiency of 100% was assumed, the apparent excess heat was 21%. The investigators concluded that: "All reports claiming the observation of excess heat should be accompanied by simultaneous measurements of the actual Faraday efficiency."[48][page # needed] Jones et al. confirmed the Shkedi et al. findings with the same conclusion: "Faradaic efficiencies less than 100% during electrolysis of water can account for reports of excess heat in 'cold fusion' cells."[49]

Edmund Storms observed that "[the] values attributed to Jones et al. [...] gives a good example of biased reasoning. They measured the recombination fraction at very low currents, where [uncertainty] is high, and used these values to dismiss all measurements using open cells, without acknowledging that most successful studies used much higher currents or closed cells where this correction is unnecessary."[50]

Fleischmann did measure Faraday efficiency in his experiments: it was better than 99%.[51] Fritz Will, former president of the Electrochemical Society, noted in his review of Jones' paper that "[the] fraction of O2 recombining with H2 decreases significantly with increasing current density. [...] On the basis of their results at low current densities, a group of researchers recently concluded that H2 + O2 recombination is the source for the "excess heat' reported by other groups and attributed by some to 'cold fusion'. However, reported excess heat values, ranging from a low of 23% at 14 mA/cm2 to a high of 3700% at 6 mA/cm2, are much larger than can be explained by recombination. Whatever the explanation for the large amounts of excess heat reported by various groups, H2 + O2 recombination must be rejected as a tenable explanation."[52]

Kevin Baas^talk 16:05, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Kevin. I fully support it. In fact, the shorter we make it the better. We might even delete it as this hypothesis has no notability, in line with WP:Undue. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:42, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that most of the original text was copied straight from the faraday efficiency effect article, which explains why it was so - ironically - inefficient. It strikes me as kind of odd to have a section that reads like "x claims y, however, they're obviously full of sh*t." Then why mention it? It might also violate WP:FRINGE. However, I'm afraid to touch it because it was part of the version formed via mediation. In any case, I'd like more opinions before implementing the changes. Kevin Baas^talk 17:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

shortening seems like a good idea. I'm not happy with "Edmund Storms observed", as it appears to endorse Storms' view. This section reports a disagreement between scientists in the field, so should be reported as neutrally as possible. Since there are two papers on one side of the debate and Storms on the other, this would seem to be a notable issue in the cold fusion controversy and therefore should stay in the article. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The only thing that isn't indisputably an observation is the first part ("..gives a good example of biased reasoning."). So it gives a good description of what storms is indisputably doing, notwithstanding the first sentence. And Mr. storms is not disagreeing with the results of the experiments. The only think he disagrees with is jones' logic (or lack thereof). --and note: jones is the only one making the claim - while both storms and flieshman are disputing it) And the people who did it (including jones) aren't disagreeing with storm's observations. And they don't logically contradict each other. You said that "there are two papers on one side of the debate and storms on the other" - this is a misrepresentation. Every scientist studying cold fusion is clearly on the other side of the debate, and they vastly outnumber jones, who is actually the only one who opines against c.f. on the basis of the faraday efficieny effect. Furthermore, to be on jones' side, a scientist would have to believe that 1) the faraday efficiency effect is significant at high current densities, and that 2) the faraday efficiency effect is applicable in a closed cell. Neither of these beliefs are mainstream scientific views. Hence, WP:UNDUE. Kevin Baas^talk 18:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I suppose alternatively one could believe that 1) all cold fusion experiments where done at unusually low current densities, and 2) no cold fusion experiments used a closed cell. And in either case, one would have to believe that 3) flieschmann did not measure the faraday efficiency. All of these are results of ignorance, and 1) and 2) are implausible in light of scientific norms. In any case, even giving the benefit of the doubt, these beliefs are still WP:FRINGE. Kevin Baas^talk 18:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and I forgot to add that they would also have to believe that cold fusion excess heat results where in the range of those observed by the faraday efficiency effect experiments - about 21%. Again, attributable to ignorance, but nonetheless a minority view. As far as I can tell, there is only one scientist who ever held the view in question: Jones. That doesn't exactly elevate it to the level of notability. add to the fact that this view goes against numerous mainstream scientific beliefs, as pointed out above, and, well, that certainly doesn't help. Kevin Baas^talk 18:39, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

There are several thousands of articles on cold fusion, and only 2 on this topic. Are we going to write a full section on each of the other disputes too ? Pcarbonn (talk) 18:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It would be nice to have sections on all the issues where there has been a genuine scientific controversy and this seems to be one of them. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:15, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see a scientific controversy here. What I see is "make sure you take this into account...", followed closely by "already did that. but thanks." Kevin Baas^talk 20:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Regardless, I want to get at least two approvals for my suggested changes. Itsmejudith, do you think this is better?:

Edmund Storms labeled Jones' conclusions "a good example of biased reasoning", observing that "[Jones et. al.] measured the recombination fraction at very low currents...

And are you okay with the proposed changes (including that one if you prefer it)? Kevin Baas^talk 21:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, good wording. And as far as I understand the question, I don't disagree with your summary of it. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that there are actually three people listed in this section as disputing Jones. I propose the last line of the second paragraph be split off, and the remaining material be re-ordered from storms,pons,fritz to fritz,storms,pons, each with their own paragraph, plus two more wording changes:

Jones et al. confirmed the Shkedi et al. findings with the same conclusion and concluded that: "Faradaic efficiencies less than 100% during electrolysis of water can account for reports of excess heat in 'cold fusion' cells."[49]

Fritz Will, former president of the Electrochemical Society, noted in his review of Jones' paper that "[the] fraction of O2 recombining with H2 decreases significantly with increasing current density. [...] On the basis of their results at low current densities, a group of researchers recently concluded that H2 + O2 recombination is the source for the "excess heat' reported by other groups and attributed by some to 'cold fusion'. However, reported excess heat values, ranging from a low of 23% at 14 mA/cm2 to a high of 3700% at 6 mA/cm2, are much larger than can be explained by recombination. Whatever the explanation for the large amounts of excess heat reported by various groups, H2 + O2 recombination must be rejected as a tenable explanation."[52]

Edmund Storms observed that "[the] values attributed to Jones et al. [...] gives a good example of biased reasoning. They Edmund Storms labeled Jones' conclusions "a good example of biased reasoning", observing that "[Jones et. al.] measured the recombination fraction at very low currents, where [uncertainty] is high, and used these values to dismiss all measurements using open cells, without acknowledging that most successful studies used much higher currents or closed cells where this correction is unnecessary."[50]

Fleischmann did measure Faraday efficiency in his experiments: it was better than 99%.Fleischmann measured Faraday efficiency in his cold fusion experiments and found it to be better than 99%.[51]

The first wording change was because jones' conclusion is actually different from shedki's (as shedki's didn't mention cold fusion). The second because it's style is more encyclopedia (the original was rhetorical).

If there are no objections to all these changes I'll propose it to an admin when I have some time tomorrow. Thanks for your input. Kevin Baas^talk 23:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Implemented. Kevin Baas^talk 18:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think you should also consider this publication: Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 44 (2005) pp. 396-401. Quote: We have observed as much as 80 times more hydrogen generated by plasma electrolysis than by conventional electrolysis at 300 V Melethron (talk) 01:26, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Pathological science

Why are Alchemy, Pathological Science, Protoscience, and Transmutation linked to Cold Fusion here? Wouldn't Nuclear Fusion, Nuclear Fission, and some other kind of energy production linked to this article? They seem almost unrelated to this article, other than the fact that most of those require a fusion of some sorts (namely alchemy and transmutation) and that this is a new science (protoscience). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.119.185.104 (talk) 03:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Cold Fusion isn't protoscience so much as it is pathological science, hence the links. I have no idea on Alchemy or Transmutation, though. Titanium Dragon (talk) 09:14, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Cold fusion was considered pathological science in the 90's, but it isn't anymore: the 2004 DOE was evenly split on the evidence of excess heat, and identified several areas of research to resolve the controversy. You would expect such an assessment for a protoscience, not for a pathological science. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I haven't seen any evidence that the field's reputation has improved since the 90's. According to the Physics Today 2005 article, cold fusion is still in a state of "disrepute." Therefore, the link to pathological science should probably stay. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 01:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Funny enough, the title of the Physics Today article you refer too is "DOE Warms to Cold Fusion". That article does not talk of "pathological science" at all. Actually, I do not think that there is any post-2000 source presenting cold fusion as pathological science. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The Physics Today April 2004 article is titled "DOE Warms to Cold Fusion" while the Physics Today January 2005 article is titled "Cold Fusion Gets Chilly Encore." The former states that the scientific community "shuns" cold fusion, while the latter states that "Claims of cold fusion are no more convincing than they were 15 years ago." Physics Today is the principal magazine published by the main association of American physicists. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 12:32, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Surely the numerous recent articles on cold fusion would present cold fusion as pathological science if that's the proper way to present it. None is doing it. Pathological science is a a clearly defined concept: a science in which "people are tricked into false results ... by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions". None of your statement nor your sources supports that view. Instead, they are consistent with a new field of study trying to establish its legitimacy. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:00, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

They recommended against giving it any federal funding, and considering some of the things the federal government HAS sunk money in (the infamous telportation report, the remote viewing program, ect.) I don't think that's exactly a vote of endorsement. They listed some very basic stuff which cold fusion has ultimately failed to answer; I think calling it pathological science is justified given it seems more that people WANT to believe in it rather than actually having solid evidence for it. The whole thing reminds me strongly of polywater. Titanium Dragon (talk) 23:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

You are mistaken : the 2004 DOE DID recommend giving federal funding (but not in a focused program). Here is a quote from the 2004 DOE report : "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV."

Polywater has been shown to be pathological science, not cold fusion : small impurities were invariably found to explain the polywater phenomena; many experimental reports of cold fusion have no satisfactory explanation at this point. If some people want to believe in CF, as you suggest, others chose to show "pathological disbelief" towards cold fusion, only on the basis of their belief system. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:51, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

A general principle on controversial articles is to keep the See also section quite short and not to use it to introduce aspects of the controversy that should be dealt with in main article space. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The relevant scientific literature does classify Cold Fusion with Polywater. See "Indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: A publication analysis of Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion", E. Ackermann, Scientometrics 66, 451-466 (2006) --Noren (talk) 23:52, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

You can't conclude that cold fusion should be considered pathological science from that paper, only that it should be considered as a failed information epidemics. The definition of failed information epidemics given in that article is distinctively different from the definition of pathological science. I would have no problem tagging the cold fusion article as a failed information epidemics, but it would require this topic to be presented in the article (as itsmejudith explained). Pcarbonn (talk) 06:30, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia; we report from a NPOV and use RSs. RSs say that cold fusion is a pathological science, and indeed it is more commonly thought of as a pathological or pseudoscience than as an actual science by scientists. Hence, we MUST state that it has a reputation as being such; it would not be neutral for us to do otherwise. Titanium Dragon (talk) 06:38, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Then please provide a reliable source, among the many published since 2000, that say that cold fusion is pathological science. Wikipeida policies require that any challenged statement be backed up by a reference. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

You mean other than the source already in the article? Titanium Dragon (talk) 04:55, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Refer to pcarbonn's previous comment, where he notes that said source does not say that cold fusion is pathological science. Kevin Baas^talk 15:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Google reveals: Columbia university cites it as an example of such: [6] Hyle criticizes the term "pathological science", but cites cold fusion as an example thereof: [7] It is associated with pathological science as strongly as polywater and N-rays, perhaps MORE strongly in some people's minds because it is more recent. Titanium Dragon (talk) 23:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Columbia's citation is from 1998. Hyle's citation is from 2002, and he says that OTHER people called it pathological science, with examples from pre-2000. A lot of things have happened in the field since then (such as the 2004 DOE report, which presents it as an ongoing controversy). Again, I don't know of any people saying that cold fusion actually is pathological science after 2000. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

They don't use the phrase "pathological science," but here's an article in Discover from 2006 which calls cold fusion a "fiasco" which delivered "little besides unpredictable results." They even put "cold fusion" inside quotes which implies that they have a low opinion of the field. http://discovermagazine.com/2006/jan/physics 209.253.120.198 (talk) 02:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, they are not using the word "pathological science". So, we agree. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:12, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Why is it being from 1998 important? That's silly. I could put all sorts of arbitrary requirements on you, but that doesn't mean they make sense. How much attention is paid today by mainstream scientists to it? Why? Why do they look down on it so? The answer is quite clear. Denial is a terrible thing. Titanium Dragon (talk) 09:33, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

• Cohen references cold fusion in his Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line and talks about it being pathological science.
• SFgate.com had an article about it and talked about how it showed all the signs of pathological science, but I can't find the article.

Is this the one where Hal Plotkin says that "I've become convinced that the federal Department of Energy is responsible for a massive failure to serve the public interest."(May 17, 1999) ? Hardly a support to the pathological view ! Pcarbonn (talk) 16:03, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

• The NYT quoted Morrison in 1989 calling it pathological science.

Indeed Morrison and many others have said that Fleischmann & Pons made mistakes in radiation measurements in their initial reports (but not on the excess heat). But you cannot infer that the later researchers did the same mistakes. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:03, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

• Jasper McKee, editor of Physics in Canada, talked about cold fusion being pathological science, and again referenced something else Morrison said.
• Apparently the book Voodoo Science calls cold fusion pathological science.

Its author said in 2007 : 'there are some curious reports - not cold fusion, but people may be seeing some unexpected low-energy nuclear reactions'." (source) Pcarbonn (talk) 16:03, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

• The Undergrowth of Science talks about cold fusion as pathological science.

