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Abortion

Attention, ALL: Please place abortion-article/discussion metadata in this section. Examples follow (create subsections as needed). See my special page User:Objectivist/Abortion Debate for arguments about the topic. Thank you! V (talk) 08:44, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

You were former involved in a discussion in Talk:Abortion#More reliable references so, if you're still interested about the outcome of that discussion, I ask you to express your opinion in Talk:Abortion#Assessing the current agreement status--Nutriveg (talk) 04:41, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Completely new abortion proposal and mediation

In light of the seemingly endless disputes over their respective titles, a neutral mediator has crafted a proposal to rename the two major abortion articles (pro-life/anti-abortion movement, and pro-choice/abortion rights movement) to completely new names. The idea, which is located here, is currently open for opinions. As you have been a contributor in the past to at least one of the articles, your thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

The hope is that, if a consensus can be reached on the article titles, the energy that has been spent debating the titles of the articles here and here can be better spent giving both articles some much needed improvement to their content. Please take some time to read the proposal and weigh in on the matter. Even if your opinion is simple indifference, that opinion would be valuable to have posted.

To avoid concerns that this notice might violate WP:CANVASS, this posting is being made to every non-anon editor who has edited either page (or either page's respective talk page) since 1 July 2010, irrespective of possible previous participation at the mediation page. HuskyHuskie (talk) 22:15, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Chillin

Don't let the heat get under your collar at the mediation page. He who keeps calm gets a more sympathetic reading. Binksternet (talk) 22:21, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

There's a big difference between anger and despite (as in "despise"). V (talk) 00:34, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Ya know, long belief-system posts on the talk pages of people who disagree with you rarely changes their mind. I think such posts are pointless, and they can diminish one's observed objectivity. According to Lazarus Long, "Never try to teach a pig to sing—it wastes your time and annoys the pig." A thought for today. :P Binksternet (talk) 17:20, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Consider it an experiment. If someone claims Statement A is a fact (e.g. "Overpopulation is a myth."), but someone else can prove it to be false (e.g. "The history of Easter Island proves that humans are not immune to either overpopulation or the consequences thereof."), then exactly why should it still be claimed that Statement A is a fact? MORE, why should anyone else pay any attention whatsoever to someone who still claims Statement A is a fact? So, the experiment, in the long term, is to see if Wikipedia can eventually stop the worthless edits made by people who have no idea what they are actually talking about. OR, despite the low probability, perhaps the pig will get the education needed to start to sing.... V (talk) 04:50, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

It's a fine experiment, but I have seen the results elsewhere, so I can guess the outcome. Good thing you have the energy! Binksternet (talk) 13:36, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Mediation

Your comments at the pro-life/pro-choice mediation were highly uncivil and I have reverted them. NYyankees51 (talk) 19:58, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Tsk, tsk. To quote Mark Twain, "It ain't what you don't know that hurts so much as what you do know that ain't so." That's why it is possible to prove to certain people that they are misusing Wikipedia to pollute this encyclopedia with nonsense. They do not deserve much in the way of civility, since they are doing a disservice here. V (talk) 07:52, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Hello, Objectivist. You have new messages at NYyankees51's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

18:55, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

20:26, 23 July 2011 (UTC) 14:30, 25 July 2011 (UTC) 16:59, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Opposition to the legalisation of abortion". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by May 12, 2011.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 01:56, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Abortion RFAR

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Abortion and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Requests for Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, Steven Zhang ^{The clock is ticking....} 03:35, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Request for mediation rejected

The request for formal mediation concerning Opposition to the legalisation of abortion, to which you were listed as a party, has been declined. To read an explanation by the Mediation Committee for the rejection of this request, see the mediation request page, which will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time. Please direct questions relating to this request to the Chairman of the Committee, or to the mailing list. For more information on forms of dispute resolution, other than formal mediation, that are available, see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.

For the Mediation Committee, AGK [•] 21:33, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
(Delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.)

RFAR on Abortion

An arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion. Evidence that you wish the Arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence sub-page, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion/Evidence. Please add your evidence by August 26, 2011, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can contribute to the case workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, - Penwhale | ^{dance in the air and follow his steps} 05:14, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion closed

An arbitration case regarding all articles related to the subject of Abortion has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

• All articles related to the subject of Abortion:

1. shall be semi-protected until November 28, 2014;
2. shall not be moved absent a demonstrable community consensus;
3. are authorized to be placed on Standard discretionary sanctions;

In addition:

1. Editors are reminded to remain neutral while editing;
2. Structured discussion is to take place on names of articles currently located at Opposition to the legalization of abortion and Support for the legalization of abortion, with a binding vote taken one month after the opening of the discussion;
3. User:Orangemarlin is instructed to contact the Arbitration Committee before returning to edit affected articles;
4. User:Michael C Price, User:Anythingyouwant, User:Haymaker, User:Geremia, User:DMSBel are all indefinitely topic-banned; User:Michael C Price and User:Haymaker may appeal their topic bans in one year;
5. User:Gandydancer and User:NYyankees51 are reminded to maintain tones appropriate for collaboration in a sensitive topic area.

For the Arbitration Committee,
- Penwhale | ^{dance in the air and follow his steps} 04:16, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Your new user subpage

Hello, Objectivist. You have new messages at User talk:Objectivist/Abortion Debate.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Cold fusion

Talk:Cold fusion is a useful link. And any other interesting links that I want to keep handy will be inserted here.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960109007877 --Regarding a replication of a pressurized-deuterium-gas experiment

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900008108_1990008108.pdf --Possibly one of the earliest pressurized-deuterium-gas experiments

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/TM-107167.pdf --an electrolysis CF experiment with positive results

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/IPP-Palladium-Fralick.pdf --NASA apparently is in favor of Cold Fusion

http://www.springerlink.com/content/9522x473v80352w9/fulltext.pdf --a secondary-source article mentioning some of the pressurized-gas experiments

Original text of this Section now begins:

Its true that physicist take issue with cold fusion over a lack of theory or first principles. As a chemist I have no issue with a lack of theory. Chemists work almost exclusively with empirically derived "trends". From my perspective physicists first principles don't hold much promise for advancing chemistry. This is exemplified by the utter lack of progressed derived from computational chemistry, something that was expected to hold great promise 10-15 years ago. That neither here nor there. Since chemist work empirically sorting through others results is an important part of our game. We consider researchers reputation, institution, and journal when present with extraordinary claims. In early CF research many of the advocates were of questionable repute, like John Bockris who was a frauds not only in CF but other aspects of his research. Then reputable individuals published "negative" results in reputable journals. This is publishing of "negative" results is extremely rarer for chemistry. Generally we only report positive results, neglecting to spend time on our failed ideas and attempts. The criticism direct at CF ended its relationship with main stream science. Now CF mostly exists in places like "infinite energy" which no serious scientist would take seriously, from their perspective its a glorified blog or zine. I'm not saying that CF will never see be brought to fruition but WP has a responsibility to present the mainstream as mainstream and fringe as fringe.--OMCV (talk) 00:46, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

