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

[No one of consequence]

The format here isn't conducive to dispute resolution

[Abd]

A motley collection of irreproducible anecdotes culled over a 30-year period does not provide a credible foundation for constructing an otherwise implausible theory.

History consists of anecdotes. What implausible theory is based on the anecdotes told? None that I know. I wrote that there is no theory that explains the meltdowns.

Moulton stated, with no evidence at all, that cold fusion cells don't get hot. Science, most definitely, is not based on pure polemic speculation. It's based on actual experimental results, the formation of hypotheses and the testing of them. What Mouton presents is his ignorant opinion, based on nothing but his belief in his own unimpeachable rightness, his ignorant opinion and the fact that there are others with the same ignorant opinion. And that's a fact, it's clear, and plain to see for anyone looking.

I'm not writing for those who don't look, I'm writing for the people who already have at least one eye open. Often, that's only a few, at present, I'm writing for the future as well. Open another eye, and they will get depth perception, what you get when you look at a situation from more than one point of view.

The format here isn't conducive to dispute resolution

To expand on that, it can be conducive to some kinds of community formation, which can be conducive to dispute resolution. But the mechanisms necessary to actually resolve disputes are not present here. Threaded discussion is famous for on and on, endless debate that appears to accomplish nothing. As we see. There can be some benefit to it, because issues can become clear to individual participants and readers. But the resolutions won't take place here.

[One]

Accusations of wishful thinking are not "ABF," even if that were a real-world sin. And since you can't tell by my "if he's vindicated" clause, I don't dismiss it out of hand. Unlike you, I don't have firm ideas about the existence of the effect. There's something to this effect, but I'm not going to write hagiography about Fleischmann and Pons.

Fleischmann is not a reliable witness. Their announcement was accompanied by several huge errors. They wanted it badly, and they had good reason too. I don't consider their apparently never-replicated meltdown claim remotely reliable.

At any rate, I'm also a bit of a gambler. Your notion that there's a 50% chance that Fleischmann and Pons will win the Nobel prize in the next decade sounds like one of the most out-of-whack odds estimations I've heard in a while.

You say that you're on Social Security, but I would lay a substantial wager payable in 2020. I'll give you 2-to-1 odds too.

This post has been edited by One: Fri 4th September 2009, 5:46pm

[No one of consequence]

The format here isn't conducive to dispute resolution

To expand on that...

<sigh/>

[One]

A scientist is not impeached by error, unless repeated often. A scientist is impeached, and a witness is impeached, by fraud, deliberate misrepresentation. Scientists make mistakes, lots of them. They make mistakes especially when they rush to publication.

Witnesses can be--and are--impeached for conflicts of interest.

Witnesses are also notoriously unreliable. Memory is a weird thing, colored by adrenaline, prejudice...and even wishful thinking.


Oh, and hint: this forum is not intended to be a means of dispute resolution.

This post has been edited by One: Fri 4th September 2009, 5:39pm

[A Horse With No Name]

Memory is a weird thing, colored by adrenaline, prejudice...and even wishful thinking.

Did you say "Memory"? DJ Horsey to the musical rescue:



This post has been edited by A Horse With No Name: Fri 4th September 2009, 5:40pm

[Moulton]

Beyond error and sloppiness (which is remedied by letting other teams of scientists try to reproduce the same experimental outcomes), there is the bugaboo of self-delusion.

The protocols of the scientific method are designed to reduce (if not eliminate) the problem of self-delusion. That's why scientific theories are expected to make specific predictions that are subject to falsification by careful and repeatable experimentation. The first duty of a scientist who is contemplating a novel hypothesis is to try like the dickens to falsify it (and invite his colleagues in the field to do likewise).

Physicists understand fusion in stars like our sun and in thermonuclear devices developed in the middle of the 20th Century.

The anomalous and irreproducible anecdotes of erratic and sloppy experimenters who scratch their heads at unexpected (and hence unpredicted) results and declaim atomic fusion as the explanation are almost surely self-deluded.

Nor are they doing credible science.

[Lar]

At any rate, I'm also a bit of a gambler. Your notion that there's a 50% chance that Fleischmann and Pons will win the Nobel prize in the next decade sounds like one of the most out-of-whack odds estimations I've heard in a while.

You say that you're on Social Security, but I would lay a substantial wager payable in 2020. I'll give you 2-to-1 odds too.

Me too, I'd cover part of a bet such as that.

[Abd]

A scientist is not impeached by error, unless repeated often. A scientist is impeached, and a witness is impeached, by fraud, deliberate misrepresentation. Scientists make mistakes, lots of them. They make mistakes especially when they rush to publication.

Witnesses can be--and are--impeached for conflicts of interest.

