Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 33

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reference to add

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v106/i2/p330_1

thanks... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.86.201.173 (talk) 14:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Why? has nothing to do with 'cold fusion'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that's not true, Kirk, and you know why. But this article isn't the place for that source, it belongs with muon-catalyzed fusion, which is certainly fusion and it is certainly cold, but we keep the topics separate, largely because MCF is accepted and other forms of low energy nuclear reactions aren't, at least not generally. There are, in fact, other known LENR reactions that are accepted, such as the modification, sometimes drastic, of isotopic half-lives by the chemical environment, as with Be-7. We will have a bit of a problem here until we more accurately classify parts of the topic. MCF is a low-energy nuclear reaction, albeit not chemically catalyzed, as would be the claimed Pons and Fleischmann form. "Cold fusion" is a popular and colloquial term, with rather plastic meaning. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this guy said that everyone interested in cold fusion should read that paper, and therefore reference might be useful for this wikipedia article. 93.86.201.173 (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Duncan is not writing a Wiki article on CF, he is promoting a new idea he just discovered. Hopefully, with more study, he will discover his mistake. Time will tell. However, I repeat, no relevance to 'cold fusion' except one historical tidbit. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Hahaha, I wondered why you provided such an emotional response, and then i stumbled upon the paper titled "...to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion". 93.86.201.173 (talk) 15:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

No idea what you are talking about. Please explain. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Robert Duncan (physicist) didn't simply "discover" cold fusion, he was asked by CBS as a neutral physicist (skeptical, actually), to investigate the topic, and he read the literature and travelled to Energetics Technologies in Israel to see their work. (Note that a paper where Michael McKubre precisely replicates Energetics Technologies cold fusion work is included in the ACS Sourcebook. The idea that cold fusion experiments aren't reproducible is squashed old hat.) --Abd (talk) 00:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Dardik et al, of Energetic Technologies have slides from ICCF12 and a paper from ICCF14 (2008) posted on Rothwell's web site. In both, they show an artist's drawing of their calorimeter, which contains the thermocouples, which are designated Tcell and Tjacket. The drawing and these designations are for what is known as isoperibolic calorimetry. In the text of the ICCF14 paper, the claim to be using a flow calorimeter, but what they show is NOT that. Isoperibolic calorimetry is what F&P originally did and were critcized about in the '89 DOE review. Storms has written several times that flow calorimetry is superior to isoperibolic, and he even admits that iso. calor. 'might' be affected by the CCS (while flow certainly isn't, nevermind that his flow calorimetric data is what I analyzed to find the CCS.) And you expect me to believe them? And you even more expect me to trust the opinion of someone who is new to the field and thinks ET is a great company?? What planet do you live on? Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Earth. Why do you ask? Are you unfamiliar with our customs? There is a mailing list response to the above from Jed Rothwell and from Edmund Storms, quoted by Shanahan at permanent link, together with Shanahan's comment on that, which I found fascinating, in a perverse sort of way. It reveals the nature of this controversy, quite clearly. --Abd (talk) 17:54, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan writes as if it were simply Duncan being deluded by Energetics Technologies. However, I'd pointed to a 2008 paper by Michael McKubre replicating the ET work. Perhaps Duncan is new to the field. That cannot be said about McKubre, I think he started working on cold fusion in 1989. --Abd (talk) 17:54, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

A) MuKubre is as deluded as Duncan - how's that? Actually, he's worse, as he's been in the field for a long time and done lots of measurements. He is another of those people who have a highly vested interest in NOT accepting my explanations. He's spent millions of EPRI and other funder's dollars looking for CF. B) Where is this paper? C) My position on Duncan is that he is an unknown in the field, at least to me, and I follow the field somewhat closely, therefore he is unlikely to be aware of the controversy, especially since the CFers have actively suppressed my and Clarke's contributions in their propaganda. (See the comment by Storms in the section that Abd finds 'perversely' interesting.) What are Duncan's qualifications that makes him an 'expert' in this arena? D) The CCS arise from real causes. If one scientist sees a response that might be a CCS and calls it something else, I would *expect* someone trying to replicate to have a reaasonable shot at partially reproducing it. However, exact replication, the gold standard of science, is going to be nearly imposssible to attain if you don't understand what is going on. There, you end up trying to control the wrong things and not controlling the right. The upshot is that if you manage to get the effect, it likely will not be at the same levels or behave similarly to the work you're trying to replicate, which is a perfect description of CF research results. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan shows his colors clearly. Michael McKubre and Robert Duncan (physicist) are "deluded." Who the hell is Kirk Shanahan? Conspiracy theory? Here is one: they don't accept Shanahan's wild theory about CCS (CCS is a real possible problem, that's why his several papers were published, but Kirk makes it into a General Theory of Everything Wrong with Cold Fusion -- which has not been published) because they are the "vested interests."

So certain is he that he expresses his opinion without even seeing the research. Opinion precedes knowledge, that tells us exactly what we are dealing with. He's an expert, it's a shame, but his opinions are so heavily contaminated by his fifteen-year commitment to debunking cold fusion that he's worse than useless to us. The paper is published in the the peer-reviewed (according to the ACS) Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, Marwan and Krivit, published by the American Chemical Society, 2008, it's in the table of contents I put up here. "Replication of Condensed Matter Heat Production," Michael McKubre, with Tanzella, Dardik, Boher, Zilov, Greenspan, Sibilia, and Violante, pp 219-247. Dardik, I imagine, he might recognize if he knows current activity in the field. Sorry to say, Kirk, they don't mention your work. They do reference Storms. There are other papers on calorimetry in the book. And they likewise don't cite you. Is it because they are being unfair or biased, or because your work isn't important? I'll leave that question unanswered. I don't need to know.

Duncan? You really don't know why Robert Duncan (physicist) is considered important? I throw up my hands. He's not an "expert on cold fusion," if he were, you'd be claiming he's biased! he's a reputable physicist who was asked by CBS to look into Cold fusion, to get the view of a physicist, since it was rapid and strong opposition by physicists which created the whole image of junk science that plagued cold fusion for almost twenty years. The material Shanahan refers to was deleted by Verbal, someone who might, supposedly, agree with him -- I'd say it was entirely too embarrassing -- but here is a permanent link to it. I understand Shanahan's concept of CCS, and, frankly, that this is sufficient as an explanation for the body of work is preposterous; it's is truly fringe, it's not accepted by the mainstream and it's not accepted by the cold fusion researchers. He's not just alleging calorimetry error, he's alleging an anomalous phenomenon, I think he's theorized unexpected recombination at the surface of electrodes, plus a whole boatload of coincidences; he's consistently avoided the issue of correlation of results, i.e., correlation of helium with excess heat, radiation with excess heat, and he has many quite competent researchers being bumbling fools. All in the service of maintaining that he's right. I know, now, the research he criticizes well enough to know that his theories are bogus, he has developed a possible explanation for a certain class of CF experimental results, but of no relation at all to the rest of the work, which is now the bulk of it, and thus he simply resorts to whatever ad hoc explanation he comes up with, and frequently they make no sense. He has the pits on CR-39 detectors being burns (underwater) from bubbles of deuterium oxidizing. Except that the pits are conical, and CR-39 placed outside the cell, the other side of a thin window, shows the pits in reduced quantities (as expected for alpha radiation), and there are neutron "triple tracks," on the other side of the CR-39. If there is a layer of plastic over the CR-39, again, the levels are reduced, but the pits are still there. Pits from alpha particles have a characteristic appearance, pits from surface burns wouldn't look like this at all.

Shanahan imagines that nobody here understands his proposal for an anomalous effect that produces the localized heating, but that's part of his vision: the world doesn't recognize his work. --Abd (talk) 04:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This is Duncan speaking at the Missouri Energy Summit. Yes, he mentions the paper, and recommends it as one of the best papers he's ever read. We do need to mention muon-catalyzed fusion when we mention the Coulomb barrier as supposedly insurmountable except through the brute force of high temperature. That much, certainly, is relevant here. There are some theories of cold fusion that assert other forms of catalysis or intervention that may also lower or bypass the coulomb barrier. Hydrino theory, for example, with the reduced electron orbits that are hypothesized, could allow electrons to serve for the same kind of shielding of the repulsive forces that muons accomplish. Normal electrons can't do it. Others assert some kind of distributed electron effect, if I understand it. Hydrino theory is sufficiently notable that we can mention it. Still, we wouldn't cite this article here, but at muon-catalyzed fusion. We would simply refer to MCF here, where it's appropriate. MCF is generally mentioned when considering this topic. For example, Hoffman mentions it in 1995 (see our bibliography, it's page 10. --Abd (talk) 17:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the speech is excellent, going over the history and why cold fusion was so vehemently rejected so quickly. Basically, he notes that the P-F announcement by press conference diverted maybe 60% of the NSF research budget, immediately, into cold fusion verification work. But P and F, when they exhausted their original supply of palladium, and got more, found no excess heat. Oops! And other researchers, using different palladium as well, found the same. No results. They were pissed, quite understandably believing that they'd been duped or deceived, maybe deliberately, or at least by very bad research work. However, buried in the noise was other replication by a few researchers, and that continued, and the researchers learned what conditions work to generate excess heat and what ones didn't, to the point that many groups are now reporting very high reproducibility, even 100%. The P-F method remains difficult, I don't think anyone is asserting 100% following the P-F method, but other methods do seem to reach that, such as codeposition, which avoids the whole problem of reaching deuterium saturation in bulk palladium, or nanoparticle palladium alloy gas-loading, as in Arata's work in Japan. Peer-review published, by the way, all of it. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Peer review doesn't prevent fraud, nor does it prevent people who are sympathetic to a viewpoint from putting in something awful. The reality is that peer review isn't really designed to detect sloppy science, so if you make a mistake, but make it impossible to tell that you made that mistake on cursory examination, chances are you'll pass peer review. The REAL peer review is when everyone else in the world reads it and criticizes it. People stretch their results all the time in papers which pass peer review. The reproducibility, as far as I'm concerned, is 0% - nothing useful has come of it, it hasn't done anything useful, and no one useful has reproduced the result. People report effects all the time, but unless and until they build something out of it, it remains nonexistent. This may sound harsh, but as someone who has read numerous papers claiming genes do various things, I can tell you that many, perhaps most papers making such claims are in fact wrong, and publication bias, as well as the bias of the authors of the paper, play a huge role in this. People doing such research have great vested research in the effect being useful, and I see scientists convinced that something which is obviously worthless will someday pan out, despite seeing math myself which demonstrated that what they're working on will never pan out, either being already inferior to what exists or simply not being feasible to do in the first place.

Anyone who is interested in science has to gain the ability to read papers and see whether or not they're useful. This stinks of uselessness, and ergo, I don't think it is particularly worthwhile. You can publish about claimed effects all you want, but until you or someone else makes something based on the effect, it almost certainly doesn't exist. Titanium Dragon (talk) 02:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we should put a note in muon-catalyzed fusion that it doesn't exist, based on this argument. There has been tremendous confusion over an assumption that the reliable source guideline means that particular sources satisfying it should be actually true or actually reliable. No source is infallible, peer-reviewed papers can be based on fraud, may have errors large or small, etc. However, the assumption in the guideline is that papers published as described establish notability. Notable facts should be in the encyclopedia; how we handle fraud would be to balance the fraudulent publication with other reliable source showing the fraud. If there is a fact asserted in a reliable source, as defined in our guidelines, then we have something potentially notable. Some RS peer-reviewed research is primary source. But when there is coverage of these primary sources in a reliable secondary source, then we have clear notability, it's no longer isolated primary source. Encyclopedias are about knowledge, not necessarily practical application. It is possible that there will be no major practical applications for low energy nuclear reactions, the effects may be too fragile; on the other hand, I wouldn't bet on it. I can already think of one application for the existing LENR technology. Secret, of course, though it's not rocket science. If I actually start to do something with it, I'd immediately become COI (and I would disclose this).

(Plenty of things have been made based on the effect, such as the co-deposition cells of the U.S. Navy SPAWAR group. What are they used for? For demonstrating the effect! Reliably. They are nifty devices, also, for pitting CR-39 plastic in patterns that certainly look like those of alpha particles, and, as well, a few neutrons, and for fogging X-ray film, in case you want to do that.) I think that something should be made very clear here: this article is about science. Fleischmann's research wasn't about solving the world's energy problems, it was about exploring the boundaries and limits of quantum mechanics. He found an example where standard QM, apparently, is inadequate to deal with the complexities of the condensed matter environment, to more accurately predict nuclear behavior, Quantum electrodynamics may be needed. It was pure science research, not engineering, but his discovery pointed to what might become, with a lot of work, an engineering reality. He estimated that it would take a "Manhattan-scale" project to realize this. It is not simple to scale up the effect he found. My concern is the science, not hype about free energy or whatever. And here, my concern is what we can present based on reliable source, by the Wikipedia definitions.