The cold-fusion hypothesis published in "Infinite Energy" is nevertheless PUBLISHED. Wikipedia requires verifyable sources of the data that is put in its articles. It is easily verifyable that that hypothesis has been published, therefore it should an acceptable reference for the cold fusion article. Certainly, even the magazine has on one of its first pages some paragraphs of fine print that basically say something like this: "(1) If we think some notion is being presented rationally, we likely will consider it publishable; and (2) The reader should take everything here with a grain of salt." Nevertheless, a Hypothesis is a thing that doesn't have to do anything more than "be plausible". The place where it is published should not matter at all (and such places may be limited, if many major publications have editors that refuse to look at anything about cold fusion). In this particular case, the author sent the thing to the organization-that-publishes-the-magazine (not knowing that that the organization was so small that that was also the magazine editors), just to see what opinions the organization might have about it. It was quite a surprise that it was accepted for publication. Perhaps it would have passed inspection/dissection at other publications, but the author never even thought about sending it to them. (I ought to know; I'm the author.)V (talk) 19:07, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

To begin with self promotion is frowned upon on WP. I'm not one to enforce rules but I will point it out when people seem confused. These two edits, [1] and [2], are pretty clear cases of self promotion. Further more "where" something is published matters a great deal. WP has identified the mainstream (especially in science) as NPOV, fringe ideas are to be described through the perspective of the mainstream according to WP:Fringe. A journal such as "Infinite Energy" is most definitely fringe. You are right we should describe your article in the context I've described as long as its significant. What does significance entail? Being heavily cited by other is the academic community or public media at large. As a foil lets say someone writes a article about The Tempest for a intra-college journal, should they try to get it cited on the page dealing with Shakespeare? Lastly please read WP:Verify more closely.--OMCV (talk) 19:52, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

This is from the Verify page: "Tiny-minority views and fringe theories need not be included, except in articles devoted to them." Since cold fusion outside of muon catalysis is being pursued by a minority and that group is considered by many (including, apparently, various Wikipedia editors) to be a "fringe", it obviously follows that the hypothesis qualifies as being an appropriate reference for the cold-fusion article. Also, you proved yourself to be one of those anti-CF editors (read: biased and not-NPOV) when you wrote: "insignifcant reference in a field with many many potential sources" without proving the statement. Remember, a main reason CF is not accepted is because of the lack of an acceptable hypothesis. Note that "acceptable" and "accepted" are two different things. Something that is acceptable can never become accepted if nobody ever reads it! The fact that the hypothesis was published means that the editors, and whatever reviewers they called upon, thought it was acceptable; if they hadn't accepted it, it would not have been published. (I sent them something else on a different topic, and they said "it should not be published", so now you know they have SOME standards. :) Finally, "self-promotion" involves promoting SELF, not an Idea. Where, in adding a reference to an Idea, does it automatically follow that I'm promoting myself? Does this mean Thomas Edison would be prevented from describing the phongraph, in a Wikipedia article? How can you want accurate descriptions of things in WP articles while keeping persons who know the most about those things from writing those descriptions? So, here are the two biggest theoretical objections to CF in the main article:

Nuclear reactions would occur at low temperatures if the nucleii could be forced close enough together. The average density of deuterium atoms that can be obtained in palladium is vastly insufficient for fusion to occur according to known mechanisms. The average distance is approximately 0.17 nanometers, which is too far apart to allow a significant rate of fusion through quantum mechanical tunneling. In fact, this distance is farther than the separation of nucleii in D2 gas molecules, which do not exhibit fusion.

There is no known mechanism that would release fusion energy as heat instead of radiation within the relatively small metal lattice.[96] The direct conversion of fusion energy into heat is not possible because of energy and momentum conservation and the laws of special relativity.

One way to answer the first begins by studying just how hydrogen exists inside of palladium. The hypothesis talks about "metallic hydrogen" as a hypothesized substance that is widely expected to be able to exist. Well, if hydrogen can exist as a metal, why can't it exist as an "alloying agent"? I've read that when hydrogen soaks into palladium that process is itself somewhat exothermic. The two elements have practically the same electronegativity, so a chemical reaction can't explain it. But if the hydrogen is changing state from gas to metal, alloying with the palladium, that might. The result, either for metallic hydrogen or for hydrogen-as-alloy, is that the atoms have voluntarily given away their sole electrons to the "conduction band" of the metal, and have thereby become bare nuclei. Since they are surrounded by conduction-band electrons, none of which is actually in orbit around those nuclei, it follows that any thermal motion of the nuclei could randomly set them on a collision course that would not be interrupted by an electron shell. In muon-catalyzed fusion, a muon is able to shield the two protons inside two deuterons from repelling each other, until the Strong Force can begin. In the conduction band, loose electrons can randomly pass between two deuterons, having the same effect. The biggest difference between the two is that the muon orbits one of the deuterons and actively helps the two deuterons get together, while here fusion could only happen if the deuterons are on a nearly perfect collision course; the electrons are merely preventing repulsion. The tiny size of bare nuclei logically leads to a requirement that the base metal be "fully loaded" with alloying deuterium, to maximize the collision possibilities --and the CF effect is frequently failed to be observed when the deuterium load is inadequate.

One way to answer the second is to note that one consequence of muon catalyzed fusion is, fairly often, the muon shoots away from the reaction site with a considerable amount of energy. To better appreciate that, note that because a muon is 206 times as massive as an electron, it orbits 206 times closer and the force of electrostatic attraction is 206*206 times the attaction between proton and electron in an ordinary hydrogen atom. That attraction is doubled during fusion because two protons are present --but the muon can often somehow acquire enough energy for it and its mass to escape that attraction. Well, in the metal's conduction band we have Quantum Mechanics portraying electrons as "cloudy", and many of them can be spending small parts of their time between two fusing deuterons. Electrons and muons behave practically identically when interacting with other particles, so any process that can give energy to a muon can also give energy to an electron. And any electron that shoots away from the site of a fusion, in the conduction band, can be immediately replaced by any of many many others, since all are attracted by the protons in the fusing deuterons (two at a time, even). The net effect is that the energy of fusion can be almost entirely passed to the loose electrons of the conduction band, and they can move in many directions to balance momentum. There would be no gamma ray, and the reaction can take the form of D+D->He4, meaning no neutron is released. More than 15Mev of released energy, by that particular reaction, would mean fewer total reactions to explain the observed heat. And there wouldn't be an alpha particle to detect, since at the end the He4 nucleus would just hold on to the last two electrons that were attracted from the conduction band, and put them in orbit. Nobody talks about "metallic helium"!

What are your objections to that hypothesis (and where in it is any self-promotion)? 216.54.28.10 (talk) 19:34, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations on your fine theory and good luck promoting it. If an assertion/material is your own then promoting it is conventionally considered self-promotion, your right the language could be more exacting. Perhaps they could call it self's-assertion-promotion. An effort to change vernacular convention would go well with your efforts to name CF differently then the programing language named after CF. I won't bother citing policy to you about self-promotion, it doesn't matter that much to me. If you push your luck someone else will cite policy for you.

As far as citations concerning cold fusion you might want to stop by Jed Rothwell's page called LENR-CANR.org to take a look at the size of the pro-CF literature. There is a lot. I'm sorry I didn't offer proof for this volume of literature (most of which include theory) in my other note. As I stated earlier I think you need to consider your papers significance at this moment. Perhaps one day your theory will be considered a serious and insightful piece of work but that day has not yet come.

