Abd-William M. Connolley, The Cabal strikes back Options

[Abd]

In science, when one is contemplating a novel hypothesis, the normative procedure is to try like the dickens to falsify it. The proponents of cold fusion have done just the opposite. That's not doing science. That's doing faith-based wishful thinking.

Just like anthropogenic global warming!

Erm...

Exactly. The difference, of course, is that with AGW, the majority is right and with Cold fusion, it's wrong!

Let me restate this: if I make a stand for what I believe is an important truth that humanity must recognize, or it is in danger of great loss, it's prudence and responsibility and common sense.

If you take a stand for what you think is prudence, responsibility and common sense, it is "faith-based wishful thinking." There is no contradiction, because you and I are different. I am an informed, intelligent, editor and you are a POV-pusher, an ignorant fanatic.

Is this clear? Or do I have it reversed?

Seriously, we need good process which can dismantle these disputes, allowing them to be compartmentalized into resolvable questions. It's known how to do this, but what works is largely rejected on Wikipedia in favor of blocks and bans to exclude minority POV, and those who push it, whereas those who push majority POV are rewarded or at least tolerated. Wherever I've become familiar with a controversial topic, I've seen damage, ongoing damage, so I infer that it's happening in many other places as well.

And if I say that I'm intending to confront it -- which merely means stand up to it and allow the community to judge, through careful process -- this is when the calls for me to be completely banned rise to a crescendo. It's pretty normal in human society, and Wikipedia is no exception: the majority does not like its opinions to be questioned, see the article on Socrates. The problem has become totally clear, at least to me!

[Moulton]

Whether or not you believe any of the theories about global warming, the evidence that the polar ice caps are melting is irrefutable. In the case of cold fusion, the reaction vessels don't become hot. Nuclear fusion releases a lot of heat (as we saw in the mushroom clouds).

[Abd]

Has anyone ever tried to use buckyballs to facilitate cold fusion?

No, AFAIK. Doubt it would work. No way to get the high packing. C nanotubes might work, maybe, creating a confinement channel. Don't hold your breath.

[No one of consequence]

Whether or not you believe any of the theories about global warming, the evidence that the polar ice caps are melting is irrefutable. In the case of cold fusion, the reaction vessels don't become hot. Nuclear fusion releases a lot of heat (as we saw in the mushroom clouds).

The problem is with the "anthropogenic" part, and with scientists trying to stifle criticism and dissent by shouting "consensus, now shut up", which is not very scientific, and which was my real point.

As far as cold fusion is concerned, if the palladium electroplating method works so well, I'd like to see the excess heat converted into electricity to power the cell. Then we'll have something to talk about.

[Abd]

Whether or not you believe any of the theories about global warming, the evidence that the polar ice caps are melting is irrefutable. In the case of cold fusion, the reaction vessels don't become hot. Nuclear fusion releases a lot of heat (as we saw in the mushroom clouds).

The problem is with the "anthropogenic" part, and with scientists trying to stifle criticism and dissent by shouting "consensus, now shut up", which is not very scientific, and which was my real point.

As far as cold fusion is concerned, if the palladium electroplating method works so well, I'd like to see the excess heat converted into electricity to power the cell. Then we'll have something to talk about.

I can see why you'd think that, but it's off-point. It depends, not merely on the reality of the effect, but on scalability and continuity as well. I'm talking about a science problem, you are looking for an engineering demonstration. Given that not all cold fusion cells have continuous power input, the whole concept is off. There are nuclear reactions that cannot be used for power generation, for practical reasons, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Co-dep works well in terms of repeatability, but probably not for the application suggested. The question is a mirror to Free Energy. If it isn't free energy, why bother? That's a practical question, not a science question.

As to AGW, yes, same problem, failure to understand the importance of open (and efficient) process for challenging consensus, real or apparent.

[Mathsci]

Whether or not you believe any of the theories about global warming, the evidence that the polar ice caps are melting is irrefutable. In the case of cold fusion, the reaction vessels don't become hot. Nuclear fusion releases a lot of heat (as we saw in the mushroom clouds).

The problem is with the "anthropogenic" part, and with scientists trying to stifle criticism and dissent by shouting "consensus, now shut up", which is not very scientific, and which was my real point.

As far as cold fusion is concerned, if the palladium electroplating method works so well, I'd like to see the excess heat converted into electricity to power the cell. Then we'll have something to talk about.

MastCell seems far more expert in science topics than Thatcher.