There are plenty of anecdotal reports of "heat after death," often with very substantial amounts of heat generated, but nobody has found how to make this happen reliably, so far, it's not reproducible. If it could be figured out how to control this, there would be something quite practical. But there are other forms of generating heat (and radiation, and helium) from palladium deuteride that are reliable, but low-level, not useful for anything but demonstrating the effect, and we have not only the primary sources, but reliable secondary source on this. Excess heat from palladium deuteride has been confirmed in 153 peer-reviewed papers, and those publications have continued. We are, here, working on building an encyclopedia, not in arguing over the reality of cold fusion. Quite simply, that's irrelevant. What's relevant is what is in reliable source; we sometimes discuss the "reality" here, but only for background, and editors can cheerfully disregard it. If it doesn't go in the article, and if it doesn't help editors understand the topic, it can quietly disappear into the archives, and it doesn't matter. --Abd (talk) 03:18, 5 June 2009

Thing is, the reliable source guideline is often misinterpreted in the way you are misinterpreting it; just because something appears in a reliable source does not mean that Wikipedia should include it, should include it uncritically, or even that it is notable. I understand what a reliable source is; it is a criteron for usability as a source. Being found in a reliable source doesn't mean it is NPOV, though (it seldom is), which means we have to adapt it, or consider whether it is useful at all for our purposes. If something is highly dubious or controversial, even if it does show up in a reliable source, that does not necessarily mean we should include it on Wikipedia; typically speaking, we shouldn't, as Wikipedia isn't a Crystal Ball, and if we are unable to write a NPOV entry about it (as something which is new, incredibly dubious, but obviously hasn't been specifically disputed yet because it is new or simply isn't noteworthy in the first place, as cold fusion articles tend not to be as they are seen as pathological science and therefore receive relatively little attention) we shouldn't be writing about it at all, as most likely it actually isn't notable. Just because a paper has been written about it, or a newspaper article, does not mean it is actually notable. Recentism is bad, and there's a reason there are so many junky articles about recent events and so few about random events in 1893. This is not to say we cannot include new papers or research on Wikipedia, but we should be very cautious in so doing, as we have to keep in mind that it may not really be noteworthy or worthy of inclusion. This is particularly true in this case; cold fusion is not viewed as plausible by most scientists, and as such a random article about cold fusion is unlikely to be specifically rebutted but is very likely not to be worthwhile at all, because it probably isn't notable in the first place, and probably doesn't contain useful content. The consensus of the scientific community is that cold fusion is nothing more than bad measurements, and as such papers about cold fusion are very unlikely to be noteworthy at all because no one comments on them but a small community convinced that the effect is real. There are parapsychologists, but that doesn't mean that scientists consider that science either. Our ultimate goal is verifiable accuracy. Claiming that cold fusion is science is the opposite of that. Titanium Dragon (talk) 08:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on the statemant "cold fusion is not viewed as plausible by most scientists" --so what? The article can say that, fine. BUT that is no excuse for anyone to try to prevent CF data from being included in the article. Data has precedence over theory, for any REAL scientist. My biggest issue here is that almost all the anti-CF data is about 20 years old and despite that, constantly keeps getting referenced, while new data has been steadily accumulating since (some of it in ways that specifically address some of the "bad measurements" claims). Since when, in any scientific field, does old data ALWAYS trump new data? (Note to Kirk S: this is not about interpretations of the data; we are both agreed that lots of new data has been collected, right?) V (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

TD, you've made several mistakes. First, no claim has been made that just because something appears in a reliable source, it must be permitted. However, if something appears in multiple independent reliable sources, exclusion starts to look like it's POV motivated, and your continued argument shows a very clear POV that isn't something we can have in the article; it's there now because it was asserted by an editor who requested page protection, then immediately added it. And when there is a secondary source, a peer-reviewed review of the field, excluding it becomes almost certain to be POV-pushing, and when there are multiple secondary peer-reviewed sources, and they are all being excluded, it's certain. The only argument for exclusion in this situation would be multiple sources of equal or better quality rejecting these reviews as junk. And in that case, really, inclusion of both would be warranted, with proper balance. Do not mistake "inclusion" for "presenting as fact."

But this isn't the situation. The situation is that we have a pile of secondary sources, peer-reviewed, plus independent academic source, treating cold fusion as a scientific reality, with no sources of equivalent quality that are recent, I know of nothing in the last six years. Your previous engineering argument is totally bogus, the existence of practical application is not relevant. The alleged consensus of the scientific community, taken as a whole, might be as you state. It's probably not the consensus of chemists, at this point -- unclear -- it might be the consensus of physicists, but we have some notable defectors, and, remember, three Nobel prize-winning physicists supported cold fusion, two directly, one supporting that research should be done. The 2004 DoE review very definitely treated cold fusion as science; that is, the field of research is science. That is not the same, in general, as agreeing that low-energy nuclear reactions actually take place, aside from a few accepted examples (muon-catalyzed fusion, alteration of isotopic half-lives by chemical environment, and one might classify the Mossbauer effect as related). But if we only based our text on recent secondary peer-reviewed source, many reviews, last five years, we'd present cold fusion as a fact. In 2004, the DoE review, with all its problems, still showed 6/18 experts concluding that evidence for nuclear reactions was somewhat persuasive, half concluded that evidence for excess heat, anomalous, unexplained by accepted theory, was "convincing." This isn't pseudoscience. It is controversial science. You seem to be triply confused. Please reconsider. --Abd (talk) 11:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Links available for article, mostly convenience copies.

Some additional links have been whitelisted to lenr-canr.org, based on a list I came up with from pages there which could be used as convenience links. They are:

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BockrisJaccountabi.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BushBFheliumprod.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HublerGKanomalousea.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBpathologic.pdf
• http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html
• http://lenr-canr.org/DetailOnly.htm
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf

Beyond convenience links, the last three are direct links to the bibliography (two forms, the master set of frames, and then the detailed, complete bibliography -- the master, top-level set doesn't have all lead authors in the list, I've found). Rothwell actually recommended the DetailOnly form, thus actually breaking his prior claim that he didn't want to be helpful), and the final link is to Rothwell's study of peer-reviewed publications, largely based on the bibliography of Dieter Britz, which I requested for our use here in Talk, though the important stuff in it is quite verifiable. I expect I'll be adding the convenience links to existing references, if somebody doesn't beat me to it. After the article is unprotected, of course.

It was a bit of work to get these whitelisted, there are some editors who really didn't want to see it happen, the discussion is at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3)

If it is missing from the current reference, there is bibliographic date, DOI, etc., in the discussion there on the specific link involved, in the end, each link got its own discussion section.

I only requested the first half, alphabetically, of the possible convenience links from the current bibliography, so there will be a few more, I expect. --Abd (talk) 03:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

As you felt that the discussion of the use of these links was better handled here, I would oppose the use of Fleischmanbackground.pdf and HublerGKanomalousea.pdf as a general rule.

• Fleischmanbackground.pdf is a preprint version of the one published in World Scientific. It isn't too bad, but we're referencing the World Scientific version, not the preprint. Thus it would be incorrect to link to the preprint.
• HublerGKanomalousea.pdf is the slides of the presentation of the paper. The article references the paper. Therefore we can't link the reference to the slides.

I don't have any particular concerns with the other papers, though. - Bilby (talk) 11:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Bilby, I argued at the whitelisting discussion that content decisions weren't to be made by admins through the blacklist, unless that is clearly necessary, so whitelisting doesn't automatically establish that any particular use is approved. The Fleischman paper may technically be a preprint, but there are two possibilities for use: first, an explicit link as a preprint, or, second, that we verify that the preprint is an accurate copy of the original. With some publishers, such as Elsevier, it's prohibited to make copies of the actual publication and distribute them for general viewing without permission, but authors may upload preprints and make them available, and they may edit the preprints to match the actual publication. In the case of Fleischmannbacground, the paper has been independently published, in Low energy nuclear reactions sourcebook, edited by Marwan and Krivit, American Chemical Society, 2008, pp 19-36, and I have that here on my desk, so I can verify the preprint.

In this case, the paper is important to us as what was originally self-published, in effect, Fleischmann's own account of the history of the affair. The preprint recounts that history also directly from the author, even if it's not an exact copy. So we could link to the preprint itself, as a source. Probably the differences are moot, but I haven't actually done the detailed verification yet. Thanks for pointing out the objection.

As to Hubler, we would link to the slides as exactly what they are, slides prepared by the author to accompany a lecture based on the published paper. That's useful to our readers, I'd assert, and, as long as it is not represented as being the paper itself, it's not deceptive. Someone with a copy of the paper -- I could try to get one -- could also verify that the slides don't deviate radically from the paper, perhaps by introducing some wild idea that wouldn't have been supported by the editors of the actual publication.

And thanks for the general approval of the other links. --Abd (talk) 18:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I suspect linking to preprints will be generally problematic. One of the main reason preprints exist is to get around copyright agreements. The author is not permitted to distribute the final version, so they distribute the final version - 1. If they re-edit the preprint to match the final version, it is no longer a preprint. In terms of the slides, they are of no value. Linking to them will tend to be very problematic, as slides are designed to be given in the context of the speech. Take out the speech, and you don't know why the information was presented. I don't see them as a convenience, but as potentially providing incorrect information. - Bilby (talk) 19:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that slides are useless if the ref is to a paper. However, preprint versions are usually the final versions, but before the "camera ready" changes are made. I don't see a problem, in general, with using preprints - but each link needs justification, as does use of the problematic site lenr-canr.org. Verbal chat 19:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. I can cope with preprints - it's simply that academically I might use a preprint to decide if the paper is important, but as I would reference the final version it seems odd to link to anything but the final version. But I agree that they changes are going to be very minor, and mostly relate to layout and the like, so they will tend to be useful. And that's probably enough. :) - Bilby (talk) 19:53, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

A simple proposal?

I have not really contributed any content to this page, but by means of full disclosure I was involved in some of the ArbComm discussions regarding the Jed Rothwell "banning" and I have collaborated with Abd in the past on various topics.

I do not wish to start yet another poll, and I do think that neutral mediation would be of great benefits under these circumstances so I encourage those involved to engage in the process that is being proposed. In the interim, however, the content of the page as it has currently been protected is clearly controversial among those who are actively involved here, as is the version previously protected by wikipedia user WMC. This latter part is an assumption based solely on the fact that the page was protected in the middle of an edit war which never seems to leave things in a non-controversial state.

I would recommend reverting all the way back to 15:19, 14 May 2009. I selected that version for the following reasons:

1. It pre-dates BOTH of the most recent edit wars.
2. It was last changed by someone other than Abd or Hipocrite.
3. It somehow managed to stand on its own from a whopping 5 days (give or take).

Any work that is lost can easily be reapplied within the context of a mediation moving forward.

Thoughts from those actually involved here?