Titanium Dragon (talk) 09:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

We are writing an article representing the current view of the subject, that's why recent sources matter (except for the history section, of course). That's why it is important to find a recent reliable source saying it's pathological science. Even if such as source is found (pls provide the date for your sources), it also has to be shown that it is the majority view, or we have to qualify it as the view of so and so.

By the way, if there is a consensus that CF is pathological science, why did the DOE recommend further scientific research on the subject ? Why is DARPA financing research in it ? See here. Cold fusion is a controversial effect, like many others, that is studied by real scientists.

We are having this discussion for the "See also" section: during the mediation, it was agreed that we would not have one (See here), and that, if we had one, it should not include controversial links (see Itsmejudith's comment above in this thread). A link to "pathological science" is already in the lead section: no need to add it in a "See also" section.

The same can be said about a "pathological science" category for the article: there is no recent proof that there is a clear consensus that CP is pathological science, so there is not enough support to put it in that category. It's better to put it in the Category:Unsolved_problems_in_physics. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:32, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Cold Fusion should be placed in Category:Unsolved_problems_in_physics AFTER data showing a convincing deviation from established physics has been reported in a top journal. Until then, let's wait and see how the research progresses. By the way, the fact that some people study something does not mean it is not pathological science. By definition, all pathological science has had someone studying it, or it wouldn't even exist as a type of science. The term pathological merely labels those people as being incompetent, not nonexistent. A better metric for detecting pathological science is whether results are repeatable and reproducible. Good researchers strive to publish results in top journals (Science, Nature, Physical Review), so if they can't, there is a good chance their results are not repeatable and reproducible, which supports the use of the "pathological science" label. In other words, if something is discussed but never makes it into top journals, that is by itself evidence that something is wrong, at the very least. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 12:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The cloning of animal is difficult to repeat, and very few teams can actually repeat it. Yet, nobody says it's pathological science. Just after the cloning of Dolly, i.e. when it was not yet reproduced, nobody said that it was pathological science. Also, many discoveries never make it to Nature : would you call them pathological science ? Pathological science has a well-defined meaning: let's stick to it. Your criteria, while related to pathological science, are not enough to classify something as pathological science. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:00, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

First off, government funding does not mean it isn't pure pseudoscience; see, for instance, the millions the government spent on remote viewing experiments over the course of decades, or the infamous teleportation report [8]. Any argument based on "the govnernment gives it money, therefore it isn't pseudoscience" is pretty worthless, as the US government has in the past funded pseudoscientific garbage for a variety of reasons.

Second, there is consensus by the scientific community that it is pathological science; see my references above. Our job is to report reality, not the incredibly incorrect POV you hold. We say it is considered pathological science by many in the introduction to the article, it would be completely inappropriate for us NOT to classify it under Category:Pseudoscience in light of that. You are the one who is going against what was agreed upon during arbitration, and you are the one who is, I'm sorry to say, in ignorance of the modern reality - it IS viewed as such by the scientific community at large. While not as poorly looked upon as, say, intelligent design, it is viewed as pathological science at best and crankery otherwise. And the New Energy Times seems to exist for the promotion of such, and doesn't look to be the most realiable or neutral source on the subject matter.

And comparisons to animal cloning show a complete lack of comprehension of how science works and reproducibility. People have, in fact, reproduced animal cloning, but more to the point, unlike cold fusion research, a clone is still extant over time - that is to say, if I claim to have cloned an animal, it is easy for you to confirm whether two sheep are clones via genetic testing. There is an enormous difference because a cloning project actually produces an object which is proof that it worked. Cold fusion is poorly regarded by the scientific community at large, it is seen as pathological science, and it is very different from novelties like animal cloning in essential ways. Titanium Dragon (talk) 22:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The things that are categorized as pseudoscience are categorized as such because they meet the definition of pseudoscience. As pcarboonn has already pointed out, cold fusion does not meet that definition. If some people hold that POV, then it is a POV, and should be presented as such. Using a category presents it as a fact, not a POV, and wikipedia does not take sides on POVs. Since it does not meet the definition of pseudoscience, it is not factually pseudoscience, so wikipedia cannot take a stance that it is, even if some people hold that pov. (while others don't - which brings up a whole 'nother issue: balance) Kevin Baas^talk 14:49, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Thing is, EVERYTHING related to that is an "opinion". Homeopathy, for instance, is clearly pseduoscience, but its supporters ceratinly don't believe it to be so. Same with perpetual motion machines, which fall under Category:Pseudophysics, as this would. And yes, it IS categorized as such; pathological science does not have a category of its own and is instead put into the appropriate subcategory under the larger umbrella of Category:Pseudoscience. And no, a category doesn't present it as "fact", it presents it as a -category-. The point of categories is to categorize stuff, and to group things together appropriately. And the scientific community at large (and world at large), regardless of what Pcarbonn CLAIMS, in actuality classifies cold fusion alongside polywater and N-Rays; comparisons are pretty common and it is commonly referred to as pseudoscience and pathological science. It should be grouped with them because it is commonly grouped with them, and the purpose of categories is ease of finding such. You can find people who contest ANYTHING, but amongst the scientific community, it is broadly considered to be pathological science. I have shown numerous books, universities, articles, researchers, ect. to consider it such. What does he offer in contrast to that categorization? If categorization was endorsement of a given POV, there's no way we could even have a meaningful pseudoscience category, much less put things like homeopathy or intelligent design in it. Titanium Dragon (talk) 22:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, Titanium Dragon, the criteria for pathological science is not reproducibility anymore, but whether the result of an experiment is extant over time. Luckily, the evidence of CR-39 detectors and of nuclear transmutations pass this test, and has been reproduced, so cold fusion is not pathological science by this criteria either. Also, why do you change the criteria ? This is a typical tactic of "pathological disbelief".

I wish you have read the definition of pathological science : it is the "process in science in which "people are tricked into false results ... by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions"". So, it is not so much defined by the experiment than by the method used by the researchers. I wonder why the new criteria you propose is not mentionned in the pathological science page. What evidence do we have that the recent researchers have been tricked into false results ? And, on the other hand, do those who keep changing definitions follow the process of science ? Please have a look at the characteristics of pseudoskepticism.

We agreed in mediation to represent the view of the 2004 DOE panel: indeed, this is the most notable neutral review of the field. My "incredible POV" is shared by a significant number of its panelists, just as your incredible disbelief is by others. Clearly, there is no consensus that it is pathological science. So, we cannot categorize it as such. If the article on homeopathy represent a false consensus, we should fix it too. Actually, there is an arbitration going on for that article: hopefully, they will do what's necessary. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:28, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

You said that the article could be categorized as an Unsolved problem in physics only AFTER it has been clearly established as such. Likewise, could we say that the article could be categorized as pathological science only AFTER it has been clearly established as such ? If not, why the double standard ? Pcarbonn (talk) 08:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Titanium Dragon, I read through the articles you cited (homeopathy and polywater) and I really don't see how either of them can be compared to cold fusion. Homeopathy is clearly not science - they didn't do anything scientific. Polywater was shown to be a result of contamination - it is falsified science; the result of sloppy experiments, the cause of which was later discovered to be impurities in the water. I would call homeopathy not science, just like i'd call intelligent design not science. I would call polywater a solved problem in science - as the cause of the phenomena was discovered - or one might call it falsified. But it's not perpetual motion. that i'd call pathological or pseudoscience - as it directly violates the second law of thermodynamics. Cold fusion is not like polywater because the cause of the phenomena has not been discovered and hypothesis for it have not been falsified. Cold fusion is not like homeopathy because the scientific process is used in research of it. And finally, cold fusion is not like perpetual motion because it doesn't violate any fundamental laws of energy and entropy. So I don't see the relation you're trying to make when you bring these things up. None of the objectionable qualities that these things have are shared with cold fusion. Kevin Baas^talk 14:52, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

'And finally, cold fusion is not like perpetual motion because it doesn't violate any fundamental laws of energy and entropy.' CF does not violate fundamental laws of energy and entropy, but it would violate other laws that are similarly respected: coulomb repulsion, and expected products from deuteron fusion. Unless some fifth force is acting, cold fusion is about as likely as perpetual motion. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 00:20, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Please provide a source for that. The DOE never said it. It just said that a new nuclear process would be needed. It didn't say this is unlikely. Pcarbonn (talk) 06:28, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Aren't there dozens of articles quoting scientists as saying cold fusion is unlikely? Also, I haven't read them, but by googling for a few minutes I found these two articles which appear to say cold fusion is unlikely: http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v63/i1/p59_1 http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v63/i18/p1926_1 209.253.120.198 (talk) 12:08, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The sources you quote are essentially saying that "fusion, as we know it, is unlikely in a cold environment". They say nothing about the possibility of a new nuclear process that DOE say would be required to explain the observations. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:36, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

For the record, i cited the laws of energy and entropy because there are no other laws that are similiarly respected; they are fundamental axioms which precede any other physical law. forces such as coulomb repulsion and processes such as nuclear reactions are defined in terms of them. we could not use mathematical equations to describe the universe where it not for a law of conservation of energy, and we could not describe dissipative systems such as sound waves or chemical reactions without some mechanism to quantify evolution probabilities, such as entropy. Without laws of energy providing a framework to describe transfers of causative power and laws of entropy to describe the statistical mechanics of that transfer, we wouldn't have physics (as we know it). Kevin Baas^talk 22:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I see: Pseudoscience is defined as a body of knowledge, methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific or made to appear scientific, but does not adhere to the scientific method,[2][3][4] lacks supporting evidence or plausibility,[5] or otherwise lacks scientific status.[6] homeopath does not adhere to the scientific method, polywater - i don't know how that fits in - it's just disproven science - perpetual motion lacks supporting evidence or plausibility. If "otherwise lacks scientific status" wasn't so vague, it might be more helpful. Cold fusion meets all the criteria of "science", so it has the "status" of "science" in that sense. It hasn't been falsified like polywater has, so in that sense it still retains "scientific status" whereas polywater might be said to no longer have such status. But "scientific status" could mean so many other things, it's hard to say. Kevin Baas^talk 15:23, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Though in the context of that sentence, "scientific status" can be reasonable construed to mean something other than being "scientific" or not, or having supporting evidence or not, as that would make the sentence redundant. Apparently it refers to something more elusive, and possibly subjective. Kevin Baas^talk 15:27, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I read the rest of the intro to the pseudoscience article and the "identifying..." section, and it just doesn't fit. For example:

Pseudosciences have been characterised by the use of vague, exaggerated or untestable claims, over-reliance on confirmation rather than refutation, lack of openness to testing by other experts, and a lack of progress in theory development.

Cold fusion does not meet any of these criteria. And, in fact, the identifying section has this to say:

If the claims of a given field can be experimentally tested and methodological standards are upheld, it is not "pseudoscience", however odd, astonishing, or counter-intuitive. If claims made are inconsistent with existing experimental results or established theory, but the methodology is sound, caution should be used; science consists of testing hypotheses which may turn out to be false. In such a case, the work may be better described as ideas that are not yet generally accepted.

So I have to conclude from the article on pseudoscience that cold fusion is not pseudoscience. Kevin Baas^talk 15:36, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Cold fusion research has been characterized by confirmation bias and a lack of reproducible results. Indeed, the USDOE 2004 reviewers commented on the difficulty of reproducing the results and expressed skepticism. This is why it is seen as pathological science; basically, people see what they want to see, and troll through their own data to find significance. The problem is that they have not established that they can reproduce the results of their experiments; back after the initial furor in the 1980s a ton of people tried to reproduce the results and couldn't. Over-reliance on confirmation rather than refutation is exactly what trolling through your data trying to find meaningful results is, and that's exactly what they've been accused of - wanting to see something that isn't there. They do not suffer from lack of openness, but other experts have been unable to duplicate their results, and a lack of progress in theory development is very evident in the field of cold fusion. So it meets most of the criteria of pseudoscience; the only one it fails to meet is openness. Exaggerated claims is part and parcel of cold fusion; indeed, that is exactly what the initial reports were, and the original authors ended up withdrawing their claims for exactly that reason, along with the lack of reproducibility. Titanium Dragon (talk) 23:14, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

You are confusing skepticism and rejection. Most scientists are skeptics of cold fusion, as Physics Today said: it does not mean that they reject it as pathological science. To do so would require to show that people have been tricked into false results. Yet, the DOE said that cold fusion could not be yet proved nor disproved. So, it cannot be proven to be pathological science either. Again, we decided in mediation to represent the view in proportion to the DOE panel's. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:06, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

"Seventeen years after the announcement by Professors Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann of the discovery of cold fusion in March 1989, the scientific community does not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme." - first sentence of abstract, Int. J. Nuclear Energy Science and Technology, Vol. 3, pg. 31 (2007). The author, Jean-Paul Biberian, is himself an author of cold fusion papers but acknowledges the fact that cold fusion is widely regarded as pseudoscience. I think that not 'a genuine scientific research theme' is a fine definition of pseudoscience. --Noren (talk) 14:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

For every quote in favor of pathological science, there is one to the contrary. Here is what Bob Park, the famous author of Voodoo Science said in 2007 : "Bob Park, at the University of Maryland, US, [...] concedes that 'there are some curious reports - not cold fusion, but people may be seeing some unexpected low-energy nuclear reactions'." (source). If the guru of pathological science acknowledges cold fusion, why not the others ? In any case, no consensus --> no categorisation. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:42, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, there is a fallacy in your argument: "not saying A" is not the same as "saying not A". "The scientific community does not say it is a genuine scientific research theme" is not the same as "the scientific community say it is not a genuine scientific research theme." Again, this is the difference between skepticism and rejection. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that cold fusion research has been characterized by confirmation bias - but rather by people considering the probabilities and finding them to be way out of line from what is expected. If one does 20 experiments, and theory predicts 0 of them to produce anomolous results, while experience predicts about 2 of them to have erroneous results outside the 90% confidence interval (perhaps due to contamination or some measurement error), and one gets, instead, 5 of them outside the 99% confidence interval - well, that's highly improbable. That high improbability is cause for surprise - and a curious person would say "there's something going on here that i don't understand. i want to find out what it is." I would characterize someone who takes the opposite view - the view that nothing interesting is happening - as led by confirmation bias - because they're disregarding the anomolous results and thus not weighing all of the evidence - they're picking and choosing what to include in order to confirm their pre-ordained conclusion and ignoring anything that refutes it. When you weigh all of the evidence, both good and bad, you come up with something that's highly improbable. That's not confirmation bias, that's being rational.