Semantics. By the standard implied here, every research paper reporting anything but boring results of no consequence would involve a "conflict of interest." One is correct, politically, impeachment by asserting conflict of interest is common. It's not common among scientists with their colleagues; when it becomes common, it's a sign of a political problem. Conflict of interest more normally applies to conclusions, not raw testimony.

Consider this: the nuclear physicists rushing to publish results of their electrochemistry experiments were working outside their field (except with regard to radiation measurements). They had, overall, a huge conflict of interest. If cold fusion were accepted as a possibility, massive funding would have been diverted from hot fusion research, which remains a will-o-the-wisp, just around the corner, as it has been since I was in college. Even if they weren't working personally with hot fusion -- and some were -- if the hot fusion programs shut down, there would be a lot of unemployed physicists on the labor market, it would depress opportunities for all.

But I'm not asserting that their actual experimental results, their testimony, should be impeached because of COI. The MIT situation stands out as unique; if the Caltech report was badly done -- later analysis shows low levels of excess heat, apparently (it should be understood that the calorimetry isn't marginal, the reported excess heat is not down in the noise for successful confirmations) -- I have never seen it asserted, nor similarly with the rest of the negative publications, only MIT. And my opinion on MIT is that it's moot. Even if the published chart were accurate, the result was still, overall, negative, which, as I've shown, in the end, makes the experiment part of the overall research in the field, and any successful theory should account for it. This part is actually easy, there is no theoretical problem from those negative replications, they are well understood in terms of how they fit in with the positive replications.

This is behind a lot of disputes: testimony and report of actual experience gets mixed up with conclusions (and what can be intermediate, analysis.)

Witnesses are also notoriously unreliable. Memory is a weird thing, colored by adrenaline, prejudice...and even wishful thinking.

Again, true. What I've noticed is that I write about the reviewed research on this topic, and some editors who clearly have their minds made up respond without having read it. That's okay, it's a free discussion, but ... reading what I write here is a lot faster than reading the published research. If I write something here and it seems like I'm blowing smoke, ask. That's not happening, at all. If they read what I've written, they don't remember it; it's hard to remember stuff that you have a visceral rejection reaction to, we tend to remember the reaction more strongly than the cause of it. It's quite another diagnostic indicator. Rather, what I've been saying is simply categorically denied. That's what I was facing at the cold fusion article, for five months. I should have done something about it sooner, but because some progress was possible, and because I really dislike hauling editors before process -- try to find examples where I've done it with non-admins, they are rare, and with admins, it was only with two, where the problem was long-standing and was maintaining damage.

Oh, and hint: this forum is not intended to be a means of dispute resolution.

Didn't I say that? Again, my point. In this case, AGS. Assumption of Gross Stupidity.

This post has been edited by Abd: Fri 4th September 2009, 8:20pm

[Abd]

Beyond error and sloppiness (which is remedied by letting other teams of scientists try to reproduce the same experimental outcomes), there is the bugaboo of self-delusion.

The protocols of the scientific method are designed to reduce (if not eliminate) the problem of self-delusion. That's why scientific theories are expected to make specific predictions that are subject to falsification by careful and repeatable experimentation. The first duty of a scientist who is contemplating a novel hypothesis is to try like the dickens to falsify it (and invite his colleagues in the field to do likewise).

There is a basic error here. Yes, in formulating a new hypothesis, this is exactly what scientists do. But something comes before that. The collection of data. When theoretical considerations result in rejection of data, the cart is pulling the horse. Interpretation of data is another story.

I've presented evidence that Fleischmann was attempting to falsify (which means confirm in ordinary language, confirmation by failing to falsify) the hypothesis that the differences between the condensed matter environment and the plasma environment, known to exist on theoretical grounds (quantum mechanics is a two-body approximation), were negligible. What he found was a disconfirmation of the theory. That's not the end of the story, of course, because of all the various possibilities.

Physicists understand fusion in stars like our sun and in thermonuclear devices developed in the middle of the 20th Century.

Yes. This is hot fusion, it's well known and characterized, and the assumptions were that it was impossible at low temperatures. But, of course, that assumption was never literally true, it had to be qualified with a known exception: muon catalysis. There might be an unknown form of catalysis or involvement in a reaction that had never been noticed because nobody had looked for it systematically.

The mechanism of hot fusion, the brute force overcoming of the Coulomb barrier, is impossible at low energies. And it remains impossible, in my opinion. But several mechanisms have now been proposed that don't involve seriously new physics, and one which does (hydrino theory, which replaces one mystery with another that upsets a different long-held assumption).

The anomalous and irreproducible anecdotes of erratic and sloppy experimenters who scratch their heads at unexpected (and hence unpredicted) results and declaim atomic fusion as the explanation are almost surely self-deluded.

