Category: Organizations

Parapsychologist

(This was written over a year ago and not published . . . )

Reviewing some RationalWiki articles, I see a common trope that is a fundamental error. Articles on persons interested in the paranormal call them “parapsychologists,” even if they are not engaged in scientific study. Simply being a student of the paranormal or even of parapsychology does not make one a “parapsychologist.” Those with a strong political agenda play fast and loose with definitions, …. so:

Paranormal: 

: not scientifically explainable : supernatural

Supernatural then has:

1 : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature
b : attributed to an invisible agent (such as a ghost or spirit)

Wikipedia has, in the lede on Paranormal:

Paranormal events are phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described to lie beyond normal experience or scientific explanation.[1][2][3][4]

Severe ontological difficulties abound. Phenomena, if objectively described, are “what happened.” Then there is interpretation of what happened. Perhaps a cause is ascribed; this is inferred, not necessarily directly observed. The wikipedia article does not distinguish between experiential phenomena (“I saw such and so,” perhaps lights in the sky) and interpretation (“I saw a UFO,” which assumes that there was an object there, not merely an appearance of lights.)

So there is a general meaning for paranormal, as being phenomena — actual experience — that are not understood through ordinary scientific nowledge (testable and tested) k.

Unless we believe that science has understood everything, we must accept that there are such phenomena. We might “explain” the UFO as an atmospheric phenomenon rather than an actual “unidentified flying object,” but even if we manage to show, at some point, that a particular incidence was such, we could never rationally claim that this proves that all such incidents involve no object. But the “explanation” might personally satisfy us. Or not. Genuine skepticism will cut both ways; and there is pragmaticism to contend with.

However, the “paranormal” often is used more specifically, to refer to a class of phenomena loosely called “spiritual,” another quite problematic word. Again from the Wikipedia article:

The most notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to ghosts, extraterrestrial life, unidentified flying objects, psychic abilities or extrasensory perception, and cryptids.[6]

Before even clearly defining “paranormal,” the article is talking about “beliefs.” What is a “psychic ability”? “Psychic” refers, at origin, to the mind. (“relating to the soul or mind”). However, in usage, it comes to mean mental abilities that have no apparent physical modality. Again, we return to the problem of appearance. That is, there “appears” to be no “physical explanation.”

What is “belief”? We have operating assumptions that might be called “beliefs.” I get out of bed and put my weight on the floor and “believe” that it will support me. However, the Wikipedia article is talking about something else. Someone may say, “I believe in ghosts.”

I.e., perhaps, “spirits of the dead.” Feynman famously was being interviewed for a draft physical and was asked if he ever heard voices. Yes, he replied, because he could remember the very distinctive voice of a certain scientist. It was like he was actually hearing it. So if I experience some phenomenon that I interpret as being some manifestation of someone who died, is that a “ghost”?

How would I distinguish between a phenomenon that is “only in my mind” and one that exists “out in the world.”

And what difference does that make in my life?

The ontologically unsophisticated typically believe in a reality that is “out there,” not merely in the mind. I do, too, but I’m aware — and have been trained to be aware — that this “belief” is an invention, a tool, something that has a function, it is not, in itself, “truth.” Tools work or they don’t work.

Thus there may be “beliefs” that are not “true,” but that still have a life-enhancing function. They are “myth.” Pseudoskeptics dismiss “myth” as contrary to “critical thinking,” apparently not realizing that the creation of myth is a nearly universal human phenomenon. As such, it must have evolved for a purpose, or it would not have been maintained. At least that is my understanding based on my training in science.

(How the hell did “cryptids” get in there? Humans tend to believe the results of their own investigation or interpretation, and may variously assign credibility to reports, or not, depending on many, many factors. If some unknown species exists, how is this outside of the normal, since we have not necessarily discovered all species?)

Setting aside the “paranormal,” and allowing it to have a more restricted meaning, limiting it to “psychic phenomena,” we can turn to “parapsychology.” From the Wikipedia lede,

Parapsychology is a field of study concerned with the investigation of paranormal and psychic phenomena which include telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, apparitional experiences, and other paranormal claims. It is identified as pseudoscience by a majority of mainstream scientists.[1][2]

Does this belong in the lede, and is it true? There have been revert wars over this, for a long time. There are claims in reliable source that “parapsychology” is so identified. What is the balance? The problem is that “parapsychology is defined as scientific investigation, but a casual respondent to a survey may confuse parapsychology with the claims investigated, those “paranormal beliefs,” and if those were accepted by the majority, they would not be paranormal! So parapsychology must always be “fringe,” but that does not make it a pseudoscience. Ah, pseudoscience:

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be scientific and factual, in the absence of evidence gathered and constrained by appropriate scientific methods.[1][Note 1] Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; and absence of systematic practices when developing theories. The term pseudoscience is often considered pejorative[4]because it suggests something is being presented as science inaccurately or even deceptively. Those described as practicing or advocating pseudoscience often dispute the characterization.[2]

The demarcation between science and pseudoscience has philosophical and scientific implications.[5] Differentiating science from pseudoscience has practical implications in the case of health care, expert testimony, environmental policies, and science education.[6] Distinguishing scientific facts and theories from pseudoscientific beliefs, such as those found in astrology, alchemy, medical quackery, occult beliefs, and creation science, is part of science education and scientific literacy.[6][7]

It may be fun to track down the sources, but this article has, again, been a battleground. Notice the division is between “scientific facts and theories” and “pseudoscientific beliefs.” Key is “beliefs” and “scientific theories.” In the ideal, a scientific “theory” is not merely a belief held for emotional or similar reasons, but has been rigorously tested through the scientific method; it is useful for prediction, often very accurate predictions.

Unfortunately, for the pseudoskeptics, “scientific” is equated with “mainstream,” but not mainstream in the sense of the general population, it is “mainstream” in the sense of “most scientists,” and this often completely neglects whether or not these people are experts in the field they are judging. Many scientists rely on information cascades, to use the sociological term and, indeed, do those who claim to be skeptics study that science? There are some very clear examples of widespread belief among scientists that was rooted in an information cascade, rather than in actual scientific testing of the ideas. Scientists tend to believe what their friends believe, the same as everyone else.

What is an “occult belief”? Wikipedia again:

The occult (from the Latin word occultus “clandestine, hidden, secret”) is “knowledge of the hidden”.[1] In common English usage, occult refers to “knowledge of the paranormal“, as opposed to “knowledge of the measurable“,[2] usually referred to as science. The term is sometimes taken to mean knowledge that “is meant only for certain people” or that “must be kept hidden”, but for most practicing occultists it is simply the study of a deeper spiritual reality that extends beyond pure reason and the physical sciences.[3]The terms esoteric and arcane can also be used to describe the occult,[4][5] in addition to their meanings unrelated to the supernatural.

Again by definition, the “occult” will be unknown and not understood by most. However, the operative term here is “knowledge.” Occult belief is practically an oxymoron. That is, if it is not rooted in experience, the most reliable source of knowledge (that issue was largely resolved centuries ago, and experience is the basis of science, not “satisfying explanations.” Explanations are models, useful for prediction, but without experience, it is not actually knowledge of reality, but of ideas. Hence training in science includes laboratory work, not merely absorbing the conclusions of centuries of scientific work, such that we not only know a thing, we know how we know it. We cannot test everything — there isn’t time — but, collectively, we can test everything over and over. Unless some idiot locks the doors, prohibiting re-investigation, which is exactly what pseudoskeptical fanatics want to do!

We are largely programmed to ignore much of our sense experience. I’ve been having a lot of fun lately, observing entoptic phenomena. These are things we can see that are not “out in the world,” unless we want to think of the eye as “out there.” They are ubiquitous, but we learned as very small children, probably before language, to ignore them. Years ago, as a young man interested in music, I learned to hear partialtones. I remember reading a music dictionary that described them as “faintly heard.” That was written by someone who had little or no experience! Without hearing partialtones, we cannot tell the difference between the vowels, but we were never taught to consciously discriminate them. One who does that can tune instruments perfectly, it is not merely a guess as to what “sounds good.” Musical harmony is based on coincident partialtones.

And then there are countless human phenomena that we mostly ignore and overlook, beyond a few who study them — and who profit from them. What makes us happy? Is it possible to live life so that we die smiling? There are ancient “secrets” that are not secret, they are quite open, but which are hidden by lack of attention. Much of this shows up in religion, which pseudoskeptics commonly deny as “pseudoscientific.” The demarcation would theoretically be “can it be tested?” So how do we test these things?

I know one thing clearly: we will not deepen our understanding through lying, about ourselves and about others. Our ideas that others are wrong will never, in themselves, make us either wise or happy.

So … pseudoscience would be “fake science,” not merely something we think is “wrong,” which is how pseudoskeptics often use the term. Does something pretend to be science, but actually is something else?

Parapsychology is an old field. From the Wikipedia article:

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882. Its formation was the first systematic effort to organize scientists and scholars to investigate paranormal phenomena. Early membership included philosophers, scholars, scientists, educators and politicians, such as Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, William Crookes, Rufus Osgood Mason and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet.[20] Presidents of the Society included, in addition to Richet, Eleanor Sidgwick and William James, and subsequently Nobel Laureates Henri Bergson and Lord Rayleigh, and philosopher C. D. Broad.[21]

Was this “pseudoscience”? What is the “fake science” involved? Does a scientific investigation become pseudoscience if some errors are involved (such as, perhaps, unrecognized fraud)?  More traditionally, if the methods of science are used, and if some error is made resulting in erroneous conclusions, this is called “pathological science,” perhaps, though Bauer (a sociologist of science) points out that there can be little practical difference between the “pathological” and simply the ordinary process of science — which can involve error, and later correction of error.

The first steps in scientific investigation is the collection of data, not the identification of “claims.” That is, I saw those lights. I might claim I saw a “flying saucer.” Normally, in human society, we accept reports of experience as true unless controverted. So if I say I saw lights, most will agree, I saw lights. They might even be entoptic phenomena, but … I saw them! The phenomena are distinct from the interpretation. This is basic social understanding and is a principle at law as well.

The Society for Psychical Research has this prominently featured:

THE SOCIETY for Psychical Research was set up in London in 1882, the first scientific organisation ever to examine claims of psychic and paranormal phenomena. We hold no corporate view about their existence or meaning; rather, our purpose is to gather information and foster understanding through research and education.

I look at this and wonder: do such claims exist? Of course they do. So what are they talking about? Ah, the meaning! That is, the interpretation or explanation.

What question were “scientists” asked such that the following could be claimed?

[Parapsychology] is identified as pseudoscience by a majority of mainstream scientists.[1][2]

This is stated as a bald fact? Is it verifiable? It should be well-known that because some alleged fact is stated in a reliable source, it is not necessarily balanced and verifiable as fact, but rather it is a claim or statement which is verifiable if the existence of the claim can be verified. Otherwise we get into the issue of whether what is in reliable source is truth, well-known as unresolvable.

[1] refers to a series of sources

  • Gross, Paul R; Levitt, Norman; Lewis, Martin W (1996), The Flight from Science and Reason, New York Academy of Sciences, p. 565, ISBN 978-0801856761, The overwhelming majority of scientists consider parapsychology, by whatever name, to be pseudoscience.

That is an offhand comment, made in response to what appears, in the brief excerpt Googlebooks presented, to be a critique of some specific claims made by a non-parapsychologist. There is no clue how the author knows what he knows; rather it would appear to be common knowledge. I.e., sloppy as hell, not substantiated by evidence (such as a survey, and an examination of the pesky question of who qualifies as a “scientist” for purposes of the question. Such as being a software engineer and professional skeptic (i.e., Tim Farley)?

Mind you, I’m not denying that “most scientists” might reject claims of the paranormal. but I don’t actually know that. Answers depend on questions. I don’t see that the authors actually asked any questions, they merely made a statement off the top of their heads, and were so allowed by the publisher, which made it reliable source. But this isn’t science, it’s popular writing.

  • Friedlander, Michael W (1998), At the Fringes of Science, Westview Press, p. 119, ISBN 0-8133-2200-6, Parapsychology has failed to gain general scientific acceptance even for its improved methods and claimed successes, and it is still treated with a lopsided ambivalence among the scientific community. Most scientists write it off as pseudoscience unworthy of their time.

What I notice is that the term “pseudoscience” here is used as a synonym for “not worthy of their time.” Is parapsychology treated with a “lopsided ambivalence”? What does that mean? Does it use “improved methods”? Are there “successes”? The book is stating, it appears to me, that even though there have been such developments, most scientists won’t look at the evidence. I’ve certainly seen this in other fields. Everyone has the right to decide where to invest their time, and I’m not investing mine to find out if I can predict coin tosses. Except in a small experiment for fun!

This was not intended, it appears, to establish  that parapsychology is “identified by most scientists as pseudoscience.” It’s making a comment about difficulties the field faces in attracting the attention of “most scientists.” However, what was the context of the quotation? On Googlebooks, the paragraph before is talking about CSICOP. It’s about skeptics! (CSICOP became a debunking organization rather than the original intention of parapsychological research:  Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. I.e, it might as well have been named Committee for Parapsychology.)

  • Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten (2013), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, University Of Chicago Press, p. 158, hdl:1854/LU-3161824, ISBN 978-0-226-05196-3, Many observers refer to the field as a ‘pseudoscience’. When mainstream scientists say that the field of parapsychology is not scientific, they mean that no satisfying naturalistic cause-and-effect explanation for these supposed effects has yet been proposed and that the field’s experiments cannot be consistently replicated.

That is, when they refer to parapsychology as a pseudoscience, they are not actually claiming it is pseudoscience, they mean something else, which is then stated. This is, then, a reference to results, not to the practice of a science. I am not sure what “naturalistic” means. It would probably be “fitting within my understanding of nature.” But the paranormal, by definition, appears to be outside that.

Is it true that “the field’s experiments cannot be consistently replicated”? That is odd. Suppose I want to find out if saying Heads before I toss a coin affects the result. I suppose this would be, allegedly, telekinesis. So I do this a hundred times. I get results. Can they be consistently replicated?

Here is what I expect: I may get some result that seems “significant,” but if I repeat the experiment many times, that result may not be found any more than would be statistically expected with no influence, only random chance. That would be a result! If I’m not satisfied, I continue to repeat the experiment until I am.

And if there is a biased coin, this would discover it. I would do control experiments saying “Tails.”

So what  are Pigliucci et al talking about? It seems as if scientific investigation, in the minds of these unidentified critics, is only “scientific” if it produces some confirmed result that is expected under some theory. Scientific investigation, however, is carefully structured, when it is real science, to not be biased toward “positive results.”

Let’s say that parapsychologists study the paranormal so that others don’t have to. That works for human society, there are obvious survival benefits for some minority maintaining investigation of the fringes. Once in a while it pays off, and, by definition, the overall cost is low.

The occasion for this post was the identification of certain people on RationalWiki as “parapsychologists,” when they are not scientists and are not engaged in scientific investigation, but merely have studied sources , or have expressed beliefs.

Brian Inglis (1916-1993) was an Irish journalist, parapsychologist, spiritualist; and pseudoscience author.

Neither this article on RationalWiki nor the Wikipedia article on Inglis show that Inglis was a parapsychologist, i.e., someone engaged in scientific investigation.  Wikipedia has, as a detail:

He also had interests in the paranormal, and alternative medicine.

And, indeed, he compiled The Paranormal: An Encyclopedia of Psychic Phenomena (London: Paladin 1986). But this doesn’t make him a parapsychologist, it makes him a writer and editor. An Irish one, perhaps, and the author wants to make sure we know what “Irish” means. I’m not looking at the other terms.

The sloppiness is common for RationalWiki and especially common for Anglo Pyramidologist socks, as the original author of the Inglis article was.

And then we have Ben Steigmann:

Benjamin Steigmann (born 1991) is a [list of alleged political positions equivalent on RationalWiki to “clubs baby seals” or “is a Donald Trump supporter” — and I have no idea if he is or is not] he is also a parapsychologist and promoter of paranormal pseudoscience.

Steigmann is, again, not a parapsychologist at all. He decided to do a source review on parapsychology, on Wikiversity, which makes him a student, not a scientist. He is utterly non-notable, except for being a long-term target of Anglo Pyramidologist (specifically Darryl Smith, probably, less so his twin brother, Oliver Smith), so if you want to see an AP sock, it’s easy, look at who created the article (and look at the accounts created impersonating Steigmann, shown in the Anglo Pyramidologist studies with checkuser evidence on Wikipedia and the Obvious Obvious on RationalWiki.)

More:

Craig Weiler is not a parapsychologist. He is a blogger and became a target when he wrote about the situation of some on Wikipedia.

Geraldine Cummins is not a parapsychologist but a medium.

Princess Märtha Louise is not a parapsychologist. See the Wikipedia article.

Now I have some more places to look for AP socks!

 

A new argument on evap calorimetry

On LENR Forum, there is a thread on Shanahan’s critique of cold fusion experiments, and this post appeared by THHuxleynew:

I’ll give his last comment first:

PS – I don’t make these arguments often here, since I feel they are perhaps known by those interested in them, and strongly disliked by others. So I will not continue this argument unless new facts are added to make it worthwhile.

In fact, THH addresses an issue that I have never before seen raised. It is of limited impact, but it proposes a possible artifact that could afflict some experiments, that should probably be explicitly ruled out (or confirmed!)

Jed was arguing something familiar, common, and … incorrect, and THH nails that.

Jed,

It may help to look closely at the strands of argument here:

THH: As far as the F&P evidence against entrainment goes, salt measurement does not do the job since there can be condensation within the cell.
Jed: Yes, there is condensation in the cell. You can see it. But that does not change the heat balance.

I agree with Jed, he makes a number of true statements, but his point does not address mine. My point was that measuring salt balance does not determine the amount of entrainment, because entrained liquid can be either condensed (no salt) or non-evaporated (with salt). Condensation does not change the heat balance. But entrainment, in an open cell as we discussed here, does. Jed trying to argue that F&P can know there is no entrainment (and therefore no resulting change in heat balance) by measuring salt content. This is false.

He is correct. We will explain. Measuring the salt assumes that entrained liquid is unvaporized electrolyte, and the electrolyte is salty. However, that is not the only possibility!

Jed: Condensation is exothermic, so the heat lost to boiling is added back into the cell by condensation. You can test this by measuring the heat of vaporization in a cell with some condensation. It does not change from the textbook value. The null experiments by F&P all had condensation and they all produced the textbook value.

Jed is completely correct that condensation does not change the heat balance. However, this is missing THH’s point. The problem is not condensation alone, but condensation followed by entrainment of the condensed vapor (which would have no salt in it). The PF cell has a long, thin tube as a vent. if the vent is at a lower temperature than the cell interior, I would expect condensation to take place within it (heating it up).

This requires more than a little care to examine! It does seem possible that condensate (salt-free) could then be blown out of the cell. It would be, in boil-off cells close to the boiling point and would then evaporate outside the cell as it hits the unsaturated air. This water was not expelled as vapor, though, as it left the calorimetric envelope. If it is treated as having been vaporized, the heat of vaporization would then incorrectly enter the calculations.

And this cannot be ruled out by measuring the remaining salt. That would apply to “splash,” i.e., perhaps boiling or bubbling electrolyte that tosses it into the head space and then flow carries it out. The cell design militates against this as to any major quantity, but condensed electroyte might well be preferentially expelled. The devil is in the details.

The problem is that such results can be over-generalised. They only apply when conditions remain the same. The entrainment issue applies to unusual boil-off conditions. By definition the control, which does not have such extreme boil-off, will have different conditions, in a way likely to alter this result.

THH’s argument gets a bit iffy here. If the control is lacking an “extreme boil-off,” why? The point of the PF “simplicity” was that the boil-off time would be the experimental result. The loss of unevaporated water would indeed decrease the boil-off time, but only as an additional effect. That the boil-off is more rapid is a result, not a set condition. Presumably the conditions were set so that without XP, the boil-off times would be the same.

Jed: In a closed boiling cell with 100% condensation, the heat balance from vaporization is always zero. There is no heat lost to vaporization, because no vapor escapes.

I agree – but this is not relevant to the matter at hand which is discussion of F&P open cells in boil-off phase.

Both seem correct.

Jed: You are wrong about the salts,

I don’t believe you have shown that?

Jed often argues from conclusions based on evidence outside the argument. This then creates sprawling disagreements that never resolve. In this case, THH’s original point is very simple: the salt measurement does not definitely rule out liquid entrainment, liquid leaving the cell while unevaporated.

Jed: and you ignore the fact that they did several other tests to ensure there was no entrainment.

This is an offensive “you ignore” argument, common with trolls. Jed is not a troll, but … he’s not careful. He is very knowledgeable but has stated many times he doesn’t care about communicating clearly with skeptics. It’s unfortunate. Jed has paid his dues, to be sure, doing an incredible level of work to maintain the lenr-canr.org library (and he has been personally supportive to me in many ways). But we should keep him away from outreach to the mainstream! — Unless he is willing to develop better communication skills, dealing with genuine skeptics, and here, THH certainly resembles a genuine skeptic.

No – I point out that it is not possible to know which tests are done on which experiments, and note the danger of over-generalising results. That is addressing this fact, not ignoring it.

He is correct, and there are such dangers.

Jed: It would make no difference whether they did each of these tests every time: once every 10 tests would be fine. Note that they ran hundreds of cells, 16 at a time.

Only if the one in 10 included the (1 in 10 – I’m not sure?) cells that showed this special boil-off. We don’t know this.

This problem is addressed with random sampling and controls. I am not claiming Jed is wrong, only that his arguments are far less conclusive than he makes them out to be. Jed was correct, it is not necessary to verify every instance, but in doing that one would need to look out for possible sample bias.

THH is correct to at least suspect that rapid-boil-off cells would be more likely to entrain condensed water, which would again shorten the boil-off time. Obviously, one would want to see tests for expelled liquid, though that isn’t necessarily easy. I think measuring the heat of condensation on an external trap might be necessary. I’ve seen no descriptions of this.

THH is also not paying attention to the primary phenomenon, the rapid boil-off, treating it as an experimental condition, rather than a result. If there is the rapid boiloff changing the cell conditions, yes, entrained water could cause calorimetry error, but Pons and Fleischmann were not depending on the calorimetry at that point. The possible level of error could be estimated, and it is limited to the correction made to heat measurement for vaporized water. Looking at cell conditions, one could estimate the range of possible values.

Jed: They also tested closed boiling cells where the heat of vaporization plays no role (as I just said), and these cells also showed excess heat.

This kind of thinking fries my brain. Jed is arguing for the correctness of a conclusion (real heat, not artifact), which is the opposite of scientific process. There can be different artifacts in different experiments. What is needed is something that can be measured across all experiments, or at least most of them. We have that.

The heat/helium ratio. I remember when I started proposing measuring that with increased precision, there were arguments within the field that this was unnecessary, we already knew that helium was the ash.

However, if there is a single phenomenon that produces both heat and helium, in a consistent way, i.e., with a constant ratio, within experimental error, each measurement validates the other, again within the error bars. Ideally, helium should be measured in every D20 cold fusion experiment. At this point it’s too expensive, but that could change. It would kill all these arguments about various possible artifacts. If the heat/helium ratio holds in the experiment, the calorimetry was almost certainly correct, in spite of all the i’s not being dotted and the t’s crossed.

It has been pointed out that there is no end of possible artifacts, which is why the “they must be making some mistake” argument is so offensive. It’s pseudoscientific, proposing theory as creating a conviction of error. That makes sense when one must make some quick decision, but it makes no sense when one is examining experimental results to see if there are possible reasons to reconsider one’s beliefs.

(Cold fusion is not actually theoretically impossible, the arguments all require assuming a specific reaction and then calulating the rate for that reaction, which completely fails to be relevant if that is not the reaction.)