As regards "a lack of reproducible results", firstly, results have been reproduced - historically they haven't been nearly as reproducable as the norm (but neither is cloning sheep), but they have been reproduced. the pseudoscience article says nothing about things that are difficult to reproduce (such as hot fusion, for instance), and rightly so. the phenomena observed in these experiments have been difficult to reproduce. that does not make it pseudoscience. furthermore, there are now experiments (such as those done in SPAWAR) that have very high reproducability, so your premise is critically flawed anyways.

"trolling through your data trying to find meaningful results is" called trying to find an explanation for the phenomena. That's what good scientists do.

"and a lack of progress in theory development is very evident in the field of cold fusion. " - the rate of theory development in proportion to the number of people working on it is actually very high. theories in physics don't just develop overnight. it often takes decades. (quantum physics, and relativity being two well-known examples) and the whole string theory / m-theory stuff has been around for a few. That's thousands of scientists working on one problem for a couple of decades and producing a total of two theories. Point is I think you're sense of scale is a bit off here. The rate of development of c.f. theories, esp. given the relatively small number of researchers and the mysteriousness of the phenomena, is quite impressive.

As regards exaggerated claims, it seems to me that you're taking the initial statement "there seems to be something nuclear going on here" as "exaggerated claims" that are categorically pseudoscience, and I really don't think that's what the article means to say. I've read a lot of the papers and i don't see any exaggerated claims in them - i see exact numbers and graphs and it all looks very scientific and conservative to me. it looks to me like you're cherry-picking here -- and all you've got is one cherry -- and even that's disputable. The claims made in the papers publishing results of the experiments are not exaggerated. They are very testable and specific.

So in conclusion, it does not meet any of the criteria. The only way you can make it seem to meet the criteria is by twisting the meaning around while simultaneously cherry-picking and disregarding any results that refute your hypothesis. Kevin Baas^talk 15:34, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is it IS confirmation bias; one of the things which the cold fusion community has been specifically criticized for is data mining. If you run a thousand experiments, you'd expect about ten of them to be out pretty far on the tail on the top, and about ten to be pretty far out on the tail at the bottom. If you then write a paper and take only twenty results, ten of them the high ones and ten others, and claim you have something, you're basically committing scientific fraud. People do this fairly often, unfortuantely, and it isn't always intentional - sometimes they really believe they have something because they WANT to believe it. This is the confirmation bias I'm speaking of. You simply aren't going to run a perfect experiment every time, most likely, and if you get a couple of anomalous results, which checking them out is a good thing, it doesn't mean there is ANYTHING significant. The fact that other people cannot replicate these experiments speaks volumes about the controls on them, and the scientific community at large does not take it seriously.

Hot fusion is very easy to reproduce, it is just very expensive and you need specialized equipment. Moreover, how it works is well known and it is fairly readily observable otherwise - just look up. Cold fusion simply doesn't work in many labs, which is very reminiscient of early polywater experiments - a lot of people are sloppy, but some people aren't. There aren't examples of it in nature, either.

There is no "twisting" here; there is a reason cold fusion research is laughed at by so many physicists. I don't think you really understand the nature of it. It is considered to be pathological science, which is why so few people pay attention to it. Its like a lot of other nonsense - the scientific community just doesn't spend much time on it unless they consider it worth their while, and they often don't find it worth their while to refute what they consider nonsense in scientific papers and the like unless they're specifically criticizing something which actually got published in a worthwhile journal. Titanium Dragon (talk) 07:58, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

A lot of what you just said is conjecture, and a lot of it is just false. You mention "confirmation bias" - while it seems to me that, ironically, you're the one exhibiting the symptoms thereof. I have seen no evidence of data mining and you certainly haven't presented any - nor have i seen anyone present any. Even if you can find some people who've made the accusation - without any substantiation it's just hearsay. Now from what I can tell, it's like I said - when you take both the positive and negative results together (in other words, to NOT DATA-MINE), you get something that's very improbable and can't be explained by measurement errors and the like - if that were the case they'd occur far less often (in addition to producing a much smaller deviation from whats expected). It is only rational to conclude that "there is something interesting/unexpected going on here." To come to the opposite conclusion one would have to ignore most of the positive results and suggest that the negative results vastly outnumber the positive results when it's clear that this simply isn't the case - to do that would be confirmation bias.

And again you claim that nothing is reproducable, after i just told you that this is not true (in bold), and even gave an example. To me that looks very much like ignoring (even forgetting almost immediately!) anything that refutes your pre-established conclusion. This is a symptom of confirmation bias. (and i dare say pathological disbelief, as well.)

You have a strange definition of "easy". re: "how [hot fusion] works is well known" Yes. That's why hot fusion is currently an engineering problem whereas cold fusion is a scientific one. That's the difference between engineering and science. It's amazing how many people confuse the two. Roughly put, in engineering you apply, in science you discover. Hence by definition we don't know what's going on in these phenomena. if we did, it wouldn't be science. And there'd certainly be no point in doing any experiments.

Cold fusion hasn't worked in many labs because it's not well understood and it's very sensitive. A lot of the early negative results were because scientists were sloppy. But now, as I've said before, (and please remember it this time, so i don't have to repeat it again) there are experiments which are HIGHLY REPRODUCABLE. (bold didn't work, perhaps uppercase will.) Such as, for example, the co-deposition technique and gas-loading. But, like hot fusion, these experiments are expensive and require lots of specialized equipment and careful controls. And the scientists doing these experiments certainly weren't sloppy.

I've shown how cold fusion doesn't meet any of the criteria for "pseudoscience" listed in the corresponding article, and how your fitting it to the criteria was based on faulty reasoning and/or faulty assertions. You've responded to this largely w/conjecture and opinion. Of what you said that was logically related to the criteria, your responses were conjecture, unsubstantiated accusations, and/or demonstrably false statements. Now I don't know what's going on in these phenomena, whether it's nuclear or what have you, but I have seen nothing to convince me that it's not a valid scientific endeavor to try to find out. Kevin Baas^talk 18:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

You can tell me it is reproducible, but they found in both 1989 and 2004 that it wasn't. Indeed, one of the things which is stated in this article is specifically that the 2004 DOE panel expressed skepticism at it.

The reality is that if the scientific community at large thought cold fusion works, there'd be absolutely enormous amounts of money thrown at it because it would have the potential to massively change world energy supplies. Look at reality: cold fusion research is looked down upon and scorned. Given the profit potential, the only reason it would happen is if the community at large thinks it is just not real.

You haven't shown how it doesn't meet the defintions of pseudoscience; you've shown you haven't done the research, or that you rejected it. Titanium Dragon (talk) 21:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Your middle paragraph about "the reality is that..." is a non-sequitor and not even sound logic anyways. you make too many unsupported assumptions and the conclusions you draw don't logically follow from them. The argument doesn't address the question as to whether or not cold fusion meets the criteria - it tries to infer its status indirectly from hypotheticals.

I don't see where I showed that i haven't done the research, nor where i rejected any research. To the contrary, i cited research that you seem to be unaware of and in any case are rejecting. About two replies up i did a point-for-point rebuttle, about a paragraph per criteria ("definition"). And i didn't just tell you it is reproducable, I gave you concrete examples of experiments that have been found to be very reproducable. Generalizations that were written in a report that did not review those examples do not speak to them. Furthermore, you should note that, in spite of the reservations noted in the review, said DOE report answered charge #3 (the relevant charge here) in the affirmative. Kevin Baas^talk 22:11, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

We need to distinguish occasional reproduction from reproduction "on demand". While the first one is enough to justify further scientific study, the second one is necessary for commercial applications. The DOE recognized the first one, but not the latter : that's why it found the evidence somewhat convincing, recommended further research on selected topics, but did not recommend a large-scale program. Again, saying that this field is pathological science would require the demonstration that it is based on false results, something that the DOE and many other sources did not say, and that would be contrary to what they actually said. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:27, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should bring this thread back to the article. Does anyone have a proposed edit that might be acceptable to all of the interested parties? If not, how about any kind of improvement to the article? I think the article is pretty good right now. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 23:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, this discussion could go on for ever. The point is that there are 2 different views, and no consensus about whether cold fusion is a story of pathological science or pathological disbelief. We agreed in mediation to present a balanced view of the field, in line with the notable, respected, DOE review where a significant number of reputabe scientists found the evidence convincing. All this means that a "pathological science" category is not justified. So, no other edits are necessary. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Except, of course, there is a great deal of consensus on it, just as there is a great deal of consensus that intelligent design is pseudoscience. Its just that believers are never going to accept that. Titanium Dragon (talk) 21:29, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, the only person of the opinion that this article should be put in the pseudoscience category is you, and that doesn't exactly constitute consensus. And secondly, I shouldn't have to tell you that you're comparing apples to oranges. The analogy, besides being outright insulting, is false on so many logical levels. Kevin Baas^talk 16:12, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I ask this again: Does anyone have a proposed improvement to the article? Is this thread going anywhere? If "a pathological science category is not justified" how should the article be changed? 209.253.120.198 (talk) 23:43, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

mediation block on top of page

Does anybody know what the block on top of the page should say now ? The current one says that the mediation is still going on : it should be updated. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I have checked the archive of mediation requests, and could not find any example of a block / tag in closed cases. So, I have just deleted the tag on top of this page. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:40, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Mizuno

I ask for the reinsertion of the following sentence:

":"Tadahiko Mizuno was among the first to contribute a paper (Mizuno 2000) and a book on the subject (Mizuno 1998). "

There was a confusion on the link to the article: 2 are listed in bibliography, and one of them is in a reputable journal (Jpn. J. Appl. Phys).

Concerning the book, WP policy says: "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." Mizuno meet this requirement: he has published relevant work in the peer-reviewed, as just stated

Furthermore, the Journal of Scientific Exploration had this to say on Mizuno:

"Two books written by adherents of cold fusion stand out in that they were

written by people active in "normal" science, with solid research records, and who have themselves done research on cold fusion. One of them was by T. Mizuno (1997), an electrochemist, and the other by radiochemist Edmund Storms"; Dieter Britz, J. Sci. Exploration. Vol. 21, #4 page 801 (2007). Winter issue

So, I'd say that Mizuno has both the reliability and notability needed for adding the sentence back in the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:57, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Pierre, that's a nice summary and I agree with it. Normally I don't yank sentences out of any article for sourcing problems...in fact, there's been a lot of discussion on that topic at WT:V over the last few months, and everyone is agreed that when there's a sourcing problem, it's best to give people time to explain or to find new sources, rather than deleting the material. Reviews, especially reviews at WP:FAC and WP:FAR, tend to involve a lot of "yanking" in order to try to get to the end of the process, but the general principle still holds that material shouldn't be removed without giving people time. I'm just underlining here that I agree with what you're saying.

In this case, I was ready to pass the article, and I couldn't pass it with that sentence the way it was, for two reasons. Technically, the referencing was wrong; it needed Harvard referencing. Also, the most contentious issue in the cold fusion controversy (both from memory and from what I read while reviewing this article) is that both sides have often taken the position that everything the other side says goes against standards, and in some cases, both sides have been right about that. I mean, there has been a lot of willingness by the skeptics to offer their opinions about cold fusion researchers without subjecting their opinions to peer review, and there has been a lot of willingness of cold fusion researchers over the years to publish material without the normal peer review (understandably) and to publish books and monographs without going through established publishing houses. Even though I have no personal knowledge of the quality of Mizuno's book, the one that some would regard as self-published, I'd like to suggest that we not use that as a reference unless we really need to. I'm perfectly happy for this article to include Mizuno's assertion, supported by many, that he was first to do several important things, including publishing this book. Is this acceptable? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

New intro sentence

I have added "The word is also sometimes used to describe muon-catalyzed fusion or desktop experiments that create local temperature and pressure sufficiently high to produce conventional nuclear fusion." I could document such use if needed. The question is : is the use frequent enough to justify mention ? Any comments welcome. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Pierre, I got a complaint today about your insertion of this sentence, on a user's talk page that I was watchlisting. First, do you see how this new sentence in the lead might not be welcome? Second, during the WP:GAN review, it was much faster to make changes directly to the text, and we did a lot of that. It's still okay to make changes directly to the text...there's been a lot of discussion at WT:CONSENSUS about how yelling at people because they don't discuss things first is bad, you really need to allow people to edit the text directly if they want to. But one of the issues that has been brought up a lot on this page, and was just brought up again today on a user's talk page, is that people have felt worn-down in the past by a perception that they needed to "babysit" this Cold fusion article. Going forward, let's aim for whatever stability we can get, whatever stability is appropriate. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for trying to put it diplomatically, but I fail to understand the problem about the stability of the article. If it's easier to discuss it off-line, please send me an e-mail via my talk page. I'm fine with the reversal of my edit. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:57, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, and I'll take you up on that offer to respond by email. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Btw, regarding your reversion on "They say that numerous studies have reported that 4He was produced at levels above that of the concentration in air"...thanks for the page reference, that's exactly right. I added the page reference. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

