Talk:Cold fusion

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Only a "few"?

Are you sure that it's only a "few" people who take the position that it's pseudoscience? I've followed this whole thing fairly carefully since its inception (being at the time a semi-hard science-fiction writer who, like my friend Jack Vance and other S.F. writers of my acquaintance, was blown away by the possibilities) and it seems to me that except for a few die-hards, it's long since been pretty much discredited.

But I'll certainly admit that there is a vast difference between being an advocate of a "pseudoscience" and being an advocate of an unpopular position that is somewhat outside the mainstream without being pushed by nuts and fanatics.

So maybe this is just a question of semantics in the CZ article?

My own impression of the article as at least the opening now stands is that there is not enough emphasis on the general rejection of the idea by the mainstream. But I certainly don't want to get into an ideological battle over this....

Cheers! Hayford Peirce 11:28, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

It depends on how you define pseudoscience. I would say this was bad science but not necessarily pseudoscience. Chris Day 14:33, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

That's my own feeling. So that I think it should be rewritten accordingly to say that whereas a few people think it's pseudoscience, most mainstream people simply consider it to be bad science. Hayford Peirce 15:46, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

Let us please not cite "my own feelings" for this sort of thing. Please cite some evidence in support of these claims. It is obvious that many scientists and magazines oppose cold fusion, but on the other hand I have a public opinion poll of scientists in Japan, and I have comments from the DoE panel and from readers at LENR-CANR. Based on this data, I believe that scientists are sharply divided with regard to cold fusion, but there is no overwhelming majority on either side. Based on the Japanese survey and the DoE panel, scientists are about evenly divided.

Let us not put statements into this article which are not supported by objective evidence and sources.

- Jed

Have rewritten the Intro to give a more skeptical view

I'm not an expert in this field, but I remember the initial excitement and the subsequent letdown. The Intro should reflect this actuality.

The more that I reread the initial effort here, the more I see it as a fairly unvarnished point of view that cold fusion actually exists.... Maybe it does -- but almost no reputable scientist believes that it does. Hayford Peirce 15:56, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

You wrote:

but almost no reputable scientist believes that it does.

I have a list of 4,000 reputable scientist who believe that cold fusion is real. Most of them observed it themselves. They are all reputable, or they would not be on my list. They include, for example, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin; two Nobel laureates in physics; the director of BARC (India’s premier nuclear physics laboratory) and later chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission; Bockris, Fleischmann and other authors of the leading textbooks on electrochemistry; several Distinguished Professors and Fellows of the U.S. Navy, the Electrochemical Society, NATO and other prestigious organizations; three editors of major plasma fusion and physics journals, and a retired member of the French Atomic Energy Commission.

Four thousand scientists is not "almost none."

- Jed

And by the way, you can read 500 papers, including papers by all the researchers I listed above, at http://lenr-canr.org/.

I suggest that you review this literature carefully before making statements about the research, or about the researchers themselves.

- Jed

please stop trying to push your biased point of view here

Jed, you are relentlessly trying to undo what is a neutral, as well as a more truthful, approach to this subject. You obviously believe that cold fusion exists. Almost no one else in the world does -- and this article should reflect that fact clearly. Please stop your reversions to earlier versions by you -- while they are not exactly dishonest, they are slanting the way the events unfolded in order to present the most positive version of the affair. Hayford Peirce 16:05, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I disagree. I think that you are biased.

Furthermore, this is not Wikipedia, so you are not allowed to delete my contributions as abruptly as you have done. I shall complain, if you continue to do this.

- Jed

Be my guest. You are attempting to introduce pseudoscience in CZ in the form of an article that is sharply biased towards your own non-mainstream point of view. I'm sure that a number of flatearthers can still be found, as well, of course, as scientists who deny global warming or the link between HIV and AIDS. That doesn't mean that they are reputable or regarded by mainstream scientists as anything but cranks. Hayford Peirce 17:08, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

As I mentioned, I know 4,000 mainstream scientists who disagree. But that is not relevant. An encyclopedia article should be based on the gold standard of scientific information: peer-reviewed papers from mainstream journals.

All of the assertions that I have made are backed by mainstream, peer-reviewed journals of physics, chemistry and electrochemistry, including some of the most prestigious ones such as Jap. J. Applied Physics. I have 1,200 peer-reviewed papers on cold fusion, and 2000 others from non-reviewed sources such as conference proceedings and government reports.