I also add that alloying two elements involves forming a multi-centered chemical bond called metallic bonds (regardless of electronegativity differences). You might also be interested to read about palladium hydrides; terminal, non-classical, and interstitial. I don't know much about nuclear physics so I can't help with that. Have a good one.--OMCV (talk) 01:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Cold Fusion

I'd like to express the opinion that transmutation does not necessarily involve fusion, and therefore any discussion of it in the Cold Fusion article should be kept to a bare minimum. Certain transmutations are widely known and accepted (e.g. carbon-14 becomes nitrogen-14, potassium-40 becomes either argon-40 or calcium-40, uranium-238 spits out an alpha particle and becomes thorium-234). Other transmutations of a huge variety are acceptable but rare (and are caused by interactions with cosmic rays or ray-showers that happen to penetrate to the bottom of the atmosphere, or caused by an occasional naturally occurring loose neutron, or caused by an occasionally absorbed solar neutrino). I've read that today's instruments are so sensitive that in various top-of-the-line laboratories, the researchers have to obtain steel from ships that were sunk before the end of World War2, because all the steel made since is too radioactive and would interfere with the measurements they want to make. So how many of those claims of transmutation-detection are simply the result of modern instruments discovering a cosmic ray or equivalent event has messed with some of the experimental hardware? One final point is that in MOST atoms, the nucleus is buried under layers of electron shells, that keep nuclei from getting anywhere near each other at ordinary temperatures, and makes classical transmutations like turning base metal into gold practically impossible by any ordinary means short of a particle accelerator. The biggest exception is hydrogen, which only has one electron. That's why transmutation of hydrogen to helium (otherwise called "fusion") is a much more likely thing; under any ordinary conditions you might care to specify, it is far more possible for a hydrogen to lose its lone electron, and have its nucleus exposed for interactions, than it is for any other element to lose its multiplicity of electrons, and have its nucleus exposed for interactions. V (talk) 05:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I can tell from you posts that yout are very interested in science, but have not gone that far into science education. It is a lot of work, especially if you are going as far as a Ph.D. A Ph.D. is well described as an apprenticeship in research. If you want to do original work and make meaningful contributions, that is the way to go. However, you are kidding yourself if you think you can pop on your thinking cap and come up with great stuff without doing a huge amount of hard work.

The worst misconception you have is that the electron shells are the main obstacle to nuclear reactions. That is very mistaken. The electron clouds are the obstacle to chemical reactions. It is the repulsion of the nuclei themselves that prevents most fusion reactions. The nuclei are tiny in comparison to their electron clouds. They must be very close before the strong nuclear foce comes into play and makes them start attracting. Electrical repulsions go as the square of the distance. The repulsions between nuclei are nothing at the electron cloud distance in comparison to what they are just before the strong nuclear force takes over.

Nobody is contending that all nuclear transmutations are fusion. ~Paul V. Keller 15:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Paul, you are either only paying partial attention to what I wrote, or you are reading stuff into what I wrote, that isn't there. It is completely true that under ordinary conditions, two nuclei cannot approach anywhere near each other, because ordinarily they are inside atoms and the electron shells of those atoms have to be breached first --which breaching hardly ever happens under ordinary conditions. Sure, AFTER at least one is freed from its shell, it might approach another nucleus and then be repulsed by having the same type of electric charge, but that is a different thing than what I wrote about --I wrote about the FIRST step of any transumation that involves more than one nucleus. (And if you care to point out anything else I wrote that you think is an error, I'll be happy to either accept it, or show how you misinterpreted what I wrote.) V (talk) 16:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

It occurs to me that there is another aspect of what I wrote that could be misinterpreted. "Near each other" is a phrase that is somewhat "relative". In this case, a typical atom may have a diameter of 10E-8cm, and its nucleus may have a diameter of 10E-13cm. That makes the diameter of the atom 10E5 or 100,000 times the diameter of the nucleus. Two similar atoms with their electron shells in contact therefore have their nuclei separated by one atomic diameter, 100,000 times the diameter of those nuclei. I think it is fair to say that in that situation the nuclei are "nowhere near each other", especially since if we want them to interact via the Strong Force, they need to be somewhere <10 diameters apart. V (talk) 18:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

You are stubborn. I am telling you, the difficulty of getting nuclei close enough for nuclear reactions is neglibly affected by their electron shells. The forces keeping the nuclei fusion more than fusion distance apart is many orders of magnitude greater than the forces keeping them more than 10x-8 cm apart. Its like taking cellophane of a tank, only less so.

Maybe thinking about plasma will help. Or is that how you got confused? It is not the plasma state that make hot fusion, it is the massive energy per molecule at 10 million Kelvin. The stripping of the electrons is just a side effect of the early stages of heating. I think it is all done by 10,000 Kelvin. ~Paul V. Keller 22:51, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I can be plenty stubborn when I know (A) I am exactly right if perhaps not expressed totally clearly, and (B) you are grasping at straws. "Cold Fusion" is not about 10,000K or higher temperatures. It is mostly about minor modifications to the ordinary conditions that ordinary people ordinarily encounter. (In this case case the minor modifications include such things as deuterium enrichment of hydrogen to nearly 100%, and then stuffing it into a metal.) If what YOU wrote was true in ordinary conditions (and I quote) "I am telling you, the difficulty of getting nuclei close enough for nuclear reactions is neglibly affected by their electron shells" --if that was true, then every time a hammer hit an anvil, you would see nuclei escaping from their electron shells, and that does not happen. Period. The electron shells DO INDEED keep nuclei from approaching each other under most ordinary conditions. And this is exactly why ONE of the objections to CF is this: "How do the nuclei of the deuteriums in that metal escape their electron shells, in order to have any chance at all of interacting with each other?" It makes no sense to assume fusion is the source of the claimed/observed excess heat, if that very first question cannot be answered. So, per the proposed answer that was talked about in the "New Guess" section of the discussion, what of an assumption that the deuteriums can alloy with the metal, thereby giving away their electrons to the overall electrical-conduction band of the metal, and freeing their nuclei? EVERYTHING else about the hypothesis simply and logically follows from that one assumption, thanks to various known facts about QM and particle-cloudiness, and muon-catalyzed fusion, with a minor caveat or two. (It would be nice/supporting if muon catalysis sometimes directly produced He4, and the hypothesis should not be used to try to explain any other reactions/transmutations.) I might mention that I've been told by one third party that WHENEVER hydrogen soaks into a metal, it does it by giving away its electron --and another third party told me that the alloying process is actually a chemical reaction, and the hydrogen retains its shell, after all. Who is right? Perhaps it depends on the metal. Lithium hydride is a well-known chemical compound to people interested in fusion, after all. Next, I've been told that when hydrogen soaks into palladium, even outside of using electrolysis, the process is exothermic. Do note that if THAT was true, then the "recombination" thing that the CF-detractors talk about would have less validity; hydrogen atoms escaping palladium and reforming 2-atom molecules should be endothermic if hydrogen absorption is exothermic. And then there is the question of HOW? The two elements have practically the same electronegativity(!), so if a chemical reaction between those elements can't explain it, then what is the source of that energy called exothermic? Well, if the hydrogen was "changing state" from gas to metal, though, that could explain it; lots of gas-molecule motion may mean enough energy is available to (A) break the molecular bond and (B) to have some left over as the hydrogen atoms reduce their magnitude of motion, inside the metal lattice. Time to stop rambling. V (talk) 13:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