[GoRight]

Regarding the discussion of the policy changes to WP:BAN at this link, what is the probably that we will get any momentum going again? Has Ottava Rima just handed Will Beback everything he wanted by derailing the entire discussion?

Is she a real person or is she under the control of someone with a vested interest in all of this? She is also the one that originally suggested that I was a sock master to Raul654 back in the discussion regarding my editing sanction with respect to the real life WMC. Now she may have given Raul654 exactly what he (presumably) wants in terms of keeping the policy language as it is because he can use it to ban AGW skeptic POV via Scibaby. Ironically also protecting Will Beback's apparent desire to use it for similar purposes even though she claims to oppose him on that front.

Can someone truly be that naive or stupid?

[Abd]

Whether or not you believe any of the theories about global warming, the evidence that the polar ice caps are melting is irrefutable. In the case of cold fusion, the reaction vessels don't become hot. Nuclear fusion releases a lot of heat (as we saw in the mushroom clouds).

In some cold fusion experiments, the reaction vessels become hot. Sure, nuclear fusion releases a lot of heat. If you have a lot of reaction taking place, all at once.

In an operating cold fusion cell, with heat being generated (which happens, by the way, with the electrolysis current switched off, these things keep running for a time, more time than could be maintained with chemical storage), the heat is apparently coming from very small regions, tiny hot spots, at or very near the surface of the palladium. That's what's normal.

But sometimes bulk palladium cells have melted down; early in Fleischmann's work, he's reported, a cube of palladium melted, the apparatus melted, and burned a hole through the lab bench and down into the concrete floor. I wrote here about Mizuno's work. Those cells became hot.

This is the part of the work that has been very difficult to reproduce. Getting small amounts of excess heat, clearly excess heat, is simple. Or, more accurately, it's known how to do it. Massive heat, no, but because of so many reports of it happening, researchers are obviously tantalized and keep looking for how to make it happen more often. Without losing the lab. By the way, the explosions that have happened aren't from this. A researcher died at SRI when a recombiner failed and unrecombined deuterium and oxygen built up inside the cell. The researcher picked up the cell and apparently jarred it. The recombiner then did its job all at once. Bang. But that was a chemical explosion. It wouldn't have melted palladium.

This post has been edited by Abd: Thu 3rd September 2009, 5:08am

[Abd]

Regarding the discussion of the policy changes to WP:BAN at this link, what is the probably that we will get any momentum going again? Has Ottava Rima just handed Will Beback everything he wanted by derailing the entire discussion?

Is she a real person or is she under the control of someone with a vested interest in all of this?
Can someone truly be that naive or stupid?

Stupid, yes, you proved it. Naive, I reserve for foolish assumptions of good faith, which isn't what you were doing.

Ottava Rima isn't part of the Cab, for sure. Naive? Maybe, don't know and don't care. There's so much naivete floating around, among otherwise intelligent administrators and arbitrators, that a little extra in some editor would hardly be noticeable.

It was a comment I made to Ottava Rima when the editor was blocked for trying to help Wilhelmina Will that brought my attention to that whole can of worms. I was attacked for saying something kind to Ottava. Really? There must be something weird going on here, so I checked it out.... and there was.

The problem isn't bad editors, the problem isn't even Raul654, GoRight, though that's certainly a tempting hypothesis. The problem is the structure, or, more accurately, what is missing from the structure. It could be supplied, but it will take ...

off-wiki work. Don't hold your breath. But sometimes pigs fly and wishes are horses. How about we find out?

It is necessary for me to be banned for me to start working off-wiki. I'm not likely to do it if I'm not banned, too much trouble, too easy to get distracted by working on articles.

[dtobias]

Let me restate this: if I make a stand for what I believe is an important truth that humanity must recognize, or it is in danger of great loss, it's prudence and responsibility and common sense.

If you take a stand for what you think is prudence, responsibility and common sense, it is "faith-based wishful thinking." There is no contradiction, because you and I are different. I am an informed, intelligent, editor and you are a POV-pusher, an ignorant fanatic.

I think the proper "irregular conjugation" is:

I'm taking a stand for prudence, responsibility, and common sense.

You are engaged in faith-based wishful thinking.

He/she is a POV-pusher and an ignorant fanatic.

[One]

But sometimes bulk palladium cells have melted down; early in Fleischmann's work, he's reported, a cube of palladium melted, the apparatus melted, and burned a hole through the lab bench and down into the concrete floor. I wrote here about Mizuno's work. Those cells became hot.