--GoRight (talk) 20:26, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Not ideal but acceptable as well. Hipocrite (talk) 20:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. Unfortunately if there was an ideal solution we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Either way, it was just a thought that tried to be even handed to both sides. --GoRight (talk) 20:37, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Shoot, GoRight. What you just did greatly complicated efforts here. There had been opportunity to fix any problems with prior protected version, nobody had complained about protection then, it was fine. Above, there is polling on four version. You just added a fifth. Without doing any comparisons, really. The version 1 above was last changed by *Hipocrite*. He now claims that this wasn't acceptance, but he claims a lot. There had been continual use of reverts from Hipocrite prior to 14 May, the revert warring on May 21 did result in some of the proposed material getting in, and consensus had settled on it. So you undid a lot of work. I wish you had respected existing process, any of the three versions above that weren't the current revision would have been better than what WMC implemented based on your suggestion

Nothing I have done is binding on anyone, Abd. It was just a suggestion to go back to what looked like the latest version prior to the edit warring, or at least what looked like the edit warring. If you don't like this suggestion, don't accept it. If there are better versions to revert to, then fine. You can still see how the voting goes but with two competing polls I'm not sure how you're going to be able to resolve anything. --GoRight (talk) 02:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

as is the version previously protected by wikipedia user WMC - slipped out of my memory. Am I involved? Anyway, I've done your bidding William M. Connolley (talk) 22:26, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I was merely referring to this. I don't think you were involved other than you were the one that protected the page. The edit warring was apparently with others. --GoRight (talk) 02:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

So I did, and indeed my notice is still on this talk page. How my memory fails me. I'll peruse this page a little William M. Connolley (talk) 19:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

WMC, this change could greatly complicate our process here. As you might recall, the last protection was due to edit warring between Hipocrite and myself. The current protection was due to edit warring between Hipocrite and other editors. He did revert me, but I didn't revert him. I didn't revert anybody this time. Please, we had high consensus, above, on *three* versions, looking at the two polls, where highest consensus on the version of 31 May as proposed by Hipocrite, where Hipocrite and Verbal both approved it and I rated it as 8/10. Now we'd need to compare the versions to an additional version, since you did not unprotect. I can assure you that I won't edit war, and there is an agreement between us that would nail that down at User talk:Abd#0rr, a section started on my Talk by Hipocrite. I recommend that you unprotect, immediately, the article, and I'd propose, then, that we -- any one of us can do it -- edit the article to the version of 31 May as proposed by Hipocrite, which has one more change to it that was made by me (that would be manually added.) --Abd (talk) 23:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see, wikipedia user WMC has already acted on my proposal. I hadn't really expected that since I am totally uninvolved with this page's content myself. My intention was simply to solicit opinions from others who are involved (meaning more than just Abd and Hipocrite), hence my query at the end. With such prompt response maybe I should make a few proposals on the global warming pages too while the iron appears to be hot?  :) --GoRight (talk) 03:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm amending the rating poll to show this current version, removing the original protected version as having no support, in spite of solicited opportunity to simply express it with a signature (doesn't that say something about the editor who created that version?) There is no mediation planned to deal with actual content, the request was only over process. I'm not abandoning mediation entirely, maybe the purpose will shift. --Abd (talk) 02:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I apologize, Abd, it was not my intent that this proposal be acted upon unless consensus had been reached here among those editors involved (more than just Abd and Hipocrite) prior to the change. I was only seeking to propose for consideration a version that appeared somewhat neutral relative to the recent edit warring.

I see no reason that the current polling can't continue but I do suggest that you stop removing options even if they have no support. Changing the options in real time while the polling is on-going is probably not a good idea. Adding additional options would be fine, removing anything not so fine.

If the polling or the mediation finds consensus on a different version it can easily be switched back to that before moving forward. --GoRight (talk) 03:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Removing options has only been done when there was no support for them. That's with my poll, which is intended as a running summary of results, and as a tool for comparing versions, because of the matrix, and editors were complaining about the complexity. Can't win, I guess. Basically, I "proposed" all the versions in my poll, I could have just asked for approval for my preferred version, which was simply what we'd have had if Hipocrite had simply stopped edit warring and making provocative edits, or if he'd have simply stopped when requesting page protection. Requesting page protection, then making new drastic changes to the article in a way that he knew and knows quite well would find little or no support, that's gaming the system, blatantly. H got the article his way for about four days as a result, and now he's still got the reversal of changes that had been accepted by consensus. There were only a couple of actually controversial parts.

The goal of the polling I started was to quickly find the most acceptable version without debate. So what did Hipocrite do? Started a completely independent poll that split up the !votes and created more debate. Why? Why couldn't he have just added those versions to the list in the original poll? The questions asked are really the same. So I've been copying !votes from the second poll to the first, so that there is one summary. If I make a mistake, someone please correct it. The original poll, though, was set up as a range poll, so that more sophisticated expression of preference can be made than just Accept/Reject. (In copying votes, I copy an Accept as 10 and a Reject as 0. If someone wants to shift their vote, please do. An explicit vote at the original poll supersedes a vote at the second poll. And because new versions can be added, it's okay to change one's own votes based on new comparisons.

The September versions were removed because the article had changed so massively since then that comparisons were difficult, and no support was maintained for them. The original version 2 was the current version at the time, as protected, and nobody supported that version, not even Hipocrite who edited it to that state.

(It shouldn't matter, in the end, where an editor !votes, consider those precincts. The earlier fancier precinct has a more sophisticated voting machine, but most people tend to vote the extremes anyway. Before we announce a consensus, there would be opportunity to clear up any misunderstandings.

I do think we might maintain some kind of running approval poll of a few versions, so that we have evidence of acceptance of versions by consensus, which would mean that if we run into article protection again, we have a quick go-to point that has been widely accepted.--Abd (talk) 03:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This reply grew to be more long-winded that I had expected, but ...

I believe that problem here, Abd, is that people expect the list of options to remain stable throughout the duration of the !voting. Again, adding new choices is OK but removing choices because they don't have support is not OK. Touching people's !votes in any way or even making the logical transposition you are between Hipocrite's poll and your equivalent versions will likewise be viewed as bad form. I'm not saying you are technically doing anything wrong, just that you are stepping into thin ice territory needlessly, IMHO. This will definitely color the credibility of your results regardless of whether your changes actually affected anything or not. That's just a reality.

So, for example, in your section which gathers the raw votes I would (a) expect to still see V2-4 in there with no !votes under them, and (b) I would not expect to see any votes transcribed by you from Hipocrite's poll into yours. Leave that for the !voter to do for themselves if that is what they wish. You can't make the weighted level of acceptance decision for them in the actual raw voting tallies. While logically what you have done is perhaps the best one could do without their input, it is not like these people are not around to speak for themselves. In short, the actual raw voting tallies should not be touched by anyone but the !voters themselves, at least IMHO, no matter how sensible your mapping might be.

Now, in your comparison matrix I don't have any problem with you only including comparisons between versions that actually have support in the raw tallies as a means of reducing the effort required. So not including V2-4 there is OK with me. Why the difference? Because the latter is a value added tool that does not affect the raw tallies.

Similarly, if you wanted to provide a running tally of the results in a table of some sort that merely summarizes things as they stand at any point in time, that table too could omit V2-4 without a problem. If support eventually showed up in those sections later then they should be added into the summary tally. This is generally how !votes are handled elsewhere on the project.

I, personally, also wouldn't have a problem with you showing combined results from both polls in one table as long as you clearly expressed the methodology used to map from one to the other (i.e. your 10 for acceptable, 0 for not). Why would this be acceptable here and not in the tallies themselves? Because it is a post-processing of the raw data that does NOT affect the clear choices and actions made by individuals as captured in those raw tallies. The raw data should not be changed from what the !voter indicated by their own actions, and this is the basis of the issues that people have been raising here.

Personally, at this point I am not sure the best thing to do with the tallies themselves. Putting them back is just going to look like more fussing with the !votes but leaving them as is also looks like fussing with the !votes regardless of whether anything was effectively changed or not. If I were in your position, personally I would restore all of the tallies to the exact state that the original !voters had put them in by their own actions and support that by including a diff and permanent link back to the original !vote by the original !voter.

Now, if you do provide a combined results table you have to be clear about what you do to handle the case where someone !votes for the same version in both places and their weighted !vote does not agree with your default mapping. For example, someone might choose to pick a given version in Hipocrite's poll as "acceptable" because they are forced to make a binary decision there, but only rate that same version as an 8 instead of a 10 in your poll because they have more flexibility there.

Please accept this commentary in the spirit in which it is intended. You often point out to others that their friends should "warn" them when they need it. I am not "warning" you about anything other than how your actions are being perceived by others and how that perception is likely to work against your overall goals. Do with this observation whatever you think best. --GoRight (talk) 15:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

sections reverted

Proposed explanations

According to Storms (2007), no published theory has been able to meet all the requirements of basic physical principles, while adequately explaining the experimental results he considers established or otherwise worthy of theoretical consideration.[1]

The source:

1. <ref>{{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=173}}</ref>

I assert that Storms is reliable for a statement like this. Is there any contradiction to it in any other reliable source? Besides, it's attributed. Why was this removed?--Abd (talk) 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
I have to agree with this statement I would also like to point out that Julian Schwinger proposed that phonons were able to bridge the atomic to nuclear scale gap and explain how the energy is converted to heat. Official editors of this section should read some of his papers see http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Julian+Schwinger+%22A+Brief+History+of+Mine%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=1mZ_-PL2Zjc I submit that it is possible for phonon interactions to cause an energy spike exceeding that required to cause electron capture events in hydrogen atoms / ions with in natural systems. That conversion only requires 0.782MeV for a proton and a maxim of 3MeV for a deuteron. See "The Two-site Problem" starting on page 24 of Energy-related Problems - 29 RLE Progress Report 145. Even though Professor Peter L. Hagelstein was not invistigating the idea of neutron accumulation at the time it does point out the possibility of creation of low energy, perhaps even cold to ultra cold neutrons. I actually have written an entire paper on the subject and am raising see money to fully test my hypothesis. If some one is willing to read my hypothesis please contact me.

Regsoft (talk) 06:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC) Regsoft

Theory of ⁸Be intermediary, not simple d-d fusion

(this section edited to expand consensus)

Outside of mainstream-accepted explanations , cold fusion researchers have proposed a number of different possible fusion pathways other than deuterium-deuterium fusion, but most of them produce too little energy per resulting helium nucleus to explain the excess heat claims of 25±5 MeV/⁴He.[1] One that predicts this energy has been advanced by Takahashi, that four deuterons condense to make ^8<//sup>Be, which quickly decays to two alpha particles, each with 23.8 MeV.[2][3] --Abd (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The sources:

1. <ref>{{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=180}}</ref>

2. <ref>Takahashi, A., Deuteron cluster fusion and ash, in [http://www.iscmns.org/ ASTI-5], Asti, Italy, 2004, cited in {{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=180}}</ref>

3. <ref>He Jing-tang, ''Nuclear fusion inside condense matters,'' Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96―102</ref>

above edited per suggestion from Enric Naval. Version before edit at [1]--Abd (talk) 21:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

---

What, specifically, is the problem with this? There are a number of theories that have been advanced to explain cold fusion, (besides the null hypothesis of experimental error!) While it can be argued that Storms is fringe, or that He Jing-Tang is fringe (harder, perhaps, I think he's a nuclear physicist), the publishers aren't fringe! these sources are being used to establish notability within the field. If cold fusion is a widely rejected field, i.e., if the general belief is that cold fusion is not a real phenomenon, then it should go without saying that theories to explain it would also not be generally accepted! What is the problem with stating this proposed explanation? It's not being asserted that Be-8 is formed. The decay of Be-8 to two alpha particles, though, isn't controversial, that's what would happen, it's a very unstable isotope, see Beryllium-8. What we say here is not that deuterons fuse to form Be-8, but only that Takahashi has proposed this. And, of course, I assert that because it's cited both an independently published volume on the science, and in a peer-reviewed journal, it's notable. --Abd (talk) 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Why is this theory important? Well, if that kind of fusion could occur, it would explain: the lack of neutron radiation, the low levels of tritium, the conservation of momentum problem, the branching ratio difficulty, the finding of helium correlated with excess heat, the extreme sensitivity of the effect to exact surface conditions, and possibly more. What would this theory predict: alpha radiation. And this is found and confirmed. "Catching" the fusion "in the act" would be extremely difficult, but only one "miracle" is required for this theory: quadruple deuteron fusion. That some effects might exist with multiple deuterons is indicated by the transmutation work of Iwamura et al. The claim that no theories have been advanced is quite misleading. Please remember that Quantum mechanics is inadequate to predict behavior in the nuclear environment when three or more bodies are involved. That requires, I understand, Quantum field theory or Quantum electrodynamics, and Fleischmann's work was intended, not to discover "cold fusion" as an energy source, but to test the limits of quantum mechanics. From our article on Quantum mechanics, which matches my memory of the subject from Feynman: It turns out that analytic solutions of Schrödinger's equation are only available for a small number of model Hamiltonians, of which the quantum harmonic oscillator, the particle in a box, the hydrogen molecular ion and the hydrogen atom are the most important representatives. Even the helium atom, which contains just one more electron than hydrogen, defies all attempts at a fully analytic treatment.

None of this indicates that this actually happens. It only shows that the claims that theory conclusively prohibits cold fusion, or that there is no theory explaining it, are false and easily shown to be so, with reliable source, and only by rejecting reliable source because it's "fringe" can this be blocked, so that the reader remains unaware of it.

We now have in the article, hydrino theory, but not the much more mainstream Be-8 theory. Why? Well, the New York times has covered Blacklight Power, that's why. The Be-8 theory is only covered in peer-reviewed publications (I think I can find more than just the Front. Phys. China article, though that should really be enough), and the independently published, but not mass-market, Storms (World Scientific, 2007). --Abd (talk) 15:17, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

On the ⁸Be thing, I would agree on this wording with two tweaks:

a) replace that "however" with "one of them that would produce enough energy", as the sentence before says "most of them" not "all of them"

b) the start of the paragraph should read something like "Outside of mainstream-accepted explanations , cold fusion researchers have proposed a number of different possible fusion pathways other than deuterium-deuterium fusion,(...)". I think that this is mecessary to address the issues raised by Phil153 about weight [2] (fourth paragraph). That's an introduction that makes clear to readers that this part is describing the POV of the group of CF researchers outside of mainstream that is described in other part of the article, so it would satisfy WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE.