When Storms’ 2010 review was published in Naturwissenschafter, I winced when I saw the abstract: “reaction between two deuterons to make helium.” That was Storms opinion (generally rejecting multibody reactions, largely out of ignorance of the possibilities, and then thinking of two nuclei coming together, though, in fact, his theory is multibody, merely in a different way. It is not the simple two-body reaction that the abstract suggested.

That would be a different paper, with results and conditions we would need to look at afresh. Shanahan’s affect might be relevant here, or something else. Or perhaps this other sustem would be solid evidence. We would need to consider it. Either way, it does not change the arguments here relating to F&P open cell results.

Jed: Unless you have a scientific reason to believe there was entrainment, you should stop beating that dead horse. You have not given a single reason other than “maybe” “I suppose” “we can imagine” or “some scientists think they may eventually find a reason.”

This was way off. The explanation of how entrainment was ruled out was simply wrong. Testing the remaining salt does not show lack of liquid entrainment. I’m sure Jed can understand this, so, why not simply recognize that this particular argument has not — so far — been addressed.

That is where we disagree about the nature of skepticism. F&P posit some new effect (LENR) to explain anomalous results. It is they who must show there is no plausible mundane explanation – as they try to do – not others who must prove such an explanation.

Nevertheless, THH here takes on standard pseudoskeptical cant. “It is they who must show.” Must according to what? Someone can assert some evidence for something new, and can show evidence that they think supports it. There is no “must.” Both skeptics and believers fall into this trap. They become demanding, attached to a position, and the position of “wrong until proven true” or close equivalents, is pseudoskeptical. The moral imperative “must” deludes us. People need freedom to change their minds, we resist attempts to force us to accept based on coercive arguments. THH has the complete right to be skeptical, which is properly an agnostic position. He isn’t convinced yet, and he is the world’s foremost authority on whether or not he is convinced. Jed has the complete right to believe or accept whatever he wants … and to disbelieve skeptical arguments until and unless he is convinced.

The problem arises when one party or side attempts to claim the other is “wrong.” “Wrong” — like “Right” — is a complex judgment that does not exist in reality, and that gets into deeper ontology. The naive will think my statement preposterous!

Jed: Oh, and “condensation in a cell changes the heat of vaporization.” No, it doesn’t. Try it.

If THH said that, he misspoke. But I don’t think he said it. Rather this was Jed’s interpretation, and if so, the use of quotation marks was an error.

Condensation in the cell, as above, can affect open cell experiments by allowing entrainment not discovered from salt balance check.

This does not change the “heat of vaporization, which is a constant for a particular liquid. Rather it changes the correction made for vaporization, if and only if the liquid actually leaves the cell as a liquid, condensed, instead of as vapor. One would need to look at a particular experiment to see if this is relevant. I don’t think THH explained the problem well enough, I can see Jed continuing to think that it is the condensation that matters, and thus that THH is wrong wrong wrong. But that is not what THH is talking about. He is talking about the possibility of water leaving the cell as liquid instead of as vapor, having first been condensed inside and only then blown out. Thus the amount of water leaving the cell unvaporized would not be determined by measuring salt loss.

I don’t have the experience to say much more about this, about how much of an effect this might be. But I agree with THH on the primary issue, and it seems clear enough. Against this would only be argument from authority (they were experts and could not possibly make such a stupid mistake). Or other arguments that depend on there being a single effect without having actually shown that.

For closed cells we have other issues, and specifically, unless the calorimetry calibration is known independent of cell temperature distribution, ATER/CCS. But it does not help to mix up different cases – open and closed.

Each approach must be evaluated separately. Because of problems with confirmation bias and the file drawer effect, there are many problems in interpreting cold fusion experimental results. I remain satisfied as to the reality of the effect by the heat/helium reports, which actually point to a testable hypothesis, which has been confirmed by many, even though there is also room for improving the work, increasing precision, etc.

This is much more definitive than a pile of anecdotes, using varying experimental methods, showing heat but without being able to predict it. The multiplicity of excess heat reports is evidence, all right, but circumstantial. The correlation of conditions with results (such as loading ratio with heat) is supportive, but also subject to other possible interpretations. Heat/helium, by comparison, ices it.

We are discussing F&P’s open cell results. I’m not going to address directly here the question of whether condensation in the cell can ever affect the heat balance (by indirect means), it is not what I’m arguing now. Given more space we could however consider it. I’ve never stated or implied that condensation changes the heat of vaporisation.

Regards, THH

THH is the clearest, best, and most civil of all the skeptics I have encountered in about eight years of discussing cold fusion. He, and people like him, are important to the progress of cold fusion, more important than “believers,” unless the latter are scientists practicing real science, where the goal is to prove oneself wrong. (I.e., that the hypothesis fails to predict results). Those have paid their dues, and it is actually their work that is of ultimate importance, not their conclusions as such.

 

Wikipedia neutral or not neutral?

Well, what is it? Inquiring minds want to know. First of all, the policy.

The policy follows the “impartial” or “objective” journalistic model, as described in this document from ethics.journalists.org.

Supporters of this tradition feel it is the most honest form of reporting, attempting to lay out all sides of the issue fairly so that readers can make their own decisions. Reporters and editors following an objective model generally conceal their personal political beliefs and their opinions on controversial issues.

It is not necessary to conceal one’s own point of view, but the effort of an “impartial” journalist is to cover the topic, not their own opinions. As pointed out in the essay, if they do write about their opinions (as distinct from the facts on which those opinions might be based), this is labelled or distinguished as opinion.

Objective journalism does not require so-called “he said, she said” reporting that just cites the arguments or each side without seeking to draw any conclusions. Objective reporters can judge the weight of evidence on various sides of a dispute and tailor accordingly the amount of space they give various opinions. There is no need to provide “false equivalence” — treating every opinion equally.

News media following the objective model may express opinions in clearly labeled editorials, commentaries and cartoons, but those views should not affect the organization’s news reports.

Calling the neutrality goal “Neutral Point of View” was misleading, because “impartial reporting” is not a “point of view.” It’s a choice, a decision, a practice, the goal being to present, for Wikipedia, encyclopedic information that is not based on some point of view, but that provides readers with the information they might need to make their own assessments. There has been long-term conflict on Wikipedia over the interpretation of this, and what is remarkable is that there are users and administrators who openly prefer advocacy reporting, who have edited in conflict with others, and used tools to enforce, their own obvious point of view.

It has been called the “scientific point of view,” which was also a misnoer, because science, by definition, has no point of view, but seeks to establish knowledge through testing of ideas. Humans have points of view, not abstractions like “science.” Scientists often have points of view. In fact, scientists often get blocked on wikipedia for expressing them.

Again from the Policy:

Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[3] Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a “see also” to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct minority; to do so would give undue weight to it.

Wikipedia made a decision very early, not based on extensive experience, to use a flat model, with all encyclopedia articles sitting in a single namespace, called “mainspace.” Subpages are not allowed in mainspace. Wikiversity decided differently, having had more experience. The flat model discouraged exploration of detail. So the Wikipedia article on the Earth does mention Flat earth ideas, by linking to the article. By doing so, the coverage becomes complete, and roughly proportionate to coverage in reliable source.

Notice: the standard for inclusion of material is coverage in reliable sources, a term of art for Wikipedia, a substitute for having an actual editorial staff of experts making notability and reliability decisions. However, in actual practice, the flexibility allowed creates situations where a point of view, especially if held by a significant faction of users, can warp what is allowed for inclusion and can effectively exclude from the entire project, information presented in reliable sources, because of editorial opinion about what is accepted by “most scientists,” as it is often put.

Reliable sources include the expression of opinions, not all are purely factual. So if some reliable source shows an opinion that “most scientists consider parapsychology a pseudoscience,” as a real example, this is then often reported in articles as if a fact, rather than the opinion it often is. However, perhaps there was a poll. The fact is the poll and objective reporting would cover that poll, where it was appropriate. If there are other sources which treat parapsychology as a science (which it clearly was, by intention, the “scientific study of claims of the paranormal”), these will then be labelled by anti-fringe users as “fringe,” which is synthesis, often, i.e., the insertion of personal judgment for reporting of verifiable information.

And “most scientists,” if they have not studied a topic, have opinions that are not much more informed than those of anyone else. Generally, they may depend on what others they consider to be informed have said, and this can be an information cascade. In the case of parapsychology, they may readily confuse parapsychology itself with belief or promotion of the claims studied. They may have an opinion that all paranormal claims are false, unsupported. Is that opinion a scientific fact? Consider what it would require! There are two aspects to a claim:

The first aspect is the evidence, and the second aspect is analysis. So there is a claim, perhaps, of some “paranormal ability,” and the bottom line for classifying a claim as “paranormal” is that it is not understood, or not understood scientifically, and it may seem to conflict with ordinary understanding of how the universe operates. Is the investigation of the unknown “pseudoscientific”? Investigation will develop evidence. Suppose the evidence shows that the so-called “psychic” was a fraud. Was the investigation — parapsychology in modern times — therefore “pseudoscientific”? Hardly.

Basically, if people are asked survey questions who are not experts on the topic, their responses might be poorly informed. But a collection of those responses might well be published in reliable source. Does it therefore become “fact,” which can be reported on Wikipedia without attribution?

Notice that with attribution, anything can become a “fact.” That is, if the attributed report is verifiable by looking at the source, that such and such was said or claimed is “verifiable fact,” not that the statement or claim was necessarily true.

When I began, as a Wikipedia editor, looking at Cold fusion, what I saw was that sources were being cherry-picked, and, as well, an administrator had blacklisted the main site where one could read scientific papers on the topic. At that point, I was quite skeptical about cold fusion, believing the common wisdom, that nobody could replicate the original findings. That claim, by the way, is still found in many articles on cold fusion in reliable sources, particularly newspaper or tertiary sources not actually focused on the topic, but which mention the inability to replicate in passing.  When I attempted to balance the article, as policy would require (this was, after all, on an arguably fringe topic, so covering it more thoroughly than in an article on nuclear fusion would be appropriate) I ran into high resistance. I have since researched coverage of cold fusion on Wikipedia and saw that this went way back. Many arguments were advanced to avoid covering what should be, by Wikipedia guidelines and Arbitration Committee rulings, golden for science articles. One of the principle ones was “undue weight.”

Yet this was an article on a subject that was poorly defined. First of all, it was called “cold fusion,” first, in media (I think the first to apply the idea of “fusion” to the anomalous heat seen by Pons and Fleischmann in 1984 and first reported publically in 1989, was the University of Utah press office, but it caught on, and Pons and Fleischmann themselves were iffy about it. They actually claimed an “unknown nuclear reaction.” The only nuclear evidence they had were some detections of neutrons (an error, artifact), tritium (actually confirmed by others but of unclear implications and not at levels expected if the reaction were producing tritium through ordinary deuterium fusion) and inference from the energy density they calculated, which was weak; and confirming their work was very difficult. Even they had trouble with it, later. (The finding of anomalous heat in palladium deuteride was later confirmed by many groups, but it remains a difficult experiment).

Cold fusion immediately became, by 1989 or 1990, a fringe topic. That is, the idea that there actually was a nuclear reaction taking place in the material studied was largely rejected, but it was never conclusively shown that the original work was defective as to the report of heat. There is still no successful and verifiable theory of mechanism, but a practical theory has emerged that is verifiable, and it has been widely confirmed, and this is reported in scientific journals, and not just in primary sources. There are multiple secondary sources, peer-reviewed reviews of the issue or of the field in general including the issue or of some aspect of the field that takes this practical theory as a given, and that is that the reported heat is explained by the conversion of deuterium to helium, without significant loss of energy to other products or radiation. That conversion, by the laws of thermodynamics, must generate the observed energy in some form or other. (In classic hot deuterium fusion, if helium is the product, the large bulk of the energy is released as a high-energy photon (gamma). This is not observed (which caused many to reject helium as a possible product, “because no gammas.”)

So, the entire Wikipedia article is on a fringe topic. Many sources from almost thirty years ago reject cold fusion as a phenomenon worthy of study. The formal reviews, by the way, (1989 and 2004, U.S. DoE) did not do that; these are merely widespread opinions, back then. As it happens, if one restricts a source study to mainstream peer reviewed journals and academic publications, the best sources, there are more papers considered positive on cold fusion than there are negative. But that cannot be reported on Wikipedia because it is synthesis. As to reviews of cold fusion, I studied papers in Wikipedia qualified reliable source (or should be), published since 2005 on Wikiversity

I count 19 peer-reviewed or academically published reviews, in the period 20015-2012. In 2015, there were 34 papers published in Current Science, a peer-reviewed publication of the Indian Academy of Sciences. Some of them are reviews (such as my paper there). Are any of these reviews, over twenty, cited in the Wikipedia cold fusion article? Yes.

A small community of researchers continues to investigate cold fusion,[6][11] now often preferring the designation low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) or condensed matter nuclear science (CMNS).[12][13][14][15]

15. Biberian, Jean-Paul (2007), “Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (Cold Fusion): An Update” (PDF), International Journal of Nuclear Energy Science and Technology, 3 (1): 31–42, doi:10.1504/IJNEST.2007.012439

Links shown are to the Wikipedia article or, for Biberian, to a copy on his web site. I cover some of these sources here: [15] [16]

15. Biberian is a general review of the field (as of 2007), and would be reliable source. All that is taken from it is the name shift. Isn’t that a bit odd? There is another paper that I did not classify as a review, ([16], Labinger & Weininger), but it could be taken that way (and there are other sources that are not peer-reviewed as scientific papers).

Since cold fusion articles are rarely published in peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journals, they do not attract the level of scrutiny expected for mainstream scientific publications.[16]

16. Goodstein 1994,Labinger & Weininger 2005, p. 1919

From Goodstein (my emphasis):

Cold Fusion is a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between Cold Fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don’t receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here.

Who believes that about “serious science”? Goodstein, physics professor at Cal Tech, apparently. Goodstein covers the “fiasco,” the total mess of 1989 and beyond. He ends up with what became my position, very quickly, which was very unpopular with the editors sitting on the Wikipedia article. What was a casual, off-hand remark that actually makes little sense when closely examined, if taken literally, is what is selected from him. That was his opinion. He expresses other opinions, which are ignored. Why?

Because, I came to think, the anti-fringe faction believes they are wrong. By the way, by “serious science,” Goodstein was not claiming that cold fusion was real. He was claiming that there is genuine research and there are some genuine mysteries, things not understood yet.

What Goodstein wrote, in 1994, was about the very large body of research reports that are not published under mainstream peer review. That’s a loss, created by the difficulty of publishing experimental results in some journals. But others accepted papers and the issue obviously does not apply to what is published under peer review. So research published in that was does receive — or would be expected to receive, normally — the necessary critique. My position is that genuine skepticism is essential to science, and critique within the field is crucial and necessary.

The article presents Goodstein’s 1994 comment as if it describes the present situation. Does it?

And then there is Labinger and Weininger, 2005.  It isn’t easy to find a copy of this paper, but I have one. It’s a decent report of the history of the cold fusion controversy. It does not support what is attributed to it.  Because of the importance of this study, I am uploading a copy of the paper, claiming fair use. The page referenced is 1919, but the entire paper is worth reading. Again, there is much in this paper relevant to what have been major issues with the Wikipedia article, and it’s been ignored. Heat/helium correlation is covered, as was known to the authors in 2004 (and there is much that they apparently didn’t know, but they were certainly aware of the significance of the correlation claim). I will probably write a fuller review of the paper.

The heat/helium correlation is still not covered in the Wikipedia article. All attempts to refer to it were reverted on various excuses or sometimes no excuse. Yet Labinger and Weininger, in 2005, considered this significant.

So how does this happen? It’s what I called MPOV-pushing, Majority Point of View Pushing, and in practical terms, “Majority” does not refer to the “majority of experts on the topic,” nor to “the majority of scientists,” nor even to the “majority of Wikipedia editors,” but rather to the “majority of those who are watching an article and who have not been blocked or driven away by the majority faction.”

And that faction has been quite open about opposing neutrality policy. Here is an essay by an editor, Manul,  Neutral and proportionate point of view.

There was no participation in that page by other than the author, and there is no comment on the Talk page, but it’s linked from many pages.

The neutral point of view policy does not prescribe neutrality, in a certain sense of the word. When there are competing points of view, Wikipedia does not aim for the midpoint between them. Rather, it gives weight to each view in proportion to its prevalence in reliable sources. Wikipedia’s less-than-obvious meaning of “neutral point of view” is a perennial source of confusion.

NPOV editing would be “objective and impartial.” “Points of view” are actually irrelevant. The problem is in determining “weight,” because Wikipedia verifiability rests on what appears in reliable sources, and the faction tends to reject sources that “promote” views it opposes. That judgment is synthesis; it’s prohibited in text, but infects the process by which text is selected — or rejected.

How the faction distorts the subject is by creating “balance” that reflects their own views, by cherry-picking from a vast array of sources of differing quality and relevance. And the strongest sources, for how cold fusion is currently viewed, would be those peer-reviewed reviews. In my opinion, that balance is itself somewhat skewed as to general scientific opinion, because, as pointed out by Labinger and Weininger and others, most scientists are not aware of “recent research,” which includes much research published as early as a few years after Pons and Fleischmann announced. From what I’ve seen, many scientists will argue that the biggest problem with cold fusion was the absence of a nuclear product, and that argument depends on ignorance of the heat/helium correlation.

Facts are not points of view; they may be used in arguments to support or oppose a point of view. But if a fact is verifiable by reliable source, my position was that the fact belongs somewhere in the project. For example, there are claims of evidence for a flat earth. If these appear in reliable source (which might be an article on the Flat Earth BS, published by a reliable secondary source as Wikipedia requires), they belong in the project somewhere, assuming that an article on the topic exists, which it can if there is enough reliable source. It only takes a few for an article, and only one for a mention.

The faction would exclude these arguing that they would be undue weight in an article, but would also disallow and historically opposed creating a new article that would include those facts, being more specific and balanced within the topic of that new article.

Presenting an argument against some position while not presenting the position itself is clearly POV expression.

Effectively, evidence that they think contrary to their point of view has been excluded. The essay by Manul is not completely wrong, but is misleading, because the issue is not the “weight of points of view,” but the “weight of what is in reliable source.” If all of that is presented somewhere in wikipedia, and properly linked and contexted, what is “mainstream” will become obvious.

Yes, there can be reliable source claiming that such and such is fringe or pathological science or pseudoscience. However, are there reliable sources that claim other than that? And if a source claims something is fringe, but another reliable source accepts that thing and covers it, is the latter to be excluded because a source claims it is fringe?

That exclusion, which has obviously happened, is not neutral in the meaning of the policy. As a practical reality, opinion shifts over time, and the opinions of experts can differ from that of the majority, so there is also the fact that what is “fringe” may vary with time.

There are rejected views that exist in reliable source. “Reliable source” does not become unreliable because opinions expressed became obsolete. Rather, it would be covered somewhere, in the project I and many others envisioned. “The sum of human knowledge” includes mistakes that were made.

I never attempted to present cold fusion, in the article, as other than fringe, but simply to present what was in reliable sources, following policy. This was heavily attacked. On the talk page, however, I argued that the extreme skeptical view, favored by many editing that article, had disappeared from scientific journals long ago, and that cold fusion was being routinely accepted, in some journals. Not in all. There were journals that vowed, in 1990 or so, to never again publish an article on cold fusion. All this, by the way, is not some vague conspiracy theory, it’s well-covered in sources accepted by Wikipedia, such as Simon, academically published, Undead Science, mentioned by Labinger and Weininger.

Wikipedia never developed reliable structure to deal with factional POV pushing. Yet it obviously exists, with some administrators being among the pushers.

Is Wikipedia neutral? No. It could be, and it often is. There are many editors who understand the principles — as are well-known to experienced journalists. The “He said, she said” style of journalism is lazy and shallow, and the idea of neutrality as being “in the middle,” as Manul decries, is a primitive idea, a straw man. However, what the principles behind the NPOV policy suggest is allowing the weight in the sources (which means, effectively, the weight of the sources) to determine the balance of articles.

Factional, POV editing pushes out information, even though reliably sourced, that contradicts the faction’s point of view.

I found that this only happened when there wasn’t broad community attention. Factional POV-pushing, then, thrives in the noise, the huge volume of activity on Wikipedia, where a faction can, through what is created by watchlists, appear to be in the majority, and can revert-war out what they don’t like, and they did, long-term.

When broad attention was attracted, as with RfC or other process, they would lose and articles would be improved. So a priority for the faction came to be eliminating or disempowering users who could skillfully manage creating those processes, within policy. And so there is an essay written originally by a factional administrator: Civil POV pushing

There is philosophy that developed of creating a neutral encyclopedia by excluding editors who were not neutral.

As can easily be understood, that was doomed, because nobody is always neutral. Very rarely are those who  become highly informed on a topic completely neutral, having developed no point of view.

What human organizations develop, that need objective judgement, is process, and there is only one real standard for assessing neutrality: consensus, with the degree of neutrality generally being measurable through the degree of consensus, including all participants willing to behave civilly. Civility is crucial to this.

In standard deliberative process, if a member of an assembly is uncivil, they are not banned, but asked to sit down, and if they refuse, they are conducted from the room. To actually ban a member from a deliberative assembly generally takes a supermajority vote, after announcement, and it’s rare. Most people will cooperate with an attempt of a chair to maintain order. So if the chair orders a member excluded from the room (the equivalent of a block on Wikipedia), that only applies to the immediate session. Wikipedia went for “quick,” i.e., :”wiki,” and lost the power to develop consensus as a result. It famously takes time and much discussion.

In fact, however, wiki process as it developed on Wikipedia is incredibly inefficient, failing to establish real consensus after massive discussions, enormous wastes of time, because few do the real study needed. Instead it’s quick: Keep/Delete, Block/Unblock, and if you argue, Ban. Or if you argue for what a strong faction likes, ”Unban.” Even after massive process to determine a need for a drastic change in behavior.

What I saw from the author of the CPOV essay was gross incivility from him and those whom he supported and who supported him. These users, including administrators, could freely and with little restraint insult those who disagreed with them. Before I was involved with cold fusion, the faction was not doing well before the Arbitration Committee. The open “SPOV (Scientific Point of View) pushers” had suffered losses in arbitration and thus we can see disgust with the Arbitration Committee in the essay — though I agree that they failed to deal with the issues. Then there was the first cold fusion arbitration, in 2008.

I was largely unaware of this case until later. (And at the time I was quite skeptical about cold fusion.) There was no finding of improper behavior (by which I mean behavior not matched at least as strongly by those arguing for Pcarbonn to be banned), rather the core finding by the Committee was this:

3) Pcarbonn edits articles with a stated agenda against Wikipedia policy. [1] [2], [3] Additionally, Pcarbonn has treated Wikipedia as a battleground; his actions to that effect include assumptions of bad faith [4], and edit warring. [5][6]. For more complete evidence see [7], [8], [9].

The “stated agenda” links to a screed by JzG (Guy) on the Administrator’s Noticeboard. JzG was far from neutral, I established that later, he was involved in the controversy. So they validated JzG’s agenda by blaming the problem on Pcarbonn instead of looking at the underlying cause of the continued dispute. (And JzG, emboldened, then proceeded to act even more disruptively, leading him to blacklist lenr-canr.org out-of-process, which I noticed and confronted, purely as a neutral editor …. and JzG will never mention it, but that first arbitration led to his reprimand. But nothing was done to actually restrain his POV-pushing. He resigned his admin tools in disgust, but, then, because the resignation was after the ruling, he was able to request them back and then work, piece by piece, over time, to get revenge.)