And now we've jumped to the realm of urban legend and positively unverifiable work. Golly, that could have been a cold fusion China syndrome! Plus Mizuno's ridiculous assumption that his student accidentally caused electrolyte to boil away via cold fusion in 1978 (never mind that the effect isn't replicated when they're actually trying--and only after "months" of loading). Few are so credulous, Abd.



Ottava seems concerned about this change being used against Peter Damian (even though everyone agrees that the purpose is to codify the more lenient standards that actually exist). I'm particularly confused because he supported my change early on, but I'm very much on the same page as Thatcher, Nathan, and others he attacks. Maybe Peter could weigh in on this change himself to defuse this?

This post has been edited by One: Thu 3rd September 2009, 3:30pm

[Moulton]

The problem with these improbable stories from the annals of cold fusion is that they are not as entertaining as the ones published in the satirical Journal of Irreproducible Results.

[No one of consequence]

MastCell seems far more expert in science topics than Thatcher.

Really? Has MastCell ever publicly stated his scientific credentials? More importantly, have I?

I first began to question AGW when I heard about 6 journal editors being hounded out of their positions for publishing a study that questioned the received wisdom of the Mann hockey stick (that's not a link to some "denier" site, that's MIT). I don't have to be William M. Connolley's dissertation advisor to see that the AGW crowd was acting more like Pope Urban VIII than Galileo*. Nor does it take a PhD in climatology to understand that when scientists publish studies based on complex analysis of large data sets, and then refuse to provide a copy of the data or details of their analytical methods to their peers, they are not acting like scientists should.

I'll admit that I would need a PhD in climatology to accurately determine for myself whether Mann's bristlecone pine tree ring series records temperature, as he claims, or rainfall, as some others claim. But I don't have to be an expert to know that forcing people to resign for publishing a paper that raises the issue is just not good science.

*Ottava explains that my view of the Pope Urban/Galileo relationship is incorrect. So consider the analogy in the loose, pop-cult sense only.

This post has been edited by No one of consequence: Thu 3rd September 2009, 5:08pm

[GoRight]

Really? Has MastCell ever publicly stated his scientific credentials? More importantly, have I?

I first began to question AGW when I heard about 6 journal editors being hounded out of their positions for publishing a study that questioned the received wisdom of the Mann hockey stick (that's not a link to some "denier" site, that's MIT). I don't have to be William M. Connolley's dissertation advisor to see that the AGW crowd was acting more like Pope Urban VIII than Galileo. Nor does it take a PhD in climatology to understand that when scientists publish studies based on complex analysis of large data sets, and then refuse to provide a copy of the data or details of their analytical methods to their peers, they are not acting like scientists should.

I'll admit that I would need a PhD in climatology to accurately determine for myself whether Mann's bristlecone pine tree ring series records temperature, as he claims, or rainfall, as some others claim. But I don't have to be an expert to know that forcing people to resign for publishing a paper that raises the issue is just not good science.

Hear, hear! 100% on the mark correct. If your facts and your conclusions are correct, they will speak for themselves and you won't need to resort to political tactics in a science debate. More importantly this whole secret data meme is 100% counter to good, reproducible science.

[Mathsci]

MastCell seems far more expert in science topics than Thatcher.

Really? Has MastCell ever publicly stated his scientific credentials? More importantly, have I?

I first began to question AGW when I heard about 6 journal editors being hounded out of their positions for publishing a study that questioned the received wisdom of the Mann hockey stick (that's not a link to some "denier" site, that's MIT). I don't have to be William M. Connolley's dissertation advisor to see that the AGW crowd was acting more like Pope Urban VIII than Galileo*. Nor does it take a PhD in climatology to understand that when scientists publish studies based on complex analysis of large data sets, and then refuse to provide a copy of the data or details of their analytical methods to their peers, they are not acting like scientists should.

I'll admit that I would need a PhD in climatology to accurately determine for myself whether Mann's bristlecone pine tree ring series records temperature, as he claims, or rainfall, as some others claim. But I don't have to be an expert to know that forcing people to resign for publishing a paper that raises the issue is just not good science.

*Ottava explains that my view of the Pope Urban/Galileo relationship is incorrect. So consider the analogy in the loose, pop-cult sense only.

Thatcher has switched from CF to GW - I don't quite know why. Isn't MastCell a trained doctor?

I want to know about the company Abd is currently creating that possibly might be able to send monkeys to Jupiter for the price of a milk shake. The future of our planet is apparently in Abd's hands. I hope he has remembered the bananas.

[Abd]

The problem with these improbable stories from the annals of cold fusion is that they are not as entertaining as the ones published in the satirical Journal of Irreproducible Results.