--Enric Naval (talk) 21:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to edit the proposals above to reflect your changes, Enric, since they seem reasonable to me. Thanks. Uh, "explanations"? Okay, there are two. One is actually very reputable, might still be a majority or close: "unexplained anomaly, probably not nuclear in origin." "Experimental error" is the other. The "experimental error," for excess heat, is probably a small minority position now, among those who know the research. From 2004, already one-third of the DoE reviewers were inclined to a nuclear explanation. My guess is that "experimental error" is down below ten or twenty percent of those who look at the research. There are a lot of scientists who long ago decided to stop looking. --Abd (talk) 21:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC) 21:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The 2004 Takahashi paper has been discussed previously on this talk page, and the conclusion at the time was that it does not support the ⁸Be claim. User:JohnAspinall had read the paper and indicated that it does not address the claim of a ⁸Be intermediary that Storms(2007) alleges that it does. Please address these concerns prior to adding material that has been previously considered on this talk page and rejected for cause. --Noren (talk) 00:54, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Can we have another tweak to appease these concerns? Something like adding at the end "Mainstream theory predicts that the fusion of four d nuclei has a much lower probability than the fusion of 3 nuclei, which already has a much lower probability than the fusion of two d nuclei." --Enric Naval (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Got any source for that, Enric? I don't know of any, in fact, and don't know that it's true. It would be true in free space, obviously. "Much lower" would be an understatement! But under conditions of confinement, the relationship would be complex. On the one hand, as you add deuterons to a confined space, the probability of fusion increases. On the other hand, the "space" starts to resist the addition of deuterons, and deuterons will be expelled; in addition, the stress on the chemical bonds holding the space together increases. There may be a peak, a level of maximum fusion rate, and it might be sharp. I.e. fusion of two deuterons might be rare, of three a little more, but not much more, and four high enough to see effects before the increasing rarity of the conditions again reduces fusion probability drastically. I'm not aware of any reliable source showing the claim about lower probability, but if you can find one, of course! I have already addressed the concerns previously expressed below. They were misplaced as applied to this text, which is only about a proposed theory. The mainstream response? Mostly none. You want to say that, I don't think I would object, but making up a mainstream theoretical response is beyond the pale. We could say, "There has been no mainstream response to this proposal." Negatives are a bit tricky because they are clearly synthetic, unless based in a source, but sometimes this kind of thing is done as a compromise, and all it takes is someone to find one mainstream response, and out that goes and in goes the actual response. --Abd (talk) 14:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Hum, Takahashi said in one paper[3] said that he had observed fusions of 3 nuclei happening 10⁴ less times than to 2 nuclei fusion, when conventional physics predict 2³⁰. We can assume that 4 nuclei fusion will be at least as unfrequent in respect to 3 nuclei fusion, so mainstream theory would predict that they would be at least 10³⁰⁺³⁰ = 10⁶⁰ less frequent than 2 nuclei fusions. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:14, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Noren. The reference at that time was to a 2001 paper by Storms hosted by New Energy Times that has been moved to [4] The paper is worth reading. For our purposes:

The insistence that gamma emission must accompany helium production is based on how this fusion branch behaves in a plasma. Because the reaction d + d = 4He has two nuclei producing one nucleus, gamma radiation must occur to conserve momentum. On the other hand, suppose the following reaction occurs in a lattice where the d concentration is very high[119] [120]: d+d+d+d --> ^8Be --> 2 ^4He. Such a reaction would not require gamma emission because 8Be would promptly decompose into two particles, each having 23.8 MeV. Other, similar reactions can be proposed to avoid the need to emit gamma radiation. This suggestion shifts the problem from requiring gamma emission, to accepting that such reactions can actually occur. Evidence for such multibody interaction has been reported by Takahashi et al.[121] based on the energy of tritons emitted when titanium is bombarded by D+.

Notes:

119. Chubb, S.R. and T.A. Chubb. Quantum Mechanics of "Cold and "Not-So-Cold Fusion". in The First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion. 1990. University of Utah Research Park, Salt Lake City, Utah: National Cold Fusion Institute.

120. Takahashi, A., Some Considerations of Multibody Fusion in Metal-Deuterides. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 451.

121. Takahashi, A., et al., Detection of three-body deuteron fusion in titanium deuteride under the stimulation by a deuteron beam. Phys. Lett. A, 1999. 255: p. 89.

The analysis at our Talk page was largely original research, which is, in my opinion, acceptable for our purposes in discussion, though, obviously, not for article text. To cut it short, JohnAspinall criticized the theory based on evidence for it, specifically note 121, being allegedly insufficient. That is not a denial of the fact that the theory has been advanced. Storms only used that paper as evidence for multibody reactions occurring. However, to understand how the multibody theory might work, imagine a box with openings in each side; the palladium lattice is an array of such boxes. One deuteron into the box: very happy, a little heat is released (the heat of formation of palladium deuteride). Another in: it begins to get tight, probably one deuteron is expelled thorough one of the faces into an adjacent box, but this takes time. Another in: tighter, faster expulsion, or the box ruptures. Another in: this can't last long, but it might be tight enough for long enough that the four deuterons realize that "It will be much more comfortable in here if we get together." So they do. Take this rough explanation and do the math on it. Warning: the math is probably too difficult for present-day analytical techniques, at least using classical quantum mechanics. But, for certain, it's beyond me. There is much other work by Takahashi, referring to the hypothesis, in conference papers.

Googling source 120 should ice it. 120 is cited in the Mosier-Boss Naturwissenschaften (2009 96:135–142} paper, Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons, with explicit reference to the multibody hypothesis. Here is what they say:

The multibody reactions proposed by Takahashi (1994) involve deuteria occupying the tetrahedral and octahedral sites in the metal lattice. In the proposed 3D and 4D fusion reactions occurring in the metal deuterides, high-energy α particles are formed that dissociate deuterons in the system to produce neutrons with a continuous spectrum in the 0 to 10 MeV region. These high energy α particles are also expected to produce Bremsstrahlung X-rays. Experimental data that support this mechanism are evidence of recoil carbon and oxygen atoms on the backside of the CR-39 suggestive of 1.25–8 MeV neutrons (see discussion in “Electronic supplementary material”) and Bremsstrahlung radiation that has been observed in the X-ray and γ-ray spectra obtained during Pd–D co-deposition (Szpak et al. 1996).

Mosier-Boss is leaning on the Takahashi hypothesis to explain why she found a low level of energetic neutrons. They are proposed to be secondary products, which is why they occur at such low levels. However, any other mechanism that allows fusion and predominantly results in energetic alpha particles at the 24 MeV level would likewise explain the neutrons. However, I'd expect those other mechanisms to show more evidence of the other pathways, as JohnAspinall noted. He apparently didn't consider that lattice confinement with less than four deuterons might be insufficient to produce significant fusion. Good thing, too. Otherwise, load palladium with deuterium, disturb it to create a shock wave in the deuterium causing local compression, and bang! there goes the lab and maybe the whole city block. --Abd (talk) 12:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The 8Be theory, and other notable proposed explanations, should definitely be included, IMO. If the section gets too long, it can be made into a new article and briefly summarized here. In a brief summary, many explanations can be mentioned: a couple of them in a sentence or two each, perhaps, plus some more perhaps listed as one word or phrase each (to show people what they can find out about at the other article). ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:06, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Specific edit requests

I suggest that as soon as this page is off of protection, the discussion of exactly one patent, the 4body fusion explanation and the "According to Storms (2007), no published theory" section be removed from this article, the tags I added be removed and the intro returned to the old version. This is the status-quo ante. Storms is not a reliable source (this is settled, above), patents are not reliable sources, and the two papers on 4body fusion are far from reliable sources, regardless of the fact that they were reprinted by Krivit. While, of course, I actually engaged in discussion regarding the intro, I was happy to you know, finish that discussion before reverting back the changes I wanted over and over again like some others may have done.

I further suggest that we construct an article RFC, submit that RFC, and NOT PESTER THE RESPONDERS TO THE RFC, such that we can see what people who have not previously edited this article think about the entire mess. By NOT PESTERING, I mean no responding to the individuals who have not previously edited this article, and no responding to the RFC ourselves. Thoughts? Hipocrite (talk) 03:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

There is only one editor here consistently using reversion as an editing technique, and he signed above. No basis has been asserted for the removal of the section from Storms. The claim that Storms is not reliable source is preposterous; Storms is certainly notable, from the paper Mathsci was so kind as to provide to me and to Enric Naval, and possibly others. If we are going to have an RfC, the questions must be agreed upon, otherwise it is essentially editor harassment, because one RfC is created which asks misleading questions, then another one is needed to ask different questions, and sometimes even more is needed. So we need to work on an agreement on an RfC first. It can easily be done. I tried to ask the most important and simplest version above (which version was better) rather than a non-comparative, absolute question (is a source reliable), because the latter actually asks for an abstract judgment absent specific situation, and reliability of sources varies with what is being sourced.

There can be some merit to the suggestion of not responding to the RfC ourselves; however, the editors who actually know this field are the editors of this article, for the most part. So a middle path is needed. By the way, nobody is harassed because someone responds to a comment, because there is no obligation to respond to comments. But I do understand that it can feel that way.

For RfC to work, the evidence must be laid out coherently and simply, and likewise the arguments and the questions. All of them, presented neutrally. User RfC process can be a guide, likewise ArbComm process.

I don't think that Hipocrite gets that the Takahashi paper wasn't reprinted by Krivit. Krivit was merely an editor of the book, the Low energy nuclear reactions sourcebook. It was published by the American Chemical Society in cooperation with Oxford University Press. Definitely not a fringe publisher. It is the publisher which determines what is reliable source, not the author. So we had three sources on the Be-8 theory: secondary sources being Storms (World Scientific and the Chinese paper, effectively published by Springer-Verlag, and primary source being the 2008 Takahashi paper, notable for being included in the ACS Sourcebook. And against this, it appears that Hipocrite wants to assert passing mention in old secondary or tertiary sources as being adequate on the topic. It's obvious what's going on.

There are also issues here that might not be resolvable at this level, but we will cross that bridge if we come to it. Most important is [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science#Prominence|]] and Advocacy. Generally, we judge prominence by preponderance of publication in reliable sources, and, in a science articles, by publication in peer-reviewed or other academic sources. The problem is that by this standard, the predominant view in recent years would be that cold fusion is real. Negative papers on cold fusion have not outnumbered positive ones since 1989; in 1990, they were in balance, and every year after that, positive papers outnumbered negative ones. I'm not proposing that we present cold fusion as scientific fact, don't worry. It's clearly quite controversial. But my point is that we should be very careful about supporting one side of the controversy over the other, and, in fact, once we open up, we will see that there are intense controversies within the field.

