I am all earsCrawdaddy74 (talk) 02:46, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
- James, since MastCell has blocked Jed Rothwell's IP and semi-protected the Cold Fusion talk page, I left him a note that he could join Abd on Wikiversity to continue presenting his theories and analyses of the yet-to-be-explained phenomenon occurring in CF cells. —Moulton 08:29, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately, my name is not James. I actually am not that interested in any theories of cold fusion as there is not enough experimental data available to generate any predictive theories. I am only interested in high energy particle observations from cold fusion (and upon further reading, possibly transmutation) as I feel they are more interesting and reliable than excess heat. You see Moulton, any observation of unexpected high energy particles no matter how small, as long as they are quantifiable and not erroneous (see Mosier-Boss 2010 for a good example of what that might look like) is as earth shattering to the scientific community as 5000X excess heat.
My only interest in this article arose when, after hearing about this recent cold fusion experiment in Italy, I checked wikipedia for some info on cold fusion (which amazed me as a boy of 12 but that I hadn't thought about since becoming a trained scientist). Unlike all the other times I had visited the site while wondering about a scientific curiosity I was confronted with an article devoid of any scientific merit sourced with a bunch of crappy popular puff pieces and the language seemed far from neutral. In short the article was so bad that it made me check out the discussion...where I was further puzzled by the fact that people were going on about how the Houston Chronicle is a better source than a peer reviewed journal! Put off, I went and watched a few cold fusion youtube videos and finally happened upon the SPAWAR experiements. Reading the literature papers, especially the 2010, article was pretty eye opening for someone trained in the art of materials chemistry.
I shared the article with a few of the people I work with and a couple of them that bothered to look at it came back to me puzzled. None of us could think of any reason to doubt the results as presented and we had never heard of these convention disrupting experiments before. We sat around joking about maybe repeating them... I have all the ingredients in the lab (no CR-39 of course)... we were joking because every experimenter knows that to repeat a published result can take years even for well established research group. Then after all the fun was over I started thinking about the amazingly poor quality of the cold fusion article at wikipedia and how improving it might be a helpful thing for me to do. I decided to try. Immediately after my first comment I am accused of being an idiot and a sock puppet! takes me a while to figure out what a sock puppet is...phew! I was cleared of being a crazed loon out to destroy the cold fusion article (HA!)
I decided to try and reason with the denizens of the talk page and maybe even try to explain a few of the details of this exciting experiment so that together we could reshape the article into something that would attract the attention of curious scientists and maybe help get these observations explained once and for all (every researcher I know hits up wiki first btw). Try to talk about a possible edit.... no response... Out of frustration I start commenting on your off topic post, then I realize I am trying to converse with someone who thinks that the motion of bubbles in water is governed by the gas density and not the difference between the mass of the gas and the mass of an equivalent volume of water. Not to mention the drag forces that vary with surface area etc...this from a man who bleats about high school level failings in peer reviewed publications...a flush of embarrassment rose to my cheeks "What have I become?".
Moulton I read your post on wikiversity where you said: "As a science educator, one of my interests (after teaching science to children) is to understand how persistent misconceptions arise in the way lay persons come to understand scientific subjects." In light of our brief period of interaction I would like for you to reflect on this statement. I weep for the children, but my spirits are raised by the Shakespearian majesty of what you unwittingly wrote.
I will not be making any edits to the cold fusion article. It is futile to try in such a toxic environment. But in parting I will mention that my latest reading leads me to believe that the part of the article about transmutation is sorely out of date. The article cites very old sources and claims that the experiments "didn't use state of the art techniques". The Storms 2010 article reviews experiments that monitor transmutations in real time using an XPS instrument resolving a transmutation of 10^9 atoms per second (equivalent to a mass of a few hundred femtograms). I happen to be sitting next to an XPS and I am very qualified to tell you that this instrumental technique is very state of the art. If you haven't heard of this technique or the experiment referenced in the Storms review please take some time to try and understand it before you make any more wild claims about AC burst noise... do it for the children.
Think of the children Moulton. Crawdaddy74 (talk) 11:31, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
Sock investigation
editWikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nrcprm2026. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)