One more thing. Pierre, thanks for your mention that the Arata story made it to http://www.physorg.com/news131101595.html. That strikes me as kind of a big deal; I think most physicists would be a lot more comfortable talking about a story they read on physorg.com's news site than any of the other references we've seen so far. I notice that some of the messages in response to that story mention this Wikipedia article...naturally :) When people are looking at us, I'd like for us to be a bit more careful to do fact-checking before we make new insertions. To answer Pierre's question above, no, muon-catalyzed fusion and the recent desktop fusion story are not generally referred to as "cold fusion". I wanted to back away from this article a bit, but now that I know that the news story is heating up and people are reading us, I'm going to go ahead and revert the muon-catalyzed addition. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Post-2004 literature reviews

There were some recent peer-reviewed literature reviews mentioned during mediation which were published after 2004 (which is where the "History" section currently ends.) They are here and here. I think a summary of their abstracts and conclusions should be included in the article. What do other people think? Wide and Slow (talk) 04:17, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I fully support it (but don't have the time to do it). Pcarbonn (talk) 07:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

You may also want to add this 2002 report: Szpak, Stanislaw & Mosier-Boss, Pamela A., eds. (2002a), Thermal and nuclear aspects of the Pd/D2O system - Volume 1:A decade of research at Navy laboratories, Technical report 1862, San Diego: Office of Naval Research/Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center.Pcarbonn (talk) 07:15, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Updating the article with current reviews is far more important than arguing about whether to link to potential copyright violators; is it not? NMD prime (talk) 17:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Current Science published a comprehensive review of highlights of the research last month. Is this a good reference to include? [9] Krivit, S.B. "Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Research – Global Scenario," Current Science, (Indian Academy of Sciences,) Vol. 94, No. 7, p. 854-857 (April 10, 2008)

I did the ones that I'm absolutely certain are peer-reviewed, and I will update the {{todo}} list. 76.246.148.242 (talk) 05:11, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Good Article review

Plan of attack for Good Article nomination

Hello, I will be your reviewer for this Good Article nomination. This is a highly contentious subject with a long history, and anyone and everyone is welcome to weigh in; I don't have any opinions on what kind of discussion is or isn't allowed, but the first step in any WP:GAN is the quick-fail criteria decision. I will only pay attention to the quick-fail criteria until it's clear the article should not be quick-failed; this is the description from the WP:GAN page:

Before conducting an extensive review, determine whether the article should be "quick failed". Issues that may warrant a "quick fail" of the nomination include:

1. A complete lack of reliable sources - see Wikipedia:Verifiability.
2. An obvious non-neutral treatment of a topic - see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Articles on controversial topics can still be NPOV and stable, but scrupulous efforts must be made to keep the article well referenced to ensure neutrality. Remember that neutrality does not mean that all points of view are equally covered, merely that no point of view is given undue weight in the article.
3. Presence of any correctly applied cleanup banners, including, but not limited to, {{cleanup}}, {{wikify}}, {{NPOV}}, {{unreferenced}} or large numbers of {{fact}}, {{clarifyme}}, {{huh}} or similar tags.
4. The article has been the subject of recent, unresolved edit wars.
5. The article specifically addresses a currently unfolding event with a definite endpoint. Articles about participants in or other articles related to the unfolding event, but not about the events themselves, should undergo a more thorough review.

is not a problem. The fact that someone doesn't believe a source, or that they feel that there are better sources, isn't relevant to whether Wikipedia considers a source reliable or not. The folks at the Reliable sources noticeboard are very good at what they do, and questions about reliability of sources should be directed to them. Clearly, this article doesn't have a "complete lack of reliable sources".

is a problem. As a rule of thumb, people will often say that the difference between "guidelines" and "policy" on Wikipedia is the difference between statements that ultimately wind up being followed 90% versus 98% of the time when there's a dispute. However, in particularly contentious issues, Wikipedia's guidelines and policies are often the only way to keep everyone sane and productive. I am quite willing to put in much more than the usual time reviewing this article, and to help both sides prepare the very best case you can for any future WP:GAR or WP:FAC, but my assistance to one side ends at the point where that side pleads that they have a special case in which the usual rules don't apply. See the one-paragraph essay No common sense. There are many potential problems with WP:NPOV here, and I'll let both sides make their own case, and we'll see what we've got. I strongly encourage reading the relevant Guidelines; apply the same reasoning that has been applied in other contentious science articles.

is an obvious problem; there are a large number of unresolved {{fact}} "citation needed" templates.

is, hopefully, not a problem, because of the recent mediation; that is, we can hopefully get a sense of resolution by the time we're ready to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the quick-fail.

might a problem; I'm not up to speed on the current DARPA program. What are the chances that this program going to issue something definitive some time in the near future?

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:17, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts:

Firstly, by "problem" i assume you mean "issue"; as in "area that may have some focused attention paid to it". With that semantic grievance noted, i'll give my thoughts regarding the article in relation to the enumerated criteria:

1. simple.
2. well we seem to all be satisfied with the neutrality of the presentation; even though we have different pov's, we've arrived at a presentation that we all can agree on. certainly there's nothing "striking", and we seem to have weeded out even the more subtle controversies. but it's always good to have a new pair of eyes take a look at it.
3. i was not aware of this. i'm aware of 1 page number request. i certainly wouldn't say "large number" - if that were the case i would have at least noticed one. in any case, i'm sure whatever oversights exist can be fixed on-the-fly.
4. sense of resolution was achieved before this article was nominated.
5. cold fusion is definitely not a current event. there's no definite "endpoint" in sight. and even if there were - the article isn't about an event, it's about a phenomena. If the proposed explanations for it that are controversial were disproved, cold fusion would still have an article, just like polywater does. And that's the form the article attempts to take on, a description of a phenomena, and the context surrounding it, not an event with a definite duration. And the chances that this program going to issue something definitive some time in the near future? Slim to none.

Anyways, those are my thoughts. Glad to have you aboard. Kevin Baas^talk 20:11, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I fixed point 3, by removing the unsourced statements. They are not very important anyway. Please clarify point 2: where do you see "an obvious non-neutral treatment of a topic" ?? Which "both sides" are you willing to help ?? The mediation addressed all these points already, and we came to a conclusion accepted by all. We agreed to represent the views of both DOE panels, which are both notable and reliable, and we quoted them fully in order to avoid introducing bias. If you see any issue, please raise them more precisely. I agree with Kevin that CF is not a current event. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:05, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Dan, I would like to hear more about your point #2. My view is that the introduction accurately describes the doubts about this field held by many scientists, but the lengthy descriptions of the recent work may mislead the reader about the still low reputation of the field among scientists. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 03:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I applaud the recent mediation and the attempts to reach accommodation, but I'm not yet convinced that the article should not be quick-failed; I need to hear the arguments. (And of course, even if you didn't run through the arguments here, you'd have to make the case if this gets to WP:GAR or WP:FAC.) NPOV is sometimes misunderstood to mean that contentious issues should be handled the same way the 24-hour news channels handle them: interview people from both sides, express a position approximately halfway between those two positions that avoids saying anything concrete, and represent this position as the "unbiased" position. Instead, the way we do it here is to try to identify all possible areas of agreement, or at least of lack of disagreement, and then see what's left. If the two sides are still not really close...and that's my sense here...and especially if there is a certain unwillingness for the two sides to swap and compare methodologies and results, then NPOV requires that we let each side tell their story, without overly intrusive "editorializing" by the other side. WP:UNDUE further requires that the amount of space devoted to either side should not be way out of line with the level of acceptance of their position in the larger scientific community.

I've read the Dec 2004 DOE report, and I was a little disheartened. The sense I got was that the clear signals of excess heat were still never being observed outside the labs of the supporters, and no nuclear byproducts had been measured outside the labs of the supporters, either; is this true? I'm not trying to "play scientist" here, I'm trying to establish whether the criteria are present that make this the kind of article where you simply have to allow each side to tell their story. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:53, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that the DOE says anything like "the clear signals of excess heat were still never being observed outside the labs of the supporters", and I'm not sure it would be relevant anyway. Anybody who would find clear signals would become a supporter, wouldn't he ? Those who did not find clear signals were just unable to reproduce the experiment, for unknown reasons: this does not invalidate the other experiments, as the DOE said (see our "reproducibility" section).

What the DOE said is this:

• Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic.
• When asked about evidence of low energy nuclear reactions, twelve of the eighteen members of the 2004 DoE panel did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence, five found the evidence "somewhat convincing" and one was entirely convinced.

These are the key issues about the cold fusion phenomena, and the DOE clearly said that they have not been resolved yet. Hence the need to present both sides in our article. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding "present both sides"...absolutely, both sides need to be presented no matter what, that's not what I'm getting at. In less contentious science articles, the bulk of the article should find and focus on areas of agreement, and then let each side describe how they differ. In articles about more contentious subjects, especially subjects where the two sides tend to talk past each other and not share results, it's important not to let the normal Wikipedian process of article-building, which includes and ought to include lots of assumption of good faith, obscure the fact that the two sides really are still far apart. When that's the case, the article should give both sides all the space they need to explain and justify their positions, unless we're talking about truly fringe science, like Polywater or N rays. The DOE wouldn't fund a "review" of Polywater experiments, even if a hundred scientists started publishing papers on Polywater again.

But we're talking past each other a bit; that's okay, I'll keep reading and find out the answer for myself. My question is, did the DOE panel consider experimental results that were presented to them on paper, or were they able to get these experiments running in their own labs? From "unreproduceable", I'm guessing the former, but I'll find out. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:23, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It may be helpful to consider at this point whether the recent Storms book, by consensus RS, is used to good effect in the article. There may also be scholarly reviews of the book that we should be citing. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:42, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Since you are interested, here is the reference of a review of Storms' book: D. Britz, J. Sci. Exploration. Vol. 21, #4 page 801 (2007). Winter issue Pcarbonn (talk) 14:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Dank55, I'm not sure how your question relate to the quick-fail process, but here is the answer: the DOE did not conduct any experiment in their own lab during their review, nor did they visit other labs. They reviewed the documents presented to them, and met the researchers in a one-day session. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Pcarbonn. Food for thought while I'm reading up: the 1994 DOE panel report ends: "Conclusion. While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review. The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful...." Here's a koan for meditation: when the answer is the same 15 years later, is it the same answer? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:52, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Again, I'm not sure where you are getting at. Are you saying that the article fails NPOV ? The 1989 report said that "it was not possible to state categorically that cold fusion has been convincingly either proved or disproved", and "it was sympathetic toward modest support for carefully focused and cooperative experiments within the present funding system", among others. That seems very similar to the 2004 conclusions, as presented in the article. So, yes, when the answer is similar 15 years later, it is a similar answer. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:06, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

In case you are interested in whether cold fusion should be presented as pathological science or as an ongoing scientific controversy, please have a look at the discussion at the top of this talk page. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Right, I'm reading up; you don't need to worry that I'm going to jump in and declare Cold Fusion a hoax. Yes, there is a chance that the article "fails" NPOV unless changes are made; I could make that decision myself as the GA reviewer, but it will be much more helpful to the GAR or FAR process if we all decide it together. These really tough issues are a great way to really nail down what NPOV is all about, what is unique about how Wikipedia handles these things. My reaction so far is that the article needs to do a better job of not taking a position, and this is no surprise at all; this what usually happens to articles like this over time. There have been long discussions at WP:Words to avoid and other NPOV-related guidelines pages on how to discuss controversial subjects...how to divide up the narrative, what words to use and avoid, how to make Wikipedia's position crystal-clear. By the time we're finished with the quick-fail (which might not be so quick in this case, out of respect for the complexity of the issue), speaking for myself, the goal is to get the article into 100% compliance with Wikipedia NPOV-related guidelines, and for everyone to understand exactly what those guidelines are. The key is that WP:AGF stops at the border of Wikipedia; out there in the world, people are willing to say all sorts of things, and mostly, they're willing not to say what they know, and it's our job to sort the mess and make sure that each side is presenting a clear and powerful case. Anyone who knows nothing about "Cold fusion/Low energy nuclear reactions" should not, when they are finished with this article, think that they have the answer, but everyone should know where they could go and who they could talk with if they want to pursue finding the answer, without having to waste time sifting through the third-best answers and sources and second-best answers and sources; this article should present the very best, on both sides. This is what Wikipedia offers the world on difficult, unresolved issues: we don't answer the question, but we save people a lot of time if they want to look for answers. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. Let's wait for your review and proposed actions. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I've read most of the 30-page submission by the proponents to the 1994 DOE review, and I think this article largely complies with NPOV-related guidelines from the point of view of the proponents. If I were writing for the proponents, my preference would be to move some of the material to Wikibooks and link it there, so that you can have the best of both worlds: detailed science information for the scientists, without confusing the people you're trying to reach through the encyclopedia with experiments that they don't understand and can't evaluate. (And I'm not talking about that vague "more information at Wikibooks" graphic, I'm talking about specific in-line links in both directions.) But not everyone takes the Wikibooks approach, and I'm only evaluating quick-fail NPOV concerns at the moment. The bottom line is that I'm happy with what the proponents have done.