What was the “stated agenda”? JzG wrote:

See also WP:COIN. The long and the short of it is, Pcarbonn (talk · contribs · logs · edit filter log · block log) has written an article in a fringe journal, New Energy Times, openly admitting that he has been pursuing a years-long agenda to skew the article Cold fusion (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs | views) to be more favourable to the fringe views proomoted by that journal, [10] and especially [11]. Example:

“I’m pleased to report that the revised page, resulting from the mediation process, presents the topic as a continuing controversy, not as an example of pathological science. This is a major step forward in the recognition of the new field of condensed matter nuclear science and low-energy nuclear reaction research … I now have a lot of respect for all paradigm-shifting scientists, like Copernicus, Galileo, Fleischmann and Pons, and the other courageous cold fusion pioneers”.

Note:

Few media outlets are paying attention to the subject, and many of the prominent individuals known to New Energy Times who are observing the field are keeping mum though a few observers such as Ron Marshall and Pierre Carbonnelle have tried their best to participate.

That note was from Steve Krivit, not Pcarbonn.

The source given by ArbComm does not support the claim. The whole article should  be read (the old links are dead), it is here. Pcarbonn was claiming that the Wikipedia Dispute Resolution process worked. What he was allegedly “promoting” was what is quite obvious from recent sources, including the 2004 U.S. Department of Energy review.  An “agenda to skew the article” would be far from reality for Pcarbonn. But ArbComm fell for it.

In addition the edits they point to with “[1][2][3] “do not support the claim. They have stated that they do not wish to rule on content issues, but what Pcarbonn was claiming in those edits is easily supportable from sources, and they seem to infer an agenda from pointing to what would be, for him, simple knowledge found in reliable source (or at least sources accepted by most editors). That’s ruling on a content issue, by using an opinion or claim as evidence of improper agenda to promote that opinion, while claiming they were not so ruling.

I am not here looking at the behavioral claims, i.e., the alleged results of “battlefield mentality,” (revert warring and incivility), but Pcarbonn’s accusers had, for years, in many situations, behaved as badly or worse (and continue). Assumptions of bad faith have been routine for them, and it is still going on. Pcarbonn had been able to work through mediation to improve the article, but the faction (JzG and Science Apologist being prominent factional users) did not like the results, so they got rid of him, it’s pretty much that simple. They knew what arguments might appeal to the Committee, and this time they prevailed. Science Apologist was only a few months away from being sanctioned himself, but he was able to later return with no restrictions, with factional support that misrepresented the history to the community.

The Arbitration Committee did not have the sophistication to realize that “POV pushing” is human, and normal, and that what we would hope for is “Civil POV pushers,” who will negotiate in good faith, and seek consensus.

Instead, “POV pushing” is considered a crime, and experts get banned frequently, because they have a point of view and argue for it. A sane Wikipedia community would guide them toward advising the community, to provide sources. A “fringe POV pusher,” is likely to know better than anyone else what reliable sources exist, if they exist.

I argued before the Arbitration Committee that Wikipedia might consider suggesting that experts declare their credentials and with that be treated as having a conflict of interest (since Wikipedia does not want them as “authorities,” but would — or should — respect and consider their advice. An expert (which would include “cranks” and “crackpots”) is likely to be aware of the best sources, but should not be judging whether or not these are adequate. Those are editorial decisions, which on Wikipedia would be made according to policies, not “truth,” or even “expert opinion.”

By banning experts, and, relative to the other editors involved, Pcarbonn was an expert, Wikipedia warped the article.

Other experts, including scientists, showed up, but generally did not understand how Wikipedia worked and tended to argue “truth,” an easy mistake to make.

JzG actually disclosed, at one point, where his POV came from. He had a friend who was an electrochemist and he had asked the friend about the article, from before Pcarbonn and others had worked on it, apparently, and he thought it was “pretty good,” as I recall. So, JzG concluded, Pcarbonn and others must be wrong. He had a point of view, and he pushed it relentlessly, and continued to do so, but it was not a point of view based on expertise, nor on the best reliable sources, but on emotional reactions and personal opinion. JzG was famous for radical incivility, long before I ever became involved. And it continued, it’s still going on….

Pcarbonn faced, as I later faced, some outrageous opposition, and commented about it, which could look bad. But I have not examined those specific claims. I’m just looking, now, at what was cited by ArbComm as the proof of an “agenda contrary to policy.” It wasn’t there. So they imagined it, synthesized it, which, I found, was all too common. They did themselves what they accused Pcarbonn of, not “assuming good faith,” but assuming an intention to violate policy — which was not shown in the evidence given. And they did it unanimously, which is scary.

(Later, the ArbComm mailing list was hacked. ArbComm considers it valuable to present a face of consensus to the community, but that is negotiated privately, on the list. So much for open process.)

(One point: I think they considered Science Apologist an expert. He was indeed a physicist, but that conveys almost no expertise on cold fusion, only on the theoretical reasons to expect it’s impossible, which is not controversial. That is, “cold fusion” is not well defined, but the common concept of it, the easy assumption from the name, is probably impossible and SA would know why — and so do I.

Yet that argument is also flawed, and was known to be flawed. Basically, perhaps something is happening that we have not anticipated. Low-temperature fusion is not “impossible,” but a first approximation of rate, for d-d fusion, which is what everyone thinks of first when “fusion” is mentioned in connection with the heat effect, would have the rate be very, very, very low. However, rate cannot be calculated for an “unknown nuclear reaction,” which is what Pons and Fleischmann actually claimed. That fact, by the way, is not mentioned in the article. My source for it would be primary, the actual first paper. Here it is: (my emphasis).

… We realise that the results reported here raise more questions than they provide answers, and that much further work is required on this topic. … The most surprising feature of our results however, is that reactions (v) and (vi) are only a small part of the overall reaction scheme and that the bulk of the energy release is due to an hitherto unknown nuclear process or processes (presumably again due to deuterons).

The title of the article as printed was “Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium”; however, I have seen claims that as-submitted, there was a question mark after this, dropped in the editorial process. The matter was enormously confused by the coverage of the classic d-d reaction, because they apparently believed they had detected those neutrons, and tritium as well, which, as to the neutrons, was artifact and error. Looking at that paper now, numerous errors stand out. This was rushed and sloppy — and apparently did not disclose enough to allow replication.

There is later work reporting neutron production from PdD, but the levels are extremely low, and have never been correlated with heat. There is also later work finding tritium, but roughly a million times down from what is apparently the primary product, helium. And, again, I have seen no attempts to determine if tritium was correlated with heat. Experiments tended to look for one or the other, or if they looked for both, as in some of the famous replication failures, they found neither.

“Fusion” also appears in the University of Utah press release.

Again, I’ve seen a claim that this came from the press office, not Pons and Fleischmann.

My favorite counterexample to the “impossibility” argument is to point to a form of cold fusion that is not controversial, it is accepted as a reality, and the argument as to why “cold fusion is impossible” does not consider it. Muon-catalyzed fusion takes place at very low temperatures.

What we know of as “cold fusion” is definitely not muon-catalyzed fusion, but the naive impossibility arguments don’t think of exceptions, i.e., what if there is some catalyst? MCF (or an equivalent with another catalysis, perhaps some kind electron catalysis) isn’t happening because MCF has the same branching ratio as hot fusion, and would generate fatal levels of neutrons (from the level of heat reported), so a simple catalyst causing ordinary d-d fusion cannot be the explanation of cold fusion. But what if the reactants are not just two deuterons (and some catalytic condition)? Basically, what Pons and Fleischmann actually claimed was an “unknown nuclear reaction” and the later-developed evidence, still excluded from the article even though very amply covered in reliable source, does not tell us the actual reaction, only the fuel and the “ash” or nuclear product.

I still find it hard to believe that the strong helium claim remains, after so many years, and in spite of ample coverage in peer-reviewed and academically publish sources — including sources cited in the article for other, relatively trivial matters, totally excluded. What the article has on helium is this:

In response to doubts about the lack of nuclear products, cold fusion researchers have tried to capture and measure nuclear products correlated with excess heat.[121] Considerable attention has been given to measuring 4He production.[13]However, the reported levels are very near to background, so contamination by trace amounts of helium normally present in the air cannot be ruled out. In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, the reviewers’ opinion was divided on the evidence for 4He; with the most negative reviews concluding that although the amounts detected were above background levels, they were very close to them and therefore could be caused by contamination from air.[122]

(The links in the article quotations are to the Wikipedia notes, but I will cover some of these sources below. [121] [13] [122])

Ugh. “In response to doubts” was POV synthesis. There was a search for nuclear products, from the beginning. Helium was not expected, from “fusion theory.” The lack of other products (especially neutrons) was a cause for doubt that a nuclear reaction was involved. But helium can be a nuclear product. Helium was found to be correlated, but that is not stated, only that there was a search for it. Describing this as a reaction to doubts follows the debunkers’ opinions that this is based on fanatic belief, trying to prove the belief. Not good science.

Other nuclear products have indeed been reported (at very low levels), but only helium has been correlated with heat. Tritium has been widely observed, but still only, roughly, a million times down from helium; if tritium is being produced, it is probably from some side-reaction or rare branch. No attempt was made, to my knowledge, to compare tritium levels with heat reports. The discovery that helium and heat were correlated was not announced until 1991, by Miles, and that fact was reported by Huizenga in his book — also reliable source. He was quite skeptical but considered the report astonishing, as it would “solve a major mystery of cold fusion,” as I recall. All this, of high importance in the history of cold fusion, is missing.

One of the main criticisms of cold fusion was that deuteron-deuteron fusion into helium was expected to result in the production of gamma rays—which were not observed and were not observed in subsequent cold fusion experiments.[40][123] Cold fusion researchers have since claimed to find X-rays, helium, neutrons[124] and nuclear transmutations.[125] Some researchers also claim to have found them using only light water and nickel cathodes.[124] The 2004 DOE panel expressed concerns about the poor quality of the theoretical framework cold fusion proponents presented to account for the lack of gamma rays.[122]

The new sources are [40] [123] [124] [125].

[121] The 2010 Hagelstein review in Naturwissenschaften, being cited for what is trivial about it. Wow: they point to a convenience copy on lenr-canr.org. JzG must not have noticed. What would be a bombshell in that article is the stated assumption in the abstract:

In recent Fleischmann-Pons experiments carried out by different groups, a thermal signal is seen indicative of excess energy production of a magnitude much greater than can be accounted for by chemistry. Correlated with the excess heat appears to be 4He, with the associated energy near 24 MeV per helium atom.

Peer-reviewed reliable source in a mainstream multidisciplinary journal (then, it later narrowed the focus to life sciences).

[13] The Hagelstein paper submitted to the 2004 U.S. DoE review. Not peer-reviewed, though. Primary source for claims of a segment of the Condensed Matter Nuclear Science community.

[122] is the 2004 U.S DoE review report, misrepresented — or synthesized. The statement, however, is from the summary and was the opinion of the anonymous review author, based on some reviewer opinions.

From the review, listing the claims in the review submission:

1. “The existence of a physical effect that produces heat in metal deuterides. The heat is measured in quantities greatly exceeding all known chemical processes and the results are many times in excess of determined errors using several kinds of apparatus. In addition, the observations have been
reproduced, can be reproduced at will when the proper conditions are reproduced, and show the same patterns of behavior. Further, many of the reasons for failure to reproduce the heat effect have been discovered.”
2. “The production of 4He as an ash associated with this excess heat, in amounts commensurate with a reaction mechanism consistent with D+D -> 4He + 23.8 MeV (heat)”.

The second claim being considered is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article, only a criticism of it. “Commensurate” is stronger than “correlated.” That is, not only is 4He correlated with heat (i.e., increases when heat increases, is not found when heat is not found), but the ratio found experimentally is consistent with the requirements of thermodynamics for deuterium conversion to helium. (Which might not be the reaction shown, but another which accomplishes that conversion). And then the review had:

The hypothesis that excess energy production in electrolytic cells is due to low energy nuclear reactions was tested in some experiments by looking for D + D fusion reaction products, in particular 4He, normally produced in about 1 in 107 in hot D + D fusion reactions. Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat.

Wait just a cotton-pickin’ moment!  That was a blatant error. It’s not what was in the document, they are referring to the Case Appendix, which mentions “sixteen cells” that were tested. But 8 of them were controls which were not expected to show either heat or helium. Unfortunately, the Case work was never published, I’ve been leaning on McKubre — gently! — to arrange its release, it was done for a governmental client. In any case, only five cells are reported in the Appendix, I forget the exact details, someone could look them up. A detailed heat report was only shown for one cell. There were not “sixteen cells reported to be producing excess heat.” And, as well, these were not electrolytic cells. Someone read quite carelessly. (One of the reviews made the heat error and I think the summarizing bureaucrat made the “electrolytic” error.) All of this shows that the review report itself was not carefully checked. Primary source, my opinion. It went on:

The detected 4He was typically very close to, but reportedly
above background levels.

Misleading and inaccurate. In two cells, helium levels rose above ambient, and showed no slowing as they reached ambient levels. In most 4He work, the helium levels are either below ambient (and ambient helium has been excluded) or in one case, which I cover in my 2015 review in Current Science (reliable source!) ambient helium was not excluded and the measured helium was an elevation above ambient.

This evidence was taken as convincing or somewhat convincing by some
reviewers; for others the lack of consistency was an indication that the overall hypothesis was not justified. Contamination of apparatus or samples by air containing 4He was cited as one possible cause
for false positive results in some measurements.

That is a “possible cause” if one pays no attention to experimental details and the correlation, and if one believed the 5/16 claim, as one reviewer did, of course the “lack of consistency” would be an indication that the overall hypothesis was not justified. However, what is the hypothesis? The work was investigational, and the conclusion was that heat and helium were strongly correlated, and this was not based on Case, except a little. It was based on Miles, which the reviewers ignored, but who is featured in all reviews of the topic.

The correlation is covered in many, many reliable sources, but totally missing from the article, yet it is the strongest evidence for the nuclear nature of the heat effect called “cold fusion.” By far. All the rest is circumstantial and remains debatable for the most part. Garwin on input power and heat measurements: “They must be making some mistake.” Okay, it’s possible, but the “mistake” somehow creates a correlation with blinded measurements? I’ve said that if cold fusion was a treatment for heart disease, it would be standard of practice already, the evidence is that strong.

Remember, though, Wikipedia’s standard for inclusion is not “truth,” but verifiability in reliable sources, and for scientific articles, the gold standard is peer-reviewed and academic sources. Not editorial opinion about “mainstream views.” If a view is not mainstream, that can be stated, by showing a reliable source claiming it. All this can be verifiable if properly attributed.

But the faction actually censors and makes the subject obscure. This example makes that obvious. Continuing to look at the notes on what I quoted from the Wikipedia article:

[40] is an article from Scientific American in 1999: What is the current scientific thinking on cold fusion? Is there any possible validity to this phenomenon?

Peter N. Saeta, an assistant professor of physics at Harvey Mudd College, responds:
Eight years ago researchers Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, then both at the University of Utah, made headlines around the world with their claim to have achieved fusion in a simple tabletop apparatus working at room temperature. Other experimenters failed to replicate their work, however, and most of the scientific community no longer considers cold fusion a real phenomenon. Nevertheless, research continues, and a small but very vocal minority still believes in cold fusion.

Fuzzy in, fuzzy out. What did Fleischmann and Pons actually claim? “Fusion in a simple tabletop apparatus”? Not actually. They claimed evidence for an unknown nuclear reaction, and the apparatus only seemed simple. It was actually quite a difficult experiment. “Other experimenters failed to replicate their work” was false, if taken as excluding confirmation, the reported effect was eventually confirmed by many, the idea of general failure was obviously based on early difficulties in replication.

The statement about “most of the scientific community” was true for 1999 and may still be true. What does “believes in cold fusion” mean? Is cold fusion a religion? The question was about “current scientific thinking,” but it is asked as if there is some authority, when, in fact, scientific opinion can vary widely. “Very vocal” is a tad, ah, judgmental. People who are working on something may be enthusiastic about it. Is that a problem? I will quote the skeptical inquirer Nate Hoffman from Dialog (1995):

YS: I guess the real question has to be this: Is the heat real?

OM: The simple facts are as follows: Scientists experienced in the area of calorimetric measurements are performing these experiments. Long periods occur with no heat production, and then, occasionally, periods suddenly occur with apparent heat production. These scientists become irate when so-called experts call them charlatans. The occasions when apparent heat appears seem to be highly sensitive to the surface conditions of the palladium and are not reproducible at will.

YS: Any phenomenon that is not reproducible at will is most likely not real.

OM: People in the San Fernando Valley, Japanese, Columbians, et al, will be glad to hear that earthquakes are not real.

YS: Ouch. I deserved that. My comment was stupid.

OM: A large number of people who should know better have parroted that inane statement….

The Scientific American article then presents Michael Schaffer. He is clearly at least somewhat knowledgeable, but he’s also sloppy. Nevertheless, he comes to a reasonable conclusion:

“So, what is the current scientific thinking on cold fusion? Frankly, most scientists have not followed the field since the disenchantment of 1989 and 1990. They typically still dismiss cold fusion as experimental error, but most of them are unaware of the newly reported results. Even so, given the extraordinary nature of the claimed cold fusion results, it will take extraordinarily high quality, conclusive data to convince most scientists, unless a compelling theoretical explanation is found first.”

He is talking about the political situation. He obviously thinks that something might be valid. However, he does not mention the strongest evidence that the heat effect is nuclear in nature, the heat/helium correlation. He merely points out what is not controversial, that the ordinary d-d fusion reaction only very rarely produces helium and when it does, it will always produce (must produce) a gamma ray. It is not clear that Schaffer realizes that the reaction might not be “d-d.” The lack of gammas strongly indicates that. But what I find of interest in his comment is the description of the position of “most scientists.” Is this “reliable source”? Obviously, the editors think it is for the comment about gammas. What about the ignorance of most scientists on the “newly reported results”?

A “compelling theoretical explanation” is quite unlikely at this point. Many have attempted to come up with one. Most theories conflict with the experimental evidence, so are not complete even if valid, i.e., there would be details to be worked out. Some theories replace one mystery with another, i.e., cold fusion is a mystery but what is known does not actually contradict known physics, it is merely unexpected, something yet to be understood. The theory that most closely attempts to explain experimental results would require a massive revision of basic nuclear physics, but without the specific experimental evidence that would justify this.

However, as to a scientific examination, the heat/helium correlation hypothesis is testable. In addition to having been confirmed widely, there is a project under way to confirm it with increased precision, and I hope and expect that there will be results in “not long.” Which could still be some years. My concern here is simply that there is extensive coverage of the heat/helium correlation in reliable source, the earliest I know of would be Huizenga, Fiasco, 1993 (2nd edition), yet it is still entirely missing from the article, almost 25 years later. This is not “recentism.”

The rest of the Scientific American article is pseudoskeptical bullshit, mostly scientifically irrelevant. I have sometimes considered writing a detailed review of that whole article, but … so much bullshit, so little time. (Morrison also did debate Pons and Fleischmann in a journal, and we are reviewing that elsewhere on this site. In that environment, he was more careful. What the other respondent wrote could not have been published in a scientific journal … but Scientific American published it…. so much for them. There was no thorough analysis of the topic, it was almost entirely opinion.

Phlogiston theory is covered better than cold fusion.

Completing the notes to that quoted section of the Wikipedia article:

40. The 2004 U.S. DoE report, again, which is reporting the “most negative” individual reviews. The argument of leakage is an obvious possible artifact with helium measurements at the low levels that would be expected if helium is the source of the reported heat (as helium production from deuterium is very energetic). The objection completely neglects the correlation and the actual experimental behavior.

[The review report was itself not subject to peer review, it was political. It actually shows a sea change in thinking from the 1989 review, but … attempts to insert fact from the review that could show this was always reverted. Instead, superficial comment from the review that is easily misunderstood was used. There was massive revert warring over this, over the years (before I was ever involved).  Is this still the condition of the article? Yes. The 1989 review is presented this way:

In 1989 the United States Department of Energy (DOE) concluded that the reported results of excess heat did not present convincing evidence of a useful source of energy and decided against allocating funding specifically for cold fusion.

That is easily verifiable from the primary source, the 1989 review. It is also misleading. First of all, the 1989 review was rushed, and the conclusions based on almost complete replication failure in the early efforts. Of course those reported results “did not present convincing evidence”! Further, the concern was “useful source of energy,” and there are still no such results, only indications of possibility, certainly not “convincing evidence,” enough to justify the charge to the panel, should there be a massive, heavily funded project? No, there shouldn’t have been, and still should not be. Not yet. Rather, the panel did recommend further research “under existing programs.”

A second DOE review in 2004, which looked at new research, reached similar conclusions and did not result in DOE funding of cold fusion.[10]

And on that point, (a massive or special program) the 2004 review conclusion was “similar” as in 1989, and said so, and that is also my conclusion, with much more thorough knowledge of the evidence than they were able to gain in the short review process. Rather, the panel again recommended further research– unanimously this time (the 1989 recommendation was actually forced by the threatened resignation of the Nobelist co-chair if it was not included, along with other language noting doubt, not certain rejection) further research. What was missing from that summary of “similar” was that what they report from 1989, about the lack of “convincing evidence” was definitely not the conclusion of the 2004 panel. Yet the way the reports are presented in the article matches the common opinion of skeptics on this: that the 2004 report also rejected cold fusion, and that there is no decent evidence for it. There is language in the summary of the report that shows the contrary; the panel was divided, which actually is a better reflection of “emerging science” rather than “fringe.” Given the very strong general negative opinion of cold fusion, some reviewers were apparently predisposed to misread the evidence, as can be seen in the individual reports (and then reflected in the summary). I never attempted to state this in the article, because it is “original research,”  though it is easily verifiable in the primary source, the review submission and report.

123. Rogers, Vern C.; Sandquist, Gary M. (December 1990), “Cold fusion reaction products and their measurement”, Journal of Fusion Energy, 9 (4): 483–485, Bibcode:1990JFuE….9..483R, doi:10.1007/BF01588284

The abstract is at the linked URL. From the first words of the article:

Ambient or cold fusion of deuterium is postulated to occur when two deuterium nuclei in a palladium or titanium metal lattice with ambient kinetic energy quantum mechanically tunnel through their mutual coulombic charge barrier and undergo one or more of the following
nuclear fusion reactions.

It is not controversial that gammas are not observed. The article examines the proposal (“postulated to occur.”) By whom? The reactions listed are the three known d-d fusion branches, and it was obvious from the original Pons and Fleischmann paper that these were not the main reaction, and what they presented showing that the might be happening at low levels was either artifact (neutron measurements) or weak (tritium and helium, as of that time). The article wastes a lot of space on what is completely not controversial: the absence of any product other than helium at significant levels. Is this the best source for that? Perhaps. They use the source to show “no gammas.” Right. No gammas, at least not high-energy gammas. There is later work reviewing this issue in more detail and with more experimental history, this was 1990.

124. This is Simons, Undead Science, p. 215. He is actually studying the sociology of cold fusion and the rejection. Simon is cited for “X-rays, helium, neutrons.” To repeat the quotation:

Cold fusion researchers have since claimed to find X-rays, helium, neutrons[124] and nuclear transmutations.[125] Some researchers also claim to have found them using only light water and nickel cathodes.[124] 

Now, due weight. What are the “main claims”? What has the most reliable source? Further, there are claims of major effects, correlated (and also with correlated causal conditions), and claims of minor effects, not correlated. The article mashes all this together. There are indeed persistent reports of X-rays, , but with no particular coherence or consistency across multiple researchers. Likewise neutrons have been reported, with the strongest report, least likely to be some artifact, being more recent than Simon, so why is Simon cited? And the levels of neutrons reported are only slightly above background, with the relationship to the primary reaction (primary symptom: heat) being quite obscure.