I oppose any more individually-initiated RfCs unless we have consensus on holding one, and, please be aware: if an RfC isn't propoerly formed, it will inhibit consensus, and if we can't find consensus, the matter will escalate until some final decision is made. --Abd (talk) 04:29, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

So to summarize, you have no comment on my proposed return to the status quo, and you oppose seeking outside advice through RFC. Hipocrite (talk) 16:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No, not a summary. Here is my brief statement: We should negotiate specific changes here, from the article as it exists;given how much dispute there is from a few editors, we should work on the smallest and simplest changes first. We should request those changes if we can find sufficient consensus to convince an admin to edit the article. If we are going to use RfC, because we can't find consensus, we should design the RfC to ensure that all reasonable evidence is shown, that all arguments still standing after discussion are included -- I'd say that any argument should ideally be seconded to be included, i.e., not just one editor's position, but I also think that solitary arguments can be included if someone really insists -- and the RfC itself should then present all this coherently and concisely (if longer arguments or evidence is needed, this can be done through references or collapse boxes.) In other words, we want to resolve the issue, having insured that all reasonable arguments and evidence are easily accessible to any new, neutral editor. And, then, if further process is needed, there is a clear basis, already compiled. Probably it won't be necessary if we do our work well. POV-pushers usually give up at this point, if they haven't before, because they see what will happen if the matter escalates. It's more work, perhaps, than BRD, and certainly than simply revert warring, but, in the end, the results will stick. --Abd (talk) 17:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

So, to summarize, you're finally going to propose changes to the article on the talk page instead of just making them over and over again? And your thoughts on returning the article to the stable status quo? Hipocrite (talk) 17:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, above you noticed what could be taken as a leading question and you objected to it with the standard "When did you stop beating your wife" remark; I then looked down and saw many leading questions from you, like the one above. I'm going to do what I've been doing all along, improving the article through seeking consensus by various means, sometimes by discussion before editing(which you don't like) and sometimes through actual edits that incorporate improvements as a suggestion when I think it possible they will be accepted, even if not discussed in advance (which you also don't like). A little while ago, almost all these direct, non-discussed edits were accepted. That changed when you arrived.. In the end, it's not about you and not about me, it's about the community. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I support reverting the article to a stable version and the discussing these changes individually on the talk page. Verbal chat 17:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That's okay, it's better than the intro Hipocrite mangled just before protection, having exhausted 3RR and it wouldn't be considered a revert, I assume. We can still do the rest, then. I'm not attached to any changes I made yesterday. I propose we each pick a version to revert to, because then we can compare and say, "This is best," or "That is best." If we can find consensus on a version, it will be trivial to find an admin to make the change. Every disagreeing editor is likely to make it more difficult, and we should ideally aim for unanimity, but, here, I don't know how possible that is. We'll see. Maybe it will be the first time that we all agree on something. After all, just about any recent version would be better than the way it was left. This could be fun. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I wouldn't have said this before, but now I will. Hipocrite rushed to make the changes because he knew the protection was coming, because he requested it. I wasn't edit warring, I didn't make any reverts, rather I added some material that had indeed been there before, so it could, by some, technically, be called a single revert, but it had been discussed, most of it. The one edit warring was Hipocrite, hitting 3RR just before changing the lead, and he played it well here, except for one thing: his move was blatant, because after I wrote the above, I thought, what if this was deliberate? So I looked at his contribs, and there it was. Someone can ping causa sui|causa sui, I don't know if he realizes what happened. And this is also noticeboard material, if anyone has time. I don't right now. "Skeptical" editors, be careful of this editor, his goal is to disrupt this article, that's what he started doing a month ago, and, indeed, from what I'd seen before, his goal is to disrupt Wikipedia over the Fringe science arbitration. I can, and will, establish this with evidence in the appropriate place, I'm through discussing it here, and his Talk page is already prohibited to me. --Abd (talk) 17:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Your assumptions of bad faith are galling. "This shouldn't be controversial." reverted back in the highly controversial highly controversial Storms-as-arbitor-of-theory sectionm, and your "based on talk discussion" revered back in the highly controversial 4-body fusion claims. If you were able to actually discuss article changes on a talk page without drowning everyone in reams of text, you'd know you didn't have consensus for either of those changes. But, you know, keep right on threatening to take me here, take me there, noticeboard this, report me to that, whatever. It's exactly what you were told to stop doing in your last ArbCom fiasco, and it's exactly what you'll be told to stop doing in your next ArbCom fiasco. Hipocrite (talk) 18:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No threats, I'm done here. A threat is an attempt to alter editor behavior through intimidation. I now care nothing about what Hipocrite does here, and I'm not asking him to change. The comment above was for the information of editors of this article, who should know what was done, because I think it likely that the article will be unprotected shortly. The poll below is still a good idea, we simply include the present version and we could even make it a standing poll allowing us to monitor the progress of the article toward full consensus, which is my goal. I'll do what I do, beyond this, and it really has almost nothing to do with this article any more, it is not a content dispute. That's why it would be inappropriate to discuss further here. If someone thinks I've done something wrong, my Talk page is thataway --> --Abd (talk) 18:23, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd has inserted a comment above out of sequence. But I answer it here:

Abd is really giveing a biased interpretation of the events. If you check the revision log of the Cold Fusio article for June 1 for example, you find multiple non-minor edits by Abd. And I emphasize here and now, *this was done without ANY concensus to do so*. properly, all those edits should be deleted, and were. And then Abd has the gall to clain the reverter was violating Wiki policy. Abd, YOU are the problem here, with your POV-pushing. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:18, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The last stable version I recall was before the then current crop of editors decided that the article needed some mainstream viewpoint to get NPOV. That's when they emailed me and asked for my input. I did that on Sept. 17, 2008. Unfortunately, that's when all this garbage started, because the then current and today's current crop of editors were pro-CF biased, and they didn't like my input. I recommend we go back to then, with the understanding that we are going to be adding mainstream view, and start editing there. We also need to ignore all the trivial pursuit-like junk that had dominated the Talk page since that time. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Pick a revision, Kirk. Make it your best shot, but do try to consider what other editors might accept, you might be more likely to get it. Or, for efficiency, pick the best revision, in your view, and then also pick a compromise that is at least better than the status quo. Maybe at the end we would compare those two! Presumably either would be better than the present. Or you can pick the present version as one choice. I propose using Range voting for polling (not to make the decision, just to judge how it's going): each editor can rate each proposed revision on a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing the worst and 10 the best, and 0 would be presumed (i.e., you can vote just for your favorite. You can also vote Yes or No to each version, which I'd interpret for my own use as 10 and 0, respectively. (There is debate among range voting advocates as to whether or not to count abstentions as 0 or to exclude them from the average, but because we aren't necessarily making an actual decision by this, it's purely advisory at first, it really doesn't matter, and we can present results both ways for final review. This could be very quick, actually, we should probably not debate it, but just propose revisions and rate other ones that have already been proposed, then, hopefully, later, come back and rate any overlooked, and maybe change the !votes. I'm not proposing a revision yet, I don't have time to research it. --Abd (talk) 18:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone else here understand how poorly Abd reads??? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Poll to find quick rough consensus for change under protection

Comments on process

[this next comment preceded the poll in the original poll subsection. Then the poll followed, and then some attempt to correct errors that got thoroughly confused (on my part), then the comment from Woonpton below. --Abd (talk) 14:18, 5 June 2009 (UTC)]

Above, I suggest we poll editors as to a reversion to return to pending unprotection of the article. I have requested unprotection of the article based on a review of the history, see discussion there Unprotection was not granted. This poll, however, was supported as a good move. I'm going to suggest two revisions, one preferred by me and one rejected. Beyond a brief statement from the one proposing a revision as to why it's proposed, which is optional, I'm suggesting we do not debate this in this subsection, because the goal here is to quickly find some reasonable compromise so that we can fix the article, which has been protected into a state with a mangled lead. Please !vote on these revisions, and suggest new ones if you prefer some other revision to what is already listed. Please !vote using a number, 0 to 10, with 0 indicating unacceptable, and 10 indicating the preferred version. You may vote 0 to 10 for more than one, in which case it will be taken as rejection of all of the 0s and full acceptance of all the 10s. These numbers will not, in themselves, determine the outcome, but may be used by any of us to quickly seek the most acceptable compromise. You may change your !votes at any time, it's not necessary to strike out the old one, since there should be no discussion of specific !votes, the whole point is to avoid debate. --Abd (talk)

I call shenanigans. Please do not remove this comment. The version I chose as the better of the three and !voted for, as you can see by the diff of my !vote, was the version of 19:54 September 17, 2008 My !vote has been moved to the version of 15:48 September 18, 2008. I have struck my !vote for the moment, but after people have an opportunity to see what was done here, I will be removing my !votes entirely. I will not participate in a poll where the options keep changing and people move !votes around; this is not okay. Woonpton (talk) 03:48, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I apologize, Woonpton. The link in the place where you voted was to the Sept 18 version, accidentally, not the version suggested by Shanahan. My move was entirely intended to represent your intention, so I don't know why you struck the vote. There was an error made, Woonpton, maybe two. Let's get it clear:

:19:54 September 17, 2008, as you specified it as being the version you preferred, is actually the revision of 15:48, 18 September 2008, which was the Pcarbonn edited version of Shanahan's proposal of September 17, as you can see. If you look at the version now shown for Shanahan's version, and you can look at the diffs in the matrix below to compare any two versions, I think you will see that v4 is substantially better than v3, Shanahan is a COI editor and simply wrote in his POV, and wasn't experienced at avoiding POV text. It's quite hard to compare the 1&2 versions with the 3&4, because there have accumulated such massive changes.

Please, AGF. I have no intention here other than to gauge editorial consensus, and I apparently made a mistake in setting up the reference to the Shanahan version and linked it to the next reversion, by Pcarbonn. I think your !vote is in the correct place now, and if you want to restore the comment you struck and I then deleted, that's absolutely fine with me. If I'm wrong about the place, move your vote to the right place. I want your !vote to represent your intention, and nothing else. I will point out, however, that with Range voting, to not vote the full range is to cast a weak vote, which is your total privilege. It's appropriate if your opinion is weak and you wish to defer to the opinions of other editors. Otherwise, I'd recommend that you !vote a 10 for your favorite and a 0 for the worst, and what you do wtih the rest is up to you. You can vote 10 for the favorite and 0 for all the rest, or whatever. There are two ways to analyze range votes: one is simple sum-of-votes, and the other is average vote. With sum-of-votes, abstaining on voting for a version is the same as voting 0 for it. With average voting, an abstention doesn't affect the average. My plan is to look at both figures.

(ec) And this is even less okay, especially the edit summary "Woonpton seems to have accepted the move of the !vote." after my strong objection to the move had already been registered. And this is likewise not okay, removing my struck comment and leaving the vote intact. You do not have permission to (1)move my votes, (2) remove my comments or my !votes. (3) edit my comments. Please cease and desist.Woonpton (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

(after reading intervening edits) You're simply wrong about the links. If you'll look at the link that was there when I voted, the link I voted for, it is the version of 19:54 September 17, 2008, just as I have said, not the version of the next day that you moved it to. Anyone looking can see that this is the case. Do not take any more action on my edits, please. I will do with my edits what I think is appropriate at the time I decide to do that; you may not. Thank you. Woonpton (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Woonpton, please AGF, again. When I wrote the "Woonpton seems to have accepted the move," that was when you had struck the text of the vote, which implied to me that you did accept the place of the vote, so I deleted that struck text, because in the poll section, there is no back and forth, no debating with comments, and, at that point, nobody had responded to your comment, so no reason to strike rather than delete. The goal here is consensus, Woonpton, I apologise for any offense. It can all be fixed if it's wrong, this is a wiki. The point is for the poll to show a simple result, and what's important is the most recent !vote in it, not how we got there. This is a little different from discussion process. Any of my edits touching your vote, you could have reverted, no problem, not edit warring. I almost put "revert if I'm wrong" in the edit summary but thought, no, that is implicit.

By the time I read the above request, I'd already moved Woonpton's vote back to where it's been said it should be. I'm not going to touch it again! This is a poll where !votes can be changed (by the editor who made them). Because, for a time, I believed that I'd made a mistake (it was a misunderstanding of how version numbers are used in certain contexts), I was totally confused about which version was which. The two versions are contiguous, so Pcarbonn's version can be referred to by the number of Shanahan's version with a paradoxical (counterintuitive to me) oldid reference, and I missed it. Won't do that again! --Abd (talk) 05:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Woonpton ended up removing the !votes entirely. (Quick summary: v1 and v2 -- both recent versions -- were rated 0, v3 was rated 7, there was no rating on v4.) That's up to that editor, but it's a bit mysterious to me why a transient problem with some confusion over version numbers and intention resulted in total removal, but editors in the poll subsection are completely free to change their !votes, including removing them , because !voting in that section is not debate, please delete rather than strike, or just change the rating number if you change your mind, and not only do you not have to explain, it's preferable that you don't. The status of the poll at any given time will show the sense of our opinions at that time, and, while there may be some trickiness to interpreting the poll, I think that after a couple of days, it will be obvious enough to ask an admin to make the reversion to prior version. This is much simpler, I expect, than trying to debate specific changes at this time. (If we had polling software, typically a user might change a vote at any time, and it would be the vote at close that mattered, not the intervening history.) If it were up to me, from universal practice in Parliamentary procedure, there would be no comments with !votes, they would be pure Yes or No votes, which has here, for polling purposes, been made more flexible by allowing intermediate ratings.