Not so much with the opponents. Let's start with the very first sentence, in the hatnote: "This article is about the controversial nuclear reaction". Are the opponents willing to concede that there is in fact a controversial nuclear reaction going on? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:24, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your question is. FWIW, IMO, the phrase "controversial nuclear reaction" does make it sound kind of like there's this nuclear reaction going on and it should be scolded for doing so because of all the controversy it's created -- like some a-bomb going off has sparked off contentious political debates. But what's really meant -- and i think readers will understand this -- is that it hasn't been conclusively determined whether whatever's going on does in fact produce a change in the composition of atomic nuclei. And I don't see either "proponents" or "opponents" would dispute that. until some mechanism for the process has been convincingly demonstrated, by definition, we don't know exactly's what's going on, and it remains an open question. But there's more to it than that. For instance, some people would insist on classifying it w/polywater, even though polywater is clearly a closed question. So i'd say there's controversy. And I don't really think anyone here, or in the field for that matter, is presumptuous enough to assert that there is, beyond any doubt, a nuclear reaction taking place. I hope that helps to answer the question. (And I'm fine with the sentence in question. ) Kevin Baas^talk 18:43, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Obviously for such a controversial issue, you'll find people on both sides to say that there is no controversy: some proponents will say it has been demonstrated without doubt, some critics will say there is not even a remote possibility that it exists. So, it's more a question of reliability and notability of the sources. As far as I know, there isn't any notable, reliable and reasonably recent source which would say that there is no controversy. Even Bob Park, author of "voodoo science" and a long-time notable critics of CF was quoted as follows in March 2007: "Bob Park, at the University of Maryland, US, [...] concedes that 'there are some curious reports - not cold fusion, but people may be seeing some unexpected low-energy nuclear reactions'." (source).

I agree with you that opponents have not done a good job at criticizing cold fusion: it is hard to find a serious critique of the subject. Skeptics explain this by saying that serious scientists don't spend time criticizing the work of others, while proponents say that they don't critique it because the strong evidence makes the critique too difficult. This is particularly true for the transmutation observations. Therefore, it is hard to find reliable and notable sources of skeptics for this wikipedia article. So your critique on the opponent side describes the field itself, I would say. The article only reflects that. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:25, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Now that I have read more about the definition of a "good article," I feel very strongly that this article does not fit the definition. Labeling it a "good article" would imply that it is one of the top 10 or so articles in entire group of physics articles. It has had relatively recent edit wars, for one thing. For another thing, its structure is disjointed and complicated. For example, the "excess heat" section and the "excess heat by electrolysis experiments" section should be merged and shortened. Simlarly, the "ongoing controversy" and "moving beyond the original controversy" sections should be merged and shortened. There are many ways to accomplish this, but a good outline might look like this: (1)Experimental reports (1a)Excess heat (1b)Fusion products (1c)Transmutations (2)Proposed mechanisms (3)History (3a)Early work (3b)Pre-announcement (3c)Post-announcement (3d)Recent work (4)Other types of fusion. This would produce a more readable and useful article. One a side note, perhaps we should use the word "proposed" instead of "controversial" in the introduction. On another side note, I am puzzled by Dan's reluctance to "play scientist." As wikipedia editors, we should all strive to act like scientists: asking questions, seeking good quantitative data, stating opinions clearly and politely, trying to understand opposing viewpoints, etc. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 12:27, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful comments on the structure of the article. I'm in favor of merging and shortening the excess heat sections as you propose, and of placing the experimental reports first (although that has been disputed in the past). I'm not sure what you would put in the "proposed mechanism" section : I suppose it would be based on material in the current "ongoing controversy" section. However, I'm concerned that the section title you propose could be seen as an implicit acceptance that the effect is real, and rejected by skeptical editors.

On your other comments: the definition of good article does not say that it should be in the top 10 or so articles. Also, we should "play editors", not "play scientists". That is, we should based our discussion on sources, not on our opinions as scientists. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

When I say I'm not going to "play scientist", what I mean is that I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not; in the history of the cold fusion debate, there's been some of that on both sides. I should finish my background reading today. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm also favorable to the idea of removing the detailed description of experiments from the article, as Dank55 suggested earlier, and possibly moving them to a wikibook. I'm not familiar with the idea of writing wikibooks linked to wikipedia articles: is there a good example that we could draw from ? Pcarbonn (talk) 16:57, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

This "WhatLinksHere" page shows there are between 1000 and 1500 WP articles that use a graphic that links to a page on Wikibooks, usually a specifically relevant page. Links can point to specific sections. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Reverted edit adding "claimed"

See WT:Words to avoid for a discussion of why we don't use the word "claimed" in contentious articles. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:15, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Edits attempting to reflect NPOV and accuracy concerns

Feel free to revert or modify any of my edits. I changed the first sentence from: "Cold fusion is a controversial effect reported by some researchers to have been produced from nuclear reaction at conditions near room temperature and atmospheric pressure" to "Cold fusion is a controversial heat effect which some researchers believe is caused by nuclear reactions in desktop electrochemical devices, at temperatures and pressures far below those generally believed to be required for nuclear fusion." My target reader is reasonably interested in science but doesn't know anything about "Cold fusion/Low energy nuclear reactions". I think "heat effect" gets people up to speed faster than "effect". Researchers don't so much report nuclear fusion as make a reasonable hypothesis about fusion, based on failure to find any other sufficient source of heat, and some also find "nuclear ash", but I'll get to that later. Temperatures over 100 C are not considered by most people to be "room temperature", they are only room temperature by comparison with the temperatures generally considered to be necessary for deuterium fusion. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:48, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Another checkmark; I've reviewed all the edits since the beginning of May 8, and they have only improved the article, except for the one I reverted concerning "claimed", a word to avoid. There's nothing I would describe as "instability" here. At least, not until my edits :) I'm doing some copy-editing now; feel free to revert or ask questions. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Yoshiaki Arata public experiment

i found news only on this Italian newspaper: http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Tecnologia%20e%20Business/2008/05/nucleare-fusione-fredda.shtml —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.208.231.53 (talk) 08:23, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

New Energy Times has just published news on yesterday's public demonstration of cold fusion from one of the leading CF researchers. See here Pcarbonn (talk) 11:16, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

We should keep an eye on the scientific reaction to this one, and attempts to replicate. Does anyone know how much ⁴He he is measuring? He uses a powder of ZrO₂ and Pd, so this isn't the experiment that was reviewed by the DOE in 2004. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:19, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, only some of the CF evidence was presented to DOE 2004. With my limited knowledge of Italian, the Helium he produced is commensurate with the excess heat: "Quanto all'Elio, la quantità è assolutamente confrontabile e compatibile con l'energia prodotta, ed è la firma inequivocabile dell'avvenuta fusione nucleare." FYI, here is an older paper that he published on Helium production. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:33, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

That's from 1999; do you happen to have his paper published just this March? Btw, I get no hits on a Google news search, and I don't read Japanese so I can't gauge the reponse in Japan. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:35, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't have his 2008 papers (yet). Pcarbonn (talk) 13:43, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I have created an entry on wikinews. (Title may be changed though) Pcarbonn (talk) 16:03, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

There is now an entry on PhysicsWorld blog. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:50, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

To be correct, Arata's work was actually presented to the 2004 DOE: see 4.3 and Appendix C of Hagelstein's paper. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:39, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Articles:

http://physicsworld.com/blog/2008/05/coldfusion_demonstration_a_suc_1.html

http://newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.83.19.62 (talk) 17:09, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Slashdot has now picked up the story, and it's starting to get legs; Gizmodo has it too. In true Slashdot fashion, some of the responses are quite funny. Italian for Helium is "Elio", and the first poster remarked that the experiment was obviously a success, since all the H's are gone now. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:44, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Cold fusion success in Japan gets warm reception in India, India PRwire Pcarbonn (talk) 13:42, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion on Physorg.com. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:46, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

In a not-so-unrelated announcement, Blacklight Power said today that it has successfully developed a prototype power system generating 50,000 watts of thermal power on demand.(News release). In his book, Edmund Storms says that the hydrino theory proposed by Randy Mills could be the basis for explaining cold fusion, even if it is not perfect. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The "underside" of scientific research is that it's a given that other people will attempt to take advantage of any renewed interest in the subject. I'm highly inclined to ignore Blacklight Power and anyone else who attempts to distract from whatever the "main story" is (which seems to be Arata at the moment), unless and until someone else replicates their work. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:11, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

This is still POV

The article repeatedly uses the phrase "the field" to mean "the field of cold fusion", though there is no such "field". The article also implies that the US Department of Energy acknowledges the existence of such a "field" in its findings or conclusions, though the Department may also disagree on the level of evidence "the field" has in its favor. This implication is completely false, as there is no such field, and there never was. Cold fusion is still, as it always has been, a completely fringe cult that is based on the god-of-the-gaps notion that any anomaly must be corroborating evidence of the cult's beliefs, until proven otherwise. The methodology is completely ascientific, and to describe people who find anomalous effects as members of some "field" of cold fusion is spurious. --70.131.118.218 (talk) 16:14, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I follow what you're saying. This was my answer to a similar question on WT:Words to avoid, and this argument was widely accepted:

Read Miracle, and see how many times the words incident, event, and occurrence are used. What makes that okay is the statement in the lead section that it's disputed that there's any evidence at all, and what makes "phenomena" okay in Parapsychology, IMO, is the statement right up front that it's fringe science, although the article could be improved by additional examples of debunking. Articles like this wander into NPOV territory, and NPOV says in this case: even when you don't believe it, if there are significant numbers of people on both sides of the issue, you have to let both sides tell their story. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:43, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

And btw, please don't take that to be my "view" on cold fusion; I don't have one. There are obviously a couple of things that distinguish the cold fusion issue from well-known quackery like "polywater": if these cathodes aren't producing energy in some way, then they may be an interesting storage device; and if there is something to be ashamed of here, then both sides deserve blame. It would have been trivially easy for the 2004 DOE review panel to run the experiments themselves and find the presence or lack of helium, and put the issue to rest one way or another. They chose not to, instead taking the position that science questions never need to be answered, they just need more study. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:50, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

There are 4 occurences of field in the article. Both occurrences of "field" in the intro come directly from the corresponding quoted sentences in the DOE report. The following occurrence comes directly from David Goodstein. The last occurrence is also well sourced. How can all this fail NPOV ??? On the contrary, 70.131.118.218's statements are not sourced at all, and expresses his personal POV unless proven otherwise. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

By the way, some people still believe that the Apollo Moon landing are hoaxes. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Dan, I am baffled by your suggestion that cold fusion skeptics might deserve "blame." Who are you talking about? Also, do you really think that cold fusion experiments that produce negligible excess helium values would put the issue to rest? Some people would say that those experiments were flawed, and that cold fusion has not been disproved at all. On a side note, it certainly sounds to me like you do have a "view" on cold fusion. I would say that most of us here have a view on cold fusion; otherwise we would not be posting and editing. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 16:08, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Did I say that they deserve blame ? I don't think so. As editors, it's OK to have differing views on cold fusion, as long as they do not impact the way we edit the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:42, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I was the one who assigned the blame. I don't have a view; that is, I have absolutely no idea whether cold fusion is a series of sloppy mistakes and possibly occasional fraud (because I haven't kept up with it since the early 90s, and I'm not familiar with the quality of the work), or whether helium is being produced. The fact that I don't know after 19 years is surprising and disappointing. The blame comes from the fact that with trillions being spent on energy, the DOE panel couldn't be bothered to round up spectroscopy equipment and take a car ride to investigate whether helium was being produced or not; instead, they were content to read papers, find flaws, and declare that more work needed to be done. As to my role here, I'm in the fourth category I mention below: I'm a Wikipedian interested in building and applying policy and guidelines equally across all of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has two spectacular strengths: the output of the wikiprojects, and the quality of the very contentious articles, which we tend to get right in a world where no one else seems to be able to (on a broad range of topics). - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:06, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I want to point out that the 1989 DOE panel did visit laboratories and examine equipment, and came away unimpressed. I suspect the reason the 2004 DOE panel did not do the same because they were so unimpressed with the data available in the documents that they thought visiting laboratories would be a waste of time. Remember, cold fusion researchers can submit papers to publications whenever they want; the absence of articles with convincing evidence of cold fusion after 19 years of work indicates it probably is not being produced. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 01:19, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I missed that in the 2004 report; can you point out where they said or implied that? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:35, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Recent press report

http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo.htm claims a live demo of cold fusion. Stephen B Streater (talk) 16:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. You don't have the scoop though: it was already announced in the "Yoshiaki Arata public experiment" thread above. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:57, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes. But I may have been the first to post that particular article ;-) Stephen B Streater (talk) 08:25, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not so sure, but that's not very important anyway.See [10] Pcarbonn (talk) 09:08, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

OK - I'll try harder next time. It's not an area I've been following for a few years, but with oil at $130/barrel interest will pick up. Stephen B Streater (talk) 09:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The original Fleischmann and Pons experiment

Hello Wikipeople. I wish to bring to your attention an apparent innacuracy in this section.

The text states: This experiment has been critiqued by Wilson,[43] Shkedi[44] and Jones.[45] Cold fusion researchers find these critique unconvincing, and not applicable to other experimental design.[46][47][48]

Wilson et al. performed and published a critique of the original FP experiment. Shkedi and Jones, however, did not. Furthermore, Shkedi and Jones published a critique of potential problems with recombination in these *types* of electrolytic cells.

The Shkedi and Jones critiques do not take into account the fact that FP measured the Faraday efficiency of their cell and that F&P took this problem into account. The Shkedi and Jones critiques suggest that the FP excess heat could be explained by recombination, if FP failed to consider recombination. However FP did take into account recombination effects.