Note that they didn't make this claim until they knew, from later work, that fusion might be possible. Moulton, you are deluded, I'll state that without qualifying it as merely probable, because it's that clear to me. And I've told you exactly why, your responses ignore mine and simply make more unfounded assumptions and claims. You are engaged in an "I'm right and you're wrong" debate. If you actually provided evidence for what you said, I'd check it out. But you don't. Not once. Instead, you recite facts about fusion that I've known since I was twelve years old, and that's more than fifty years ago.

Nor are they doing credible science.

Says the great Moulton, who knows more than all the experts brought in by the DoE, and the peer reviewers at Naturwissenschaften and all the other publications, and the agencies currently funding this "incredible science." No wonder you were blocked, Moulton. Firm opinions, derisively expressed, with no sources or evidence at all, just mere assertion based on a tiny bit of knowledge, no respect for any possibility that the other editor might know anything at all.

I think I've said enough about Moulton and his claims. Someone else tell me if he says something worth responding to.

[Moulton]

Methinks you are projecting, sir.

[Abd]

At any rate, I'm also a bit of a gambler. Your notion that there's a 50% chance that Fleischmann and Pons will win the Nobel prize in the next decade sounds like one of the most out-of-whack odds estimations I've heard in a while.

You say that you're on Social Security, but I would lay a substantial wager payable in 2020. I'll give you 2-to-1 odds too.

Me too, I'd cover part of a bet such as that.

That would make me 75. Don't think I'll need the money then, but it would be nice to pass something along to my kids. How about something more near-term? If it's money involved, we might have to settle on an escrow, could you guys afford that?

Nah, I'm putting what I can get into the project company. I'm putting my money and effort where my mouth is. How about, if we have some kits available, you buy a few? I could guarantee to cover the price if they don't work or have a prosaic explanation. And if they work, what would you offer? This could be fairly soon, I'll possibly know within a few months. Codeposition is pretty simple.

The up side, if you are right. You'd be helping to prove that cold fusion was bogus. What do you think, if a company that I endorse puts out a home cold fusion demonstration kit. Not a water heater, not a teapot, probably not calorimetry, which is difficult, though there might be rough calorimetry involved; more likely it would be radiation with CR-39 chips, correlated (or not!) with a series of variables, and possibly backed with helium analysis provided by an independent lab.

Nobody has ever tried this, Lar. All the cold fusion commercial efforts have been aimed at scaling up the effect, this one is probably going to scale it down to the minimum, using only a small amount of palladium in a small cell. I've written on the vortex list that if we can't do this, I'd have to completely revise my opinion about cold fusion, that this would show, indeed, that it was all a delusion. Exact replications have been rare; that's one of the problems noted in the 2004 DoE review. Researchers were all trying to be the first to get the most heat; in this sense, the critics (including One) have been right, though off. These were really engineering attempts, and data collection for later theorization.

One might note that nearly all the recent publication isn't about theory; theory is sometimes mentioned as an afterthought, as Mosier-Boss mentions Takahashi's TSC theory. The reports are about "anomalous heat in the palladium deuteride system," or "Triple tracks in CR-39 radiation detectors from codeposition cells." I.e., neutron evidence. There are still complaints that the charged particle radiation could be some other kind of damage, through there has been serious effort to falsify the finding through controls, and none of the alternative explanations seem to match the data. But triple tracks, there is no way that could be a result of chemical damage, dendrites, electrostatic discharge, and the levels are well above background, conclusively shown, so they aren't cosmic rays.

This post has been edited by Abd: Fri 4th September 2009, 9:15pm

[Herschelkrustofsky]

But they were experts in carts and Fleischmann et al were experts in horses.

I met Martin Fleischman briefly in 1989, and I have an autographed copy of an interview he did with EIR. What kind of price do you think that would fetch on ebay?

Hold on to it. I'd put about even odds on Pons and Fleischmann winning the Nobel prize in the next decade. If so, it will become much more valuable. Otherwise, it's not likely to lose value. Was that interview published? Was the interview transcript different from the eventual publication?

It was published. He autographed the actual magazine for me. ''EIR'' is, of course, a LaRouche publication, and had a friendly relationship to Fleischman on the cold fusion issue (among others,) so there was no censorship.

[Abd]

Was that interview published? Was the interview transcript different from the eventual publication?

It was published. He autographed the actual magazine for me. ''EIR'' is, of course, a LaRouche publication, and had a friendly relationship to Fleischman on the cold fusion issue (among others,) so there was no censorship.

Is that available on-line? It's of historical value, Fleischmann writing about his work very early on. For that kind of thing, the publisher matters less, it could be self-published and still be useful.

To expand on that...

<sigh/>

Great, made you sigh. Next comes the moans, the quivering and shaking. Are we having fun yet?

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Was that interview published? Was the interview transcript different from the eventual publication?

It was published. He autographed the actual magazine for me. ''EIR'' is, of course, a LaRouche publication, and had a friendly relationship to Fleischman on the cold fusion issue (among others,) so there was no censorship.