I added the matrix of diffs so that editors can quickly compare any pair of versions. It's quite sensible to give the same rating to versions, even if your opinion of them is different, perhaps doing what's called "bullet voting," i.e., yes or 10 for your favorite, and 0 for all the rest, but we will find consensus more quickly (usually) if there is more flexibility, either by fully accepting more than one version, or by giving an intermediate rating that is better than the worst and worse than the best. In real practice with Approval voting (all 0 or 10), there are usually rounds until some proposal has a majority. We'll have to feel this one out as we see how it goes, but one result is already obvious, both from the poll and from the prior discussion: nobody has been willing to acknowledge that they favor the article as it is. --Abd (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

[moved from being a response to the poll in the poll subsection to here. This subsection has also been moved up to precede the poll itself to give it prominence --Abd (talk) 14:11, 5 June 2009 (UTC)]

This is a totally ineffective way to progress on the article. Abd is not the person to lead discussions here. Mathsci (talk) 06:54, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Verbal chat 07:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Expected. Mathsci and Verbal, both of you have consistently pushed an anti-fringe agenda here of exactly the kind that got ScienceApologist banned. You do not appear to be here to improve the article, only to complain about an editor. The article is under protection due to edit warring from an editor with whom both of you have aligned in discussion. Nobody else was trying to deal with the protection, and I think you like it, because the article then says what you want, something that the community has rejected, the claim and bald statement that cold fusion is pseudoscience or pathological science. Definitely, there is old source that makes that claim, and it's part of the social history of cold fusion, but it's also clear that there is no peer-reviewed reliable scientific secondary source that claims this in recent years, and there is plenty of reliable source of all kinds, from this period, to show the opposite. Stop it, or properly seek editorial consensus. Don't like the poll above? You are not obligated to participate, nobody is. But please stop trying to disrupt efforts to determine consensus here. The poll above is nonbinding, and is not an RfC. It will be used to make a quick request for a change to a prior version, and the number one proposal was to a version that Hipocrite edited after proposing page protection. I'd allow the tags, to, but since he mangled the introduction, first, I pointed to the best available version that didn't toss all the prior work that he had, at least provisionally, accepted. All this does is to undo the gaming of protection. Please help or go away. --Abd (talk) 14:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, stop moving other people's on topic comments, you just confused the hell out of me. Also, don't forget to assume good faith. You can't just discount opinions because you term them "anti-fringe" - which I'm not, but it's hardly an insult. Verbal chat 14:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It's time for you to drop the stick and back away, again, Abd. Your proposed methodology is terribly complicated, and moving peoples votes is in poor form. I'll show you how we do things at the bottom of the page. Hipocrite (talk) 14:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, please try to avoid speaking for me. I accept no version that includes 4 body fusion or the Storms quote, currently. That I self reverted a misclick does not mean I accept something. Hipocrite (talk) 14:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• Agree that this poll is ineffective Abd is acting as if he owns this poll, moving others' comments and even their votes about. This is no way to run a poll, the results would be meaningless. --Noren (talk) 14:34, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• Agree that this poll should be closed and following the recent arbcom decision made against Abd's editing style he needs to stop filling this page with kilobytes of irrelevant material which is stifling discussion and often off topic. Verbal chat 14:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• Moot. Poll cannot be closed except by neutral admin, I'll stand with that. Noren, this poll is quite integrable with the alternate poll started below by Hipocrite. There was an error made by me in the revision numbers while I was working on the matrix, and, in the confusion it appeared to me that Woonpton had been looking at one version when !voting for it, when the permanent link had led the editor to another. I'd actually started out with the right permanent links, so that Woonpton's !vote was indeed in the right place, and it ended up back there, but after that Woonpton removed the !vote, reason not really explained. As to editing style, if I'm verbose, it's rejected. And if I'm succinct -- the poll itself here is ultra-succinct -- it's rejected. Instead, I'll let ArbComm speak for itself. I wasn't sanctioned for verbosity, and a host of editors, including Hipocrite and Verbal, tried their best to get me topic banned. It didn't fly. This whole process to find consensus on a version was occasioned by Hipocrite edit warring, requesting article protection, and then making a highly controversial edit that nobody is supporting, including Hipocrite, and you want to complain about my behavior? Your POV is showing, Noren. This poll is not an RfC. As to ownership, I asked, with this poll, a very specific question, and expect to be able to manage the process to get specific answers; no repression of comment has taken place, only organization of comment into sections, and I'll again, stand with that. I'm not going to reorganize Hipocrite's poll or try to remove or close it, even though it's the fox polling the chickens. Refactoring of Talk content for clarity is allowed. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• WP:NOTDEMOCRACY. Wikipedia doesn't work by making complicated polls that editors find themselves uncomfortable with, polls that have the explicit goal of "avoid[ing] debate"[5][6], polls that are WP:OWNed by one person who keeps moving stuff around, moving "!votes" from one poll to other, removing options that have no support when only one day or two have passed (I'm sorry, Abd, but "your poll" is a total mess). Wikipedia works by WP:CONSENSUS, which includes discussing arguments based in sources and policies. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
• Oh come on guys, whine whine whine. This is a little survey that you don't have to participate in if you don't want to. It serves as a nice, concise way to show people's opinions on the different versions under discussion, and for that it is helpful. But apparently it pains you too much to appreciate that -- instead it's an opportunity to attack - in rather creative ways i might add - and for what? Well I'm a little better informed about where a few people stand, and a little more annoyed and tired at all the pointless vitriol I've had to read in this comment section. I don't understand why such simple things must be made so difficult. Kevin Baas^talk 15:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Poll, reserved section

Please do not use for general comments or debate, only to propose additional revisions (please follow form already used) or to rate proposals. Comments or debate, beyond brief specifics about a version, should be in reserved comment subsection above.

Note that an alternate poll was started by Hipocrite below, at Talk:Cold_fusion#A_poll_to_determine_a_working_starting_point_for_this_article. This alternate poll does not include versions 1 or 2. Editors may !vote in either poll, or both, we can sort it out when analyzing !votes. Votes here are in the form of 0 - 10, with 0 indicating "worst" and 10 indicating "best." One may vote 0 or 10 or any other number for more than one version. In comparing this poll with the other poll, "Acceptable" will be interpreted as 10 and "unacceptable" as 0.

Editors may change their !votes here, as alternatives shift, what was the best version at one time may become the worst, by comparison.

v1. [7] proposed because it was an edit where Hipocrite accepted Coppertwig's edit, by self-reverting back to it after reverting, but before he changed the lead. --Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• 10. Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Krellkraver (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Kevin Baas^talk 14:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

v5. [8] this version was proposed by Hipocrite, and is the prior version as protected, 21 May, 2009. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• 5. Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Hipocrite, as reported by Abd (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 10. Verbal, as reported by Abd (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 10. Krellkraver, as reported by Abd (talk) 03:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 7. Kevin Baas^talk 15:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

v6. [9] version of 31 May also proposed by Hipocrite, plus Hipocrite added a single-word change, "most scientists" to "most physicists," per the source. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• 8. Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Hipocrite, as reported by Abd (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 10. Verbal, as reported by Abd (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 10. Krellkraver, as reported by Abd (talk) 03:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC) from other poll.
• 8. Kevin Baas^talk 15:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

v7. 15:19 version of 14 May 2009. This is the current version as protected by William M. Connolley, restored at suggestion of GoRight, except that WMC added a POV tag to it. --Abd (talk) 01:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

• 0. Abd (talk) 01:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC) (votes are relative. this version is much better than what it replaced).
• 5. Krellkraver (talk) 17:52, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
• 5. Kevin Baas^talk 15:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

deprecated proposals, withdrawn by Abd

v2. [10] version as protected, proposed for comparison. --Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Clearly not NPOV, containing numerous opinionated statements without attribution or sourcing. Krellkraver (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC) [add !vote here} v3. [11] proposed by Kirk shanahan with the version of Sept. 17, 2008 is very much better than we have today, but certainly is not a finished work. --Abd (talk) 18:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Abd (talk) 04:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC) [add !vote here} v4. [12] above version involved substantial edits by Kirk shanahan. Pcarbonn accepted part and removed part, particularly unsourced POV. --Abd (talk) 01:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Abd (talk) 04:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC) [add !vote here}

Matrix for comparison of versions

Please fix any diff errors found here.

Extended content

This matrix is often innacurate at this point in time. Individuals who would like a corrected dif should feel free to approach me either here or on my talk page and I can provide them. Hipocrite (talk) 16:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC) I think maybe Hipocrite is correct, I'm checking it. Correction of errors is appreciated, but if there is an error in the top row, it may have been replicated down (this would have been part of the confusion over Woonpton's !vote). I'll fix it ASAP --Abd (talk) 16:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC) I believe all errors have been fixed, if not, please fix them! --Abd (talk) 17:33, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

version/version diffs	v1[13]	v5[14]	v6[15]	v7[16]
v1[17] 2009-06-01 02:54	*	[18]	[19]	[20]
v5[21] 2009-05-21 19:01	[22]	*	[23]	[24]
v6[25] 2009-05-31 16:51	[26]	[27]	*	[28]
v7[29] 2009-05-14 15:19	[30]	[31]	[32]	*

matrix edit signatures/notes: Abd (talk) 04:05, 5 June 2009 (UTC) created table.
Abd (talk) 16:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC) added v.5 and v.6.
Abd (talk) 17:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC) fixed errors and removed v. 3 and v. 4 for simplicity, no maintained support.
Abd (talk) 01:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC) removed no-support v2. added v7, current version (excepting POV tag) as restored from May 14

Branching Ratio

In this series of edits in May, Abd changed the branching ratio section. I have reverted to the earlier version and then redrafted. I think the earlier version was unclear, but some of Abd's changes were inaccurate - for example, "Neutrons and tritium (³H) were not being detected" and "Neutrons and tritium (³H) were not being detected at levels commensurate with claimed heat" mean different things. Recognising that the article is controversial, any thoughts / suggestions / comments on my redraft? EdChem (talk) 09:52, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

It's now misleading: detection of energetic neutrons (Mosier-Boss) and tritium, at very low levels, has been reported in cold fusion experiments, but the wording you've changed to gives the impression that they have not. Yes, they mean different things; Abd's version seems to me to represent the situation more accurately. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 10:31, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

If I remember well, when that experiment was announced there were a couple experts saying that it looked good, but that they wanted to see the results quantified (see below). After the 20th anniversary passed, there were some scientific blogs reporting that the experiment had detected very few triplets of neutrons, and that they had "averaged" the gamma rays. No confirmations, analysis or replications from RS yet. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:10, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

"Johan Frenje at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an expert at interpreting CR-39 tracks produced in conventional high-temperature fusion reactions, says the team's interpretation of what produced the tracks is valid. 'I must say that the data and their analysis seem to suggest that energetic neutrons have been produced,' he says, although he would like to see the results confirmed quantitatively."New Scientist

"But that does not mean the results indicate cold fusion, said Paul Padley, a physicist at Rice University who reviewed Mosier-Boss' published work. (...) 'Nobody in the physics community would believe a discovery without such a quantitative analysis'," Houston Chronicle

--Enric Naval (talk) 18:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Good quotes. Let's put those in the article to illustrate the controversy.

The Mosier-Boss abstract says that neutrons were previously detected, but that theirs is the first detection of energetic neutrons. (I'm not sure if I can get access to the full text.)

Whether or not the neutron detections have been replicated, they've been commented on in published sources. We need to avoid directly contradicting the POV that neutrons have been detected. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 20:49, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd's version referring to neutrons at levels inconsistent with observed heat was unreferenced and appeared to me to alter the meaning of the text, hence my revert. I have no problem with modifying the section to reflect information in other reliable poublished sources. EdChem (talk) 21:27, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I added the two sources and also the ACS press release. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I've thought of an alternative wording: [33] I inserted "the expected" to give "but without the expected neutron or tritium production".

The first footnoted source for this sentence (Schaffer in Scientific American) says "But they could not be detected; if they were present at all, it was only at an extremely low level." It was not claiming that there was no production of tritium; only that it had not been detected, while explicitly mentioned the possibility of low-level production. My wording is attempting to achieve the following: avoid stating or implying that there was or that there wasn't low-level neutron or tritium production. Perhaps someone can think of a better wording which achieves that goal. Neutron and tritium production are mentioned in more detail elsewhere in the article; here I'm just trying to avoid directly contradicting any sources.

This solves the objection I raised above. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 21:56, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Good edit, Enric. I changed "he" to "they". ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:18, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Why is there even an entry on 'branching ratio' in the article. It falls under the 'miracles' required to get 'cold fusion' which is well explained in books and literature. It just clutters up the CF article. As I suggested (way) above, move all this stuff to a subarticle or delete it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Everything in the article is well explained in books and literature. And, in fact, anything that isn't should be promptly removed per WP:OR. One of the primary goals of wikipedia is to have everything in it explained in books and literature. We are an encyclopedia - our goal is to be a faithful copy of what is out there, not a source of original thought. And you asked why there is an entry on branching ratio in the article - well it's precisely as you describe: because it "falls under the 'miracles' required to get 'cold fusion'". Because it's interesting and important. And that, again, is a goal of encyclopedias: to touch on everything interesting and important about a subject. I believe that criteria is even mentioned in our guidelines. Kevin Baas^talk 14:54, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

And of course, we don't have room for or want 'everything' in the article, do we? The question you have to ask is what it brings to the wiki reader. Does it clarify the current situation? What does a long explanation add to the article vs. a short mention and maybe a side article? Etc. I have already said I feel the whole section on 'miracles' can be reduced to a paragraph total without impacting the article. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I somewhat agree; we want the article to be complete , one way or another, and one way to do that is for it to be detailed where it is immediately relevant, and well-linked to all other related details. In this "way" we could describe branching ratio stuff because it is part of the primary objections by mainstream physicists, to the idea that CF could happen in these experiments. Hypotheses attempting to answer those objections might be better placed in a linked article, partly because there are so many of them, and partly because they merely try to fill in the details to the broad explanation that "fusion did it", causing the excess-heat observations. V (talk) 13:00, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Something Awkward

One of the early paragraphs in the article is this:

There have been few mainstream reviews of the field since 1990. In 1989, the majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached similar conclusions.