StevenBKrivit (talk) 23:11, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Sentence not needed due to obviousness

Does anyone have an opinion about this sentence in the Nuclear Transformations section?: "At the same time, the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss experimental evidence." I say this is an obvious statement about science in general, does not contribute to the understanding of transmutation or cold fusion, and damages the NPOV of the article, so it should be removed. While Pcarbonn is correct that the statement is important(see recent history of main article), it is not important to state it in this cold fusion article. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 17:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I see 4 classes of readers who have some kind of stake in this article: supporters, opponents, undecideds, and encyclopedia-builders, that is, people who watchlist the article and try to keep the article quality from degrading. What drives people in the last category nuts with contentious articles is the daily back-and-forth of people trying to subtly shift the argument. The way to keep the guardians of article quality sane is to clearly mark a section where opponents make their strongest arguments, and a section where supporters make their strongest arguments, and to leave these two sections relatively stable. By that I mean, from time to time, invite a lot of people in and have a big discussion on what you can and can't say in these sections, and between the times when you have a lot of participation, revert any statement that shifts the arguments on sight, on the principle that one person's opinion doesn't outweigh the consensus of the masses.

In this case, "the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss experimental evidence" is a key statement by supporters, and needs to be in the article, but IMO, it needs to be in a section that is clearly marked as following the assumptions of the supporters. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:25, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not support splitting the article in 2 parts, one for the proponents and one for the skeptics. The reason is that many statements can be read either way. Take for example: "it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process". Skeptics read it as saying: "You see, it's impossible", while proponents say: "we told you it should not be called 'cold fusion', but 'low energy nuclear reaction'". Or this one: "the field would benefit from the peer-review processes". Skeptics say: "we told you, the reports have not been reviewed and are thus unreliable"; proponents say: "DOE finally says that the field should not be suppressed anymore". Splitting the article in 2 would make the article unreadable.

We had the big discussion during the mediation in the last month. We agreed to represent the view of the DOE reports, for good reasons. This view is balanced. Let's keep it that way. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:21, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I won't fail this article at the GA level for the lack of such sections, but I would fail it at the FA level. There is no such thing as a "balanced" view if there are significant numbers of people with radically different viewpoints whose opinions need to be represented per NPOV. The "average" of two opposing viewpoints is not honest; it's dishonest. Honest would be to let both sides forcefully make their case about the fundamental fallacies committed by their opponents. But I'm not a physicist or electrochemist so I wouldn't be able to do a good job of it; and if no one else can do it either, then that's okay, at the GA level. I'm close to passing this article, btw. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:47, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Could you give some examples of GA or FA article with such sections ? Thanks. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:40, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I found the following articles interesting on this issue : Wikipedia:Avoid thread mode and Wikipedia:Pro and con lists. I don't think the article suffer from thread mode today, as most sections is divided in 2 clear parts: pro and con. If cold fusion was generally accepted, we could start with presenting its case, and follow it with a "criticism" section. Writing the other way around ("cold fusion does not exist", followed by a criticism of this position) would be weird. So, for the moment, it's not clear to me how we could improve the structure of the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:36, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I made some edits following this proposal: in "ongoing controversy", each section starts with the skeptic view, and is followed by the pro view. In the "Experimental report", it's the other way around. Is that better ? Pcarbonn (talk) 15:50, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Other than technical problems with the references (I'll pass your concerns along to Ealdgyth), I think the article basically satisfies GA requirements, or will when I'm done, but I'm not quite finished. It's not the tone or the order of the arguments that makes me feel that this isn't FA-quality yet, it's the sense that both sides are being silent about things that they should be speaking up about. Clearly, the DOE panel and many other scientists don't think that there is any measurable helium signal, because if there were, that would mean fusion; so why do they discount the helium measurements? Do they think there is helium hiding in the palladium, is it an issue of insufficient helium depletion in the ambient gases, is the equipment outdated, is the technique sloppy, does the measurement need to happen in a different location? They don't say, and they should. Proponents say that there are no other possible energy storage mechanisms that could explain the sudden release of heat; are they sure? Have they looked? What about relaxation of a deformation of the palladium crystal? The bottom line is that, when reading this article, you get more of an impression of things unsaid than of things said, which is of course the problem with the cold fusion controversy as a whole. It would be nice if Wikipedia did a good job of pointing a finger at the biggest missing pieces and the most persuasive observations on both sides. But the world hasn't succeeded in sorting this out, and we haven't either. If you want to move this article on to the WP:FAC level after we're done here, I would want to make a better effort at that level. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:15, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, the proponents have done their homework, not the skeptics. And I'm not talking on wikipedia, I'm talking in the real world. The issue is pathological disbelief, nothing else. But that's only my opinion. In any case, what you propose to do is borderline with original research. I'm not sure wikipedia policies would allow us to do it. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:31, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

No original research is needed to make this a better article, IMO, because of the immense volume of written material concerning cold fusion; it's a matter of sorting and sifting, but that's a very tough chore. When this gets around to WP:FAC, I'll spend more time reading the sources, and take another whack at it. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Great. Thanks. I would propose that what is really lacking in the article is a sociological analysis of the event. What happened in 1989 ? What are the "political" errors that were made, on both side, and why ? What are the evidence of pathological science and pathological disbelief ? The section could be titled "Pathological science and pathological disbelief", and could go in the "Ongoing controversy section". What do you think ? Pcarbonn (talk) 18:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that kind of material would be very helpful, and also very encyclopedic, but in order to reduce misunderstandings...this is just a suggestion...I think that that kind of material should be in a separate article. That is, the clear purpose of this article would remain as it is, to do the best job possible of pointing to the strongest arguments by both sides, to help people understand the science, while the purpose of that article would be to explain how science does (and often, doesn't) get done in the real world...what the social realities of the scientific process are, both in general and for the 19-year history of cold fusion. I believe I remember seeing a red link to Cold fusion controversy, was that in the 2004 FA version of this article? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:01, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

In case you are still interested, here is a copy of the old cold fusion controversy page.

Pre-GA Review

Okay, I'll list any problems here. I asked User:Ealdgyth about some of the references, and she said, "I noticed a format glitch up in the footnotes (current ref 37) and a number of the footnotes are lacking page numbers (current ref 53, 69, 70, 75, 76, etc.)". There's also a problem that some of the web cites in the references don't say "Retrieved on (date)"; if you don't know the date, and if there's a chance the material might have changed since it was last accessed, then please access it again and give the date that you access it. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:32, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Most of the material in the last section, Other types of fusion, such as muon-catalyzed fusion and sonoluminescence, isn't cold fusion and doesn't shed any light on cold fusion. It seems to me it should either be in a separate article or in Wikibooks. The one-sentence mention of hot fusion could easily move into one of the other sections. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:23, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I changed "There are nearly 200 published reports of excess heat and other reviews by cold fusion researchers reach similar conclusions" to "...of excess heat by cold fusion researchers"; if the number reporting excess heat is smaller, then lower the number, please. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:28, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Please clarify what you want to see done for GA. I've seen GA articles without pages numbers in the ref (e.g. electricity, Plasma (physics)): is this really part of the GA requirements ? Please note also that some page numbers are listed in our bibliography, instead of in the references: please clarify where do you see them missing. The section of other types of fusion is already in nuclear fusion, so it can be safely removed from here. They is a list of 200 reports in Storms book, so no need to lower the number. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:49, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I didn't put the access date for DOI and ISBN numbers. I suppose this is not necessary. Let me know otherwise. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:04, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Why did you delete the "other reviews by cold fusion researchers reach similar conclusions" ? Pcarbonn (talk) 08:17, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Part of complying with WP:V and WP:OR, which is policy for all articles, is making sure that readers can actually find your references, once they're holding the book or looking at the website you used. I'm not the expert on this, but User:Ealdgyth is, and I don't want to pass references that she's not happy with. We can ask her to hop in here, if you like. Are there at least 200 reports in Storms's book that measure excess heat? Retrieval date is only necessary when your source is a webpage.

Yes, it would be great if she could clarify. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:08, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

"Other reviews by cold fusion researchers reach similar conclusions" is a good example of what not to say in a scientific article. Reviews where? In what Wikipedia considers reliable sources? What's "similar" to excess heat? And 200 reports are quite enough to indicate what's going on, one way or another; if additional reports didn't make Storms's book, is there some other reason they should make the cut into the Wikipedia article?

I edited the article to clarify this point. See article history. Definition: "reviews are a category of scientific paper, which provides a synthesis of research on a topic at a moment in time. " Pcarbonn (talk) 15:08, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The lead is fine for GA. At the FA level, the lead would need to be rewritten so that all the references (other than the references to quotations) move out of the lead section. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:27, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:V really does require page numbers, and if you're thinking of taking the article to FAC, it would be a requirement there. Note that you don't need page numbers for journal articles, just books. There is an exception, if you're using the fact that the book exists as a fact (i.e. "So and so published a book (ref to the book here)" you don't have to give page numbers of the book. The relevant part of WP:V is "The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question." which is generally interpreted to mean you need page numbers for books of any size. (A book that's about the size of a pamplet wouldn't be as big a concern) As for access dates, that's not a policy, I just figure that it's a good idea for most weblinks. DOI and ISBN numbers though, they don't need access dates. But if you link a journal article, it's a nice courtesy, but not required. And it doesn't have to be the date you originally accessed it, it can be the date you double checked that it actually still is there. (That's really the point of the last access dates, trying to figure out when web pages were still around so if a link goes dead you can start searching the internet archives for archived versions. Lots easier if there is a date you know the article was existant.) Hope this helps! Ealdgyth - Talk 17:25, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I have read and re-read the 5-page 2004 DOE panel report, and I'm still confused about when the word "reviewer" means "a member of this panel" and when it means "one of the people who reviewed reports and submitted their review to this panel". Can anyone clear this up for me? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:29, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Dan, the "review" occured in two phases. In the first, the documents prepared by McKubre, Hagelstein et al. were sent to nine anonymous reviewers by mail. On Aug 23, another group of nine reviewers gathered for a one-day meeting to for a face-to-face discussion with McKubre, Hagelstein et al. The second group of reviewers were given copies of the first group's reports prior to the Aug. 23 meeting. Hope this helps. I don't watch this page closely so feel free to PM me. We have more relevant information about this at the NET Web site including the reviewers' actual comments and McKubre's oral explanation of the process.

StevenBKrivit (talk) 06:53, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Specifically, I can't be sure that there is support for the statement that (in my rewording) "The panel was split approximately evenly; about half found that the evidence for excess power is compelling...". They don't use the word "panel", they are referring to "reviewers". - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:37, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

IMO, 'Reviewers' mean members of the DOE panel, unless stated otherwise. If there is any particular instance where there is a doubt, let us know. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:40, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I would say that the researchers presenting to the panel were all convinced of the reality of cold fusion. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:43, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, the third time I read it, I got it. "Reviewers" in that context means the 18 panel reviewers. However, immediately following, it says that most of those reviewers believed that "many of the reported experiments were not well documented", and it's really impossible to parse what this means; to be fair, we should just include the quote, and let the reader figure out what it means. Grrr, I hate the DOE. :) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:55, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I think there are only 2 references to books left without page numbers: Miley and Evans. I don't have these books, so I can't help. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The article needs to be careful with "adsorbed" vs "absorbed"; it was claimed that Paneth and Peters (incorrectly) reported adsorption, but the given reference mentioned only absorption. I've fixed it. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:14, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The bulleted list of researchers in Cold fusion#Moving beyond the initial controversy would benefit from short descriptions of their reputation, especially Arata.

Issues resolved for now

Whoa, hold on. Some of the reversions to my edits, I can't live with. I'm making a list now. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, problems to clear up:

I just noticed that the quote in the lead was repeated 3 times, once without quotation marks; I've removed it except in the lead, and wrote something short in the other two places; hopefully that's enough.

I'm not happy with the wording you propose. You say somewhere else that "small, arguable edits designed to subtly shift the tone make drives articles watchers crazy". Your edit are aguable because they introduce new words not appearing in the sources. In particular "deeply skeptical" and "more unlikely" are not used at all in the DOE report, as far as I can see. Please refrain from WP:OR. I made this advise several times already. How can I convey the message better ? Pcarbonn (talk) 10:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

This section is getting a bit long, and there are several important points here, so see the new section below. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:36, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we'll probably have more than enough evidence of the notability of the recent Arata talk soon; there's a very vigorous discussion on Slashdot, for instance. But I don't see that news of it has shown up in a reliable source yet; correct me if I'm wrong, but we can't count web sites except in exceptional cases (Slashdot, Gizmodo, New Energy Times), or the Italian story that has a strong connection to a company that works with Arata. I'll keep an eye on news.google.com, but for now, we don't have a way to get this talk into this article.

Isn't the PhysicsWorld.com source, referenced in the article, enough of a reliable source ? Please provide a reliable source for "the Italian story that has a strong connection to a company that works with Arata". Are you arguing that there is no reliable source saying that the presentation took place ? (I could see the issue if we were to describe their claims in details). Pcarbonn (talk) 10:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The short answer is that this is a non-issue, because I'm relatively sure that the event did take place and that Japanese newspaper and TV reporters were there. Print journalism (especially when it also appears online) is almost always a preferable source a Wikipedia article than a blog (even physicsworld.com), and we know the press was there, so let's keep our eyes open for translation of the news stories. We shouldn't have long to wait. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:36, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't think that you'll get a translation of the news stories, for many reasons. I would propose the following rewording: "On May 22, 2008, Arata and Zhang publicly demonstrated what they say was a cold fusion reactor, at Osaka University." I think that they are enough reliable sources to say this. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:13, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I have been very surprised to hear on my talk page that Japanese reporters that showed up at the event might not write it up; in the US, that wouldn't happen. I'll continue to keep my eyes open. I don't know anyone who thinks that the event didn't happen, and it's not particularly controversial to say that it did happen, for now. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:45, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know why it is that cold fusion proponents keep saying "room temperature and atmospheric pressure". I don't fault Pierre for re-inserting this after I took it out, because that's what the proponents say, but it's flatly not true, except by comparison with the temperatures and pressures inside stars and high-temperature fusion chambers. Arata in particular uses high pressure to force deuterium into "palladium black", and "boiling" is not "room temperature". I can accept "ordinary temperatures and pressures", and I would also be happy with something more specific, but it has to be accurate.