This was “passing mention,” by a sociologist and it contains no detail or references. It is quite unspecific. They are avoiding citing peer-reviewed reviews, which do cover all this with far more detail.

p. 215 in Simon mentions light water reports (mostly heat and tritium). This is all vague and not clearly confirmed, unlike the primary findings: heat from palladium deuteride, and correlated helium. There is no balance, in spite of the existence of peer-reviewed reviews of the field that cover these issues in detail.

The sentence makes it seem as if helium were found in light water experiments. No, helium has not been so reported. Light water or light hydrogen have been used in control experiments. If there are light water reactions, they are largely unconfirmed. Light water has been used as a control in heat/helium studies. No helium from PdH. (Storms has theorized that light water LENR would produce deuterium, which would be very difficult to measure.) What Simon actually says is:

The most startling of these are reports of the measurement of excess heat and nuclear particles (mostly tritium) using light-water based electrolytes with nickel cathodes, as opposed to heavy water and palladium.

So not helium and not transmutations other than to tritium. Poor sourcing. And these editors don’t actually sit down and read Simon; rather they grab snippets from Google Books. Simons reports much on the sociology of high interest, but the faction just cherry-picks what tells the story they want to tell.

125. Simon again, 150–153, 162. Mysteries abound in cold fusion research and Simon is aware of it. What is reported by “most cold fusion researchers” and what is reported by only a few, inconsistently? Again, the article mashes all this together, an inconsistent collection of artifacts generated by confirmation bias.

The Wikipedia editorial process encourages sentence-by-sentence, line by line, point by point “negotiation” of article content. It is extremely difficult to generate an article with overall balance, because of how the work proceeds.

Ironically, it was Science Apologist who demonstrated another approach. While he was site-banned, for a time, from his disruptive editing, he used the time to create an article on Optics, in his user space on Wikisource. I don’t know why he didn’t use Wikiversity, it would have been ideal for that. What he wrote was judged better than the standing Wikipedia article, and it was then RfC’d to replace the existing mess in one edit. I supported that move. See the discussion. It was all much more complicated than necessary. Really, there would have been a binary choice to make, which article is better? (Not “perfect.” Just a comparison!) (The author being banned was actually irrelevant, the content was released under the standard WMF license, but some argued “meat puppetry.” An opinion that an article written by X is better than the articles written by a farrago of users, erratically, is not “meat puppetry,” and if there is consensus for a substitution, that is it, as to my understanding of Wikipedia process. ArbComm apparently explicitly approved what should really have been obvious.) I am not aware of any other example of this being done. Nor have I found much interest in doing it. People would rather fight than switch. And writing an article on a topic as complex as cold fusion is actually a lot of work. And nobody is being paid to do it.

Many hands make short work, so if that were to be done for cold fusion, it would take collaboration, which has never appeared, in spite of opportunities.

 

 

SOS Wikipedia

Original post

I’ve been working on some studies that involve a lot of looking at Wikipedia, and I come across the Same Old S … ah, Stuff! Yeah! Stuff!

Wikipedia has absolutely wonderful policies that are not worth the paper they are not written on, because what actually matters is enforcement. If you push a point of view considered fringe by the administrative cabal (Jimbo’s word for what he created … but shhhh! Don’t write the word on Wikipedia, the sky will fall!) you are in for some, ah, enforcement. But if you have and push a clear anti-fringe point of view — which is quite distinct from neutrally insisting on policy — nothing will happen, unless you go beyond limits, in which case you might even get blocked until your friends bail you out, as happened with jps, mentioned below. Way beyond limits.

So an example pushed against my eyeballs today. It’s not about cold fusion, but it shows the thinking of an administrator (JzG is the account but he signs “Guy”) and a user (the former Science Apologist, who has a deliberately unpronounceable username but who signs jps (those were his real-life initials), who were prominent in establishing the very iffy state of Cold fusion.

Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard

Aron K. Barbey ‎[edit]

Before looking at what JzG (Guy) and UnpronounceableUsername (jps) wrote, what happened here? What is the state of the article and the user?

First thing I find is that Aron barbey wrote the article and has almost no other edits. However, he wrote the article on Articles for creation. Looking at his user talk page, I find

16 July 2012, Barbey was warned about writing an article about himself, by a user declining a first article creation submission.

9 July 2014, it appears that Aron barbey created a version of the article at Articles for Creation. That day, he was politely and properly warned about conflict of interest.

The article was declined, see 00:43:46, 9 July 2014 review of submission by Aron barbey

from the log found there:

It appears that the article was actually originally written by Barbey in 2012. See this early copy, and logs for that page.

Barbey continued to work on his article in the new location, and resubmitted it August 2, 2014

It was accepted August 14, 2014.  and moved to mainspace.

Now, the article itself. It has not been written or improved by someone with a clue as to what Wikipedia articles need. As it stands, it will not withstand a Articles for deletion request. The problem is that there are few, if any, reliable secondary sources. Over three years after the article was accepted, JzG multiply issue-tagged it. Those tags are correct. There are those problems, some minor, some major. However, this edit was appalling, and the problem shows up in the FTN filing.

The problems with the article would properly suggest AfD if they cannot be resolved. So why did JzG go to FTN? What is the “Fringe Theory” involved? He would go there for  one reason: on that page the problems with this article can be seen by anti-fringe users, who may then either sit on the article to support what JzG is doing, or vote for deletion with opinions warped by claims of “fringe,” which actually should be irrelevant. The issue, by policy would be the existence of reliable secondary sources. If there are not enough, then deletion is appropriate, fringe or not fringe.

So his filing:

The article on Aron Barbey is an obvious autobiography, edited by himself and IP addresses from his university. The only other edits have been removing obvious puffery – and even then, there’s precious little else in the article. What caught my eye is the fact that he’s associated with a Frontiers journal, and promulgates a field called “Nutritional Cognitive Neuroscience”, which was linked in his autobiography not to a Wikipedia article but to a journal article in Frontiers. Virtually all the cites in the article are primary references to his won work, and most of those are in the Frontiers journal he edits. Which is a massive red flag.

Who edited the article is a problem, but the identity of editors is not actually relevant to Keep/Delete and content. Or it shouldn’t be. In reality, those arguments often prevail. If an edit is made in conflict of interest, it can be reverted. But … what is the problem with that journal? JzG removed the link and explanation. For Wikipedia Reliable Source, the relevant fact is the publisher. But I have seen JzG and jps arguing that something is not reliable source because the author had fringe opinions — in their opinion!

What JzG removed:

15:48, 15 December 2017‎ JzG (talk | contribs)‎ . . (27,241 bytes) (-901)‎  . (remove links to crank journal) (undo)

This took out this link:

Nutritional Cognitive Neuroscience

and removed what could show that the journal is not “crank.” There is a better source (showing that the editors of the article didn’t know what they were doing). Nature Publishing Group press release. This “crank journal” is Reliable Source for Wikipedia, and that is quite clear. (However, there are some problems with all this, complexities. POV-pushing confuses the issues, it doesn’t resolve them.

Aron Barbey is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, a Nature Publishing Group journal.[14] Barbey is also on the Editorial Board of NeuroImage,[15] Intelligence,[16] and Thinking & Reasoning,.[17]

Is Barbey an “Associate Editor”? This is the journal home page.

Yes, Barbie is an Associate Editor. There are two Chief Editors. A journal will choose a specialist in the field, to participate in the selection and review of articles, so this indicates some notability, but is a primary source.

And JzG mangled:

Barbey is known for helping to establish the field of Nutritional Cognitive Neuroscience.[36]

was changed to this:

Barbey is known for helping to establish the field of Cognitive Neuroscience.[35]

JzG continues on FTN:

So, I suspect we have a woo-monger here, but I don’t know whether the article needs to be nuked, or expanded to cover reality-based critique, if any exists. Guy (Help!) 16:03, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

“Woo” is a term used by “skeptic” organizations. “Woo-monger” is uncivil, for sure. As well, the standard for inclusion in Wikipedia is not “reality-based” but “verifiable in reliable source.” “Critique” assumes that what Barbey is doing is controversial, and Guy has found no evidence for that other than his own knee-jerk responses to the names of things.

It may be that the article needs to be deleted. It certainly needs to be improved. However, what is obvious is that JzG is not at all shy about displaying blatant bias, and insulting an academic and an academic journal.

And jps does quite the same:

This is borderline Men who stare at goats sort of research (not quite as bad as that, but following the tradition) that the US government pushes around. Nutriceuticals? That’s very dodgy. Still, the guy’s won millions of dollars to study this stuff. Makes me think a bit less of IARPA. jps (talk) 20:41, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

This does not even remotely resemble that Army paranormal research, but referring to that project is routine for pseudosceptics whenever there is government support of anything they consider fringe. Does nutrition have any effect on intelligence? Is the effect of nutrition on intelligence of any interest? Apparently, not for these guys. No wonder they are as they are. Not enough kale (or, more accurately, not enough nutritional research, which is what this fellow is doing.)

This is all about warping Wikipedia toward an extreme Skeptical Point of View. This is not about improving the article, or deleting it for lack of reliable secondary sources. It’s about fighting woo and other evils.

In editing the article, JzG used these edit summaries:

  • (remove links to crank journal)
  • (rm. vanispamcruft)
  • (→‎Selected publications: Selected by Barbey, usually published by his own journal. Let’s see if anyone else selects them)
  • (→‎Cognitive Neuroscience Methods to Enhance Human Intelligence: Oh good, they are going to be fad diet sellers too)

This are all uncivil (the least uncivil would be the removal of publications, but it has no basis. JzG has no idea of what would be notable and what not.

The journal is not “his own journal.” He is merely an Associate Editor, selected for expertise. He would not be involved in selecting his own article to publish. I’ve been through this with jps, actually, where Ed Storms was a consulting editor for Naturwissenschaften and the claim was made that he had approved his own article, a major peer-reviewed review of cold fusion, still not used in the article. Yet I helped with the writing of that article and Storms had to go through ordinary peer review. The faction makes up arguments like this all the time.

I saw this happen again and again: an academic edits Wikipedia, in his field. He is not welcomed and guided to support Wikipedia editorial policy. He is, instead, attacked and insulted. Ultimately, if he is not blocked, he goes away and the opinion grows in academia that Wikipedia is hopeless. I have no idea, so far, if this neuroscientist is notable by Wikipedia standards, but he is definitely a real neuroscientist, and being treated as he is being treated is utterly unnecessary. But JzG has done this for years.

Once upon a time, when I saw an article like this up for Deletion, I might stub it, reducing the article to just what is in the strongest sources, which a new editor without experience may not recognize. Later, if the article survives the AfD discussion, more can be added from weaker sources, including some primary sources, if it’s not controversial. If the article isn’t going to survive AfD, I’d move it to user space, pending finding better sources. (I moved a fair number of articles to my own user space so they could be worked on. Those were deleted at the motion of …. JzG.)

(One of the problems with AfD is that if an article is facing deletion, it can be a lot of work to find proper sources. I did the work on some occasions, and the article was deleted anyway, because there had been so many delete !votes (Wikipedia pretends it doesn’t vote, one of the ways the community lies to itself.  before the article was improved, and people don’t come back and reconsider, usually. That’s all part of Wikipedia structural dysfunction. Wasted work. Hardly anyone cares.)

Sources on Barbey

Barbey and friends may be aware of sources not easily found on the internet. Any newspaper will generally be a reliable source. If Barbey’s work is covered in a book that is not internet-searchable, it may be reliable source. Sourcing for the biography should be coverage of Barbey and/or Barbey’s work, attributed to him, and not merely passing mention. Primary sources (such as his university web site) are inadequate. If there were an article on him in the journal where he is Associate Editor, it would probably qualify (because he would not be making the editorial decision on that). If he is the publisher, or he controls the publisher, it would not qualify.

Reliable independent sources
  • WAMC.org BRADLEY CORNELIUS “Dr. Aron Barbey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – Emotional Intelligence“  APR 27, 2013
  • 2013 Carle Research Institute Awards October 2013, Research Newsletter. Singles out a paper for recognition, “Nutrient Biomarker Patterns, Cognitive Function, and MRI Measures of Brain Aging,” however, I found a paper by that title and Barbey is not listed as an author, nor could I find a connection with Barbey.
  • SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE David Noonan, “How to Plug In Your Brain” MAY 2016
  • The New Yorker.  Emily Anthes  “Vietnam’s Neuroscientific Legacy” October 2, 2014 PASSING MENTION
  • MedicalXpress.com Liz Ahlberg Touchstone “Cognitive cross-training enhances learning, study finds” July 25, 2017

“Aron Barbey, a professor of psychology” (reliable sources make mistakes) Cites a study, the largest and most comprehensive to date, … published in the journal Scientific Reports. N. Ward et al, Enhanced Learning through Multimodal Training: Evidence from a Comprehensive Cognitive, Physical Fitness, and Neuroscience Intervention, Scientific Reports (2017).
The error indicates to me that this was actually written by Touchstone, based on information provided by the University of Illinois, not merely copied from that.

Iffy but maybe

My sense is that continued search could find much more. Barbey is apparently a mainstream neuroscientist, with some level of recognition. His article needs work by an experienced Wikipedian.

Notes for Wikipedians

An IP editor appeared in the Fringe Theories Noticeboard discussion pointing to this CFC post:

Abd is stalking and attacking you both on his blog [25] in regard to Aron Barbey. He has done the same on about 5 other articles of his. [26]. He was banned on Wikipedia yet he is still active on Wiki-media projects. Can this guy get banned for this? The Wikimedia foundation should be informed about his harassment. 82.132.217.30 (talk) 13:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

This behavior is clearly of the sock family, called Anglo Pyramidologist on Wikipedia, and when I discovered the massive damage that this family had done, I verified the most recent activity with stewards (many accounts were locked and IPs blocked) and I have continued documentation, which Wikipedia may use or not, as it chooses. It is all verifiable. This IP comment was completely irrelevant to the FTN discussion, but attempting to turn every conversation into an attack on favorite targets is common AP sock behavior. For prior edits in this sequence, see (from the meta documentation):

This new account is not an open proxy. However, I will file a request anyway, because the behavior is so clear, following up on the 193.70.12.231 activity.

I have private technical evidence that this is indeed the same account or strongly related to Anglo Pyramidologist, see the Wikipedia SPI.

(I have found other socks, some blocked, not included in that archive.)

I have also been compiling obvious socks and reasonable suspicions from RationalWiki, for this same user or set of users, after he created a revenge article there on me (as he had previously done with many others).  It’s funny that he is claiming stalking. He has obviously been stalking, finding quite obscure pages and now giving them much more publicity.

And I see that there is now more sock editing on RationalWiki, new accounts with nothing better to do than document that famous troll or pseudoscientist or anti-skeptic (none of which I am but this is precisely what they claim.) Thanks for the incoming links. Every little bit helps.

If anyone thinks that there is private information in posts that should not ethically be revealed, please contact me through my WMF email, it works. Comments are also open on this blog, and corrections are welcome.

On the actual topic of that FTN discussion, the Aron Barbey article (with whom I have absolutely no connection), I have found better sources and my guess is that there are even better ones available.

JzG weighs in

Nobody is surprised. Abd is obsessive. He even got banned from RationalWiki because they got bored with him. Not seeing any evidence of meatpuppetry or sockpuppetry here though. Guy (Help!) 20:16, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

This is a blog I started and run, I have control. Guy behaves as if the Fringe Theories Noticeboard is his personal blog, where he can insult others without any necessity, including scientists like Barbey and a writer like me. And he lies. I cannot correct JzG’s lies on Wikipedia, but I can do it here.

I am not “banned” from RationalWiki. I was blocked by a sock of the massively disruptive user who I had been documenting, on meta for the WMF, on RationalWiki and on my blog when that was deleted by the same sock. The stated cause of the block was not “boring,” though they do that on RW. It was “doxxing.” As JzG should know, connecting accounts is not “doxxing.” It is revelation of real names for accounts that have not freely revealed that, or personal identification, like place of employment.

“Not seeing any evidence of meatpuppetry or sockpuppetry here.” Really? That IP is obviously the same user as behind the globally blocked Anglo Pyramidologist pushing the same agenda, this time with, likely, a local cell phone provide (because the geolocation matches know AP location), whereas with the other socking, documented above, was with open proxies.)

Properly, that IP should have been blocked and the edits reverted as vandalism. But JzG likes attack dogs. They are useful for his purposes.

Replication failure is not replication

A reader recently mentioned Coolessence. As the linked web site shows

Coolescence LLC was a privately funded research company located in Boulder, Colorado. The company was originally formed to rigorously examine repeated experimental reports of so-called ‘cold fusion’ (low energy nuclear reaction – LENR), generally manifesting themselves in the form of unexpected or ‘excess’ heat, from a number of scientists around the world.  Over the past 12 years the Coolescence team has replicated the most celebrated of these experiments, with no positive results that have not been attributable to measurement artifacts or chemical effects.

This page will introduce the study of the work done by Coolessence. The relevant papers are linked below. If readers are interested, reading those papers before I study them will increase experience and comprehension. If I know anything about LENR, it is because I have studied materials in the field over and over. It’s not magic.

I was quite impressed by Coolessence, in many ways. When I was planning a tour of the U.S. and Canada in 2015, I hoped to visit them … but that trip was cancelled when my Subaru, in the first fifty miles of the trip, broke a timing belt and the engine was destroyed. So, as far as I know, I have never met the principals. Late in 2016, there were private discussions with them on the CMNS list.

From my point of view, Coolessence demonstrates how to take high risk of wasting time and money . I intend, here, to review the projects they undertook. Mostly, these would not be projects I would have chosen for first work. To be sure, this is hindsight, and it took me a few years in the field to develop perspective.

Writing several years ago, I laid out Plans A and B for LENR breakthrough. Plan A was to have Rossi (or someone like him) save us by making products appear in Home Depot, or the like.

As I pointed out, Plan A was risky, but had the benefit of not requiring Any Actual Work by anyone (other than the inventor, of course).

Given the possible importance of LENR, we needed a Plan B, and Plan B was to undertake what had been recommended by both United States Department of Energy reviews (1989 and 2004). Basic science, to nail down and confirm or clearly disconfirm earlier findings.

Plan B began with Phase I. Phase I was to confirm, ideally with increased precision, what had already been confirmed. The point was not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to start with what is far more likely to succeed. Failure is a damned nuisance, unless it leads to learning. I had identified the work showing a correlation between anomalous heat and helium production as not only rather widely confirmed, but as much more strongly probative than simple isolated findings of anomalous heat, or tritium, etc., without correlations.

Looking ahead from there, Phase II would be work to create one or more “lab rats.” I.e., protocols with adequate reliability to be readily reproducible most of the time. This could actually create a “product,” such as standardized, prepared, and pre-conditioned cathodes for FP class experiments or the like. There are indications that these cathodes could be pretested and would later work as tested.

Phase II would study already-reported and, where possible, already-confirmed protocols, not new ones. The reason is, again, to make success more likely.

Phase III would be a wide variety of investigations, using the lab rats where possible, or creating new ones. Phase III would include attempts to replicate isolated reports of interest.

Phase IV would be blue sky. By this time, if the first phases are handled (with Phase I and II being completed), there will be plenty of money for wider explorations and playing hunches, etc.

This proposal did encounter some opposition in the field, because Phase I was considered to be a waste, since “we already knew that helium was being produced.” Tonto: “What you mean, “we”?

Many of us may know this (the evidence is actually strong, though there is much room for improvement), but “we,” i.e., the human and the scientific communities, don’t have this as collective knowledge. Yet. What will it take?

The DoE reviews laid it out: replications with improved methods, published in the “journal system.” The LENR community doesn’t trust the journal system, so there you go. That’s a self-maintained trap.

In any case, Coolessence describes five projects. I will study each in dedicated pages. Here is the list:

Studies
POSSIBLE NUCLEAR REACTIONS MECHANISMS
AT GLOW DISCHARGE IN DEUTERIUM (1992)
Intensification Of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Using Superwave Excitation (2003)
Results
Glow Discharge Loading of Pd (2007)
Update on results at Coolescence, LLC (2008)

Studies
RADIATION PRODUCED BY GLOW DISCHARGE IN DEUTERIUM (2007)
Results
Partial Replication of Storms/Scanlan Glow Discharge Radiation (2008)

Studies
Use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments (2007)
Characterization of tracks in CR-39 detectors obtained as a result of Pd/D Co-deposition (2009)
Results
Search for charged particle emissions resulting from Pd-D Co-Deposition (2011)

Studies
​Establishment of the “Solid Fusion” reactor. (2008)
Hydrogen/deuterium adsorption property of Pd fine particle systems and heat evolution associated with Hydrogen/deuterium loading (2009)
Results
MECHANISM OF HEAT GENERATION FROM LOADING GASEOUS  HYDROGEN ISOTOPES INTO PALLADIUM NANOPARTICLES (2012)
Origin of excess heat generated during loading Pd-impregnated alumina powder with deuterium and hydrogen (2012)
Mechanisms for Heat Generation during Deuterium and Hydrogen Loading of Palladium Nanostructures (2012)
Using Bakeout to Eliminate Heat from H/D Exchange During Hydrogen Isotope Loading of Pd-impregnated Alumina Powder (2012)
Effect of temperature gradient on calorimetric measurements during gas-loading experiments (2012)
Measurement Artifacts in Gas-loading Experiments (2012)

Studies
Data from Melvin Miles’ July 2016 experiment and My Recent Kitchen Experiment (2016)
Results
Miles Summer 2016 Ridgecrest Experiment – Coolescence Analysis (2016)

Impressions

According to the classification in my Introduction, Coolessence chose what would be Phase 3 or Phase 4 projects. Given the difficulties in the field, the probability of failure was high. In reviewing this, I will be looking for behaviors and approaches that may have fostered failure. Notice: “failure” means not finding a definitive conclusion. At first glance, the Storms/Scanlan study may have been successful. The others, as far as I have seen so far, did not find the same results as the original reports, so these would be “replication failures.”

“Failure” is not defined as not confirming LENR. If an experiment confirms earlier findings, it is a successful replication, but “findings” does not mean “conclusions.” If the work is left there, fine. It’s a successful confirmation of earlier results.

If it goes on, after that, and demonstrates with controlled experiment that the original results were misleading, i.e., artifact, that is a success (and to be careful, it should, itself, be confirmed. Sometimes, historically, that step has been skipped and premature conclusions drawn). And, of course, if it nails results, eliminating possible artifacts, or increasing precision, it is also successful.

Looking for what is wrong with an experiment or analysis is not the first step. Not ever, except in one way. If one can look at anomalous results and see an obvious artifact, one may not want to put in the effort to actually confirm, and that is a reasonable personal (or organizational) choice. Ordinary skepticism is there to keep us from wasting time. Taken too far, though, it can blind us.

The most recent “Replication” is misnamed. They did not attempt to replicate Miles’ results. Rather, they analyzed his data and came to different conclusions.

Importance

Again, from my point of view, most of this work was of low value, compared to other possibilities. Gas-loading is nowhere near the center of what has been well-confirmed. Glow discharge has always been iffy (and is quite dissimilar to the original findings). There is a general fuzziness that lumps together anything that might be nuclear.

I was originally quite excited over the SPAWAR work, but the neutron results, not the charged-particle results that Coolessence studied, which have always been shaky in some ways (with replicators showing a lack of precision in defining what have been called “SPAWAR tracks). I didn’t like CR-39, it is messy and difficult to interpret, LR-115 might be much easier (but Pam Boss told me that the absorption curve for LR-115 would not be as sensitive as CR-39. Maybe.)

Remarkably, When I opened a box Coolessence sent me (they donated a large cold fusion library to Infusion Institute), stuck in the box was a plastic ziplock bag with what looks like a sheet of LR-115.