And thus we see one of the basic problems. It's a principle of common law that testimony is presumed true unless controverted, and when experimental scientists, who are, more than anything else, rained reporters, report something, it's a hazardous undertaking to deny the very report, which is different from skepticism or even denial of conclusions.

The phenomena of unusually high heat output has been reported by many researchers; the extremes like the one Fleischmann reported are very rare. Sure, there is possibly another explanation than cold fusion, though it's hard to imagine, but.... Moulton was saying that "hot" doesn't happen, and it does, and, in fact, "hot" has become fairly common with some types of cells, just not so hot as to melt everything.

The Journal of Irreproducible Results may be entertaining, but the cold fusion field is replete with reproducible and reproduced results, and even better, correlations between independent measurements, which is golden, because it validates both sets of measurements. (Explain why excess heat measurements, allegedly unreliable, would correlate very strongly with helium measurements, also allegedly unreliable!)

Essentially, Moulton, I conclude you are blowing smoke, and it's not worth responding further. I do assume good faith, at the beginning, but when a writer demonstrates total imperviousness, making up new objections and potshots instead of addressing the previous ones, acknowledging what can be acknowledged and making the basis for any continued disagreement clear, I drop it and move on. Now I know why you were blocked, Moulton. It's obvious.

I think the proper "irregular conjugation" is:

I'm taking a stand for prudence, responsibility, and common sense.

You are engaged in faith-based wishful thinking.

He/she is a POV-pusher and an ignorant fanatic.

Right. It's safer to push the worst accusations out to people who are not present, "them." You know, the trouble-makers, cause of all that is wrong with the world, unlike you and me, of course, we might disagree, but that's among friends, right?

Moving beyond this can be done, and it is standard practice among professional facilitators.

Remarkable incident today. I dropped a friendly note welcoming JzG back, since he's started editing again. He did not take it well, at least that is how it seems. I thought he might laugh! Apparently, he's holding on to something. It's sad, because holding on to negative stuff is how we poison ourselves. It's his right, I'm not going to hold it against him, but ... it's still sad. In any case, I can leave Wikipedia knowing that I'm not holding on to that old stuff; I've still got stuff to process from the recent matters, but I will.


This post has been edited by Abd: Fri 4th September 2009, 2:15am

[Abd]

But sometimes bulk palladium cells have melted down; early in Fleischmann's work, he's reported, a cube of palladium melted, the apparatus melted, and burned a hole through the lab bench and down into the concrete floor. I wrote here about Mizuno's work. Those cells became hot.

And now we've jumped to the realm of urban legend and positively unverifiable work. Golly, that could have been a cold fusion China syndrome! Plus Mizuno's ridiculous assumption that his student accidentally caused electrolyte to boil away via cold fusion in 1978 (never mind that the effect isn't replicated when they're actually trying--and only after "months" of loading). Few are so credulous, Abd.

These are not urban legends, they are published by scientists, trained observers and reporters. Testimony from named witnesses, "urban legends" is blowing polemical smoke.

Summary: you're an idiot, One, so to speak. I'm not credulous, I've seen many reports of runaway heat, so it's reasonable as an operating assumption that it happens. Remember, difficulty of reproduction of excess heat was one of the biggest reasons for the wave of rejection in 1989-1990, and excess heat is now firmly established in peer-reviewed secondary source. Firmly. Yet the level of excess heat in Fleischmann-type cells is highly variable. So that sometimes it is way excess isn't terribly surprising. If we knew how to get that large excursion, it would be all over. Cold fusion would be commercially practical. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in the effort, so far, and one of the reasons the effort was abandoned was that quantitative reliability wasn't attained with high heat generation. It has been with low heat, without that major energy input, indeed, with hardly any input at all.

You didn't read carefully, One. Mizuno did not assume what you stated. He, in fact, found both explanations unreasonable, but this often happens in experimental science: there are mysterious results that are never explained. Only a few actually get tracked down and confirmed. In this case, very good chance, had Mizuno tried to reproduce the effect he saw, he would very likely have failed, unless he was lucky. Fleischmann wasn't only doing basic science, the right way, trying to falsify a theory that he accepted, he was also very lucky, just a small variation of something, slightly different palladium, and he'd have found nothing.

It took over twenty years of effort (if we count the first five by Fleischmann) to bring his technique to the point where most or all cells, depending on exact technique, show the effects.