More on CF

Apparently for nearly 20 years the theorists have been trying to explain how two nuclei can fuse when still inside their electron shells. They've been failing for nearly 20 years, too. That's plenty reason for me to insist that "It makes no sense to assume fusion is the source of the claimed/observed excess heat, if that very first question cannot be answered." (The "first question" was about how to get those nuclei outside their electron shells.) I got the impression from what you wrote that for some unknown-to-me reason the theorists were SUPPOSED to keep butting their heads against the problem of finding a way for the Strong Force to work across atom-width dimensions, more than 10,000 times its normal effective range. I'm quite aware that if the nuclei DO escape their shells, then the "typical" fusion mechanism (involving very high speed) has to contend with electrostatic repulsions that can be millions or billions of times the strength of electron-shell repulsion. But your pointing-out of that makes no sense if the nuclei never approach each other closely enough (for such repulsion to exist), because they start out stuck inside their electron shells!!! SO, (A) if "Something" enhances the Strong Force's range enough, then, sure, it won't matter if the nuclei are inside atoms; they are going to fuse regardless of however-much electric repulsion is going to happen while pulled together, yanked out of their atoms. OR (B) the repulsion you talked about is nonsense, because it doesn't exist and cannot exist until AFTER the nuclei escape their electron shells. So, why put the cart before the horse, and insist that nucleus-repulsion/fusing problem has to be solved before the nucleus-escape problem? The way that Hypothesis did it, the proposed solution to the "easier" problem led straight to a possible solution to the difficult problem. Do you have an objection to that? V (talk) 07:46, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

You are knocking down a strawman that you set up. Nobody is saying the nuclei are stuck inside their electron shells. Well, you are saying that, but nobody else is. The shells actually help the nuclei approach - they make them charge neutral at a distance and allow them to bond together when their mutual repulsion would keep them apart.

Sorry, but the shells only let two nuclei get as close as the distance from the center of one atom to the center of the other. That distance is at least hundreds of times the normal distance across which the Strong Force can operate, and that's why ordinary molecules don't have interacting nuclei.

The problem is not getting rid of the electrons, the problem is that the electrons are too big - their mass-energy is so small, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle puts them in a cloud on the order of one Angstrom. If the electrons were smaller (or rather, formed smaller clouds), they could be used to shield the positive charges of the nuclei and allow them to approach more closely.

NO, the problem is that the electron shells keep the nuclei from being able to get closer together, as long as both are en-shelled.

You are being annoyingly dense about this. The nuclei themselves have positive charges. That is the columbic force people talk about when they talk about the difficulty getting fusion. Take away the electrons and the repulsion between nuclei just gets worse.

You are the one who is refusing to understand. When the electron shells of two atoms are in "physical contact" (quotes used because of the nebulosity of the situation), the repulsion between the electrons is a LOT greater than the repulsion of the nuclei of those atoms for each other, across the distance between the centers of the two atoms (and ignoring the electrons). ONLY if the electrons are removed, so that the nuclei can approach each other, can the nuclear repulsion be able to exceed the initial mutual repulsion of the electrons.

That is exactly what happens in muon-catalyzed fusion. The big difference betwen a muon and an electron is that a muon is hundreds of times more massive. The effective size of a muon is accordingly much smaller than an electron. When nuclei bond using muons rather than electrons, they are far-far closer and the fusion rate goes through the roof.

Agreed, the muon has 206 times the mass of the electron and so its associated wavelength is 1/206 and its orbit around a nucleus is also 1/206 the size of an electron's. I do have ONE question regarding muon catalysis. Normally only one muon is involved, and the muonic atom can physically approach a nucleus until that nucleus is basically at the surface of the muon shell, so the distance between the two nuclei is about the same as the distance from the center of the muonic atom to its shell. Now, if there were two muonic atoms, the two nuclei would each be inside a muon shell, and the distance between the two nuclei would be doubled. Is that too far apart for the nuclei to fuse?

Stop being lazy a do some looking on your own. It is easy to see that there will never be more than one muon in the vicinity at any one time. muon-catalyzed fusion It is really rude to ask questions if you have not made an effort to figure things out on your own.

I'm aware that the question is difficult because of the 2-microsecond lifespan of the muons. I doubt that it is impossible if enough muons are sent into a small region in liquid deuterium. (Then there would be difficulty noticing the answer to that question amidst all the normal catalyzed fusions, heh.) Because of the difficulty I doubt that there is much data available about it. The question relates to the small amount of math below. Inside two muonic atoms, the deuterons would be twice as far as 242.7 nuclear diameters apart. "CAN the Strong Force act between them across that extra distance?" --that question becomes more appropriate for theorists than experimentalists --and my suspicion is that the answer is: "doubtful", thereby supporting what I wrote about electron shells keeping nuclei from interacting, and the importance of getting rid of them.

The uncertainty principle prevents you from pinning the electrons down to specific locations and keeping them their long enough to draw or push the nuclei together.

I have no intention of trying to pin any particular electron down, between two loose nuclei. Instead, I rely on the fact that the conduction band of the metal contains MANY loose electrons in the vicinity of the nuclei, ALL of which can randomly spend a little bit of time between the nuclei, helping to shield them from each other. Please do not confuse the overall "cloud" of POSITIONS with the basic point-like size of the electron itself. I'm even willing to accept that this might not be a very efficient mechanism, because to be really effective we need some sort of guarantee that whenever an electron jumps away from the best shielding-spots, another immediately jumps in --but then, we all know how difficult it is to replicate CF experiments, so what's wrong with that? (Also one thing that helps is the fact that there are two protons which can attract two electrons in-between them. Only one electron is needed to shield the deuterons' protrons, so whenever one jumps away, the other might be there long enough for a replacement to jump in.

This is what we call arm-waving.

I am describing facts. The electron is indeed pointlike so far as we can currently measure (<10E-17cm), and because it has low mass, when "stationary" it is allowed to be randomly located anywhere and everywhere ("jumping about") in a quite large volume, compared to other particles. So, pick a loose deuteron in the conduction band of a metal, and ask, "How many conduction-band electrons are within jumping-range?" All of that number will be doing some of their jumps very near that nucleus, thanks to mutual attraction, because none of them are required to orbit the deuteron (in which case they could come no closer than 50,000 nuclear diameters). Next, there are indeed two protons attracting those electrons whenever two deuterons approach each other, and it is also fact that as soon as they get somewhat near each other (~100,000 diameters, since even orbiting molecular electrons are affected as described here), the strongest point-of-attraction for those electrons will be located in-between the two deuterons. Why shouldn't a replacement be attracted as fast as any jumps away? The hypothesis is of course a speculation about what can happen as a result of those facts, but it does not go beyond the bounds of reason, and it appears to be at least as plausible as the two notions you described, and perhaps more plausible.

If you want to dream about this, here are two explanation that are somewhat plausible, at least within the limits of my knowledge:

(1) Within the Pd cathode, or on its surface, two or more (n) electrons combine to form a previously unknown particle of charge -2 (-n) and twice (n-times) the electron mass. This particle acts like a muon to catalyze fusion. Perhaps this unknown particle can only exist in a metal lattice.

Nice, but I greatly doubt that any small multiple of the electron's mass would suffice to make it work. Some simple math: (1) For hydrogen we can say that the diameter of the atom is 100,000 times the diameter of its nucleus, so the radius is 50,000 nuclear diameters. (2) We divide that by 206 to get the radius of a muonic atom: 242.7 nuclear diameters. (3) I've wondered why I've never seen descriptions of muon catalysis of protium-hydrogen, and have always suspected that for deuterons the Strong Force simply has a longer range than for bare protons. That 242.7 nuclear diameters may be near the limit of its range. (4) Assume your (n) is 50 (not really "small"); dividing by that instead of 206 yields an effective radius of 1000 nuclear diameters, obviously a tough distance for the Strong Force to cross.