The reason of the revert was that the sentence was too long and complex, nothing else. The wording you propose is not very different, and fine with me.Pcarbonn (talk) 10:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The extra sentence I added to the paragraph that starts "The 2004 DOE panel noted that significant progress..." was reverted by Pierre; we need to talk about that, because the paragraph he's citing from the 2004 DOE report seems to at least undercut itself if not contradict itself, and we need to make sure the same ambivalence is clear in our paragraph.

The lack of documentation is already presented in the following paragraph in our article. You can have many poorly documented articles and still find the evidence provided by the few well documented article compelling. I don't see the contradiction that you see. I reverted your edit, saying that your new synthesis of information which advances a position is original research, as explained in my edit comment. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Following our discussion here, I have changed the WP:SYN policy on original research so that it assumes good faith, and it seems to hold. See diff. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Here for comparison is the version of the lead section agreed to in the mediation. I worked with the lead section as I found it, assuming that that was the current state of consensus, but it was a little different, and there were some things I couldn't approve in a GA article, such as "room temperature and atmospheric pressure", and quoting the 1989 DOE panel without quotation marks, but I'm listening if anyone would like for the lead section to change to reflect earlier consensus before the GA sticker goes on:

Cold fusion is a name given to a controversial field of research which investigates the possibility of nuclear reactions at conditions near room temperature and atmospheric pressure. [Note: there was a discussion to add a sentence about most scientists being skeptical.]
The first report of such an experiment was published by M. Fleischmann and S. Pons from the University of Utah in 1989. In their publication, Fleischmann and Pons reported the observation of anomalous heating ("excess heat") of an electrolytic cell during electrolysis of heavy water (D₂O). Lacking a simple explanation for the source of such anomalous heat, they proposed the hypothesis, without supporting evidence, that the source of the heat is nuclear fusion of deuterium.
Cold fusion gained a reputation as a pathological science after other scientists failed to replicate the results. A review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 1989 did not find the evidence persuasive, and said that such nuclear fusion at room temperature would be contrary to all understanding gained of nuclear reactions in the last half century; it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process.
Since then, other reports of anomalous heat and tritium production have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and discussed at scientific conferences.

The scientific community, however, has met these reports with skepticism. In 2004 the US DOE organized another review panel. This panel, like the one in 1989, did not recommended a focused federally-funded program. The 2004 panel identified basic research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field. They stated that the field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

There might or might not have been an extra sentence about "anomalous heat and tritium production". - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes)

I'm out of ideas to improve the article. Is there still something to do to get to WP:GA ? Pcarbonn (talk) 20:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

nuclear transmutation

Dan, you act in good faith, but IMO, you take too much risk of injecting original research. I encourage you to stick to sources. I have the following comments on your recent edits:

• "Proponents of cold fusion research have charged that opponents have been willing to dismiss these observations without examining the evidence. " Not sourced. I would think that some opponents did look at the evidence.
• "Opponents have charged that their attempts to replicate these experiments have been unsuccessful" Unsourced. I don't believe that any opponent has ever attempted to replicate transmutation experiments.
• "that it is extremely unlikely that such results could be the result of anything but experimental error". Unsourced. Opponents have found many other "explanations": contamination, incompetence, fraud, delusion, ...

Pcarbonn (talk) 20:04, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Give me more than two seconds before you revert please; I've read these and similar statements many times, and I'm looking them up. We don't have to express it this way, but I wasn't happy with the paragraph the way it was. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:19, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. Sorry. I have not found any skeptical sources on transmutation yet, so I'd be interested. The current paragraph is already a stretch: 1989 DOE could not talk about transmutations because they had not been observed yet. The "additional Coulomb barrier" argument has been added by editors after consensus in mediation. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:25, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

On the first and third points, this explanation is repeated many places, it's just a matter of figuring out where we want to point people to an easily readable treatment of these points. I like http://www.newenergytimes.com/Library/2003StormsEStudentsGuide.pdf, page 36, which starts off with "Skeptics suggest that all cold fusion results are experimental error and instrument artifacts." Is this an acceptable reference, Pierre? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:26, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a fine reference, but it does not particularly apply to transmutations: it is for all CF results. Hence, I don't see why it would be placed in the transmutation section. Also, the paragraph that you quote discusses the method of argumentations rather than the arguments itself. I suggested before to have a section explaining the pathological science and disbelief. I would propose that we add this material there, and find a better section title if needed: it would cover the method of scientific (and not so scientific) argumentations related to cold fusion. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:39, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I see where you're going. Yes, I can easily live with that; after we're done here, let's think about a separate article on the nature of the argumentation. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:46, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Btw, I thought "additional Coulomb barrier" was a very nice way to put it...it's not like there isn't a big problem with the Coulomb barrier for D+D, nor is it true that the additional transmutations are "impossible"...it's simply more of a stretch to get to the additional transmutations, under current theory, and it was quite appropriate to add that. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:29, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, I have not suggested to remove this part of the paragraph. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:39, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the anonymous deletion of a subsection heading

The subsection heading "Moving beyond the initial controversy" (and only the heading, no text) was deleted anonymously; I restored it. I'm going to revert anything on sight that smacks of the kind of thing that drives article watchlisters in controversial articles crazy: small, arguable edits designed to subtly shift the tone. My second-favorite thing about Wikipedia is how good a job we do with controversial topics such as this one, and part of what makes this work is, I usually find that people have a low tolerance for "guerilla warfare". Shifting the tone is fine, as long as we get a lot of people participating in the discussion, we make a decision, and we make the change in tone obvious. Obviously, we can't get everyone looking at this article all the time, and since we're near the end of a GA review, people are probably a bit worn out now. Let's give it some time before we try any big changes, and if people want to make a list in the meantime for consideration of big changes in a few weeks, that's fine, as long as a bunch of people are asking and they're making a good case. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. You do know about the RFM? Might give you some more insight into the article's rather interesting history. seicer | talk | contribs 02:59, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, folks, please note that anon user 209.253... has been a frequent contributor to the article, and an intelligent one; I'm not biting a newbie and I don't mean to discourage contributions, I mean to encourage honest and effective processes for contributions to very controversial articles. Seicer, yes, I read the mediation discussion before signing on as the GA reviewer. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:28, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Just got a reply from 209.253 to the message I left on their talk page: "Could you elaborate on your comment please. I have been watching this site for a year and most of what I have seen is 'small, arguable edits designed to subtly shift the tone.' Are you saying that that is going to stop now?" No one can promise anything on Wikipedia, of course, but so far, I've been very happy with the results whenever I, or anyone else, asks people to take a breather after a long discussion, and wait to round up more attention before attempting to change consensus. The principle is easy: if 20 people are actively working on an article, and we make sure that everyone is being listened to and is okay with the finished product, and then someone (especially anonymously) makes a change when things have died down, and no one responds, it's a reasonable assumption that people have wandered off and they're doing other things. One opinion doesn't overrule 20, so it's reasonable to revert, and ask nicely on the contributor's talk page to add to a list on the talk page for the next time we get some kind of "quorum" or general interest. There is no specific policy or guideline that offers "protection" for any article; I'm just asking for people to please follow the spirit of WP:CONSENSUS. I could be wrong, but I'm betting people are a bit tired out by the mediation and the GA review and would like a little break, starting sometime soon. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:45, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm realizing I'm being a little bit loud on this issue; sorry about that. I'm really mostly trying to see if other people agree with this general principle, and will help me patrol the article in the future, especially in the quieter times in-between the big discussions; 209.253 didn't do anything wrong, in my book. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there a page describing the role of a GA reviewer ? I'd be interested to read it. For example, has s/he a special role in patrolling the article ? Pcarbonn (talk) 11:02, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

<attempted humor> GA reviewers are awarded special paper hats and get to tell everyone what to do. Everyone generally complies, up to the point where the article is actually awarded GA status, and then they immediately revert all the suggested changes when the reviewer moves on to the next article. As soon as someone notices, the article gets sent to Good article review, and the process starts over.</attempted humor>

WP:GA and WP:WGA and their talk pages are good places to learn about what's expected of GA reviewers. Generally, the strength of the GA process is that it's "lightweight"; there's just one reviewer and just one nominator, and therefore articles get certified as GA at three times the rate that articles get certified as FA; see this week's SIGNPOST. GA reviewers are not encouraged to watchlist the articles they review.

All of the "contentious" articles on Wikipedia are special, to me, and to a lot of people. As I said, they are my second favorite thing about Wikipedia (the first being the rate at which the wikiprojects and similar groups crank out high-quality articles). I am not quite sure how to explain it, but Wikipedia often does a very good job with these articles when no one else seems to be able to get it right. By a "good job", I definitely don't mean that we figure out the truth; I mean that we operate well in the environment of not knowing the truth. When we're successful, we give people new to the topic something that is interesting to read and accessible to non-experts, and we point opponents and proponents to the best resources we've found, so that whatever their inclinations are, they can get up to speed much more quickly than if they had to read and sort everything themselves.

As for me, yes, this article is going on my watchlist, permanently. I kept up with some of the early news on cold fusion, and the words and concepts at least are familiar, but I'm not a physicist or chemist, so it's a given that I'm going to make mistakes. I have found that knowing a lot about WP style guidelines and something about WP policy makes me useful both as an article reviewer and as an article patroller, but I make mistakes all the time, so continue to feel free (as you have done) to correct me. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. That seems fair. Thanks for your help. I look forward to bringing the article to GA status with your help. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I know that cold fusion skeptics, including the large majority of chemists and physicists, get a bit leery when a proponent such as yourself makes edits to the article, but you clearly add self-restraint and knowledge of what Wikipedia is expecting to the mix, and I very much appreciate your help and contributions.

After Seicer's mention of the mediation process yesterday, I realized that I never made a clear statement about the mediation, other than what I wrote at WP:GAN when I signed on as GA reviewer. I was very happy with the mediation process that ended in mid-April and its results; on the other hand, I noticed that the article (both in the form I found it and in the suggested form from mediation) needed numerous edits to comply with style and, to a lesser extent, policy-related guidelines. I felt and feel that compliance is a very good idea in order to protect the article from possible ravages at WP:GAR and WP:FAC. I am not the expert on Wikipedia policy, but I know something about style guidelines and about common objections at GAR and FAR. What I should have said right at the start is, my goal was to accomplish the minimum changes necessary to show the GAR and FAR people that I was doing an adequate job, while still respecting the mediation process. I also wanted to make it clear that new edits and new discussion are welcome, because this is an expectation both in the WP:GAN process and generally on Wikipedia (as often noted at WP:RFA); even a recent mediation doesn't give anyone the right to say, "Okay, we're done now, go home". - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:16, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Btw, this is the diff between the current version of this article and the April 20 version, which was a few noncontroversial edits after the mediation results were copied over to this article. Comments are welcome. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:46, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Moving beyond the initial controversy

The section title "Moving beyond the initial controversy" should be removed or changed, since people have not moved beyond the initial controversy. Any thoughts? 209.253.120.198 (talk) 03:10, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I understand that it's a potential concern. I personally didn't read it to mean that people had dropped the controversy about cold fusion, I just understood it to mean that things weren't revolving around what did or didn't happen with Pons and Fleischmann and the 1989 DOE report any more, but if people think the heading conveys some kind of subtle message, I don't have any strong feelings about the proper heading. There should probably be a subheading of some kind there. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:47, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

We need a separate section for the period after the 1989 DOE report, IMO (so, it should also be moved up a bit from its current position). This is supported by this source, which even lists 5 periods. I'm open to another proposal for its title. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:08, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Pierre, just a small concern: don't use the word "source" on Wikipedia referring to www.newenergytimes.com. It's very important to give that link (and it's on my to-do list today to make sure the end sections properly distinguish between EL's and references), because it's helpful for getting people up to speed if they want to explore the proponents' arguments, but the vast majority of websites are not sources (in the sense of reliable sources) on Wikipedia, and www.newenergytimes.com is not an exception. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:03, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Ummh. I'm not convinced. "Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." Please check what people are saying about them. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:20, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Not every question on Wikipedia has an easy answer, but almost any question about reliable sources does, because the people at the Reliable sources noticeboard are excellent. The quick and easy answer is that websites are almost never a reliable source; that is, unless they're being used to access material that comes from something deemed a reliable source, they shouldn't be called a "source". But we don't need a quick and easy answer; I'll ask at WP:RSN and we'll find out in a hurry. This is a rather important point, and I apologize that I keep putting off carefully going through the sources, but it will get done today for sure. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:28, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

They might be weasels

A key issue in this article is how to correctly interpret the 2004 DOE report, and there's even a pending question about how to interpret the 1989 DOE report. Pierre/Pcarbonn says above:

I'm not happy with the wording you propose. You say somewhere else that "small, arguable edits designed to subtly shift the tone make drives articles watchers crazy". Your edit are aguable because they introduce new words not appearing in the sources. In particular "deeply skeptical" and "more unlikely" are not used at all in the DOE report, as far as I can see. Please refrain from WP:OR. I made this advise several times already. How can I convey the message better ? Pcarbonn (talk) 10:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The quote from the 1989 DOE report is that such "nuclear fusion at room temperature [...] would be contrary to all understanding gained of nuclear reactions in the last half century; it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process." The agreed-to language from the recent mediation recommended repeating this quote in several different sections, but I expect that was just an oversight, and this wouldn't fly at WP:FAC and shouldn't fly at WP:GAR. Instead, we should leave the quote intact once (I would suggest in the lead), and then try to express in our own words what they're saying in the other two places.