It contains an inconsistency, since the first sentence specifies "since 1990" and the next sentence specifies 1989, which obviously is not since 1990. Perhaps this?

In 1989, the majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. There have been few mainstream reviews of the field since 1990. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached conclusions similar to the first.

Maybe the tail of that last sentence could be modified: ", but with a smaller majority." Does the American Chemical Society meeting of last year count as a "mainstream review of the field"? What about that recent symposium hosted by Robert Duncan (only a couple weeks ago)? V (talk) 19:43, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

No to both. Both were set up by cold fusion promoters and had no negative presentations to counterbalance the massive proCF POV. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:12, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, Kirk, but that's only two "No" answers to three suggestions. What of the first ("Maybe the tail ... could be modified")? V (talk) 21:40, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

V, a modification along the lines of your suggestion to reflect the reduced consensus on the 2004 DOE panel seems fair. Krellkraver (talk) 02:40, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. If no objection appears in the next few days, then I'll replace the paragraph as indicated above, and append that little extra detail to it. V (talk) 13:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:39, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm concerned about the "majority of a review panel" bit. In reading the Conclusions and Recommendations section of the report there are statements such as "the panel concludes", "the panel recommends" and the like, but no evidence of separate panel-majority and panel-minority findings (comparable to say, a Supreme Court decision). Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe Abd found some data regarding a breakdown of the votes. I'll probably have to ask him on his personal talk page for the link. (note the agreements above indicate I'm not the only one who saw some of that information.) V (talk) 13:43, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, Abd has responded to my request, but not with links per se. I quote: "Look at the report that we cite for 2004" and (for 1989) "Taubes, p. 422" --likely referring to links we already have. Read Abd's full account at the bottom of his talk page. User_talk:Abd V (talk) 20:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've implemented the change. I might mention that the main reason for specifying "a smaller majority" is simply that the first part connects a majority to a particular statement, moreso than it connects the majority to all the conclusions of the 1989 review. So, because it was true that a smaller majority was associated with that particular conclusion in 2004.... V (talk) 13:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Fleischmann1990

I restored Abd's ban-defying edit assuming it would fix the problem with this ref not linking properly, but it doesn't. There are several broken links to Fleischmann1990 and Fleischmann 1990. Could somebody who knows how please fix this, thanks. Verbal chat 14:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Apparently this can be fixed by replacing broken references with <ref name="FleischmannPons_1990" />. I have to go now so I can't do this until tonight at the earliest. Verbal chat 14:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Fix'ed. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Lecture by Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan, the scientist who was asked by 60 Minutes to look at a cold fusion lab, gave a lecture at the Missouri Energy Summit on April 23 about the scientific method and cold fusion. A video of the lecture is here. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It's a 100 MB file, I downloaded it and watched it, the Duncan lecture -- which is quite good -- starts in the middle. There might be another way to access just the Duncan lecture, but I couldn't find it. Duncan is really emphasizing the scientific method, which is about an ongoing process and which does not involve fixed conclusions. Ever. He reports one incident after the CBS special where a physicist called him up and was very angry, and his report shows the problem. When he asked the physicist to sit down (metaphorically, I suppose) and go over the evidence, that was angrily rejected with a comment that summed it up: something like "We already did this (i.e., in 1989-90) and you charlatans won't give up." The physicist obviously was so angry he forgot who he was talking to. Duncan isn't a charlatan, he's a reputable physicist, and simply looked at the evidence (new evidence! plus, probably, a revisitation of the old evidence, which was never properly analyzed) and came up with conclusions that were already creeping up toward majority opinion in 2004. Our resident skeptics managed, for a time, to keep the fact out of the article that half the 2004 review panel considered the evidence for excess heat "compelling." One-third thought similarly (perhaps not so strongly) about evidence for nuclear reactions. This isn't "fringe science," at least not any more. It's "emerging science," breaking through, supported by a huge amount of research of increasing clarity. If we simply follow reliable source guidelines, and apply the concept of undue weight in a neutral fashion, as recommended, we'll be fine. But if we cleave to either extreme, we'll have an unbalanced article. Right now, it's unbalanced, in my opinion, toward the skeptical side, but I reverted the re-addition of the POV tag because I believe we are working on and can resolve those issues, and since the imbalance is simply a matter of delay in reporting a shift in opinion, it's not as serious as would be, say, imbalance in the other direction, treating cold fusion as if it were a proven and accepted phenomenon. It's not. It's emerging science, with controversy remaining, lots of it, and we can and should report the nature of that controversy as shown in secondary sources like Simon. And if this makes the "pseudo-skeptics" -- the ones who confuse their own negative certainty with skepticism (certainty is the opposite of skepticism) -- look bad, let them generate reliable source to defend themselves. I don't think it's there. Good example of a genuine skeptic: Hoffman (1995). --Abd (talk) 15:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The University of Missouri link above has apparently been edited to remove Dr. Duncan's lecture. Dr. Duncan's lecture is now available on Youtube in three parts, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Krellkraver (talk) 06:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

The U. Missouri link is back, as cited by Coppertwig, above, and no explanation has been given, to my knowledge, of why it was removed, but it's easy to guess. The YouTube links appear to be up, still, and may be more convenient, in the place of downloading that huge file that is both speeches. --Abd (talk) 14:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The collapsebox doesn't render well on my phone, and that text appears to be discussing important sources. 208.54.4.50 (talk) 13:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

"excess heat observations" section

I restored some changes that were lost due to the reversion to an earlier version made by WMC during the protection. That section was the center of a short edit war:

• 13:31, 19 May 2009 Hipocrite "facts changed to allegations, observations. Mos says one space" [34]
• 13:42, 19 May 2009 Abd "Well, the observations are not only not challenged in the literature, they are confirmed massively. The open question is interpretation; the apparent excess energy could be artifact." [35]
• 13:42, 19 May 2009 Abd "add qualifiers to acknowledge that excess heat is controversial, is it real, or is it only apparent?" [36]
• 13:57, 19 May 2009 Hipocrite "excess heat is considered an experimental artifact. Replication failures do not make the fact that broken experiments break repeatedly meaningful - WP:SYN" [37]

Please feel free to review the change and update as necessary if it had problems that I didn't notice. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on that last one (by Hipocrite). I followed the links of the reference given for that quote. This is where I ended up: "Szpak, Stanislaw; Mosier-Boss, Pamela A.; Miles, Melvin H.; Fleischmann, Martin (2004), "Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by co-deposition.", Thermochimica Acta 410: 101, doi:10.1016/S0040-6031(03)00401-5"

I find it a bit difficult to believe that such an anti-CF quote could have been pulled from that particular article (I don't have access to the full text so cannot be certain). If I'm right, though, then either Hipocrite goofed in providing a reference, or some reference-scrambling has happened (I wouldn't be surprised, with all the editing going on) --or, worst-case-scenario, Hipocrite has posted a personal opinion and pretended to provide a reference for it (not good!). V (talk) 05:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

You mean Szpak 2004? It can be read at http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSthermalbeh.pdf.

Also, the first ref in that paragraf. Fleischmann 1990 ({{harvnb|Fleischmann et al.|1990|Ref=Fleischmann1990}}). is broken and I can't find any 1990 paper in the bibliography, can someone point out the paper for this ref so we can restore the lost reference?. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Hum, Szpak 2004 appears to be sourcing only the sentence "Similar observations [of heat after death] have been reported by others as well." Can you clarify what sentence in that diff is the "anti-CF quote" so we can check its refs? --Enric Naval (talk) 21:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Enric, I'm talking about this anti-CF statement: "excess heat is considered an experimental artifact. Replication failures do not make the fact that broken experiments break repeatedly meaningful" ---I'm saying that I doubt that statement can be found in the reference I traced/specifed. V (talk) 12:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

That's his edit summary, that's not part of the article. Could you point at specific sentences in the article? --Enric Naval (talk) 04:17, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Pardon me, I thought this section was about reversions to part of the article. I therefore retract any perceived complaint about Hipocrite expressing an opinion. Instead I can express a question, regarding heat production in the compressed-gas experiments (deuterium pressurized into metal): With two different ways of getting gas into metal, both types of experiment appearing to yield unexpected heat, and the "signal" is "clearer" and easier to reproduce in the pressurization method --no electric-resistance heat, no oxygen present for recombination; there is only some equivalent to "heat of solution" if the gas source is previously pressurized/cooled-- so why should the electrolysis experiments be considered uniformly flawed?

I know I have to wait for hipocrite's temporary ban to end, before he can reply to that. I doubt he has one. (I doubt Kirk Shanahan has an answer, either!) V (talk) 13:05, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

How to get patent story NPOV?

U.S. Patents 6,248,221, 6,764,561, and several others were in fact issued on cold fusion processes. Yet the text, as it stands after those who would edit differently have been disposed of by administrative action, says that no cold fusion patents have been issued by the USPTO. Why does this article quote a minor patent office functionary contradicting the standing administrative record of her own agency? Could anything be further from NPOV? When will the persecution of those who want this article to tell both sides of the story end? Why are so many editors willing to betray foundational issues such as NPOV in pursuit of an absolutist stance on the question of whether the phenomena are real? Have the editors here made a full financial disclosure of the extent to which their and their peers' funding depends on the continued funding of traditional fusion research? Splargo (talk) 06:03, 17 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

I don't see it as a POV issue - at the moment it describes the situation with the US patents, and while you may argue that the description is incorrect, this doesn't then presuppose that this is a good or a bad thing. But be that as it may, it seems to me that neither of the two patents you refer to contradict the claims in the article: if I'm reading it correctly, the first describes a device for the testing of cold fusion, rather than for the production of energy, while the second describes the creation of an alloy that can be used in cold fusion experiments. Both therefore meet the utility requirements, as they don't claim to produce electricity in and of themselves. - Bilby (talk) 08:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It's like the Yellow article saying that the assistant commissioner of trademarks once said that the trademark office doesn't issue registrations of blue trademarks. Not only is it repeating a lie, in this case it's doing so in a very biased manner because some otherwise decent editor(s) with dog(s) in the fight to various extents started throwing hissyfits about accurately conveying the state of scientific uncertainty on the subject of this article. Since when are reports on the off-hand comments of individual government employees more reliable sources than the actual government documents which the comments are about? Splargo (talk) 11:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

There are more than 250 patents at present in Dr. Britz's bibliography. Do the editors here want to be known for their familiarity with the peer-reviewed literature on the subject, or for their oratorical skill at causing and defending the bans and blacklists that characterize the administrative interventions here? Splargo (talk) 11:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

Dr Britz's list is of patent applications, covers multiple countries, and is not limited to patents for cold fusion, but includes inventions which are used in cold fusion experimentation. The discussion here is in regard to US patents granted for cold fusion itself, and the sources supporting the reluctance of the USPTO to grant applications are pretty good. I would have thought that this is not an issue in terms of cold fusion's viability - the issue is that the patent office is unwilling to accept that cold fusion works, which doesn't speak to whether or not it does function. Indeed, I note online a degree of anger from cold fusion researchers that the patents aren't being granted. - Bilby (talk) 11:57, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Will you grant that there is a difference between a patent official being quoted in a newspaper as saying that the office is unwilling to grant such patents, and the office actually being so unwilling? I would have no objection to merely stating a reluctance on the part of an individual official, if that official's name, title, or both are included. Splargo (talk) 12:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

While I'm happy in principle, there's a slight issue with the source: the Washington Post only ascribes to the (then) deputy commissioner the reason for not granting patents.

"The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has refused to grant a patent on any invention claiming cold fusion. According to Esther Kepplinger, the deputy commissioner of patents, this is for the same reason it wouldn't give one for a perpetual motion machine: It doesn't work."