They only need to get close enough for quantum mechanical tunneling to happen, which is pretty far if that position is held for a long time. ~Paul V. Keller 18:11, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

That's not very specific, and why would the position be held, anyway? There is also the fact that a frozen two-deuterium molecule will be holding position for a very long time, but we don't see much fusion taking place in the Oort Cloud, do we? V (talk) 21:38, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

(2) Under just the right conditions within the electrode with an externally applied electrical potential gradient, things line up perfectly to form a kind of particle accelerator. Fusion then occurs by a process akin to piezo-electric fusion. http://www.physics.ucla.edu/research/putterman/news/PyroScience.pdf

Those "right conditions" would have to be most extremely special. The Farnsworth fusor uses electric-field acceleration to cause fusion (was first gadget ever to succeed at controlled fusions), and the distance across which the ions are accelerated is rather greater than the dimensions of an electrode in a CF cell (and pretty high voltages are used in a Fusor, too). A modern alternative accelerator that works across short distances requires special phenomena like laser pulses or plasma (Plasma acceleration), neither of which exists in the CF cell electrode.

The cuteness of theory (2) is kind of messed up by the fact that piezo-electric fusion gives the expected branching ratio. Leadsongdog posted that muon-catalyzed fusion gives the expected branching ratio too, but I have not seen that for myself. Of course, you could avoid that branching-ratio problem by speculating that the reaction is not D+D. ~Paul V. Keller 13:22, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The Fusor also yields the standard distribution of fusion products (just an FYI). I won't argue that muon-catalyzed fusion at least usually yields the standard distribution, but I would like to know if sometimes one additional route is taken, where 4He is produced and the muon shoots out with a tremendous amount of energy, and no gamma ray is emitted (because the muon has the energy). V (talk) 17:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

{this section cloned from the history of another talk page}V (talk) 14:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

1989 DOE split

I can't remember what the 1989 DOE panel split was, sorry. In 2004 it was one member convinced, about a third somewhat convinced, and the rest unconvinced. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 21:35, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. If you are Jed Rothwell, you are invited to include in the LENR-CANR library the CF Hypothesis that was published in Issue 81 of "Infinite Energy". The .PDF is accessible from WikiSource ("Cold Fusion Hypothesis").

"Fallacies" of Cold Fusion

The CCS is simple to understand. It simply says that between the time the experiment is calibrated, and the time that experimental data is collected, an instability in the experiment has occurred and thus the prior calibration is no longer valid. In other words expressed mathematically, at time t0, the experimenter determines the calibration equation is Pout = 5 * X + 3. Then at time t1 a change occurs, such that at time t2, when the experimenter measures the unknown conditions, the true calibration equation (unknown to the researcher) is Pout = 4 * X + 3. Clearly, if you multiply x by 5 when the correct (at that time) value is 4, you will get the wrong Pout. This is why measuring the calibration equation at several times to statistically assess the stability of those constants is a necessity. --Kirk Shanahan

Yes, that is indeed simple. However, what is not so simple is WHY and HOW the calibration should shift in the first place, for every different kind of calorimeter that has been used, and especially by just enough, almost always (in your opinion), to render the measurements invalid. It is my understanding that things like that don't just happen by themselves, energy must be applied to make them happen. Where did the energy come from to do that? In other words, you are presuming your answer, in order to obtain your answer, which thereby hides the energy that causes the "problem" that you claim means no significant energy was produced! Not very scientific. V (talk) 14:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

discussion was killed

Man, I'm afraid that the discussion is over :( If you can't find some better source, then there is no chance at all that the addition is ever made to the article. There is a time at wikipedia when you have to step back from the discussion or start facing accusations of beating dead horses, etc., I think that you have reached that point with the electron shell thing. I wouldn't bother to restore that section, just make a new one when/if you find a source explicetaly making the link between electron shells and cold fusion (and make sure it's a good source making a clear direct link before re-opening the theme).

Here you have a permanent link to the discussion right before it was removed, so you can reference it[3] --Enric Naval (talk) 21:43, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

P.D.:And... hum.... about this "(...)IS there a conspiracy by CF-detractors, to keep any data out of the article that might someday become related to the solutions to the main problems? Why else would Art do his latest lie-of-omission(...)"[4], the answer is no, there is not such conspiracy.... Please, you are getting very involved, and you are starting to skip the assuming good faith thing. That's not a good thing at all, at this pace you'll finally insult someone and get yourself blocked for incivility. The others are right on the consensus thing: you have given your reasons and your sources, and you have failed to convince the other editors, so you don't have consensus for your change.... Please take this as good intentioned advice. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:58, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that you didn't give enough hard evidence to go over their objections. You just didn't have a good source that really made the link for that being a problem with cold fusion, so you can't invoke the argument that the sources are your side. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:30, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

But you still need a source linking it to cold fusion. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:49, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Cold fusion is very different from hot fusion. That source only talked about hot fusion. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Enric was right, Objectivist, you are treading on thin ice. You might get away with it time after time until the "wrong" admin notices it, and you are then blocked. There are some block-happy admins who watch the CF article. Look, I want your participation. If I wanted to see you blocked, I'd not bother to warn you, I'd sit back and watch it happen. So, please, be careful. "lie of omission" is uncivil, you could be blocked for that alone. Naval is right. There is no conspiracy, though there are cooperating editors to some degree, an anti-pseudoscience virtual cabal. ArbComm is aware of it, but it's tricky to address because some very popular editors are involved. So, patience, one careful, baby step at a time. Or else, watch out! That stove is hot.

It's possible to get blocked in this field even if you walk the policy line very carefully. Don't make it easy for them. If you are blocked for *following* policy, such as NPOV, and not for *violating* it, such as WP:CIVIL, it can be appealed, probably successfully. But with clear offenses, there is little hope, the community will take one look at those edits and say, "Nothing to do here, next case!" --Abd (talk) 16:51, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Now, on the point. Propose an edit, the best compromise you can come up with. If you think it might be accepted, go ahead and make it. If reverted, do not revert back, do not revert back the same text without discussion and consensus. See WP:BRD. Instead, go to Talk and open a discussion, with minimal argument, about the edit. Remember, the content must meet Wp requirements for sourcing, can't be based on original research, in a contentious environment, hewing closer to sources is necessary, watch out for "obvious" synthesis, which is only okay if all reasonable editors agree (editors are presumed reasonable unless it's proven otherwise). If you can't find reliable source verifying what you've put in the article, forget about it. Impossible in an environment like this, where *reliably sourced* stuff is being removed.

On the other hand, if you expect to be reverted, don't even make the edit, just start up the discussion. If you can't find *one* editor to agree with you and support the edit, as you'd make it or some compromise, forget about it, again. Drop it and move on. Maybe later. --Abd (talk) 17:05, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Where to complain

About the "where to complain about this" question you made at Talk:Cold fusion, try WP:RS/N for establishing the reliability of the source, Wikipedia:Village pump for discussing with a wider community, or WP:AN to ask that an admin does something. However, honestly, I don't think that any of these avenues works unless you can get clearly better sources first, and I can't really recommend you that you even attempt them. You are bound to get only a lot of stress from this.... --Enric Naval (talk) 22:11, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

We need to have a proper and thorough discussion of sources for the CF article, that examines the issue generically; otherwise, dealing with sources one at a time, we end up with decisions all over the map that are removed next month or next year. I'll be working on that, I've been a tad distracted with blacklisting issues. Not just one can of worms, many. A whole warehouse of them. Walk in, pick a can with anything resembling a suspicious label, and open it. Most of the time, some worms in it. It's a mess. Going through one can at a time is not the way to deal with it. Process. We need it there just as we need it with Cold fusion, and wiki-wide. --Abd (talk) 16:45, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Your recent edits

Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. If you can't type the tilde character, you should click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot (talk) 15:52, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Discussion continued from User talk:Enric Naval

You wrote, Look, there is a difference between denouncing an action and denouncing a person. I'm responding to you here, because I don't want to clutter Enric's Talk page with what might be considered useless and tendentious debate.