No, the neutron findings are more interesting! But still there is a huge problem. The protocols SPAWAR used do not look for excess heat. And you run this experiment for five weeks or more and then pull and develop the detectors. There is no other indication of whether or not the original effect (heat) was present. It’s a small experiment and would not be expected to produce much heat, but this makes a SPAWAR study, even if it shows a radiation effect, close to anecdotal. And from other evidence, if radiation is being produced, it’s at very low levels and has little or nothing to do with the main reaction. All it does is increase the mystery and confusion.

In my 2015 paper, I suggested further study of one protocol other than measuring the heat/helium ratio, and that was the dual-laser stimulation approach of Dennis Letts. It appears that others agreed with the importance of this work. It is known that Industrial Heat worked with this, but that work was discontinued when they closed their lab and released the staff. There was an attempted replication by ReResearch, also published in JCMNS, vol. 20, 2016.

It failed. I notice an acknowledgement from the authors:

we would like to thank Coolescence LLC for the contribution of Pd
material to test in this experimental campaign.

Eek! It is known that the source of palladium can be crucial. There can be unknown impurities or structure present from manufacturing. “Perfect palladium” apparently does not work.

ReResearch showed that replicating Letts wasn’t easy. Letts has claimed high reliability, but that was in his own practice. He might be carrying just the right mojo hand.

McKubre laid out how to run replication; it starts with seeing the effect, where possible, in the original lab and then, step-by-step, this is moved to the replicating lab. As necessary, the original reporter participates in the new lab, the replicators want to see the effect in their own lab. Eventually, the work becomes completely independent and eventually, controls are added. This is painstaking work, done properly.

For future work, my hope is that helium measurement be added. This is difficult and expensive, but … consider the ReResearch work. They clearly did not obtain the FP Heat Effect (or it was not at adequate levels). With helium measurement, this could be confirmed. In the Letts work, the primary study is of the effect of laser stimulation and laser frequency. (This is dual-laser and the effective frequency is thought to be the beat-frequency of the two lasers, in the THz region, as predicted by Hagelstein.)

There are many details where failure is possible.

(One of the supporting activities in the field is and will be the development of more precise helium measurement methods and sampling protocols. My sense is that what already exists is adequate for work where there is significant heat, but if sensitivity and precision can be increased, this will allow the extension of reaction confirmation into lower heat levels.

Other work that might be classified in Phase II would be the identification of additional signals of the reaction. These do not need to be “nuclear” if they are shown to be associated with the nuclear effect. An example: suppose it turns out that the acoustic signals reported by SPAWAR are distinct and associated with reaction “success.” It could then become easier and faster to identify the reaction.

There are fire alarms that depend on heat. (Sprinker systems activate when a plug melts in the sprinkler, and then the movement of water in the piping triggers an alarm. But fire alarms can also detect smoke!)

With a strong signal like helium, if there appears to be heat, and there is no helium, this would then be additional grounds to suspect calorimetry error. Ultimate assessment should be based on extensive experimental series, and hopefully many measures, not just anecdotes and single measures, as has happened too often.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the QUA[R]CK-X!

LenrForum:

Demonstration thread started November 15. Start reading here, Alan posted before the DPS (Dog and Pony Show) started.

E-Catworld:

Youtube:

3 hours. As I write this, I have not yet viewed more than a little of it. I will be compiling links to specific times in this video, and will appreciate assistance with that. Above, by the headline and by “DPS”, I reveal my ready conclusion. I will be providing a basis for that, but, meanwhile, fact is fact and we need be careful not to confuse fact with conclusion.

Test methods

From this page:

Here are the slides that Mats Lewan used in the first segement of the E-Cat QX demonstration of November 24, 2017 in which he gave an introduction to the E-Cat QX and explained how the presentation was to proceed.

Unless he hedged this in the actual presentation (and I will edit this if I find that he did), Mats is responsible for this content.

Slide 1:

E-CAT QX

Third generation of the patented E-Cat technology:
A heat source built on a low energy nuclear reaction (LENR)
with a fuel based primarily on nickel, aluminum, hydrogen and
lithium, with no radiation and with no radioactive waste.

The fuel is “Rossi Says” [* is used below] “No radiation” is possibly controversial: many tests, however, have looked for radiation and found little or none.

Claims E-Cat QX:

I have numbered the claims, and brief comments:

1. volume ≈ 1 cm3 [plausible]
2. thermal output 10-30 W [plausible as dissipation in device]
3. negligible input control power [* not plausible]
4. internal temperature > 2,600° C [* unlikely]
5. no radiation above background [plausible]

Today: Cluster of 3 E-Cat QX

Slide 2: (diagram, shows water circulation)

Water reservoir -> K-probe  -> QX -> K-probe -> Water tank on scale

(This looks simple and solid. While a magician or fraud, given control of conditions, can create fake anything, if there is fraud here, it is probably not in this part of the test.)

Slide 3: (calculations)

Thermal output
W = mwater* Cp* ∆T
Cp water = 4.18 J/(g·K)
Pav = W/t

W is, misleadingly but harmlessly, in a common confusion in Rossi presentations, not wattage but energy, in watt-seconds or Joules. Average power, in watts, is then is the energy divided by the measurement interval.

Slide 4:

Thermal output

(diagram, QX light -> spectrometer)

Wien’s displacement law:
λmax = b/T or T = b/λmax
where b ≈ 2900 μm·K
Stefan–Boltzmann law:
P = AεσT4
where
A = area
ε = emissivity
σ ≈ 5.67 × 10−8 W/(m2⋅K4)

This is BS. The QX is allegedly a plasma device, and light from a plasma does not follow the laws for black-body radiation. Light can appear to be intense but the energy will be in narrow bands, characteristic of the plasma gas. This approach simply does not work. However, it is not actually a significant part of the test. A very small spot can be very hot, that does not show high overall power if the very hot region is small, with low mass, and, as well, if it is transient.

(Mats in the video claims that the device is “similar to a black body,” but no evidence is provided for that claim.)

Slide 5: (schematic diagram)

Electric input. [explanation at video 11:28)

Shown is AC line power (unmeasured) feeding a Direct Current source (the symbol for DC is used), incorporating a fan, “active cooling ca. 60 W”. Then the DC output is connected to a 1 ohm sense resistor, and there is a voltmeter across it. Then the other side of the resistor is connected to one terminal of the QX. There are two labels, overprinted, “0 Ω” and “800 Ω.” This refers to two conditions, the zero resistance is to test conditions, allegedly, and the 800 ohms is a Lewan “test” which shows essentially nothing. The other side of the QX returns to the power supply.

I = U/R
P = UI
P = RI2
800 * 0.252 ≈ 50 W

This is utter nonsense. There is no reported measurement of the “power input” to the QX. This is the same preposterousness as was in the Gullstrom paper, widely criticized. What is “U”? Unstated. Perhaps it is in the videos. By the formula it is a voltage, the voltage used to determine the current through the 1 ohm sense resistor. If I is then that current, “P” would be the power dissipated in the sense resistor. The figure of 800 is used, but this is not under test conditions, the QX has been replaced by the 800 ohm resistor. So there is, from the power supply, 50W of power delivered to an 800 ohm resistor, apparently. This means what? It means about 200 V, that’s what!

Mats says in the video that the white box is the power source. Then he says it is a black box. Well, Mats? Which is it, white or black? He describes it as producing “direct current, which is pulsed.” That is quite different from “direct current,” depending on details. Mats says that the 1 ohm resistor is not necessary for the function of the generator. Yet, in operation, the resistance of the QX is described as zero. These descriptions have driven many who know a little electronics crazy. Yes, the 1 ohm resistor is a sense resistor, used only to measure current, but if the QX resistance is actually zero, nothing would limit current other than the supply max, and there would be no control.

The QX is a plasma device. Such devices have high resistance until a plasma is struck. It appears from the video that a plasma is repeatedly struck. At that point the voltage to the QX must be high. There will then be a short period when input power to the QX is high, until the resistance drops and input power with it. Zero resistance is quite unlikely. There is no evidence shown in the video of zero resistance, but the largest missing is any actual measure of input power.

At 13:22, Lewan explains the Rossi insanity that the heat of the reactor is conducted through the cables to the power supply, causing destruction of components. Later, on ECW, Lewan reports that Rossi is “no longer” giving this explanation. But why did he believe it in the first place?

This is said to explain the cooling fan for the power supply.

I later said, during the presentation, that Rossi no longer claims the heating problem is due to heat through the wires, but an internal heating problem in the control box. Fulvio Fabiani, who has built the original design of the control system, confirmed this, and said that it would need investments to and resources to build a control system that eliminates this problem. I agree that this seems strange. However, high voltage, high frequency, and high velocity might be challenging, combined.

The power supply is creating an output with substantial high voltage and frequency, but nothing shown as input to the reactor is high voltage or frequency. There is no consideration in the input power discussion of anything other than direct current, at low voltages.

It is obvious: there is high-frequency power being generated, and there is indirect evidence in the demo that this is roughly enough to explain the reported output power. I was discussing this today with David French, and he said that a test with forbidden measurements of a factor that might be crucial is not a test. He’s obviously correct.

If Rossi were a reliable reporter, we might decide to trust his reports. But there is voluminous evidence in Rossi v. Darden that he is not reliable. For as long as I have been following Rossi (since early 2011), he has put on one demonstration after another where some critical factor was hidden. With some of his early E-Cat demos, it was claimed that the cooling water was all vaporized, that the output was “dry steam,” but a humidity meter was used to verify this, and humidity meters cannot measure steam dryness. The physicists observing these tests had no steam experience and were easily fooled. In the Krivit video, Rossi clearly knows that there is condensed or overflow water in the output hose, because he walks it to the drain before pulling the hose out to show Krivit the steam flow, which was completely inadequate for the claimed evaporation rate. And that little demonstration concealed that water was slowly overflowing, and overflow was never checked. (Overflow is a different and larger concern than steam quality; steam quality itself was a red herring.)

In discussions on LENR Forum, THHuxleynew wrote:

Alan Smith wrote:

[…] The 800 ohm resistor was used as part of the calibration demonstration. Since the Q-X has virtually zero resistance there is not much point in measuring the voltage drop across it, so in order do show that (for example) an 800 ohm resistive heater was NOT present inside the Q-X capsule, the Q-X was taken out of circuit and a low-wattage 800 ohm resistor was put in its place. The voltage drop was measured again over the 1 ohm resistor to show there was a significant difference. This also was used to prove that the PSU was a constant voltage device, not a constant current device.

Anyone with substantial electronics experience would know how crazy-wrong this is. You don’t know that a device has “virtually zero resistance” unless you measure the voltage drop across it at a known current. The resistance of quite good conductors can be measured this way.

In any case, one would measure the voltage across the QX to verify that it is low (or “zero” as claimed, which is very unlikely for a plasma device.) Who there has experience with plasma devices? I played with neon tubes when I was young, great fun. Yes, they show “negative resistance,” i.e., the more current that flows through them, the lower the resistance, but zero? This is a major discovery all of its own, if true. It almost certainly is not. But the resistance of the QX might well be very low, because it is not the resistance of a plasma device, but of an inductor.

The test does not show what Alan claims for it. An ordinary 800 ohm resistive heater was not a reasonable possibility. With no measurement of voltage, this is all meaningless. The power supply is said to be “adaptive,” so conditions for the QX test and the 800 ohm resistor could be different. There was no description of what was actually done. The power measured with 800 ohms, from calculations was 50 W, which would certainly not be a “low wattage” resistor. But then there is more:

That is a weirdly indirect way of showing the QX has a low impedance. Also it is likely wrong! What was the 800 ohm resistor cal current? You also can’t prove CV from a single measurement.

only Rossi would give such indirect and dubious evidence… Why not measure the PSU voltage directly?

Sekrit, that’s why!

THHuxleynew wrote:

Also, these voltage measurements, are they DC or AC? And is the supply DC or AC? Without all these questions answered the word prove that Alan uses is way off beam… Impedance is not a single value independent of frequency. Nor is the QX likely linear.

Indeed. Alan’s response?

Alan Smith wrote:

The QX is stated to have near zero resistance. Which tends to suggest it has near zero impedance. Though after 5 beers I am not looking for an argument about that. Have at it.

After 5 beers, it gets worse.

THHuxleynew wrote:

[…] Suppose it has low resistance when in plasma state but high resistance when off. Driven by AC it would have varying impedance, and maybe absorb much power during these HV spikes some believe exist.

Or, take an inductor in parallel with a resistor. Low impedance at DC, high resistance at AC.

Perhaps I need to drink some more wine to even things up…

He’d have to drink a lot to approach Alan’s dizziness….

Oldguy points to the obvious: [To Alan]

Was the 800 ohm resister inductive or non inductive?

I am still having trouble with the claim that the claim that the device has “virtually zero resistance”.

Was it measured while running? How was that measured for the system as demonstrated?

Sure seem like there IS a “point in measuring the voltage drop across it”. A major point. It is possible to have a device with a low DC resistance but high inductive impedance. If there was any pulses or AC present, it could make a very big difference. -(example: a wire coil around some Ni) If It is to demonstrate the reality of excess then the voltage needs to be measured across with what ever waveform it is running with.

One would think. But Rossi certainly does not think like this. Unless he does. Unless he figured out  a way to make it appear, to those who don’t look or think carefully, that he is putting on low power, when he is putting in much more, there in plain sight and actually obvious and even necessary.

Alan Smith wrote: (about Oldguy’s “device”)

Tell me about this device? A choke perhaps? I think you will struggle to find me a good example.

Weird, indeed, probably the beers talking. He said the word: “choke.” That’s an example.

Oldguy also wrote:

No, again, you can have near zero DC resistance but have a large inductive impedance to high frequency (or spikes). The narrower the pulses the greater the “effective resistance” for an inductive device. […]

A simple wire coil with a nickel or cobalt core would do it. For example, a 10 mH inductor, would appear to have near zero resistance (depending on gauge) but about 4 ohms at 60 Hz and 7.5 ohms at 120 Hz and then about 160 ohms at 2500 Hz. Very fast pulses (single wave of a very high freq in effect) would make the effective R very high and with power going as V^2 you could transfer a significant power. A flyback transformer, cap and a read vibrator could easily be put in the housing of most DC supplies to add high V pulses.

Bottom line – the DC and AC across the device must [be] measured while running or you know nothing about possible power consumption.

Yes. The DPS pretends otherwise, and Mats Lewan, while he is aware of the massive deficiencies, goes along with it. It does not appear that Rossi invited anyone likely to question his claims. Mats seems to be on some kind of edge. Yet, in the end, he’s been had.

THHuxleynew:

All these (dubious even at DC) indirect measurements are no good if the PSU is AC, or has HV AC spikes.

Rossi, remember, has a proven (by Mats, of all people) history of mismeasuring things with meters to show positive COP from devices that are actually electric heaters.

Adrian Ashfield wrote:

Alan Smith wrote:

Tell me about this device? A choke perhaps? I think you will struggle to find me a good example.

The pathoskeptics are just looking for a way to back up their previous firmly held opinions. I doubt you can win against hem short of units for sale.

Even if the setup were perfect they would say the readings were false, or there’s hidden battery, etc, etc. The current and voltage appears to be low enough that would be very difficult claim measurement error would wipe away a COP of 300.

Ashfield has shown again and again that he is utterly clueless. There are certainly pseudoskeptics who will not accept even good evidence, but they are matched by pseudoscientists (i.e., “believers”) who assume what they want without evidence. Here, Ashfield has nothing to contribute to the conversation, but still bloviates about what he has no understanding of.

Genuine skeptics (people like THHuxleynew) are very important for the future of LENR, because they can form the bridge. Genuine skeptics are willing to look at evidence and not dismiss it out-of-hand.

As to Ashfield’s claim, input power was not measured, and easily could be enough for a COP of 1. I.e., no excess power. Mats Lewan even points this out:

‘I think the demonstration today went well, with some limits that depends on what Rossi will accept to measure publicly. The problematic part is that the voltage over the reactor could not be measured, which would be necessary to calculate the electric power consumed by the reactor. In the calculations made by Rossi and Eng. William S. Hurley, who oversaw the measurements, the power consumed by the 1-ohm resistor was used as input power instead, assuming that the plasma inside the reactor has a resistance close to that of a conductor, thus consuming a negligible amount of power since the voltage across the reactor would be very low.

(“could not be measured” because Rossi would not allow it. Then it is claimed that it was “very low,” but the evidence for this is entirely missing. They don’t even try. The power dissipated in the 1 ohm sense resistor would be irrelevant, having almost no relationship to the QX input power. That only shows DC current, not power input, even at DC, and no attempt was made to measure RMS power, and there was very substantial RMS power, it’s obvious.)

[…] it seems strange that the power supply, even if it is a complex design, is such that it needs significant active cooling, resulting in a total system that has a COP of about 1 or less at this point.

That power supply needs cooling because it is generating high voltage pulses to strike the plasma, and with no measurement of these (and it seems that the pulsing was frequent), there is no clue as to input power, but it easily could be enough to explain the “output” power.

William S. Hurley III

Sam provided a list of comments on JONP from Hurley.  It came from LENR Forum, Bill H.  (There appear to be many more comments from Hurley there.) There is speculation about Hurley on LENR Forum, with people doing a search, finding a William Hurley, and then saying that this is the DPS engineer. No. There is more than one Hurley, that much I had. I suspect the DPS Hurley lives in Huntington Beach, California, but I haven’t yet seen any strong evidence. However, his alleged company name, somewhere (I think in Lewan information), was spelled Endeavor. From the JONP comments, it is Andeavor. $6 billion in assets. Web site.

Bruce H wrote:

Alan Smith wrote:

He is Willam Hurley, an engineer who works in the oil business. That’s what he told me. At the beginning of the demo he was introduced as an an ‘overseeing expert’. But he was pretty low key for that role. nodding now and then was most of it.

Thanks. I think he probably has the background he claims. My interest is in his role in the proceedings. One thing that has puzzled me is that a summary of COP calculations was sent to Mats Lewan and then posted on ECW over his name (http://e-catworld.com/2017/11/…comments-from-mats-lewan/), and yet this report is written in Rossi-ese complete with “Wh/h” notation and slightly ungrammatical English.

He strikes me as a pawn who was under the impression that he had an important role in the proceedings, but in reality did not.

I pointed out the Wh/h trope yesterday. There is a history behind this. I once pointed to Rossi’s usage of Wh/h for power as a “trope.” That did not  mean “error.” It is simply relatively rare, i.e., idiosyncratic. I’ve researched it fairly deeply, it may be more common in Europe, and I think Jed said some Japanese use it. I have never seen an American engineer or scientist use this.

In my training, we always reduced units. Working with units like that is an important part of learning science and engineering.

Wh is watt-hour, i.e., 1 watt for one hour. The SI unit is joules/second, but the definition of a joule is one watt-second, i.e., one watt for one second. So an alternate unit for energy is watt-second, and watt-hour is common. The unit for power is simply “watt.”

I explained all this maybe a year ago. Rossi commented on it, claiming it was completely wrong, and his treatment showed that he thinks of “watt-hour” as a unit of energy, and that then power is the obvious rate, watt-hours/hour. He claimed the “hour” cannot be cancelled, and for further discussion, he referred to an well-known book author. I researched this issue in that author’s work, and found that he confirmed that the “hour” would cancel out. I.e., Rossi’s source contradicted Rossi. Rossi never, however, admits error.

It was not the use of wh/h that was wrong, that would be a pedantic objection. Rather it was his claim that “watt” or “kilowatt” was wrong.

(By the way, Rossi called the Plant the “1 MW E-cat.” Not the “1 MWh/h E-cat.”)

The point was not that Wh/h was incorrect, but that this was a red flag that this was not written by an American engineer, unless he was copying Rossi.

There is another clear sign: the company name spelling “Endeavor” is in that text, linked by Bruce H, taken from ECW. Hurley would not make that mistake. Period. Rossi would, easily. Rossi wrote that report. Hurley may have approved it, but even there, I’d expect the Endeavor error would have stood out for him and he’d have corrected it.

Alan Smith wrote:

Bruce_H wrote: “Wh/h”

Don’t start this again or we will have MY banging on about it. Wh/h is power supply engineer shorthand for the sustained load a system can handle. It is however not a recognised SI or Imperial unit of measurement.

Alan doesn’t want accurate information expressed because MY will jump on it? His comment may be misleading, or may be accurate for Great Britain, where he lives. However, “Wh/h” is not how a power supply engineer would express the load a system can handle. They would either state that it can handle X Watts for time T. Or they would state that the system can deliver so many Wh, but they would want to state peak load. Another way to say this is that a supply can sustain a load of so many watts (time not specified, and time is not specified in Wh/h, it’s an average). “Sustained” in this case is about what the supply will do without burning out. It’s a rating.

Bruce_H wrote:

I agree completely. I only use it as an indicator that that it was not Mr Hurley who wrote the report that appears over his name.

This is the DPS Hurley.

Tesoro Senior Project Engineer, Tesoro Petroleum Corp.

(Tesoro became Andeavor, August 1, 2017.)

This is also Hurley, engineer for a radio license with an address given for Tesoro in Huntington Beach., 2101 E PACIFIC COAST HWY, LOS ANGELES, WILMINGTON, CA. Mr. Hurley has a boat.

If it were important, we could contact Mr. Hurley. It’s not. We know what data he worked with, and if he made a mistake, as we think, it is no skin off our teeth. He should know, however, that he is hitching his reputation to a known fraud and con artist.

I finally found his Linked-In profile. It’s listed under Bill Hurley. (there are many of these.) Behold:

 

Mr. Hurley has a decent background. However, he has a conflict of interest. Considering the above, he would want, at this point, to encourage Rossi to deal with him. He gains no benefit by being skeptical in his analysis, as long as he is honest with his employer, and he would know, if he’s researched Rossi history, that any sign of significant skepticism, he’d be history in the Rossi story.

If Andeavor actually buys a reactor — or power — from Rossi, this would become very, very interesting. Otherwise, this is SOP for Rossi.

How are we doing?

As the first anniversary of this blog approaches, some statistics:

As of now, there are 247 published posts and  101 published pages. In terms of the number of comments, so far, the top posts, with 50 or more each:

Continue reading “How are we doing?”

What next? So much meshegas, so little time.

Watching LENR Forum, as well as looking at unfinished business here, there are endless provocations to write. I’m going to list some topics.

Interest?

Continue reading “What next? So much meshegas, so little time.”

How to win by losing: give up and declare victory!

And that’s what Rossi did, in spite of the insanity proclaimed on LENR Forum and elsewhere, and his followers lap it up, even though, like much buzz on Planet Rossi, it is utterly preposterous.

For a year, on his blog, Rossi had been proclaiming that he was going to demolish IH in the lawsuit, that he had proof, etc. Out of eight counts alleged, four were dismissing from a motion (and a count must be really poor to be dismissed at that stage — and what remained was hanging on a thread. Maybe Rossi could come up with some killer proof in discovery. That never happened, all that Rossi found were some ambiguous statements that, if one squinted, could look a little like what he was claiming, whereas the other side was heavily supported. Continue reading “How to win by losing: give up and declare victory!”

Mary Yugo, Sniffex and the Blindness of Reactive Certainty

On LENR Forum, maryyugo bloviated:

When James Randi’s foundation exposed Sniffex as a fraud, he was sued. The suit was similarly dropped before independent technical experts could perform tests on the device. Strange how that works. You may recall that Sniffex was sold as an explosive detector but was really a dowsing rod which when tested by many different agencies, detected nothing. It and similar devices did and probably still do maim and kill many people who rely on them to detect explosives and IED’s, especially in S. E. Asia and the Middle East and IIRC Africa where they can still be promoted and sold. Amusingly, Lomax the abdominable snow man, still thinks these things have merit. I propose giving him one and turning him loose with it in a minefield so he can prove it if he thinks we are slandering the makers.