And you have, again, been missing most of what I've written. That's okay, but don't imagine that you are rejecting it, because you don't know what "it" is. Let me repeat one statement: codeposition cells show excess heat immediately, without lengthy loading. The lengthy loading really has nothing to do with excess heat, though it raises obvious suspicions because of the energy input. It's necessary with bulk palladium because that's how long it takes to get high loading factors under those conditions. In a codeposition cell, the palladium plating is built up simultaneously with the generation of deuterium gas, so it is immediately fully loaded and it immediately -- within a few minutes -- shows the effect.

Arata cells show immediate heat. They consist of a little nanoparticle palladium, i.e., very high surface area per gram, and the cell is loaded with deuterium gas under pressure. The cells get very hot immediately, but that is heat of formation of the deuteride. Same with hydrogen and the hydride. By the way, Arata was just independently confirmed in a peer-reviewed publication, there is discussion of it on Talk:Cold fusion, and it's misguided, of course. If this were a purely primary report, the claim there that this is undigested news would be on point. But it is, in fact, a confirmation of earlier Arata publication under peer review in Japan, so it's a notch up.

Anyway, when the cell containing 7 grams of palladium is loaded with hydrogen, there is the initial heat release from forming the hydride, and then the cell settles to ambient within a few hours. When it is loaded with deuterium, there is the initial heat release, and then the cell settles to four degrees C. above ambient. And stays there. For the full run, which has been 3000 hours.

So take that "months of loading" and smoke it, if it gets you high to keep repeating it, as you have. Enjoy. I'm not directly working on Wikipedia consensus any more, so my approach is changing, as you might have noticed. My goal isn't consensus any more, it's process to allow others to find consensus.

This post has been edited by Abd: Fri 4th September 2009, 2:52am

[Abd]

I want to know about the company Abd is currently creating that possibly might be able to send monkeys to Jupiter for the price of a milk shake. The future of our planet is apparently in Abd's hands. I hope he has remembered the bananas.

I do live my life as if the future of the planet is in my hands, and I wish others would also do it. Because, collectively, it is. Well, maybe not the "planet," but certainly human society and the environment we live in.

Monkeys to Jupiter? The company is only about reproducing well-known effects, published already in peer-reviewed literature, at least the projects I'd personally be working on would involve that. So if there is peer-reviewed literature about sending monkeys to Jupiter so cheaply, I'd be all ears.

On second thought, I'd leave that to someone else. Sending monkeys to Jupiter, even if it can be done, has nothing to do with cold fusion, it merely demonstrates the shallow bankruptcy of Mathsci's thinking.

[JohnA]

If a notable scientist like Freeman Dyson believes that warming is localized, not global, in nature

Trouble is, it's way outside his field of expertise. To my certain knowledge, Lord Peston strongly believes in global warming but nobody would cite him as an expert in the area.

The trouble is that the physics of fluids which is modelled by GCMs is smack bang in the middle of Freeman Dyson's expertise. Which is why his criticisms of climate modelling have so much weight and why Wikipedia's eco-extremist tag team doesn't want their nice consensus troubled by an extremely qualified outsider.

Even though Michael Mann, of the notoriously broken Hockey Stick fame, admitted to a scientific committee that he was not a statistician (a point that all of us can agree on), nevertheless he continues to teach courses on statistics and continue to make statistical howlers in "peer reviewed" (ie by people as clueless as he is) literature.

One might wonder how Mann can be simultaneously outside of his expertise and yet allowed to pontificate within it, while Freeman Dyson is completely within his area of expertise and yet somehow outside of it.

Its amazing how far logic and reality can stretch when you're trying to defend the indefensible.

[Mathsci]

I want to know about the company Abd is currently creating that possibly might be able to send monkeys to Jupiter for the price of a milk shake. The future of our planet is apparently in Abd's hands. I hope he has remembered the bananas.

I do live my life as if the future of the planet is in my hands, and I wish others would also do it. Because, collectively, it is. Well, maybe not the "planet," but certainly human society and the environment we live in.

Monkeys to Jupiter? The company is only about reproducing well-known effects, published already in peer-reviewed literature, at least the projects I'd personally be working on would involve that. So if there is peer-reviewed literature about sending monkeys to Jupiter so cheaply, I'd be all ears.

On second thought, I'd leave that to someone else. Sending monkeys to Jupiter, even if it can be done, has nothing to do with cold fusion, it merely demonstrates the shallow bankruptcy of Mathsci's thinking.

Abd's "rationalisation" and future plans

The website of his company

This post has been edited by Mathsci: Fri 4th September 2009, 6:18am