You are absolutely right that there is a difference, but you crossed the line from one to the other. If you won't hear this from me, what will it take? Because you responded with that comment, and what followed, I'm placing this here. I'm not posting a formal warning here, because the last thing I want to see is that you are blocked, unless the behavior continued after ample opportunity to reform it. However, all this history is visible to anyone who looks, and, let me put it this way: someone may indeed look and if you are right, that you didn't cross that line, you could still be blocked, if it merely looks that way. Wikipedia is a community of human beings, and it respects human process, not necessarily "correct argumentation." Yes, in theory, cogent arguments should prevail, but, in reality, as with nearly all organized human activity, politics matters. Wikipedia operates on "rough consensus," and the body of editors who participate in the consensus is variable. If it happens that a dispute escalates, increasing numbers of editors and administrators will review it, but many of these won't spend the time to carefully investigate and weigh evidence, purely. Rather, many or most -- sometimes even all! -- will make a snap judgment. So if it looks like a personal attack, it is quite likely to be treated that way, even if, for some technical reason, or even if in reality there is no attack involved. You continued:

I know what I was denouncing, and I truly think it was the correct conclusion, because if Art had a valid argument that could "put me in my place", proving that I am dead wrong about [topic elided, it doesn't matter], then I fully expect he would have posted such an argument. Since he didn't, I get to assume he didn't have one, and thereby lost the debate, except he didn't want to admit it.

Your concept of Wikipedia editorial process is radically misguided. We discuss possible edits and article considerations. This isn't a debate contest, with winners and losers. The editor gave his opinion, with what I called a "marginally uncivil" edge to it. He didn't impugn your integrity, he merely wrote that you were "dead wrong." People, including myself, and, I'm sure, you, can be very, very wrong about a thing. The editor didn't respond further, and he had utterly no responsibility to do so. He's not on trial, he's not in a contest, and I don't see that his goal was to "put you in your place." He saw your argument as seriously misguided, he told you so, and then moved on to whatever else interests or occupies him. You can assume anything you want, but if you fail to assume good faith, and show it in your edits, you can be blocked. AGF used to be considered a policy; it was demoted, not because it wasn't important, but because it can be hard to judge.

Above, I suggested a course of action for you if you wish to do more than debate in a contest with, in your own mind, "winners" and "losers." I also suggested that you redact statements that could be seen as personal attacks, with strike-out. You are free to take my advice or not, but wikipedia is also free to, as I wrote before, "spit you out like a bad grape." There is no debate between the grape and other grapes. Each grape is judged on its own merits. If an admin looks at your actions, and they "taste bad," the admin may block you, probably starting with short blocks. If you continue, those will eventually become indefinite, and can turn into a ban. From experience, I can assure you that claims you were right will be of practically no effect at all, unless you are supported by many editors. And you won't get there the way you have been proceeding.

Actions speak louder than words, remember? If he and like-minded editors had simply stopped posting to that section, that would have been more intellectually honest, and it would have eventually been archived of old age. Instead, to enforce his mere opinion regarding the proposed improvement, he chose the course (the History clearly shows it was he who deleted it) that makes it much more difficult for any new editors to see that debate, and his losing of that debate; the accumulation of new editors well-informed on the topic eventually should lead to the proposed improvement getting implemented, due to there being no valid reason not to do it.

Fast archiving of Talk is common. Deletion is less common and less accepted. Sure, the discussion was deleted. You then reverted. Not great, but acceptable. Then [[5] you were reverted], not by the first editor. You responded with a brief but contentious edit. You are dealing with several highly experienced editors. You want to know where to complain? Well, read the dispute resolution guideline. For something considered an emergency, you could go to WP:AN/I. I wouldn't recommend it, you'd get slaughtered, so to speak. You want to do something without risk of being considered disruptive? Read that WP:DR. Follow it. Start with rigorously civil Talk page discussion, attempting to find agreement with an editor you disagree with. Don't take this beyond a point of decision, and don't insist. Then, if you aren't satisfied, get help. Ask an experienced editor to look at the situation and advise you. Without being asked, several editors tried to help you. You haven't shown much sign of listening. You could change that. Nobody is going to force you to change, it's up to you. If you want to be effective, though, I'd suggest you start listening, carefully.

Now, what would I do if my Talk content were deleted? Please realize I've been here and have dealt with it. What I'd do depends on the specific details, and how important it is to me. There are good grounds for reversing that deletion; for starters, it wasn't just one editor whose commments were deleted. In addition, fast archiving may have been more appropriate. But, remember, this is a community where we seek consensus. There are plenty of editors who don't do that, but, if we want to improve the project, we can't -- we mustn't -- imitate them. So, first of all, we need to understand what was right about the deletion. Is there some way of dealing with this without losing what was right about it? In some cases, I've simply written the discussion to the archive. Someone wants to edit war over that, well, they will probably lose. But it could be disruptive. Anything better?

Sure, I think so, but it isn't commonly done. Let me suggest how you might do it. Go to history, find the deleted material, and copy it to a file in your user space, you could create or use User:Objectivist/Sandbox. Edit it to boil it down, to create a concise summary of what you think is important about it. When you have that, put it on the Talk page with an appropriate section title (the original one?) and an introduction that says that this is your summary of what had been deleted. There should be a permanent link to the full discussion that was deleted. And state explicitly that you will accept fast archiving of this copy. And I highly recommend avoiding any further debate on the subject at this point. I've elsewhere suggested how to approach editing the article. Be ready and prepared to accept consensus even if you think it to be "dead wrong."

As to the link to a permanent copy of the full discussion, here is the wikitext you would use: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Cold_fusion&oldid=270296063#Incompatibilities_with_established_physics permanent link].

Thus would the existence of the discussion have a use; it would be a lie to say it was useless (well, it would not be a lie for a detractor to say, "It is useless to my vested interests...").

Dead wrong, and the kind of assumption of bad faith that could get you blocked. It would not be a lie. It might be wrong, or it might be right. In the short term, it is clearly correct. No edit to the article resulted, if I've got it right. However, you are also correct that there may be a benefit in the long run, but the benefit will be more if the points made there are made much more concisely, otherwise they may never be read again by anyone. If you want to be successful here, pursue your goal while at the same time considering and addressing objections. Insisting on being correct is highly counterproductive. It isn't the correctness that is the problem, it's how it is asserted.

The deletion diminishes the possibility of Art's opinion getting overruled by people possessing valid data, and is exactly the type of action that can be expected of the board-bashing losing chess-player, or of Religious Authority (how many WARS did they start, preceding even the Hebrew invasion of the Promised Land, to shut up their competition?). Enric, I repeat, "what [they] believe is irrelevant here; what [they] can prove is relevant." --paraphrased from the deleted debate.