I know the Sniffex case and have researched it fairly deeply. Much of what Mary Yugo has claimed is not verifiable, but some is. It does appear that the Sniffex was a very expensive dowsing rod (about $6,000, though there are sources saying as high as $60,000).

However, dowsing rods can detect something, this is where Mary goes too far. What they detect is entirely another issue, I call it “psychic.” Meaning “of the mind,” not  meaning woo. A “psychic amplifier” or “sensor” will fail a double-blind test, the kind that Mary considers golden. However, in real life, there are often what are called “sensory leakages,” in parapsychological research. Information that comes through in ways that are not necessarily expected.

In medicine, there is the placebo effect, but, then, are there approaches which amplify the placebo effect? Clinical manner certainly would. Anything else?

I never claimed that the Sniffex “had merit.” This is Mary’s corrupt interpretation, radically misleading, like much of what Mary writes.

And I never claimed that Yugo was “slandering the makers.” Mary made all that up. Continue reading “Mary Yugo, Sniffex and the Blindness of Reactive Certainty”

Is there a survival benefit for stupidity?

Continuing Hope springs eternal.

Is there a survival benefit for stupidity?

Probably not for stupidity itself, but possibly for persistence in the face of obstacles, if the person does know when to fold.

My son was about ten years old, walking in the woods with his friend. Recognizing poison oak, he told his friend to be careful not to touch it. His friend said, “That’s not poison oak!” My son said, yes, it is. His friend said, “Look!” and rubbed his face with the plant. Continue reading “Is there a survival benefit for stupidity?”

Hope springs eternal

Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion on LENR Forum. This starts with Alan Smith’s announcement that he will be attending the Rossi Quark-X demo in Miami (apparently), but then looks at discussion and general insanity around the Quark-X electrical measurements. Many other topics intruded into the thread, but mostly I stuck with the electrical issue. Continue reading “Hope springs eternal”

Paranoia strikes deep

Evil Big Physics is out to fool and deceive us! They don’t explain everything in ordinary language! If Steve Krivit was Fooled, how about Joe Six-Pack?

Krivit continues to rail at alleged deception.

Nov. 7, 2017 EUROfusion’s Role in the ITER Power Deception 

All his fuss about language ignores the really big problem with this kind of hot fusion research: it is extremely expensive, it is not clear that it will ever truly be practical, the claims of being environmentally benign are not actually proven, because there are problems with the generation of radioactive waste from reactor materials exposed to high neutron flux; it is simply not clear that this is the best use of research resources.

That is, in fact, a complex problem, not made easier by Krivit’s raucous noises about fraud. Nevertheless, I want to complete this small study of how he approaches the writing of others, in this case, mostly, public relations people working for ITER or related projects. Continue reading “Paranoia strikes deep”

ITERitation

Krivit continues his crusade against DECEPTION!

Nov. 7, 2017 List of Corrected Fusion Power Statements on the ITER Web Site

What has been done is to replace “input power” with “input heating power.” Krivit says this is to “differentiate between reactor input power and plasma heating input power.” He’s not wrong, but … “Input heating power” could still be misunderstood. In fact, all along what was meant by “input power” was plasma heating power, and it never meant total power consumption, not even total power consumption by the heating system, since there are inefficiencies in converting electrical power to plasma heating.

Krivit calls all this “false and misleading statements about the promised performance of the ITER fusion reactor” and claims “This misrepresentation was a key factor in the ITER organization’s efforts to secure $22 billion of public funding.”

If anyone was misled about ITER operation, they were not paying attention. Continue reading “ITERitation”

Krivit’s ITERation – Deja vu all over again

Krivit must be lonely, there is no news confirming Widom-Larsen theory, which has now been out for a dozen years with zero confirmation, only more post-hoc “explanations” that use or abuse it, for no demonstrated value, so far.

But, hey, he can always bash ITER, and he has done it again. Continue reading “Krivit’s ITERation – Deja vu all over again”

Gateway to Chaos, Confusion, and Complexity

I spent years as a very active Wikipedia editor. My contributions there don’t reflect well the level of work that I did — some users accumulate large edit counts with brief reverts based on immediate appearances, it’s very quick, sometimes even computer-assisted, I once tracked the contributions of an administrator who obviously sat at his computer pressing Save several times a minute for simple edits suggested by a program. He did this for many hours.

You can see the total numbers of my contributions on all WMF wikis on the global account display. Because my “community ban” on Wikipedia has come up recently– the situation being misrepresented in the new RationalWiki article on me — I will cover this on a page here, Wikipedia/Bans/Abd (draft, not complete)

There is a theme, revenge. In theory, Wikipedia is not a battleground. In practice, it is. Continue reading “Gateway to Chaos, Confusion, and Complexity”

An avalanche of sock puppets

The last few weeks I have been investigating disruption on Wikipedia and Wikiversity. This has a peripheral relationship to cold fusion. I’ll get to that.

For years, I was active on Wikiversity, supporting that community to build deep resources on sometimes-controversial subjects. Wikiversity, like all the WMF wikis, has a neutrality policy, but Wikipedia enforces it by, in theory, excluding the expression of points of view by users; rather, Wikipedia depends on “reliable sources,” with editors merely reporting what is in them, with emphasis on the “mainstream view” (which creates problems; the original idea was that the mainstream view would be reflected by the balance of sources, but when sources are preselected according to a judgment of whether or not they appear to support the “mainstream view,” a circular argument is set up. Pushing the mainstream view is theoretically contrary to Wikipedia policy, but,in practice, it is often tolerated, while similar behavior re views considered minority by adminstrators is quickly sanctioned.)

Wikiversity, instead, allows users to create resources and express opinions, and handles neutrality by attribution and framing. It is thus closer to a university library, including lecture notes of seminars and student work, which can report “primary source,” and can include opinion and unsourced analysis.

Some years back, I supported the creation of a Wikiversity resource on Parapsychology, because there were scientists and others interested in the topic.  I designed this to be neutral, and created a subpage for a young user who wanted to create his own list of sources on the topic, this was [redacted], who had gotten into trouble on Wikipedia and was blocked there. The user happily worked on his resource, and was not, in the least, disruptive on Wikiversity. However, the resource was attacked, a number of times. These attacks were always handled, it is not difficult on Wikiversity, if a resource has been created with care.

(I should add that I’m highly skeptical of many claims called “parapsychological,” but, then again, so are at least some parapsychologists. Parapsychology is a field of investigation, not a body of belief.) Continue reading “An avalanche of sock puppets”

Joshua Schroeder on pseudoscience on Wikipedia

Draft. If you are reading this on an archive site, be sure to check the original URL for updates, corrections, retractions, etc.

If coming here from the Wikipedia discussion, perhaps read this first.

Development 12/29/2017. Due to continued and very personal attack on me, now including attack by Joshua Schroeder, but also attack on scientists, I have restored the information given in the original post on a page: wikipedia/joshua-p-schroeder/accounts/. This is explained there.

This is not the original post, which was created October 4, 2017, as private, the same date as the same information was posted on Thunderbolt. It was later made public. I’m guessing, from the blog activity log, that was November 8, 2017. Why this administrivia? Because a sock of Anglo Pyramidologist is claiming that the date on this post is misleading, because it was edited December 2, 2017 but the post shows the original date of October. (This is just how WordPress works.)

This is a blog post, not a “page.” Blog posts appear in date order, date of creation (not open publication) and I deliberately did not want to make this post very visible. When it was made public, it did not show up in the latest posts display. So, while I have a means of changing the date, I’m not doing it. I don’t want it to show up in recent posts. There will be comments below that will display.

This is a response to the fuss made over the original post, which demonstrates the use of charges of doxxing as an attack method. The active person here, accusing doxxing, was also cementing the revelations in archives it so it is difficult to hide, is known as Anglo Pyramidologist. There may actually be two people (or maybe three). Real names are known but I do not personally have direct evidence, not yet. I do have strong technical evidence linking these socks, aside from what is on Wikipedia, my WMF global study on meta, and a study of RationalWiki socking here.

Update 12/29/2017: the study on meta has been deleted out-of-process and is currently under a review of the deletion. If the deletion stands, I will open the material to public view here. As on meta, it will be open to correction, but, so far, the only actual correction attempt has come from an obvious sock who had not actually been accused — and the new version will include this account. Certain facts were omitted from the meta study in order to clearly comply with WMF privacy policy. There is no such restriction here, though I will not allow gratuitous outing. If I am convinced that there is strong evidence of illegal or unethical abuse of anonymity, I will reveal or allow the revelation of what would otherwise be protected and private, based on the public need to know.

I have been assisted in my own research by private information that administrators on other sites published as to attacks on them. It’s confirmed. They were telling the truth.

(Initially) Two IPs, now WMF globally blocked as open proxies, starting November 30, made a huge fuss on Wikipedia, Wikiversity, and the meta wiki, attempting to once again attack [redacted], and, when, once again, I exposed this, they again attempted to attack me. The IPs were:
117.20.41.10
Having asked (last edit but one on Wikipedia) to be blocked (obviously because he knew he would be blocked very soon), and claiming that he was done, his mission  being to stop [redacted] from disrupting Wikipedia, within ten minutes of being blocked, he began again with a new IP, same source of open proxies. He was lying, as usual.
117.20.41.9.
(more IP socking continues, stewards are getting swift at noticing them and blocking.)
dot-9 admitted being dot-10. AP does not care about being blocked (he’s been blocked hundreds of times). In this case, these were expendable open proxies. The user also creates many single-purpose accounts, and just did that as part of this sequence on RationalWiki.
This is not about “skeptics,” as AP pretends. It is about a single person (or possibly two brothers, based on early claims made by the socks) who is highly disruptive, commonly impersonates his enemies, libels them, and harasses them. I have issues with Joshua P. Schroeder (JPS), but he is a saint compared to AP.
You are honestly going to get in trouble for this [http://coldfusioncommunity.net/joshua-schroeder-on-pseudoscience-on-wikipedia/]. You are shaking in your boots abd. You think you can get away with doxing people names, locations and harassing them? Btw your abuse has been archived, no point in deleting it. I also didn’t reveal anything apart from public knowledge. His account name change is public knowledge [link redacted]. It was changed yesterday by an admin [link redacted]. Because of your stalking and abuse he had to change his username. You are a bully abd. More and more skeptics are going to be informed about your harassment and stalking. You are really not a nice guy. You claim to be a devout Muslim but you just sit online all day writing slanderous statements about people on your website and stalking them. Remember cyber bullying is a crime. [[Special:Contributions/117.20.41.9|117.20.41.9]] ([[User talk:117.20.41.9|discuss]]) 05:54, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
The material was hidden out of concern for JPS, not about any threats. JPS has not been particularly appreciative. He may understand more about that later [note added: apparently not!]. I’ve taken this material down and I requested moderators where it was originally posted take it down. That’s about what I can do, though I do own copyright on the material, so maybe I can assist him in removing it from archives. However …. he hasn’t asked and is just blaming and angry. He knows a lot about start and astrophysics, but apparently not much about people. Maybe he will come around.
{He did not and publicly accused me of harassment for my email offering cooperation, see the page linked above.]
And dot-9 posted claims about this page in a number of places. “Archived.” Who archived it? He did, of course. There is clear evidence of that. When I saw this I decided to contact Dr. Schroeder (who now has a different last name). I emailed him and perhaps he will respond. I decided to take my page on Schroeder down. There is also a copy of the information that went on a public forum. My guess is that if it were requested, they would take it down. Or maybe not. [After some discussion, they took it down. So the only available copies are those created by Anglo Pyramodologist (who claimed to be Schroeder’s friend. Some friend, eh? Schroeder claimed not to have any idea who he was. My guess is that Schroeder has not looked at the meta study of Anglo Pyramidologist. If he doesn’t recognize at least one name, he is nearly brain dead. How about Goblin Face?
In fact, it was all readily available public information. But that is not the same as being easily accessible. That post on the other forum was obscure. My blog post was obscure. Now the information is right in the face of many who might not be friendly. If this was offensive doxxing, AP just made it far more offensive, showing that what matters to him is attacking people — in this case me –, not protecting people like Schroeder. (I have since recreated, on another page, the Wikipedia account information, I wanted to think about that before putting it it. Reviewing Schroeder’s activity, he is still a POV-pusher on Wikipedia; he has been blocked less frequently than before, but he’s still at it, same agenda.)
There are two pages, both archived and clear evidence that both were archived by AP. Not by me. Archive copies are timestamped and that can be put together with other information, public and private. I know who archived my pages, and this is clear enough, and is public:
On RationalWiki, user Astrophysics (a reference to Schroeder, his field) began to edit the article on me on November 30. 02:44, 30 November 2017, he added a reference to the JPS mention on the original forum, using an archive copy.
Lomax is known to attack skeptics on forums. He joined the thunderbolts woo forum to complain that astronomer Joshua P. Schroeder is a “pseudoskeptic”.<ref>[redacted]</ref>
That archive copy was created at 30 Nov 2017 02:36:09 UTC
This is obvious: he created an archive preserving allegedly offensive material and then immediately linked to it on RationalWiki.
This is simply SOP for AP. Highly disruptive, and he, very personally, attacks anyone who frustrates his agenda, and I did (see the meta study and the massive eruption of sock puppets it led to), and he threatened that if I continued documenting what he did, he’d get even.
He has claimed to have created 700 socks on RationalWiki, and from what I have documented so far, which is only the surface, it is believable.
This is not a “conspiracy theory.” However, he has claimed to be supported  (even paid) by a major skeptical organization, and he has referred to other users, and an organization called the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. There may be some level of off-wiki collusion and coordination. My study of AP is not about that, it is about this user who freely creates attack socks, who creates attack articles on RationalWiki and who may have influenced Wikipedia articles toward violations of biography policy.
Skepticism is essential to science, that is one of the themes of this blog. What AP does is far, far from genuine skepticism. It’s libel, and his impersonations (what he did with [redacted] on Wikipedia that got me started on all this) are illegal.
If he’s not quaking in his boots (what he thought I should be), he’s crazy, which is, in fact, plausible. He has claimed to be schizophrenic. Because these socks freely lie, it’s difficult to tell what is true about him. But the behaviors can be seen.
The references to JPS are now in many places, because he put them there. He also notified JPS himself, on his new changed-name Wikipedia account, waving a big red flag to it. And then he claims that I was harassing JPS, forcing him to change his name. If I actually were, he just handed me the new account name with no fuss. Normally, JPS has requested name changes on the page for it, but that made it easier to find them. This time he made the request by email, according to the link that AP handily provided.

Open discussion on Wikipedia

This is being discussed on Wikipedia, and by allowing that discussion on his user talk page, started by the now-blocked IP, Schroeder has made it necessary to point to it. (though this could easily be removed here.) Calling public attention to alleged doxxing or outing is massively naive, at best, and can show that the real motive is attack on others. If he deletes that discussion (and he can ask for rev-del), I will remove this reference. Schroeder is not my target or enemy [was not as this was written]. I am exposing the activity of a massive family of sock puppets who have long disrupted Wikipedia and other sites. libelling, and commonly arranging for others to be blocked when they respond as normal human beings to his outrages.
I call these “attack dogs,” and AP is not the only one. They are anonymous and take high risks, but what I’ve seen is that they get away with things that would get ordinary users blocked or even banned. Those whom they attack are often blocked or banned and, in fact, I’m an example. So there is something like a conspiracy, some systemic factionalism operating, but that is only a loose hypothesis at this time, not a developed theory with as-yet clear evidence.
My only related recent WMF activity has been addressing the disruptions of the two IP users listed above, both using the same provider, with open proxies. Longer-term, originating in the damage at Wikiversity, and to protect users there (and others), I have been documenting the activity of this LTA, documented here as to RationalWiki and here as to WMF socking and locks and blocks. Schroeder had not been mentioned, and my comments about his account history were obscure. No other WMF “skeptics” have been documented, only Anglo Pyramidologist socks, so the IP is admitting to being Anglo Pyramidologist, clearly block-evading, and block evasion is continuing, using the open proxies (four of them so far) for this talk page discussion.
The original version of this post was written Oct 4, 2017. However, it was private, not public. It was based on a post on the Thunderbolts forum, the same day. I later opened it. Because of that sequence, it did not appear in normal blog display (which was deliberate). When attention was drawn to it, I made it private again, then edited it to remove all the personal information and republished. If there are any questions, comments are allowed here, and an easy way to email me is through the WMF interface, global user Abd, accessible on Wikipedia and most WMF sites to any registered user with email enabled. (and autoconfirmation is not required to email, I believe.)
Update, January 11, 2019.
I see that, as I predicted, the focus by AP socks has created a response from others interested in Schroeder. This is far more detailed than anything I compiled.
See also
 A study of JPS edits to the Wikipedia article on cold fusion. I had never looked at this before. He was far more involved than I knew. (This page is presently private.)

Lowdown on Lie-bull

I mentioned the other day that Ascoli65 was banned on LF for two weeks, by Alan Smith. Ensuing discussion has brought up some issues worthy of attention. So, first of all, this is the post for which Ascoli65 was banned:

Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions

The post — and the subsequent discussion of the censorship — were all off-topic.

Ascoli65
Tuesday, 11:30 pm

@ Alan Smith,

my long and documented comment has been substituted by this words of yours.

Ascoli65 wrote:

The content of this post has been removed, since it contains nothing but thinly veiled attacks on Levi and UniBo, despite your assertions to the contrary. Do ir again and you may well be sanctioned or even banned.

This comment, apparently by Alan Smith, was argumentative, and, as well, was off-topic. A procedure had been established to move off-topic posts to the Playground — or to create a topic for them — and offensive posts to Clearance Items, though I think grossly offensive material was still being deleted, at least I’d expect so. My own practice is not to actually delete anything, but to possibly “trash” a clearly offensive post; it’s still in the database and can easily be recovered by me or anyone with admin privileges. Mildly offensive or irrelevant material may be moved to an appropriate topic or to a catch-all. Personally, I’d want to add notes where appropriate to maintain transparency. These considerations seem to have long been completely beyond the ken of Smith.

If the post was “long and documented” as claimed, deleting it was quite offensive, unless a procedure exists for the user to recover it. (On Discus blogs, like ECW, when a post is deleted, it appears that it is still accessible through the user’s profile, at least by the user.)

I’m very surprised of your decision to completely cancel my comment. Not greened, not moved in the Playground or Clearance Items threads, but immediately deleted. I think, it’s the first time this happen in this abrupt way, and I don’t see any reason for such a reaction. I didn’t used offensive words, and I only reported documented facts.

It was probably quite unexpected. Ascoli may have done more than present “documented facts,” but … the offense in this post was quite mild, compared to what is routinely tolerated when it is not Levi or Unibo being “attacked.” Alan is personally offended, apparently. Darden can be attacked, Dewey Weaver can be attacked, and often nothing is done.

My comment was not a “thinly veiled attack”, it was just a “open plain evaluation” of the apparent behavior of a public researcher at a public university which publicly claimed on many public media of having measured 12 kW of alleged excess heat generated by a table top device during the public demo held in Bologna on January 14, 2011. This conclusion of him was based on a couple of presumed data that I can’t explain otherwise, except for an intentional misrepresentation of experimental data. If you have any other explanation, why don’t you provide it?

Smith greened this paragraph as offensive. “Intentional misrepresentation of experimental data” is, in fact, a serious charge, albeit consistent with Ascoli65’s long-term claim that there was some sort of falsification of data in those early reports. I never found his claims plausible, but, like many who write on LENR Forum, he was quite sure of his evidence.

I’m going to agree with Smith that this was inappropriate, but it was merely a failure of ability to imagine alternate explanations, and was far short of ban-worthy (though any offense can be ban-worthy if it persists after warning). Much more direct claims of false statements have been made about many others involved in Rossi v. Darden, and commonly. Drawing the line here, while not covering more egregious possible libels, is bizarre and unskillful. The effect is chilling.

Apparently one may strongly criticize or even insult, depending on whom it offends.

I think Ascoli65 genuinely did not understand, and because that paragraph was greened and not deleted, it was not a repeat of the allegedly deletion-worthy offense, so blocking him because he questioned the censorship was offensive and a violation of civilized norms — i.e., what Smith below accuses.

My comment was in theme. THH had just accused Levi of practicing “bad science” following a mistake in the emissivity used in the Lugano report. This aspect seems to be quite controversial and has given rise to hundreds, perhaps thousands of comments in recent years.

Ascoli is making a false parallel. I would not like THH using “bad science,” if he did. The mistake was a mistake. The failure to require a full control was worse. Allowing the work to be so strongly guided by Rossi was worse. It gets pretty bad, all right, but I have never seen evidence of actual data falsification on the part of Levi and the other professors. Ascoli did not quite accuse Levi of that, but of “intentional misrepresentation.” That’s close enough to be considered falsification. It’s an offensive claim, and, indeed, in some contexts, could even be criminal libel.

On the contrary, the inconsistency between the pump capacity and the flow rate reported in the UniBo document issued on January 2011 is much more apparent and incontestable. In fact, Levi claimed to have calibrated the pump for 2 weeks, but on the front panel of that pump was clearly indicated a max output of 12 L/h, a value much lower than that one he claimed in his report (equivalent to 17.6 L/h).

That statement is not libelous. By the way, the “label” is, as Rossi correctly pointed out, not a maximum capacity, but a minimum guaranteed capacity at the specific pressure, and under some conditions actual flow could exceed that. This is Rossi’s argument on Lewan’s blog and it is not exactly wrong, except that he then proceeds to use this fact as a justification for making probably false claims.

The word “capacity” implies a maximum!

From 12 l/h guaranteed to 17.6 l/h actual might well be possible for a real pump under some conditions. The current testing being done by Alan Fletcher is showing a pump rated at 32 l/h at 2 bar, actually pumping maybe 40 l/h at low pressure. That is 125% of rated flow. The Levi claim is 147%. Maybe. Different model pump.

I would never accuse a professional scientist of data falsification based on evidence this thin. But, again, libel is fairly common on LF.

I can’t understand why these considerations are not allowed in this forum. Which specific rules do they break?

Smith then adds his comment in bold:

Your comment above breaks the rules of civilised behaviour just for a start.

That is an offensive comment. An experienced moderator will never argue with a person they are sanctioning, it inflames sensibilities. The issue is civility, and Smith’s comment is outrageously uncivil, much more so than Ascoli65’s.

As -despite your denial- so did almost every line in your deleted post which actually contained a criminal liable (in some jurisdictions). Accusing somebody who is not a member here of (effectively) deliberate scientific fraud from behind your avatar is certainly worthy of a 2 week ban. And you just got it. Alan.

I find Smith’s claim likely exaggerated. Levi is a “public figure” in the Rossi v. Darden case. Others not members have been accused of fraud, lying, data falsification, etc. I agree that this could be libel, though generally truth is a defense. There are other defenses as well.

That Smith enforces a rule against libel could actually create risk for the blog owner, if it is enforced selectively. There are also issues around anonymity.

So some discussion ensued:

Alan Smith wrote:

Hi Jed. My interaction with the now banned (for 2 weeks) ‘Ascoli’ had nothing to do with a debate on scientific ethics. The deleted post contained what could be considered – in almost any jurisdiction outside the USA – to be a criminal libel, repeated twice in the thin disguise of a question. If you had been the target of it- or indeed MY or Kirk I would have taken precisely the same action. Since Ascoli hides behind a screen-name libelling somebody on the web takes zero courage on the part of the poster, but does carry risks for other parties involved in publishing this forum.