Is that available on-line?

Sorry, no. BTW, I haven't followed this controversy in a long time. Whatever happened to the expression, "solid-state fusion"?

My take on the controversy, which I may actually have posted at the WR before, is that anomalous, inexplicable results are a font of joy for any real scientist. Science progresses in a "negative" fashion; as scientists discover the flaws in what is presumed to be the proven corpus of knowledge, the process of correcting those flaws is the portal to real discovery. There are always, however, legions of constipated hacks who will furiously defend established, though defective, theory, because they have a professional stake in the fact that they can recite it.

[Moulton]

Unexpected anomalies can indeed be a source of new discoveries. After all, the plural of anecdote is data. But an anecdotal observation must be repeatable before one has sufficient reliable data upon which to build a theoretical model for a previously unobserved phenomenon.

The anomalies in the anecdotal annals of cold fusion are not a repeatable phenomenon, explainable by physics.

Compare that to muon catalysis, which was predicted from existing atomic theory and subsequently observed in the laboratory. But muon catalysis is more like an atom smasher, in which a beam of high-energy muons is fired into a block of frozen deuterium-tritium. The negatively charged muon beam ionizes the supercold d-t, sending a few of the nuclei ricocheting around like steel balls in a pinball machine. If you're lucky, a few dozen nuclei will smash together and fuse into alpha particles before the game is over. The kinetic energy to overcome the Coulomb repulsion comes from the high-energy muon beam.

[Abd]

My take on the controversy, which I may actually have posted at the WR before, is that anomalous, inexplicable results are a font of joy for any real scientist. Science progresses in a "negative" fashion; as scientists discover the flaws in what is presumed to be the proven corpus of knowledge, the process of correcting those flaws is the portal to real discovery. There are always, however, legions of constipated hacks who will furiously defend established, though defective, theory, because they have a professional stake in the fact that they can recite it.

Agreed. There isn't anything particularly new about this. What's been seen is that the dedicated skeptics have asked for this or that, and when it's provided, then they ask for more. It's not that there is anything wrong with true skepticism, it's that something else is substituted for it, which is firm belief and lack of skepticism for what is supposedly "established." Often, with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back and see how the "established" view was never actually carefully reviewed and tested. Sometimes it was, and the testing simply overlooked unimagined possibilities. The hypothesis that CF was all artifact and no substance was never subject to rigorous examination, and the experimental evidence was waved away with a belief that it had all been proven bogus, so why even look? This isn't some conspiracy theory, it simply happened, right out in the open, anyone can see it. It's all been documented in reliable source, but who looks?

Well, some do. And that's why the situation has been shifting. Most peer reviewers will give a paper a good look and a fair chance. Not all, but most, and it snowballs. It's still amazing how long it has taken, I think we are at the cusp as far as expert opinion is concerned (and, no, I don't mean "cold fusion researchers," I mean independent experts who have become informed), but there is a long way to go as to "general scientific opinion," as if the opinion of random climate scientists or mathematicians or particle physicists is what matters. Eventually, the particle physicists will get a shot, but until the doors have been opened wider, most particle physicists seem to be incapable of taking a balanced look at this, except, of course, for that set of them who are "cold fusion researchers."

Methinks you are projecting, sir.

Here we call it "throwing up."

[Abd]

But muon catalysis is more like an atom smasher, in which a beam of high-energy muons is fired into a block of frozen deuterium-tritium. The negatively charged muon beam ionizes the supercold d-t, sending a few of the nuclei ricocheting around like steel balls in a pinball machine. If you're lucky, a few dozen nuclei will smash together and fuse into alpha particles before the game is over. The kinetic energy to overcome the Coulomb repulsion comes from the high-energy muon beam.

did Moulton just suck me into responding? Let's just say that muon-catalyzed fusion, this is not. It's Moulton's weird idea of MCF, with no resemblance to the actual phenomenon. I won't bother to explain, just read Muon-catalyzed fusion (T-H-L-K-D).

This post has been edited by Abd: Sat 5th September 2009, 4:18am

[GoRight]

Unbelievably clueless. Ottava thinks I am on the side of the people wanting to ban minority POV.

[The Joy]

Unbelievably clueless. Ottava thinks I am on the side of the people wanting to ban minority POV.

I am worried about Ottava. He's yelling at people on the Persian Empire (T-H-L-K-D) talk page, yelling at people on the banning policy talk page, and yelling at people on the Samlesbury witches (T-H-L-K-D) talk page. Fighting a war on multiple fronts is never a good idea, no matter how right you are. I enjoy watching his crusades, but I hate to be in his crosshairs! I'm surprised that Civil Protection hasn't blocked him yet.

I wonder if the Labor Day (T-H-L-K-D) weekend will keep this case going until Sept. 8th?