V, you have no idea how this place works, in contentious areas. You have a vision, expressed above, of a kind of war between truth and "authority," and it contaminates your understanding of what is going on. There are administrators here, with some apparent "authority," but, in fact, they have little control, individually. There is legal authority with the WikiMedia Foundation, but they are almost entirely hands-off. The real power is in the community, which is largely asleep, from my point of view, but it wakes up enough, sometimes, to do some good, or sometimes only enough to do some damage. It's like the rest of the world, V. You've focused on one editor, who is not an administrator and who has no inherent power over you. He did nothing that you could not do yourself. He deleted some Talk that he thought pointless. You restored it. Somebody else, not an administrator also, undid your restoral. Now, that deletion stood. Why? Basically, it was two to one. You failed to convince anyone else that the text should remain. If you had continued to insist, all by yourself, you'd have been blocked. Not because you were "wrong," and certainly not because you were "right." Because you'd have been edit warring, which, beyond a certain point, is almost automatically blockworthy. I've seen many editors blocked because they were insisting on something that they thought was policy. And they were right. It was policy, except that they forgot something. They were violating policy by edit warring, and the policy they were "enforcing" was a content policy, not a behavioral policy.

Wikipedia content is not ruled by "truth." It's partly ruled by verifiability in reliable sources, but the real authority is editorial consensus. If you can find consensus, you can do almost anything here. But if you can't find even one person to agree with you, how likely are you to find consensus? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which can be a rather dull class of publication. I've come across many examples where I know something, with certainty, that is known by everyone with reasonable knowledge of a field. And I can't insist on it being in articles because there isn't publication in reliable source, there are only, for example, posts to mailing lists and a known consensus in the involved community. Now, a lot of this kind of knowledge does end up in Wikipedia, simply because nobody contests it. In a controversial article, however, being watched by many editors with opposing points of view, text based on synthesis or personal knowledge has a very short half-life.

I'm not sure why I've bothered to write this. Luck of the draw, I guess. Take what you like and leave the rest, I've only done my best to explain to you the situation you face, and the likely consequences of continuing on the path you've traced. As my late uncle used to say, "Don't take yourself so seriously." And you might read WP:DGAF. It's one of the best essays about how to survive here. --Abd (talk) 01:23, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I heard enough before getting too involved, to make me decide I could usually do one reversion without getting into trouble, especially if a half-way reasonable explanation is given for it.

I agree that I'm not good at politics; I've been too busy doing computer programming since the early 1980s. I do know logic extremely well, though....

In an encyclopedia, facts should reign supreme. When opinions decide what things are facts, or which selection of facts, to put in the encyclopedia, then the result is equivalent to Creationist Dogma, and worthless. One fact: the Cold Fusion proponents routinely complain that most detractors refuse to think there is even a slight possibility for Pons & Fleischmann to have been correct in their deduction about the heat they detected. Is this fact in the CF article? I haven't looked for it, but suspect it may never get into the article. The article does say, "Enthusiasm turned to skepticism and scorn" --except I'm pretty sure some of that scorn began to exist the moment various hot-fusion experts heard about it, no enthusiasm at all did they have for it. *I* knew enough about hot fusion at that time to be wary of the claims. But I also have a fascination with wild ideas, and was therefore intrigued, not enthusiastic. Anyway, the available evidence is that opinionated-yet-ignorant-by-choice-of-relevant-facts people are deciding how the CF article should be written. If one is willing to accept the statement, "The circumstances of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion", then it logically follows that an expert on hot fusion (or practically any other specialty) cannot be expected to have lots of relevant valid opinions about cold fusion, until that expert has examined lots of CF data. It's not reasonable to think that the editors of this article have ignored all the data being referenced --but neither is it reasonable for Rothwell's library-site, which holds lots of relevant data, to have been blacklisted. In reading the article I clearly detect a bias indicating that CF is not to be believed, because "the last word" in most sections is negative not positive. Various things have to be changed, period. And when vested interests are involved, such that people choose opinion over fact, then stepping on toes while making those changes will be UNAVOIDABLE. The logic of this is crystal clear. I suspect that by the time you get certain changes done your way, trying (and failing) not to step on toes, the experimenters will, if it is possible, have proved CF beyond any skeptic's ability to doubt it. In which case you might as well have focussed your efforts on something else entirely (if the experimenters succeed, the article will be quickly edited to reflect it, regardless of what you are now working toward).

Me, I have a different objective.... V (talk) 09:54, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

ways and means

Pardon me for butting in here; what is your "different objective"? Olorinish (talk) 17:31, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Since I know that certain changes to the CF article (and other controversial articles) will require that various opinionated toes get stepped on, I see no reason to go out of my way to avoid it. I can make an effort to do it more gently than harshly, but it needs to be done if Wikipedia is to reliably contain facts instead of opinions. The reason it needs to be done has to do with the problem of: How can the bad guys, the Opinionated, be held in check? If they can insert their opinions and not be publicly exposed for it, what is ever going to make them stop, short of banning? It has been pointed out that some of the Opinionated are popular editors, often possessing relevant knowledge; the likelihood of them getting banned is low. But if their stated and/or veiled opinions can be exposed as nonsense or non-Neutral, over and over again, a process that necessarily involves stepping on toes, perhaps they will finally get the message, that Wikipedia doesn't need that sort of input from them. When they stop, my objective will have been achieved. V (talk) 20:40, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Olorinish (talk) 13:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Thus far V, you have edited CF almost exclusively. It would be worth your time to work on some other Wikipedia articles to gain more experience so that you gain a broader understanding of Wikipedia. When you got here it was for the purpose of self promotion, do you see that now? Are you now in a position to edit CF with a NPOV. You might want to look at WP:Tendentious editing.--OMCV (talk) 19:06, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

(reply moved from random place on my talk page--OMCV (talk) 22:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)) Actually, I had edited some other controversial articles without signing up, before finally deciding it was worthwhile to do that. My biggest problem here is OR not POV. V (talk) 07:52, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I think its disturbing that most of the proponents of turning CF into a technical article have added very little technical information to Wikipedia. I would think that some one interested in CF would add information on nuclear physics and electrochemistry. It makes it very difficult to judge the quality of their technical expertise. An attraction to controversial articles is also a troubling sign. I agree OR is very dangerous on pages like CF. Hopefully we can keep it in check.--OMCV (talk) 22:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks to me like the detractors are preventing appropriate technical information from being added. They are the ones who got lenr-canr.org blacklisted, after all. Also, it seems to me that if ENOUGH technical info was added, certain pieces might fit together in a manner that would get declared "OR", and as a result somebody would remove the data, not just the connection between them. Wikipedia is an ideal collection pot for information. That it is not allowed to also be a melting pot ... feels like it's stifling a potential. That could just be me; I've spent a significant chunk of lifespan thinking about ideas and ways of combining them. V (talk) 13:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It used to be that newenergytimes.com and lenr-canr.org were listed as external links for further reading. I've seen such listings in articles many times, and as long as the site is notable and informative and with a few other restrictions (which NET and lenr-canr.org do meet, with the qualification I'll assert), it's listed. If there is some POV bias to the site, the link might be qualified as "on-line magazine devoted to cold fusion and related issues, pro-cold fusion" (Note that the editor of NET might dispute that, he appears to me to be devoted to journalistic integrity, but also has the well-known bias of the liberal media. Apparently being informed on a subject warps your judgment. That's certainly true, isn't it?)