As far as I know, there are no more than 6 peer-reviewed papers representing your point of view. Therefore, mine is the mainstream point of view.

Science is not a popularity contest. It does not matter how many people you believe agree with your point of view; it matters what has passed rigorous peer-review, and what has been replicated at high signal to noise ratios in the laboratory.

Furthermore, if you believe that cold fusion is pseudoscience, I suggest you make a cogent case for that. Please define your terms and make the case here, before making major changes to the article. Note that it does say cold fusion is considered "pseudoscience." We are all well aware of that fact.

- Jed

What is the importance of neutrons?

I just cut the following from the background section to try and rework it here:

Nuclear reactions are normally initiated using neutrons or high-energy elemental particles. The process taking place under these conditions is well known and is the basis for the field called nuclear physics.

Reactions involving neutrons can occur because these particles do not have a charge and can pass through the barrier. However, neutrons are not observed to form under conditions that produce the cold fusion reactions and they are not known to exist as free particles in ordinary materials.

Why are neutrons important, especially the first bit relating to fission? The only relevance to fusion I can see is that plasma fusion gives off neutrons whereas cold fusion does not. Above seems to implicate them as being important for the fusion event. Is that true? And if so, it needs to be rewritten to establish why neutrons are significant. If not, then why are we discussing neutrons with respect to fission and the columb barrier? Chris Day 16:23, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I suggest we include the section you deleted, as follows:

Reactions involving neutrons can occur because these particles do not have a charge and can pass through the barrier. However, neutrons are not observed to form under conditions that produce the cold fusion reactions and they are not known to exist as free particles in ordinary materials.

The established theory is that nuclear fusion reactions cannot be initiated without the input of significant energy because the charge barrier between nuclei, called the Coulomb barrier, cannot be overcome any other way. Cold fusion generated widespread publicity since it seemed defy these theoretical considerations and represented a potentially cheap and clean source of energy.

Please do not delete it again without a discussion and careful consideration. As I said, this is not Wikipedia. You don't just clobber paragraphs here. You modify them carefully.

Neutrons are important because they are neutral, and if there were large numbers of free neutrons or other neutral particles such muons, there would be no argument about cold fusion. But there are not. That's a key reason why cold fusion is so surprising and controversial.

The other reason is that high energy input is not needed, but if you had muons or free neutrons, you would not need it.

This may seem obvious to a scientist but it is not obvious to the general reader.

- Jed

I'd suggest the way it was written was not even obvious to scientists. That was why i brought it to the talk page. It was not a random deletion I was trying to encourage you to discuss it (and above you do clarify what you were trying to explain in that paragraph). Some of your edit summaries are criticising your own work? I think you starting to see attacks where none exist. Chris Day 17:03, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I tweaked it a bit, and added muons. Perhaps that will only make it more confusing to the general reader. Anyway, let us try to explain it to the reader, rather than deleting it. I am confident that physicists on both sides of the debate consider this a major issue.

- Jed

No fanfare?

Jed, you wrote in in the subject for one edit that "There was no fanfare in announcement". I'm not sure what you mean here. How normal is it to have a press conference prior to publication? Pretty rare, I'd suggest. While I agree they probably did not have trumpets, literally, it is unusual to have a press conference to announce a scientific discovery. Fanfare or similar, in that context, is quite apt. Chris Day 16:57, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I meant there was no fanfare at U. Utah. There was a great deal of fanfare elsewhere, but not accompanying the announcement itself. I base this on 3 sources:

1. A video of the announcement on YouTube. It seems quite subdued to me.

2. Mallove's book "Fire from Ice."

3. My conversations with Fleischmann, Pons and others at U. Utah. They were not thrilled to be announcing this. In fact, they dreaded it, and expected the worst. They were forced to make an announcement several years earlier than they planned to. See also Beaudette's book.

In other words, the announcement was subdued because everyone there expected to lose their jobs -- which they soon did. That's what they told Beaudette and I.

- Jed

You should probably be a Topic Informant, as an acquaintance of Pons and Fleishmann. See CZ:Policy on Topic Informants. Anyone got any opinion on this? Also, please sign your comments using the signature button in the toolbar or the "Sign your username" four tilde link in the special characters panel. --Tom Morris 17:33, 15 September 2008 (CDT)