Pierre objected to my words "deeply skeptical", saying that they are original research. I'm not happy inventing words, because I've got my reviewer's hat on, so it's not a "fair fight", so I'd like some help here. When a panel of physicists says those words in quotation marks, what do they mean? Are they deeply skeptical? If not, what are they thinking?

Pierre also objected to my judgment call concerning the words of the 2004 DOE report. It's one of the most important statements in this article: what were the conclusions of the 2004 DOE report? Were they half in favor and half opposed to the position that excess heat was being produced? Why or why not? I have my opinion, but my feeling is that consensus in the mediation was roughly the same as consensus before and after, and that consensus is more important than my opinion. Anyone want to express it in their own words? (For a clue to my opinion, see this section heading.) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:51, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S. The 5-page final report of the 2004 DOE panel is at http://www.science.doe.gov/Sub/Newsroom/News_Releases/DOE-SC/2004/low_energy/CF_Final_120104.pdf. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:02, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Consistency of effect size is a crucial indicator; many reports prior to 2004 did not agree with each other on the size and character of anomalous effects. This is suspicious. On the other hand, the appearance of activated regions of differing size in different experimental runs, as well as reports of hairy nano-structures forming on the surface of the palladium, would account for this. but really, the US Navy report on Pd + D co-deposition sets the bar for research, here. -- 99.231.208.23 (talk) 18:45, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Again, you are taking the route to original research. You don't need to double guess what the DOE means. If you don't like repetition, then do not repeat what the DOE said. Alternatively, find alternative reliable sources to the statement from the DOE, or other statements from the DOE to the same effect. Nothing replaces the search for good sources. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:04, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

You ask "Were they half in favor and half opposed to the position that excess heat was being produced?" I would think that the quotation make it plain. Why the question ? You then ask "Why or why not [did they reach this conclusion]?" Again, the answers are in the report. No need to invent new reasons, or to use our own words. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Pierre, you've brought up "original research" several times, let's get this straight. It's not okay to invent ideas, or even to pull together pre-existing ideas in a way that our sources don't pull them together; I believe that's what you were getting at when you said "synthesis is OR". It is our job to invent words that do a better job of saying what our sources said poorly. For sources that say things that are apparently contradictory, the best thing to do is not to use them as sources; but when we have to, then we have an obligation to point out that they are contradictory. We're at least agreed on the principle, right? I think intelligent people can disagree on what the 2004 DOE final report meant. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:39, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I've asked Krivit about finding something we can attribute to DARPA, or McKubre, or anyone else to justify the statement about current DARPA research. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:56, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Another anonymous edit

This one by 99.231, who comments just above. "It is a simple matter to imagine that the degrees of freedom are constrained in low-energy fusion pathways; but a theory should make quantitative predictions. None has emerged as superior." I'm not an expert, but what's your "simple" explanation for cold fusion? Are you saying that momentum and energy don't need to be conserved, or are you saying that the energy is transferred coherently to the crystal, and if so, what other similar coherent processes involving millions of atoms at room temperature can you point to? The problem with introducing language like "the degrees of freedom are constrained in low-energy fusion pathways" is that it gives the theoretical foundations a "weightiness" that I'm not aware they possess. I think a large majority of people on all sides of the issue think that cold fusion lives or dies on the experimental evidence. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:04, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

This edit should be immediately reverted for a lack of sources. Please provide a source if you want to keep it. There is no way we'll get this article to GA, let alone FA, if anybody is allowed to insert his own opinion in the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

A few problems with sources

Most of the sources for this article check out. Can anyone find a source other than recent conference proceedings for any of the following? In general, it's not appropriate to take a scientist's say-so for when they discovered what; that's what publishing is for. If we can't find a better source, we can of course say that Fleischmann starting thinking of these ideas in the 60s (who's to know?) and started pursuing experiments designed to answer questions (again, who's to know?). We can't credit him with being a theoretical physicist unless he is one, and I don't believe he is. (Removing this material would also solve the problem of the missing page number for Evans.)

In the 1960s, Fleischmann and his research team began investigating the possibility that chemical means could influence nuclear processes. ... but Fleischmann started to explore whether collective effects, that would require quantum electrodynamics to calculate, might be significant. By 1983, Fleischmann had experimental evidence leading him to believe that condensed phase systems developed coherent structures up to 10^-7m in size.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:12, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Where do you see that we credit him with being a theoretical physicist ? Pcarbonn (talk) 07:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The changes you made today deal with my concerns, by putting it in his own words. I don't have any desire to deny him the right to a paragraph giving us a glimpse into his mind as he worked many years on this idea; we just can't make it sound like he came up with a "solution" on paper and then put it into practice. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone have a source for Bush & Eagleton other than Transactions of Fusion Technology? It would be better in general not to use conference proceedings as sources, particularly when the given experimental result didn't match other experimental results. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

What makes you think that these are conference proceedings ? There is no reference to a conference. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware. I kept up with various listservs at the time, and my understanding at the time was that Transactions of Fusion Technology was used to publish some of the ICCF papers. What I found on a Google search makes it very unlikely that it would pass muster at WP:RSN, but I won't press the point if you'll concede that it would be a bad idea to use material from that journal (I should probably say "journal") for any overly controversial purpose. The Bush-Eagleton results were, and are, at odds with other published results, so if that's the only source we can find, I think we should delete that sentence. If you disagree, our first stop will be WP:RSN. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The answer at WP:RSN was that Krivit and newenergytimes.com are not a reliable source for Wikipedia purposes (few websites are), so the material cited to either of them will either need to meet the requirements of WP:SELFPUB, have other sources, or be removed. This doesn't imply any disrespect for Steven's hard work, and IMO the article should absolutely keep the external link to his site, because it's a useful resource; it just means that Steven is on the same footing as everyone else here; he can point to sources, he can't be a source. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dan, I noticed my name here so I thought I'd take a look. Thanks for your kindness and respect as you wrote above. I'm not sure what or where the question was that you are answering. One time I looked up the Wiki guidlines of reliable sources but I don't recall those details off the top of my head. Sometimes I chime in here on TALK to point things out to folks, but I learned long ago that I'm too much in the category of "OR" to be a direct contributor/editor of this page. I do take partial exception to your blanket statement about my work as SELFPUB. I've had work published in Current Science, the Great Falls Tribune, conference proceedings and in the fall, a book by Oxford University Press and another article in J. Scientific Exploration will pub. I've been quoted briefly in numerous other places. Also, New Energy Times has citations/references in articles from Wired, Current Science, Great Falls Tribune, Nature News, Chemical & Engineering News, so hopefully those other sources will help with confidence in our work so that the Wiki article can benefit from our work and be stronger.

StevenBKrivit (talk) 07:59, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

With almost any web site, WP:RSN issues are difficult, and not for mere mortals like me; you are welcome to add those arguments to the thread I started at WP:RSN#www.newenergytimes.com. Keep up the good work, and best of luck. If you want to pursue this, be up-front about whatever sources of funding you have, and what it is your contributors expect you to do. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:09, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I take it from Wikipedia:RSN#www.newenergytimes.com that it's OK to cite Krivit and NET as long as we attribute the statement to them. This could not be said of any of us editors. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually they didn't say that (read it again), but because I'm generally happy with the site, I'm willing to say that it's okay with me and okay at the WP:GAN level, as long as:

1. It's understood that the WP:FAC people are generally going to want us to go find the sources in the library, rather than relying on an intermediate source that isn't itself a reliable source;
2. We're using www.newenergytimes.com only when it's important to include something in this article that we can only find an online copy of at that site; and
3. The original source is a Reliable source.

I wouldn't use WP:ATT to describe what we're doing here, I'd say it's WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Of course, Steven's site could also be used for the purposes of WP:SELFPUB, if we need to say something about the site itself. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The question is whether to include the following statement: "New Energy Times said that DARPA sponsored an international research project on cold fusion in 2007." Here is what I read in Wikipedia:RSN#www.newenergytimes.com: "I'm inclined to treat them as only good for sourcing opinions they themselves espouse. [...] If you're just citing their opinions, [...] just be sure to make the reader aware they they are opinions". I would thus think that their opinion on DARPA funding can be included. Maybe we need to find a better word than "said", so that it's clear it is an opinion. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Krivit and I are both happy with leaving DARPA out for the time being; DARPA has not been anxious to share what they've been up to. There's a book coming out in the fall that will probably acknowledge their funding; we can wait til then, or sooner if DARPA makes an announcement. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

Whew. It's been a lot of work, but worth it, because I think this article could not only become a featured article again, but more than that, become one of those articles on very contentious subjects that Wikipedia can be quite proud of. I'm passing this article. Here is a summary of the GA criteria:

• well written:
  • I've done a lot of copyediting on it, and I hope it would be considered well-written now, but I've been working fast and a little sloppy, and further editing would be welcome.
• lead sections:
  • The lead section is now fine for GA, but references that don't support quotations will need to be moved down below the lead section before this article gets to WP:FAC.
    • Now fixed.
• jargon:
  • Jargon is always a problem with a very technical article, but many improvements have been made, and IMO this article is a lot easier to read than some others I've seen on the topic.
• words to avoid:
  • After some work, the article seems to be in compliance with both the spirit and the letter of WP:WORDS.
• fiction:
  • let's hope not :)
• list incorporation:
  • I made a suggestion for the one incorporated list: it would be helpful to add short descriptions establishing notability for some of the researchers in the bulleted list.
• It is factually accurate and verifiable:
  • I was familiar with some of the material from the early years myself, and I haven't seem claims that anything in this article is not factually accurate. The references seem to check out. There are an overwhelming number of inline citations; great care has been taken on all sides to avoid WP:OR.
  • I just passed the article (02:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)) after reviewing the references. I checked that every short (Harvard) reference matches up with an item in the bibliography. I can't swear that some of the references haven't been "orphaned", that is, in the process of removing the short (Harvard) references, we may have something in the Bibliography section that doesn't match up now; that should be checked before FA. I wanted to go ahead and pass now that all my concerns have been addressed, but to get it to a passing state, I had to delete 3 sentences, the ones about Bush-Eagleton, Mizuno and DARPA, that I haven't gotten answers on yet. I mention the Bush-Eagleton reference below in #A few problems with sources. The Mizuno sentence can be added back in when the references are done correctly, and it can't claim a book from Infinite Energy Press as a reliable source (this is absolutely not an insult to the late Mallove, I'm just aware enough of how they think at WP:RSN that I know it's not going to happen), but we can treat it as Mizuno's WP:SELFPUB without any harm. It's not clear to me exactly what DARPA has owned up to in terms of funding in 2007 or 2008; as soon as we nail that down, we can add it back in. As mentioned below, there are a lot of good things to say about www.newenergytimes.com, but the folks at WP:RSN don't (yet) identify it as a "reliable source", so the main use of those references is complying with WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT; some of the original references should be found in a library and cited before WP:FAC. Otherwise, all sources are either books from established publishing houses, or articles in peer-reviewed journals, or established news sources, or appropriately-used government or technical reports; otherwise, the point of the reference is to describe the positions of the skeptics or the supporters in ways that everyone agrees with.
• breadth:
  • It's pretty broad, yes. We deleted one section (other fusion topics) that didn't seem relevant enough. Additional material might possibly be split off into a separate article on what this controversy reveals about the scientific process in the modern world.
• neutrality:
  • There are very few people who have done a lot of reading on the subject who are undecided (I'm one of the few, but that's mostly from ignorance and bone-deep skepticism about how science is done), and neither proponents nor supporters will be 100% satisfied with this article, but especially following the mediation, the feeling seems to be that the article is fair. I hope no one believes that bias has been introduced, either by my changes during this review or by any other editor, but my door is always open. Lack of bias is certainly the goal.
  • There are neutrality issues that can't effectively be tackled now, but not anything big enough to fail this article at GA; much work went into the mediation that ended in mid-April and largely dealt with issues of neutrality, and the current state of the article reflects the results from the mediation fairly well. Nevertheless, the skeptics who showed up during the mediation were largely absent or at least muted during this review, and Pierre was very active, so I had to play a much larger role during this review than reviewers generally play, in copyediting, and moving the article in the general direction of WP:FAC, and representing what I know of the concerns of the skeptics. I don't think we've hurt the article, but ultimately, it isn't appropriate for the reviewer to be "representing" any particular side in a contentious article. If no one has sufficient objections to take this article to WP:GAR, and no one has voiced that opinion so far, then I hope this article will make its way back to WP:FAC in the near future, and when or before that happens, it will be necessary to pull in more voices.
  • The goal is that readers unfamiliar with the issue should be able to read something informative, lively and accessible, and both proponents and opponents should find information on the best sources and best arguments that will help them get up to speed much faster than if they had to sort through everything themselves.
  • Finally, to chemists and physicists who might say that it's pointless to represent the points of view of the cold fusion proponents: the Chubb and Van Noorden references show sessions on these topics at recent ACS and APS yearly meetings, the 2004 DOE review was equivocal, the Indian government is currently funding studies, and one of the fathers of hot fusion in Japan (Arata) just gave a live demonstration of his excess heat experiment in the hall named in his honor to the Japanese press. Wikipedia can't take a position that you're not willing to take; as long as chemists and physicists keep the subject alive and unresolved, Wikipedia must do so as well.
• stability:
  • The article is fairly stable, especially for such a contentious topic. The edits since May 8 have, in general, only improved the article. The article was the subject of formal mediation earlier this year.
• images:
  • All images are appropriately tagged. They're also attractive and illustrative, and the captions are well-written.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)