The question asked by Ascoli was actually what it was about his question that was bannable. He apparently repeated the question in order to ask. He could very simply have been told. Instead he was, himself, insulted, though not libelled. “Hides behind” is uncivil, to be sure. Alan Smith is commonly terse, avoiding clear and complete answers to questions. It was easier to accuse Ascoli65 than to tell him where the border not to cross lies. That might actually take some thought, and, problem is, the border Ascoli crossed — in my opinion — is crossed by many so then the next question would be why was this enforced strictly and rather abruptly with Ascoli — who was being polite — and not with so many others? My answer is “Alan Smith.”

Jed Rothwell wrote:

Libel is never criminal in the U.S. as far as I know. It is always a civil matter. I do not think it is a good idea to have the police involved. This web site is based in the U.S., so U.S. laws apply, and you don’t need to worry about criminal libel.

Alan Fletcher wrote: (in response to Jed)

According to wiki 17 states have Criminal Defamation Laws. In Florida it’s a misdemeanor Florida Statutes Chapter 836

Lots of legal foo, but admins, note : 

836.03 Owner or editor of the paper also guilty.—Any owner, manager, publisher or editor of any newspaper or other publication who permits any anonymous communication or communications such as is signed otherwise than with the true name of the writer, and such name published therewith to appear in the columns of the publication in which said communication any person is attacked in his or her good name, or it is attempted to bring disgrace or ridicule upon any person, such owner, manager, publisher or editor shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree

Kudos to Fletcher for providing links. The Wikipedia article includes this:

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 generally immunizes from liability parties that create forums on the Internet in which defamation occurs from liability for statements published by third parties. This has the effect of precluding all liability for statements made by persons on the Internet whose identity cannot be determined.

That is, the web site owner is not liable. (The author of the libel would be liable.) The owner could become liable under some circumstances. The decision to “publish” on LENR Forum is not made by moderators or administrators. However, this may shift if there is a protest. The Communications Decency Act supersedes state laws.

Alan Smith replied:

The server you see may be in the US Jed, but the publisher is in the EU. That’s what counts I beleive.

Alan is sliding down a slippery slope by considering David Nygren the “publisher.” Nygren lives in Sweden, apparently. Sweden apparently has criminal libel laws; this was,. I think, pointed out to Sifferkoll. Sifferkoll’s main protection has been inertia, because he’s written a lot that is clearly libel. But Nygren has not libelled Levi. He simply owns a blog where someone may have done this. I think Ascoli65 is Italian. I doubt there is any risk to Nygren, unless he refuses to cooperate with a libel investigation. I also doubt that any action would be initiated against Ascoli65 for his level of offense.

In any case, there are what may be complex issues of jurisdiction. Nobody commenting so far is an attorney, and neither am I, though I know some.

Being a blogger, I need to be better informed. So: Online Defamation Law.

That’s about U.S. law. There is a source on English libel law, London being “a town called Sue.”

The author of that was asked: Could I be liable if someone uses my blog to post a defamatory message? He replied:

Potentially, yes

As the publisher of a blog, you could in theory be held liable in respect of defamatory material posted by others on the blog.

There are two main approaches to dealing with this risk:

• first, you can review all material before it is published, and refrain from publishing anything risky;
• second, you can seek to take advantage of the provisions of Section 1 of the Defamation Act 1996 and Regs 17-19 of the Ecommerce Regulations.

This second approach is the usual one, and typically involves a publisher doing the following sorts of things:

• prohibiting the posting of defamatory and other unlawful content in the blog T&Cs;
• providing an effective abuse notification procedure;
• not systematically reviewing or editing content posted on the site; and
• removing risky content promptly following notification of a problem.

 “Not systematically reviewing or editing content” would be a reference to the idea I mentioned above, that deleting some libels and not others could create risk that might otherwise be absent. Ideally, there would be a TOS to which users agree, and then clear procedures for dealing with violations of the TOS. LENR Forum never created this, or, more accurately, there was a feeble and naive attempt that proceeded to be ignored.

Very few users like to see their content deleted. If a blog wants to encourage users to write substantial contributions, deleting it without notice or opportunity for recovery is a huge insult to any writer. LENR Forum uses idiosyncratic software, I don’t know what tools are available. This is a WordPress blog, and I can easily and quickly hide any content, without deleting it. That is, if the author wants a copy, I could (and would) send it to him or her. This avoids the worst admin abuses. Others still exist, but, bottom line, the owner owns the site and may delegate authority. But others can also point to abuses or moderator incivility!

When a site comes to enjoy wide public participation, users may come to expect fair treatment, and when it doesn’t seem fair, sometimes they develop a grudge, and Wikipedia administrators created highly offended users that proceeded to engage in sock puppetry that lasted for years, with thousands of accounts created, wasting countless hours of admin time. Some of that was necessary, perhaps, but it was also clear, when I investigated cases, that there had been abuse of users, and it was very difficult to address. The abusers were highly privileged.

I have seen no case of such revenge posting on LF. However, there are some blatant trolls. Activities like that, tolerated, will drive away many otherwise productive participants, eventually. Ever wonder why few real-name users are women? Why actual scientists rarely post on LENR-Forum?

Beyond pointing to that British site, I’m not summarizing libel law for bloggers, though I’ll be happy to discuss it. This is an area of law which is shifting, as one can tell from the EFF coverage.

Update

I found this Pennsylvania site interesting. Pennsylvania Newspaper Handbook – Libel.

Newspapers are held to a stricter standard, in some cases, but libel is libel and this and the pages I have linked above cover the definition and give advice about avoiding libel that any blog, if it is to develop a reputation for utility and reliability, should understand.

Looking at it again, and reviewing all this, the comment of Alan Smith implying that David Nygren was the “publisher” who might be held responsible for libel, was a stretch, particularly since the particular incident he was discussing did not involve a publication decision. As well, deletion is a form of retraction, and does not defend against a libel claim for something published, it may merely mitigate damages.

Rossi, in many posts and filings, and in my opinion, did libel others. However, there are specific exceptions in libel laws for court filings, and for obvious reasons. Nevertheless others, repeating the claims in those primary sources, presenting them as fact (instead of as allegations), also libelled, and may not have had that necessity defense. Is Frank Acland responsible for libels posted to ECW? Not unless he specifically approves of them. Thus by moderating some users, he is creating a (low) risk of a prosecution for libel. He has less risk if the user decides to publish or not.

The internet is still a frontier, and frontiers can be lawless, or, more accurately, law may not be settled. Some risks might exist in theory, but in practice, there is no risk. Until there is a crazy plaintiff! — or one who decides, “enough is enough!” and goes ahead, damn the expense!

The blogger most at risk in what I’ve seen is Sifferkoll. And maybe Rossi, for JONP. (I have not reviewed his JONP posts from this point of view. Many “insults” are not libel. Context matters. Rossi does not seem to have an open blog, I believe all posts must be approved. That can create liability for what those users post, i.e., approval is publication.

Many libel targets will not sue, because it can look very, very bad. Consider Levi. Suppose I call Levi a “blithering idiot.” First of all, not libel, legally, if one studies the sources I’ve given. Just an insult, one which might enrage Levi or his friends. However, suppose I claim that he altered or faked data. And then he sues me. A defense is truth, and truth may be decided by a jury. As well, my state of mind is an issue. I’m media, and Levi is, in this field, a public figure. That’s a defense. I might be able to show truth or, given “public figure” and “influence,” at least reasonable cause to present information. “Proof” in a civil case is preponderance of the evidence, it need not be absolute. I think any sane lawyer would advise Levi to let sleeping dogs lie, and maybe to tolerate some level of barking.

There is a list of “red flag” words on the Pennsylvania site. These words are relatively common on LENR Forum. Alan Smith was not wrong to identify the Ascoli65 post as libelous, but, in context, he had singled out a mild case to enforce a rule that was vague and probably not understood by the user, instead of doing what the user asked, to explain it to him. It is as if the real rule was “if you have to ask, you’re banned!”

Dewey Weaver’s comment about LF moderation was “amateur hour.” Technically, of course, LF moderators are amateurs, but some amateurs become experts. Some don’t. Some refuse to learn, and simply blame others. LF had been doing a better job, with moving comments instead of deletion. I never liked green ink, it’s ugly. However, it is far better than raw deletion. I boycotted LF when Smith deleted *many* comments that he considered off-topic, and I said “until this is addressed,” which could mean that the Staff community restrained Alan (with removal of privileges being the extreme sanction, if the moderator refuses to cooperate). LF Staff does not discuss issues publically, which can make it a star chamber. I was banned, by Alan, apparently — banned users cannot read their own private messages — as retaliation for declaring a boycott, surely a juvenile and amateurish response. But the entire Staff is responsible, it is not just Alan. We are responsible for what we tolerate and allow. I have friends on that Staff. I was basically told that the situation was hopeless.

This incident demonstrates that it’s still a mess. Alan Smith has a high personal conflict of interest. He runs Looking for Heat, a generally laudable exercise, with a problem: it is almost entirely about nickel hydride exploration, which depended for its appeal heavily on Rossi, and, as well, on Levi. There are plenty of attempts to “replicate” Rossi, which is, scientifically, a problem, because a replication is not possible without full information about the original experiment. So at best, independent “replications” without that information, are a kind of “confirmation,” i.e., that something happens. A genuine replication would also be quantitatively confirming. What is often an “indication,” can be the file-drawer effect. Many people try, a few make calorimetric errors…. and often only positive results are published, the rest remain in the “file drawer,” hence the name of the effect.

So Smith, in defending Levi, is promoting his own interests. And he did so in a quite uncivil way, while pretending to be disallowing incivility. Smith does not know or understand recusal, apparently. And in that, he has been, as far as we can tell, unrestrained by the administrative staff (at least one member of which, probably more than one, has the power to assign and remove moderator privileges.) In the end, the highest responsibility is with David Nygren, the owner.

Nygren sells advertising. “Vigorous discussion” — which can be an alternate description of libel and flame wars — can improve traffic, possibly improving revenue. Or that motive is not applicable to him. I really don’t know, because Nygren is mostly silent.

Taken from the list of red flag words, ones that I’ve seen (or close equivalents), on LENR Forum, E-Cat Word, JONP, or Sifferkoll (on his own blog or on LENR Forum) — or here on CFC, for which I am, at present, responsible:

altered records
bad moral character
bankrupt
bribery [or corrupt influence]
gambling den
gangster
graft
hypocrite
illegitimate
incompetent
intemperate
intolerance
mafia
mental illness
mobster
moral delinquency
mouthpiece
perjurer
pockets public funds
profiteering
scam
scandalmonger
scoundrel
sharpdealing
shyster
smooth and tricky
smuggler
sneaky
sold out
spy
swindle
thief
unethical
unprofessional
unsound mind
unworthy of credit
villain

Avoid any words or expressions imputing:

2. a crime, or words falsely charging arrest, or indictment for or confession or conviction of a crime;
3. anti-Semitism or other religious, racial or ethnic intolerance;
4. connivance or association with criminals;
5. financial embarrassment (or any implication of insolvency or want of credit);
6. lying;
7. membership in an organization which may be in disrepute at a given period of time;
9. unwillingness to pay a debt.

Reviewing Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox, as part of an ongoing study, I am drafting a policy for CFC, to govern some legal issues that could arise here, both from the point of view of protecting the owner of CFC, Infusion Institute, Inc. (III) from liability, protecting CFC administration, whether volunteer or otherwise, protecting the interests of the community that CFC attempts to represent and serve, which includes the right of free expression, while at the same time protecting individuals and organizations from libel and claims of copyright violation.

Policy on libel and copyright violation

Comment here or there is welcome.

Update1

A copy alleged to be (and believed to be) the original obliterated post on LF has been added here as a comment.

While this is edgy, it is not libelous in context. It was actually a challenge to Alan Smith, which he removed by censoring it. This is long-term Smith behavior. The real problem is not Smith, but an LF Staff that does not restrain its members. I have seen many bans now. Most of them were well-earned. This one was not, but there is no clear appeal process, and no genuine explanation, so bans do not establish precedent and policy remains unclear.

Ascoli actually asked for an explanation of how his post could be considered libel. Instead of an explanation, he got a ban. This is far, far less than civil and helpful. It is knee-jerk hostile, behavior unbecoming of any site moderator or administrator, if the site clains to represent a community (as LF does) instead of merely the positions and interests of the owner. This could be remedied, but the owner is mostly absent, it is not clear that he pays attention to LF administration. This is, again, not uncommon, but this shows how internet structures can break down.

Ascoli65

{This was originally posted under Is cold fusion a fraud?]

This section was one of a number of copies of and comments on posts on fusionefredda, one of which explicitly called “cold fusion a fraud,” and other of which was radically and blatantly pseudoskeptical. Ascoli 65’s post was not libelous, though it skirts close to an edge, but he  apparently did not want his user name associated with such blatant claims of fraud. He requested that I move that section here, which I have now done. I will leave behind a note. I hope this is satisfactory to him.

Ascoli65 wrote:

[a civil post in which he discusses various issues. I’d reply there except for it being much easier for me to write here, with formatting, etc. So his post:]

@ Abd UlRahman Lomax,
I’m still unable to post on the CFC site (I tried just now), so I reply here to your comments, and, if you don’t mind, I’d invite you to reply here as well.

Thanks. I intend to post a link to this there. I may not continue to monitor that blog. As to the posting problem, something about the user email or identity triggers the spam filter. I have put Ascoli65’s email address on the whitelist here, so, in theory, he could post here by providing that address, and I have confirmed the address (because he kindly responded to my email).

In your comment on CFC dated September 11, 2017 at 2:23 pm (*), you wrote:

– I could not find a source for the pump data and the pump being called “peristaltic.” I’m sure it’s out there, but wasn’t linked by Ascoli65.

And now Ascoli65 confirms that:

The source are the Lewan’s reports of the two tests held on April 19 and 28, 2011. These reports were published on the NyTeknik site, but they are no more accessible. Anyway a copy of the first one is still available on NewEnergyTimes (1).

To give this in-line for convenience: here.

It ends with the list of “Instruments”, where the first one is called “Peristaltic pump”. I don’t know if this definition is correct. Whatever it was, I agree with you, it was a metering pump, a dosimetric pump, an instrument devoted to deliver a calibrated flux of water.

There is a lot in that document. Yes, at the end:

Peristaltic pump NSF
Model # CEP183-362N3
Serial # 060550065
Max output 12.0 liters/h
Max press 1.50 bar

First of all, the pump identification is almost certainly incorrect. The only returns, Googling the Model number, are E-cat or similar discussions taking that number, likely, from the paper cited. One comment cited a manufacturer page. Dead link. I looked at the manufacturer web site. Found no clue, so far.

Years ago, I designed equipment to use a peristaltic pump. It is a particular type of metering or dosing pump, see the Wikipedia article.

Dosimetric pumps, most (all?) types are pressure sensitive. That is, flow will vary with back-pressure (or forward pressure). “Calibration” of these pumps is valid at the calibration pressure (and I would think calibration would be necessary across a range of pumping rates). One-point calibration is only valid if the pump operation is that the same pressure. Which does open up possible artifacts.

The Levi paper appears naive to me, unaware of possible problems, so they were not checked.

Levi claims to have measured a flow of 4.12 kg/hour. He was actually weighing the water, in two sessions, a total of about 8 or 9 kilograms each. This should be accurate, if, as it appears, he was pumping water from a weighed reservoir. The rate is not a problem, being well under the specified flow of 12 l/hr, i.e., about 12 kg/hr, at 1.5 bar.

Is that a maximum flow? A lot of hot air has been issued on this. It is a minimum maximum. That is the manufacturer is, with the specification, is guaranteed that the maximum actual flow at maximum flow setting, will be a minimum of 12 l/hr. Jed Rothwell makes the point that if the pump would pump a *lot* more than that, the manufacturer would increase the claimed number, because they could sell more pumps. Perhaps.

In the cited paper, the problem of “maximum pump flow” does not exist.

– There were many tests and differing conditions and possibly different pumps.

Yes. This is a common problem in review of various claims. There may be many experiments and demonstrations, with differing conditions. It’s easy to get them confused and to think that what is true for one is necessarily true for another. Indeed, Rossi might sometimes be hiding behind that.

In 2011, there have been 10 tests at lab scale whose info appeared on internet (2). In most of them a pump was used to feed the various Ecat devices, and this pump, from the January 14 up to the October 6 tests was the same yellow dosimetric pump, featuring a nominal max output of 12 L/h.

– The measured flux was of 168 +/- 2 g in 45 +/- 0.1 s.
While it is difficult to control a water flow with a precision of 0.1 second, this would be 13.4 liters per hour. That doesn’t seem impossible for a pump rated at 12 liters per hour.

You are talking about the wrong test.

Nope. Not “wrong.” Different from what you intended, and, indeed, I have no clear idea what test you were talking about. Bottom line, Ascoli65, you are not writing clearly and carefully. Some people, believing that it’s all very simple — and very bogus — don’t take care to be clear and complete. It’s work! If we want to assist the full community in coming to choices based on evidence, we need to be clear, or, too often, we are just adding confusion.

The normal blog format and practices encourages terminal sloppiness. What does it matter if an error is buried in thousands of posts that are all over the map? Nobody is going to study these anyway! You’d have to be crazy!

The datum you cited refers to the first test [Test 1] held on December 16, 2010, whose results was reported in the same calorimetric report (3) issued on January 2011, along with those of the January 14 demo [Test 2]. In the December test, whose setup is shown in Fig.1 of that report, no pump was used. The inlet hose was directly connected to the water tap, which was presumably used to regulate the flux. Conversely, the yellow dosimetric pump has been used only starting from the public demo held on January 14, 2011.

So the problem, the inconsistency is where? You aren’t saying, Ascoli65!

– Ascoli’s real point: this early report demonstrates Levi error, which, combined with a lack of later follow-up and correction, indicates that his reports are not trustworthy. With Lugano, we saw different errors, but the same intransigence and stonewalling. I could not find verification of the pump used. He doesn’t provide a source for it, but then makes an argument that depends on the information.

I did provide all the links to the many documents available on internet which clearly demonstrate the many errors (at least three errors only for the January 14 demo: pump’s flow rate, missing steam probe, and doubled test duration) present in the January 2011 report.

Ascoli, all this is next to useless unless I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what you mean. I’ll do that to a degree, but if you are not convincing people, the first place to look is not in them, but in your own expression. When I submitted my paper to Current Science for that special issue on LENR in 2015, the reviewer initial comments were basically, “horrible paper.” Instead of getting mad, I took responsibility — which is what I’m trained to do, this wasn’t my “natural good nature.” I can be pretty crabby naturally! So I rewrote my paper, rather extensively, making sure that his objections were addressed. He turned around completely.

That’s how to write, Ascoli65. You can make real contributions if you back up and learn to write effectively and clearly. At the same time, what it takes to be careful and thorough will educate you far more deeply. You might find some of your opinions changing, or even beliefs. That will be entirely up to you!

The problem is that I can’t see how these errors can be interpreted as mistakes.

  1. You have not detailed the errors for me to review.
  2. There are many errors. By focusing on many, you become stuck in an overview (“these errors”). Rossi has long inspired scientists to make stupid blunders (stupid in hindsight). I’ve speculated that he is really good at this. Rossi’s psychology is not necessarily simple, but it is obvious that his presence inspires some people to trust him. That could be the skill of a con artist (they can be amazing in this way, with people continuing to trust they were told long after it became obviously false. And this happens with very smart people, not stupid people. Konnikova, in The Confidence Game, points out that “gullible people” are generally happier. That is, a con artist takes advantage of a very functional human behavior: trust. People who cannot trust are seriously disabled.
  3. Rossi may also be insane, that is, he might actually believe the deceptions he pushes. He might be fooling himself.
  4. Until you can understand these possibilities, as generalities, you won’t understand the specifics, and until we understand each specific example, generalization from the specific to the general can be drastically off and heavily influenced by expectations and knee-jerk reactions.
  5. If you need someone else to invent an explanation, I might be able, but that will not establish what *actually happened.* All I have claimed is that, so far, there is no evidence I have seen sufficient to justify making a public claim of data falsification for any of the scientists involved. CimPy is libelling an entire field, and no wonder he is hiding behind anonymity

(Libelling a field is not actionable until and unless it becomes personal. The courts will dismiss it as bloviation, of no substance. If I were to say, “all liberals are pedophiles,” I would simply be an idiot, I could not be sued for it.)

I did ask many people to suggest me possible explanations, but I didn’t get any answer on the merit, that is nobody suggested a possible chain of events which could explain why, for example, it was erroneously reported a flow rate much higher than the max output of the pump.

Here, we are engaged in a discussion of this matter, and you have not clearly made your case. You keep repeating certain conclusions without providing a clear and connected factual basis.

– He cites a flow figure of 17.5 l/hr. That’s from a Macy report of an “exclusive interview with Levi. Yes, that would be oddly high if it is the 12 l/h pump involved. But that figure is different from Levi’s paper covering those tests.”

The flow rate announced in the Macy’s document (“146 g in 30 seconds” = 17.5 L/h) was the same reported a week later in the final calorimetric report (3) of the demo held on January 14 [Test 2], ie “146.4g +/- 0.1 per 30 +/- 0.5 s”, equivalent to 17.6 L/h. In the meanwhile this figure has been reviewed by many people, in Italy and in the US.

That figure is not so far above the rated flow that it’s impossible. It merely raises doubt. As well, this could be a single error that propagated. I don’t see evidence cited as to what pump was used in that specific demonstration.

As well, what you are doing is focusing on, relatively speaking, a fly, when there is an elephant in that living room, the use of a humidity meter to check steam quality, plus a complete absence of examination as to overflow water, which could make the calorimetry almost completely meaningless. Lack of consideration of alternative hypotheses afflicted all of the apparently successful Rossi demonstrations I know. In the early flow calorimetry, verification of complete evaporation was missing, it was based on some incorrect ideas. In the Lugano test, assumptions about measuring temperature with an IR camera badly afflicted the claimed results, and a calibration at full power — one of the most obvious verification measures, was missing, for reasons stated by the authors of the report, but almost certainly based on Rossi Bullshit, stated by them as if factual and sensible.

None of this, though, shows actual data falsification, merely naivete and error and, later, stonewalling, avoiding the obvious. Be careful! Details matter!

Bottom line, that you cannot understand something shows much more about you than about reality. It’s a failure of imagination, because a free human mind can always find “explanations” for anything. It’s what we do. For better and for worse. The task for adults is to sift through this and come up with sufficient analysis to create basis for action.

Should there be more investment in cold fusion research? How about more investment in Rossi? Industrial Heat? What action can members of the public take or encourage? We need facts, not more knee-jerk reactive analysis.

– I’d trust the paper over the interview, even if the interview was by email (where some will be incautious and errors abound).

As shown above, interview and calorimetric paper reported the same flow rate value (ie 17.6 L/h), whereas the max output of the pump was 12 L/h, that is the same value (12 L/h) mentioned by Levi during his speech before the test (4). The main problem is that, in the Macy’s interview, he also said: “After this calibration period I have checked that the pump was not touched and when we brought it here for the experiment it was giving the same quantity of water during all the experiment.” How do you explain this statement? Was this also an incautious declaration?

I get no impression from Levi of care and caution. The statement, however, does not seem odd to me, yet. That was not a report of an actual measurement, “the same quantity” is a coarse judgment, not a number, the result of an actual measurement. I find it difficult to parse — to understand — the statement you report. The language is confused, unclear. Normally, it is possible to clear these things up, by asking the scientist questions. That totally broke down.

So my own conclusion is that I don’t trust anything Levi says. He is emotionally involved and reactive, read his “unsworn declaration” in Rossi v. Darden, and also read the private investigator’s declaration.

But I have not seen any actual lies, just gross misinterpretations.

BTW, how can you say that the interview was by email?