Thus I'm a tad uncomfortable ascribing to Kepplinger the additional claim that the patents are refused. It does give us:

"The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejects any patent claiming cold fusion. Esther Kepplinger, who was the deputy commissioner of patents in 2004, argued that this was a result of the same concern that prevented patents being granted for perpetual motion machines: they do not work."

which is better, I think, in that it doesn't ascribe the "they don't work" claim to the patent office. I suppose you could date the Washington Post claim - "As of 2004, the ..." or something similar, but that's getting a tad unwieldy, especially for something that wasn't that long ago; or perhaps "traditionally refused" rather than just "refused" would help (if it isn't too weaselly). - Bilby (talk) 13:07, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I made a change based in your suggestion. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The reliable source criteria consider officials quoted in The Washington Post as less reliable sources about patents than the government-issued patents themselves. Splargo (talk) 19:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

"U.S. Patents 6,248,221, 6,764,561, and several others were in fact issued on cold fusion processes." These are patents on cold-fusion-related processes, not the combination of nuclei to form larger nuclei. The fact they have been issued does not indicate that the patent office is convinced they describe how to produce cold fusion. (Incidentally, I have no research funding and no financial stake in these issues except as a taxpayer.) Olorinish (talk) 20:45, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Even if what you write were pertinent or true or both, it would not change the fact that the article contains a newspaper source of an individual official contradicting the state of her agency's work product. That lie is not only in contravention of the reliable source criteria, it serves no other purpose than to advance the biased position of those who are convinced that the scientific question is settled instead of still open. If there were any secondary sources anywhere near to supporting such a resolution of the field, they would have been added a long time ago, but there can be none, because the academic literature, like the DOE panels, has remained split for two decades now. Splargo (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

So far I've yet to see any evidence that the US patent office has approved a patent on cold fusion. The claim isn't that patents related to cold fusion are denied, just that patents of cold fusion processes that produce energy are denied. That said, until there is a reliable source showing that a patent for cold fusion was granted, that claimed to be cold fusion, (as per the article) we're stuck with the basic principle of wikipedia - verifiability, not truth. The claim that the patent office refused patents on cold fusion until 2004 is verifiable. Right now, a claim showing otherwise is not. - Bilby (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I have a hard time believing that first sentence. Splargo (talk) 17:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

I'd be fine w/just striking any mention of patents out of the article. I don't think it's very pertinent. There are probably TONS of patents for hot fusion reactors but not a single mention in the article - or any of the literature for that matter, either. Point is, this is a scientific article, not an engineering article, and certainly not a legal one. (not to say it's a crime) I don't think we need to mention anything at all about patents. Kevin Baas^talk 20:52, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this article would be far superior with no mention of any patents than the blatantly false and biased swill which it now contains, but our goal is to be comprehensive, is it not? What's wrong with good, old-fashioned balance? Splargo (talk) 21:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

Wow, hyperbole much? I don't even understand what you're saying! You seem to be contradicting yourself - do you want mention of patents removed or do you want balance? which one is it? if i couldn't understand due to sarcasm, keep in mind that sarcasm doesn't transfer well in writing. And also I believe someone just spoke strongly against using sarcasm here, when it wasn't even being used - and i believe that person was you, just now. So I hope you can see how I find this all very confusing. Kevin Baas^talk 14:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I understand your opinion now. Sorry, the hyperbole was really fogging up your message for me. Your opinion is that as it stands, the content in question is too one-sided and as such the article would be better without it, but the article could be made even better if the content was remedied to present both sides in due proportion. Now my argument is that if we did present both sides in due proportion we'd get exactly what i'm suggesting: nothing. So some guy made a very opinionated comment that really has no authoritative weight - he's not the patent arbitrator (there is none, and for good reason) - not the first time that's happened and certainly not the last. i don't see how it's really any more significant than any other squabble. As to the patents, well, they're not patents about methods of creating cold fusion, so it's really doesn't rise to that level of significance. patents on setups to test and all that, while certainly relevant, are by no means surprising. (or at least not for the reasons we are concerned w/ - that someone thinks they could make money off of it, i find surprising.) it really doesn't say anything important or interesting, IMO. Neither side seems to have anything truly interesting to say. Kevin Baas^talk 16:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

And on a side note i'm working on a perpetual motion machine that uses wikipedia debates as a fuel source... (j/k) Kevin Baas^talk 20:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it too much to ask that people try to focus on improving the article instead of making sarcastic off-topic comments? Splargo (talk) 21:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

Yes it is. I don't see how that was sarcastic, or to what the sarcasm would be directed at. But I do know that it was a joke. The purpose of jokes is to add levity. And it is considered good practice to joke or otherwise add levity once in a while to allay tensions in a group discussion. If you've ever been to a couple of business meetings you may have noticed this. I'm sure if one studied communication academically they'd come across it. However, when someone responds with an acerbic comment such as you did, it very much ruins it - per chance even makes things more tendentious as they were before. If this was a business meeting, that comment alone would have made everyone there very uncomfortable, and essentially turned it into a failure. Kevin Baas^talk 14:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Can you really not see how your statement could be seen as ridiculing the non-absolutist position, those of us who believe that it is the natural and proper course that debate should continue until the scientific questions are closed? What part of the definition of sarcasm do you think your statement was not? Splargo (talk) 17:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

I am one of "[those] who believe that it is the natural and proper course that debate should continue until the scientific questions are closed". And no, I do not see how my statement could be construed that. Would i, I would certainly not write it, for i am not a fan of ridiculing myself. As to "What part of the definition of sarcasm do you think your statement was not?" - ALL parts. wikipedia defines sarcasm as "Sarcasm is the use of sharp, cutting remarks or language intended to mock, wound, or subject to contempt or ridicule." were my remarks sharp? no? cutting? no. intended to mock? no. wound? no. subject to contempt or ridicule? no. Kevin Baas^talk 18:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

People saying that the USPTO accepts cold fusion patents should read the multiple sources for that statement, including a chapter from the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure the 2107.01 General Principles Governing Utility Rejections (R-5) - 2100 Patentability under "II. WHOLLY INOPERATIVE INVENTIONS; "INCREDIBLE" UTILITY" which mentions both cold fusion and the Swartz case, and 2164.07 Relationship of Enablement Requirement to Utility Requirement of 35 U.S.C. 101 - 2100 Patentability under "Examiner Has Initial Burden To Show That One of Ordinary Skill in the Art Would Reasonably Doubt the Asserted Utility" which cites the Swartz case. I also cited three books, two that deal with patents in general and one that deals with cold fusion in general, Simon's book.

Also notice that the article already says that researchers can get cold fusion patents by obfuscating references to cold fusion. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The fact remains that several such patents have in fact been issued by the USPTO. I am willing to compromise by removing the word "any" in your new first sentence. Is that acceptable? Splargo (talk) 17:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

Yes, it is. Bilby has already tweaked it well. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:53, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Talking about patents is fine, but it shouldn't be used to imply that cold fusion is real. See also: patents on perpetual motion machines. Titanium Dragon (talk) 20:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Britz bibliography

Why is Dr. Britz's bibliography not cited or listed as an external link? Is there any reason it does not qualify as the best possible external link per WP:EL criteria? Splargo (talk) 17:13, 19 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

I agree, and have added it. At one time the article did have a link to Dieter Britz's bibliography. Cardamon (talk) 22:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Decision

Polls are boring and inconclusive, especially when people start arguing over which is valid. The solution which will please no-one is: User:Hipocrite and User:Abd are both banned from editing cold fusion, and its talk page, for an arbitrary time of approximately one month, during which time we'll see if a stable version developes. Complain on my talk page if you wish to. Oh, and I'll unprotect William M. Connolley (talk) 19:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Harsh in some respects, but lets see where it takes us. Some decisive action was needed, and you have provided it. I hope that the remaining editors will show some restraint with the revert tool, and adhere to WP:BRD - perhaps without the Bold bit first? This is only a suggestion. Verbal chat 19:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[Deleted. Do this again and I block you William M. Connolley (talk) 20:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)] --Abd (talk) 19:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I would ask that the ban remains in force on the talk page, otherwise it would seem pointless. Verbal chat 20:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Such discussion should probably be moved to WMCs talk page, in deference to the ban. Verbal chat 20:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, finally, thank you very much. Let's see if I can put some stuff into the article without being drowned in wikilawyering and POV defending from both "sides". (also, I also ask that the talk page ban is kept) --Enric Naval (talk) 20:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah. I'll edit the article now. I haven't had the patience to keep up with the megabytes and megabytes of argumentation, pontification and such, so if I break any of the rules please slap me. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion in this ANI thread. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

• At the risk of sounding like a wikilawyer, is there some sort of "authority" (like WP:PSCI) or precedent for unilateral topic bans like this? II | (t - c) 07:18, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Since this is not related to editing the article itself, I have replied in User_talk:ImperfectlyInformed#topic_banning_by_a_single_admin. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:27, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Update: the ban on H is conditionally lifted. Details [38] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:58, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Contents proximity

Why is the "Excess heat observations" section four sections away from "Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat"? Shouldn't the latter be a subsection of the former, or at least adjacent? Splargo (talk) 19:09, 20 June 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

No, that's supposed to be under "nuclear products for excess heat" because that's where we are talking about the excess having a nuclear origin. And, yeah, it needs to be reorganized a bit. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Ref Consolidation

The references section has grown out of control, and it's nearly impossible to manage. I'm trying to consolidate the references - as of yet, I've only taken nearly sequential or nearly identical refs and compressed them (losing page numbers and the like). As a longer-term project, I'd like to discuss splitting refs - specifically, we have refs like 5, which reads "Browne 1989,Close 1992, Huizenga 1993,Taubes 1993" This could instead be split into 4 different refs, which would mean the body text would say "something"[5][6][7][8], with 5 being Browne, 6 being Close and so on. The advantage to this is that we would shrink the references count substantially (there's real overlap). The disadvantage is that the text would have a lot more references, and often the same number over and over. I find the second way easier to follow. Others? Hipocrite (talk) 18:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

PS: If you prefer the old refs to the versions I have changed, please revert me - I won't touch them again. Hipocrite (talk) 18:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Apologies. I would rather they were separated out, and lower quality refs could be dropped or commented for over-referenced statements, such as Hipocrite suggests. Verbal chat 18:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

As soon as you don't remove the page numbers from book refs.... it's not fun trying to find a fact buried in a 400 page book without a page number. If I use the same book for page 212 and for page 438 then they should be kept as separate refs somehow. For the DOE paragraph here we could use this technique that I saw at one article:

Blah blah blah blah blah.^{[7](page 115)} Blah blah.^{[7](page 212)} Blah blah blah blah blah.^{[7](page 438)[8]}

As a compromise between cleanliness and usability. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:21, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Can do. Hipocrite (talk) 12:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

How about pp. rather than page? Less intrusive and more common in real life. Verbal chat 12:45, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Trivia question: Why is "pp" such a common abbreviation when "pg" is also common, and makes more sense? V (talk) 13:08, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I googled pp, pg, and page, and found a page saying that "p." is for a single page, while "pp." is for multiple pages. "pg." would then just be a clearer alternative to "p.". (and i suppose its plural equivalent would be "pgs."?) Kevin Baas^talk 15:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I've always seen "p." and "pp." in English. In Spanish it's always "pg." and "pgs.".

I assumed Wikipedia's MOS would specify usage for that, but to my surprise there doesn't seem to be any guidance for style in reference sections. At any rate, in the style manuals I'm familiar with, the standard usage is "p." and "pp." Woonpton (talk) 16:25, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the change. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:18, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It's from the Latin paginae (pagina (n.) The surface of a leaf or of a flattened thallus.), p. singular, pp. plural. So know we know! Verbal chat 16:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Logically, therefore, "pg" should be used in the article, since most of the page references will be to a single page (even if it is only the first of several). That is, "pg 108" vs "pp 108-112" --if the overall idea is to save some space, then "pg" it must be. V (talk) 17:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Or p. or pp., as appropriate. I'd prefer this, but it's not a big deal.Verbal chat 17:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I basically agree; not a big deal (esp. if goal is to abbreviate stuff; "p" is better than "pg"). On another hand, the above research reveals that "p" and "pp" are Latin, and this is not the Latin-language version of Wikipedia, heh! (just kidding around. I vote we use "p" exclusively, and never worry about how many pages a particular reference may involve; just specify the first of the bunch. That is, "p 108" and never "pp 108-112" ) V (talk) 13:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

"p" and "pp" are pretty much standard, as is defining the range of pages being used. Given that the citation templates take care of this, (as per LeadSongDog) I don't see why we should use just "p". It isn't significantly more difficult to use the standard approach, and there's no pressing reason to do otherwise. - Bilby (talk) 13:39, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The cite and citation templates all generate the form: William Shakespeare, Compleate Workes, pp. 1012–13, 1015 which complies with WP:MOS.LeadSongDog come howl 18:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I used the {{rp}} template, as suggest in my talk page. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:54, 27 June 2009 (UTC)