I didn’t. So that’s an easy question to answer. Read it again.

(*) http://coldfusioncommunity.net/low-down-on-lie-bull/#comment-5420
(1) http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/docs/2011Lewan19AprilData.pdf
(2) http://i.imgur.com/rB93G1X.jpg
(3) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LeviGreportonhe.pdf
(4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr0ysNSN9Ng (at 9:46)

Thanks for giving the video time location. Many writers neglect doing that.

Watching that video, I’m impressed by how Levi became an advocate, far from a neutral observer and analyst. He is explaining the demonstration, as if he was working for Rossi. He leaps way ahead, instead of focusing on the critical issue, the heat level, he wants to exclude a chemical source. If we know the actual heat level and various other statistics, then “non-chemical” would fall out rather simply. It’s like the Lugano report, substantial energy devoted to a Rankin diagram, which is polemic and overheated analysis, not fact, while the most obvious facts — how bright was that thing glowing at, allegedly, 1400 C.? — are ignored. And later, when questions are asked, stonewalled.

But how this could happen, how scientists could stonewall, is not such a difficult question. They are human: embarrassed, defensive, or, as well, they might consider themselves bound by non-disclosure agreements, none of which would be at all surprising.

There is some of what Taubes called Bad Science there. So what else is new? What’s the reality? We will not find it by focusing on the errors of so-and-so. There is plenty of work which is not so afflicted, and there is more work to be done. That’s where we can find the future.

Even  if the future is that someone finally identifies the artifact or collection of artifacts that led me to think that deuterium is being converted to helium, in some “cold fusion” experiments, and demonstrates it with controlled experiment (as happened with N-rays and polywater) I’d break out the champagne (hah! just an expression, I’m a Muslim and don’t drink.). I completely trust reality, and my stand is that reality is better than anything I can imagine.

More from Ascoli65

Ascoli65 persists with beating a dead horse, long after reasonable utility. Well, maybe this will have some value. I’m skeptical, but I do lots of things just in case.  He wrote on fusionefredda: (15 settembre 2017 alle 12:12 am)

@ Abd UlRahman Lomax,
you replied to an above comment of mine (*) in your last post titled “Is cold fusion a fraud?” (**). As you know, I didn’t like very much to have been addressed in a post which deals with possible “fraud”, because, as I always said in all and every occasion, I’m not interested in this specific aspect. I would have preferred to read your answer in your previous post on CFC, where the pump issue was treated and a replication of my comment was still present (***).

This was corrected yesterday, per his email request. I’ll say that he might be judged by the company he keeps, it happens in real life.

(*) https://fusionefredda.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/df/#comment-61662
(**) http://coldfusioncommunity.net/is-cold-fusion-a-fraud/
(***) http://coldfusioncommunity.net/low-down-on-lie-bull/#comment-5426

Anyway, being still unable to post on your blog, I post here my answer to your reply.

He could email me, as one possibility. As before, I checked the spam filter. He attempted to post again on 14 September. As before it failed WP-SpamShield code ‘UA1004.’ I have been unable to find the significance of that code, and I have no other reports of failure that did not have a clear cause (the only other failure was a post with four links. His test post had no links. His email address is on the whitelist. The two attempts showed IP addresses from different service providers.

(I think WP-Spamshield does not post the codes because they don’t want spammers to know exactly what tests they are using. Combining the failure with the use of two different service providers makes me suspect some attempt to conceal identity, which I don’t mind in this case, but … there can be consequences. I don’t know that this is the cause.)

Ascoli65 is not providing me with precise information about what is happening. He reported a message that is not what WP-SpamShield allegedly displays to a user whose post is being blocked. There is no way I can test his access. The problem is not yet clear enough for me to file a support request, which I’m reluctant to do for free software (I have not paid for support). Back to the issues under discussion:

While I have nothing to add to what I already said about the pump issue, I’d like to answer these two points of yours.

Abd wrote:

– As well, what you are doing is focusing on, relatively speaking, a fly, when there is an elephant in that living room, the use of a humidity meter to check steam quality, …

I already pointed out many times, even to you (1), the issue of the presumed dry condition of the coolant at the outlet.

That is only one aspect of the issue. The aspect I mention is the use of an explicitly named meter, as reported by multiple sources, that can’t do what is claimed. It is an on-the-face error. However, the real situation is even worse, because even if the meter could measure steam quality, it would be possible to have high quality steam and water outflow at the same time. It’s possible accidentally. If we add the possibility of fraud, it could be even more possible (i.e., if there is a separate water pipe inside the steam pipe). When a technology that could be worth a trillion dollars if real, and with testing that did, in fact, attract investment in the many millions of dollars, fraud must be considered as a possibility, not on the part of scientists, necessarily, but on the part of the one who controls the tests. The magician, as it were.

(1) 

is a post where Ascoli65 begins by quoting me. “Ascoli65 is a troll.” The good news is that he did link to my post, so what I was actually writing about was visible if anyone checks. I don’t call people “trolls” without, at least, some evidence, and merely being wrong or even idiotic does not make someone a troll. It is trolling when someone posts something, without necessity, that one would know, if at all careful, would be offensive, and he had done that — not to me, but another user.

The foundation of Ascoli’s claim is summarized in this faux fact:

– NO Air Quality meter has been ever used to measure the quality steam during the January 14, 2011, demo!

That is not a fact, it is an inference Ascoli65 made, long ago, from the absence of evidence, not evidence. That is, no photo of the necessary probe, as I recall. Photo showing some other probe. A claim that it would be impossible to change probes (which neglects that Rossi claims low pressure — a problem in itself, but a separate one). Given the testimony we have, from Levi and from Kullander and Essen, it is highly likely that an Air Quality probe was used, at least at some point.

Given the sloppiness of other reports, such as the Lugano report, it is possible that Rossi or Levi or someone said that such a probe had been used, and that it was not actually used at the specific time in question. Again, that would not be lying, exactly, it would be terminal sloppiness, which we know happened in Lugano (which also involved Essen), so I can’t say it’s impossible.

But it is most likely, in my opinion, that a probe was used. It’s simple and actually changes nothing, and it is far easier to establish that a humidity meter cannot do what was claimed than it is to claim as if a proven fact that there was no meter, a claim made by someone who was not a witness and who appears to be relying on shaky and indirect evidence.

Ascoli65 is operating on a well-known principle: I was right, and others are wrong. And he is stuck on it, after many years, even while it has become totally useless and probably impossible to resolve. It is impossible to prove a negative, another well-known principle. Did anyone photograph the humidity meter in use? Maybe. Would that satisfy Ascoli65? Maybe.

But I call this a mouse compared to an elephant. The mouse may squeak, but the elephant will break furniture. Reading over that Levi report, it reeks of unexamined and unchecked assumptions, with an effect of promoting a commercial interest and with displayed indifference to error, as to what we have seen in what came after.

I showed you that the real elephant in the living room is that the instrument (the humidity meter) mentioned in the Levi’s report doesn’t appear in anyone of the many pictures available on internet, and taken during the January 14 demo, even in the middle of the boiling phase (2). But I also learned that you are not willing to recognize this real elephant.

Something not showing in photos is not evidence that it was not used, unless those photos were continuous and clearly documented as such. It can create suspicion only, maybe we think it “should have” shown. Reality often, however, doesn’t match what we expect. This is very ordinary, so why is it not obvious to Ascoli65? I think there is an obvious answer: He committed himself to this claim years ago, and is unwilling to let it go. He thinks “It’s true, dammit!” But so what? So what if it is true? I pointed out above how it could be true and not indicate any fraudulent intent, only sloppiness.

If the Ascoli claim is false, which is possible, easily, the test is still badly defective. The humidity meter was actually irrelevant, that’s what was later realized. Kullander and Essen and Levi never responded to those issues, which were not claims of fraud, but of error.

“Steam quality” was actually a red herring, distracting from the major issue, overflow water. In considering steam quality, there is an unspoken assumption, that the only unevaporated water would be suspended droplets, i.e., “wet steam.” Ordinary steam from a boiler is normally wet to some degree. When water evaporation is used for calorimetry, though, there is another problem, bumped water, which looms larger than mere wet steam. And then the Rossi design, as I understood it, basically required that there be some overflow, or he’d be risking the boiler running dry with associated runaway (assuming the thing actually works). Once that is realized, the issue becomes “how much.”

Industrial Heat recognized the problem and installed steam traps on the Doral Plant. (a bit misnamed, they trap liquid water and drain it off.) Rossi removed the steam traps. Not part of the design, he was reported as saying. Indeed.

You’d rather prefer to imagine the most incredible explanations in the attempt to negate its presence (3).

(3).

Apparently, Ascolil considers the use of a product that, were I designing that test setup, I would surely use, to allow quick insertion of probes while the device is operating. He thought such a thing was impossible. That old post show that Ascoli65 is not understanding what he is reading.

The pump issue is the second elephant in the room that you are not willing to see. There is also a third one, which crown the wonder elephant trio (4), but I doubt you will to see it as well.

Yet I have seen all these issues, and have investigated them, considering them carefully. Ascoli confuses my ability to consider alternate scenarios “not seeing” what he is claiming. Let’s say I have dealt with that for many, many years. People think that if I don’t fall over and agree with them, that I don’t “see” what they “see.” Sure. It’s possible that they have seen something that I have not seen, but … they commonly don’t show it, don’t communicate it, and are creating certainty for themselves out of fluff or imagination. People do that all the time, under some conditions. They confuse “seeing” with agreement and understanding.

I have “seen” nothing new here. If there is, anyone is free to point it out. Going over old arguments, that were not accepted, called “beating a dead horse,” is what fanatics and trolls do. I have not seen anyone of weight accept Ascoli’s claims.

I did learn one thing, looking at the links Ascoli65 gave. “cam” on LENR Forum appears to be Camillo Franchine, from an oft-repeated and idiosyncratic argument. If it matters (right now it does not), I may look further.

In science, personal reputation matters. Pseudoskepticism is not science.

Abd wrote:

– Even if the future is that someone finally identifies the artifact or collection of artifacts that led me to think that deuterium is being converted to helium …

Let me doubt this, too.

You can doubt or believe anything you choose.

Sorry, but if you are not able to recognize the three elephants present in the January 2011 demo, ie the most simple, witnessed, celebrated, and documented test occurred in the whole CF history, I really doubt that anyone will be capable of convince you of any artifact presents in any other CF test.

First of all, I recognize all the claims, and the only one I find implausible is the claim that reports of the use of a humidity meter were lies, which is what Ascoli65 has effectively insisted on, in spite of a lack of probative evidence, only a weak ground for suspicion.

I’ll agree that it’s unlikely that someone will convince me of artifact with regard to the best work on heat/helium, but I have identified many possible artifacts in other CF work. Sometimes they may have have been real. I.e., just because an artifact is possible does not show that it actually happened. That takes much more work, work that often was never done.

And it doesn’t matter if I’m convinced or not. What matter is what appears to the editors of mainstream and other journals, what matters is what is actually tested experimentally and reported, what matters is what those who fund research think. They will trust me or not, but what I do, properly, is to present verifiable evidence, not mere claims.

Now that I look back, seeing how much time has been wasted discussing this, I’ll be a little more explicit: I would not present claims like what Ascoli65 is making to any serious investor or in an article for a peer-reviewed journal. I would, instead, flush it down the toilet where it belongs.

(1) https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/3374-Jed-Rothwell-on-an-Unpublished-E-Cat-Test-Report-that-%E2%80%9CLooks-Like-it-Worked%E2%80%9D/?postID=30552#post30552
(2) https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/3374-Jed-Rothwell-on-an-Unpublished-E-Cat-Test-Report-that-%E2%80%9CLooks-Like-it-Worked%E2%80%9D/?postID=30695#post30695
(3) http://coldfusioncommunity.net/if-i-repeat-it-enough-it-will-become-true/
(4) https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/3374-Jed-Rothwell-on-an-Unpublished-E-Cat-Test-Report-that-%E2%80%9CLooks-Like-it-Worked%E2%80%9D/?postID=25650#post25650

Even more from Ascoli65

CimPy posted another response from Ascoli65, plus the latter made some comments in Italian that reveal more of his position, which, in spite of his denials, is quite similar to that of Camillo Franchine. The theme in the English comments seems to be that certain scientists would surely have known better than what they said or wrote, therefore something highly suspicious is going on, which he isn’t going to say, and please don’t mention the “F” word, but he can’t think of any other possibility. No wonder he was banned on LENR Forum…. do that kind of thing for a while, a moderator may well eventually act, and if the moderator is unskilled, there will likely be problems with how that’s done.

This is becoming tedious. It’s all about tests and reports from six years ago, and no matter how many times I point out that that those tests and reports were riddled with errors, “reeking” of them, Ascoli persists in his idea that he’s incredibly right and nobody else has figured it out. Who cares? Yes, there is some sort of ongoing responsibility for cleaning up institutional errors, but the field of LENR is full of examples where this never happened, and that is about “both sides” of the issues. Reading accounts of the people involved, I’m struck by how intense the emotions became, and nobody thinks and acts well when upset (and being certain about the believed errors of others is a kind of upset, it clouds the mind.)

So a few snippets from Ascoli65:

Abd wrote:

– Given the sloppiness of other reports, such as the Lugano report, it is possible that Rossi or Levi or someone said that such a probe had been used, and that it was not actually used at the specific time in question. 

I’m not interest in Rossi’s says, […]

Then he is not interested in understanding how it could happen that certain scientists stated certain things as fact that they did not necessarily actually observe themselves, or the analysis was fed to them and they accepted it because it did not occur to them that it was seriously off.

A general theme of Ascoli65 is that genuine scientists could not possibly make the mistakes the “professors” made, therefore there must be darker forces at work. Genuine scientists can make mind-boggling errors. It’s human. I’ll explain more below.

I am not going to research the claims Ascoli65 makes, unless they are clearly and specifically evidenced with links. If this was about the lawsuit, Rossi v. Darden, I have extensive resources and know exactly where to look. For old Rossi reports, they are all over the place, many different documents, and not a button push away. Ascoli is giving links for some claims, but not all.

nor in those coming from any other people different from the many professors who publicly took on themselves the responsibility to measure the excess heat, that the Ecat should have produced during the public demo held on the January 14, 2011. All of them, I guess, had the competence to distinguish a thermometer from a humidity meter, and all of them knew that such last an instrument is not able to measure the steam dryness.

First of all, nobody became “responsible” for “measuring the excess heat” simply by attending a demonstration. A series of inaccurate assumptions are being made. One cannot necessarily tell the difference between a temperature probe and an humidity probe, just by looking at it from a distance.. The meter was called an “air quality meter” and it apparently had a g/m^3 display, which could seem to someone unfamiliar with steam quality — and how that meter specifically worked — as if it was measuring steam quality. When I discovered the humidity meter issue (I think it may have been independent of others who made the same discovery) there were people arguing with me using the same argument Ascoli65 uses, that professors could not possibly make such a dumb mistake. In fact, Essen acknowledges his ignorance, in a Krivit interview, and it is utterly unsurprising. Any physicist would understand the physics involved, but not be familiar with the specific issues that arise with steam and steam calorimetry. It’s simply not difficult to understand how they made the mistakes.

What is more difficult to understand is why they then stonewalled all questions. Krivit did get some answers at first, then they clammed up. Krivit is a yellow journalist, always looking for scandal, and almost all CMNS scientists have stopped talking to Krivit; however the “independent professors” stonewalled the whole world. They talk to Mats Lewan, perhaps. Why? Mats does not ask difficult questions and does not follow up. Krivit quotes Essen: (my emphasis)

On July 15, 2011, New Energy Times telephoned Essén.

Krivit: What do you know about the calibration of the amount of steam coming out of Rossi’s device?
Essén: The steam amount was not measured. It was taken for granted that it all became steam.
Krivit: In either your experience or your efforts to inspect perpetual-motion claims, has anybody tried to claim anything on the basis of steam before?
Essén: No, I can’t recall that. I’m new at steam, unfortunately.
Krivit: Do you have any training in steam quality or steam enthalpy?
Essén: Just general thermodynamics.
Krivit: For example, like knowing the 1,600 times expansion rate?
Essén: I’d come across that before. I was aware of that.
[Note: Essén wrote nothing about the steam expansion rate in his and Kullander’s April 3, 2011, trip report.]
Krivit: When you pulled the hose out of the wall and saw the steam, did you think about the expansion rate?
Essén: No, I must admit I was thinking that I must check that the water is not draining out. I had this vague feeling that the water inlet flow wasn’t that fast, that the steam could be consistent with it, especially after some condensation in the hose. But we should have looked more into that, obviously, but there was not enough time. When we came, the setup was already there. To make any further studies, it was not possible.

“It was not possible” is a classic excuse. The problem was not that it was impossible to do a better job, but that Essen was inexperienced. Scientists are specialized, and often, operating out of their specialization, they are clueless. The problem was much larger than the humidity meter issue, which would only make a relatively minor difference in the heat measurement. The problem was twofold: there was not nearly enough steam for the claimed evaporation rate, and there was no check for overflow water. At 7 liters per hour, the hose could readily be pulled and checked and it might appear that there was no water flowing. Rossi, for Krivit, pulled the hose. We saw him walk the hose back to the drain, a maneuver clearly designed to drain any water from the hose. There would then be a few minutes in which to display the hose before putting it back.

But the lack of that high steam flow rate was utterly obvious. An electric steam kettle would show far more steam, with far less power than was being claimed to have been generated (about a tenth).

This is similar to the Lugano test: if the device had actually been running at 1400 C external temperature, it would have been blindingly white-hot. Instead, it was dull red. Yet the “scientists” trusted the IR camera and the setting of that camera, probably by Levi. Levi continued to argue that he had done it correctly, when many who have studied the issue know that it was a gross error, and the direct eyewitnessing should have been enough, but … it wasn’t. People can be fooled, sometimes, in ways that later seem impossible. Couldn’t they see?

Consider the Doral test, it’s much the same. Rossi was claiming that the Plant was producing a megawatt. Okay, where was that power going? The problem was out there for about a year, because a megawatt should have killed everyone in the Plant, unless there was a major heat exchanger taking the heat outside. Rossi eventually claimed that, indeed, he had built a heat exhanger, but it would have been noisy and the piping would have been very visible. Nobody reported having seen anything, and the warehouse was comfortable, far from what a megawatt would have done (and there still would have been a lot of heat in the building, unless Rossi could somehow convey the heat with very high efficiency to that upstairs room. Boiler rooms get very hot!)

Any observer who saw that demonstration and who had some idea of what a megawatt means, one would think, would be suspicious. We don’t know the reactions of those who visited during the “test.” Rossi’s original explanations, when asked about the heat dissipation, were completely inadequate, and that was clear. Even his own expert acknowledge that it would have been fatal without the heat exchanger. But when he was first asked, he mentioned no heat exchanger. He claimed the heat was “used” in the secret endothermic process. Then he claimed that it went out the back doors and through a vent in the roof. He mentioned no heat exchanger. Rossi lies. But many people who, we might think, should know better, have believed the lies.

(I often opine that Rossi is not necessarily “lying” in his own world. Rather, he’s insane. If not insane, he would know that he didn’t have a heat exchanger, just an idea for one! My guess, though, is that Rossi does know about the heat exchanger, that he didn’t actually make one, and, instead, he justifies the lies to himself (and some of his followers also invent justifications.)

One more item I came across. This was from Essen to Krivit.

On March 8, 2012, New Energy Times asked Essén for an update: “Considering all that has and has not transpired since [last year] and considering your failure to look for 11,200 liters of steam exiting from the Energy Catalyzer when you were there, is there a revised comment you would like to make on this matter?”

Essén wrote back the next day.

“Considering all the tests (apart from Kullander-Essén) I am aware of, at least two other, rather different, independent tests that give consistent results, either not involving steam or measuring it quantitatively, and other information that I have had since I first came across the Rossi E-Cat, I find it more interesting than ever.

“I am not aware that there have been any measurements of the amount of steam that contradict Rossi’s basic claims. Visual inspection cannot determine amount of steam since only condensed steam is visible.”

This is face-palm stupid. It is not terribly uncommon in people but less common in scientists that when it begins to appear that they made some mistake, they will scramble to invent possibilities that could make them right in the end. So … the Kullander and Essen test was not an “independent test,” and it was clear in Krivit’s earlier interview that Essen claimed the reason he had not made certain checks because it had all been “set up” and they were just observers. In fact, Essen could have noticed certain things and could have checked others, but didn’t, because he really wasn’t familiar with steam. However, perhaps that was harmless, because perhaps the E-Cat really works, and after all, others have confirmed it. However, there is only one substantial body of actually independent tests, those done by Industrial Heat, which was highly motivated to confirm, and, in the end, failed … or we could say, correctly showed that the devices were not working. All other tests were dominated by Rossi, just as was the Kullander and Essen observation.

It’s been noticed that Rossi kept changing the test methods. So with the Kullander and Essen test, there was a possible artifact from overflow water. Instead of setting up the same testing to then confirm that there was no overflow water, the system and test procedures were changed. Magicians do this all the time, they keep changing the tricks, so that one cannot confirm suspicions — or they use an earlier suspicion against the observer, who thinks he knows what is being done, but then the magician turns the hat over, or whatever. It’s different this time, and there are an unlimited number of ways to create false appearances.

Essen is desperately holding on to the idea that the E-Cat he witnessed actually worked. Then he falls into total preposterousness.

Yes. Of course, dry steam is invisible. Yet when dry steam hits room air, it immediately condenses and becomes visible. It does not appear that Essen ever did become familiar with steam. Dry steam is not nailed to the boiling point; if the measurements showed a temperature that was very close to boiling (even if it appears slightly above), the steam is now not at a controlled temperature. Wet steam must be at exactly the boiling point for the pressure (and steam exiting through a hose at some significant rate will be at an elevated pressure, though it might not be much. Just enough to nudge the temperature up slightly.) Dry steam would be very unlikely to be stable at that temperature. Making dry steam involves “superheating” it. So the temperature indications are that the steam, if it was steam, would be wet. And it would immediately condense when it hits the air,

One can readily estimate steam volume by observing the plume from a hose with the same diameter — by comparison. And that has been done. There wasn’t the level of steam flow that was claimed, not even close, and Essen could have confirmed this himself, by looking at how that much steam would appear. He didn’t because he is not looking for the error, he just wants to be right.

For a scientist, sad. Tragic, actually. Unless he wakes up and cleans this up. I can hope.

(Dry steam would also condense quickly, just not as quickly. If we look at the spout of a steam kettle, vigorously boiling, we can see the plume of steam coming out of the spout. It will be invisible as it comes out, for a short distance. If a steam generator is designed to superheat the steam (which isn’t easy, and it takes after-heating, generally, missing from the E-Cats, and this was an issue raised in Rossi v. Darden), that distance would increase, because the steam must cool before condensing. Live steam (the invisible stuff) is very dangerous. Never pass your hand through live steam, major burns would be instantaneous; you can do it with the visible fog kind of steam (though it’s still hot, it is not carrying nearly as much energy).

 

Krivit did very thoroughly cover the issues on this.

Off-topic comments are the bane of useful content creation

I’ve often mentioned the issue of off-topic comments on LENR Forum. Discussion of issues there is often heavily derailed by off-topic comments. Some of these are from trolls (who choose what to claim or evidence by the anticipated — or easily anticipable — emotional responses, or pursuing their Favorite Topic, everywhere, and with the LF access paradigm and the lack of comment threading, this heavily damages the utility of LF.) One might think that if one is researching the stated topic, one could read a variety of opinions or find evidence on that topic, but these can be buried under piles of irrelevancies, personal arguments, etc.

What can be done about this? Continue reading “Off-topic comments are the bane of useful content creation”