I don't support some of your approach in the article, but what we need is good consensus process, civility, and careful exploration of what we can do. For too long, sources have been excluded because of how they might make cold fusion look. That's backwards. We use reliable source standards, and we should apply them evenly and fairly, to judge notability and reliability, not alleged POV.

OR is a complex issue; but, bottom line, OR or no OR, if you can get consensus, it doesn't matter. If it takes a little OR to find consensus, it's okay. There are degrees of OR, and some are practically essential.

When they started removing lenr-canr.org links, they said, "It doesn't matter, there are four or five others...." --Abd (talk) 20:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

What is the obsession with lenr-canr.org it is a combination of reprinted articles and blog. The self-published blog doesn't meet WP:V for anything but Jed's opinion. Jed's opinion or anyone else operating out of a garage by an airport doesn't warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia. Any editors can still add the articles which lenr-canr.org keeps as reprints. I imagine Jed has paper copies of most, if not all, the citations included in the the CF article. Abd and V it would be best if you took you effort where OR was welcomed. By the way I'm glad you have spent your life thinking/combining ideas V. The idea that if we all think its true will make it true just doesn't fly on Wikipedia and combining ideas is the definition of OR. If you pushed that before on other pages than the citation will eventually be found or your material reverted.

So I see I missed the point in a way. You think we should have external links to these places but that would be legitimizing them. Any honest scientist will quickly identify these websites as fringe efforts to misrepresenting themselves as mainstream science. We should no sooner link to newenergytimes.com and lenr-canr.org then link to theresonanceproject.org on a page dealing with quantum mechanics, or go-here.nl and waterfuelconverters.com on page dealing with energy/electrolysis. Have a good one.--OMCV (talk) 01:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

OMCV, It is my understanding that simple obvious logic can be both OR and acceptable, equivalent to simple math. So I shall apply the KISS principle as much as possible. We shall see where it leads. Next, I have no obsession with Jed's site. I care not a whit about his blog. I simply like the fact that a whole lot of data is collected there. Why should I or anyone search the Web to find other copies of the data, when it already exists there? The idea that thinking it is all garbage will make it all garbage just doesn't fly. Even if a lot of it really is garbage, that is not ALL of it. Now, if you have good evidence that it is all garbage, we'd like to see it. After all, such evidence could lead to closure of the CF argument, in favor of the detractors. Otherwise you are committing the sin of judging a book by its cover.

I forgot to add, above, that Jed's site also hosts some anti-CF papers. So, if ALL the papers there are garbage, those would be, too, right? V (talk) 13:03, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Just for the fun of it, here's a nice conspiracy hypothesis: Most of the detractors here are really Chinese agents, bent on ensuring nobody whose prime language is English has a properly balanced article on Cold Fusion, not lacking in data that might be melted together, so that China can make the breakthroughs that lead to worldwide patents, mass manufacturing of CF units, worldwide sales and economic prosperity. Cheap energy, after all, is a key to complete resource-recycling and low-grade-ore-processing and pollution-elimination. And China has never neglected the lessons of subtle combat taught by Sun Tzu. (oops, that's OR, must be eliminated!) V (talk) 04:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Moved your comment in the poll at Cold fusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cold_fusion#Other_comments

I hope you don't mind. Perhaps you'd like to indicate a choice among the versions. I'm trying to reduce complex questions to simple ones: of two known versions (where some edit warring started), which is better. It's always possible to find some fault, real or otherwise, with a piece of text, but the real question is always whether one version is better than another. And then, to avoid restricting the matter to two versions, I created a subsection for the "current version" if it's different, or to show support for any other version.

And I suggested Approval voting for this process, especially because Version 1 (my version) definitely can be improved, even improved greatly, both to solidify sourcing and to balance it better. Storms himself, however, did attempt to present this information in quite a balanced way, even conceding points that skeptics, were they not so busy denying Storms himself, might think, "Wow! He said that?" Instead, biological transformation just sends them off the charts. But Storms is right. There is experimental work that seems to show biological transformation so, while it's not very much confirmed, it could be, and it would be useful if theory could account for the possibility. If I were him, I'd have left it out, but Storms mentioning it is also reasonable.

The option of "voting" for more than one would allow a skeptic, for example, to vote for Hipocrite's reversion, effectively, as an improvement over mine, without getting nailed to the obvious, blatant, even silly defects of the version Hipocrite restored, by doing some work to fix the section, then voting for it under the "current or other". I picked that section to work on because it was awful.

V., I really do want to find and establish solid consensus at Cold fusion. Rather obviously, it's going to take work, but I believe it can be done and that I understand, roughly, how to do it. Thanks for your support. --Abd (talk) 20:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Cold fusion mediation

I have been asked to mediate the content dispute regarding Cold fusion. I have set up a separate page for this mediation here. You have been identified as one of the involved parties. Please read through the material I have presented there. Thank you. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

ping me when the case is finished

Hello, regarding Talk:Cold_fusion#New_article, I have seen your comment, and skimmed the article, but I can't really give it my attention now. When the case is finished, could you remind me of that article, so I can add to Martin Fleischmann and similar? --Enric Naval (talk) 17:34, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

In case you didn't see it...

[6] - If it was your intention to call others incompetent, then you need to remove or reword your statement so it does not. I issued a general warning concerning disruptive comments and behavior to all users involved in this case two days ago on the Workshop talk page. I seem to have missed giving you direct notification of that on this page, but it nonetheless applies. Hersfold non-admin^(t/a/c) 18:53, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

density of hydrogen or deuterium in palladium

Long, and moves to different subjects related to CF, hope you don't mind.

It's OK, if you don't mind this interspersed reply.

If you figure density by the number of nuclei, the density of hydrogen in palladium hydride or deuteride can exceed 100%. Cold fusion researchers speak of the loading ratio, i.e., how many deuterons there are compared to palladium nuclei. CF phenomena seem to occur beginning around 90%, i.e., 9:10. Co-deposition is such a useful technique because it builds up palladium deuteride at 100% from the beginning. And higher packing than that is possible. The early replication failures were mostly a matter of failing to reach high loading ratios; the ability of palladium to hold hydrogen/deuterium is very sensitive to the microstructure, how the material was formed.

On the CF Talk page I wrote about pressurized silane being 80% hydrogen, and by that I meant 4 atoms out of every 5 were hydrogen. So, palladium saturated to the 100% mark, as you describe above, is only 50%-of-all-atoms-are-hydrogen, and if saturated to 90%, that's 45% hydrogen. Sometimes I do know what I'm talking about, although maybe I don't always express it clearly enough.

The behavior of palladium hydride/deuteride was an active field of research before the CF flap, because this remarkable material is similar in some ways to metallic hydrogen; if fully loaded, it's the closest thing to metallic hydrogen you could come to touching with a finger without the finger being immediately frozen.

It has occurred to me to wonder, if we can have a high-temperature superconductor, might it be possible to have a high-temperature Kondo Effect? Note metallic hydrogen is expected to be a high-temperature superconductor.

By the way, the argument that Cold fusion requires special rules for sourcing is a losing one. All that is needed is to apply the existing guidelines evenly, without using (often unspoken) original research or SYNTH to reject otherwise fully acceptable sources. In fact, as will become plain when our process opens up, some level of synthesis is required to assert that cold fusion is fringe science or "rejected by the mainstream." My position is that consensus trumps any particular or wikilawyered interpretation of the guidelines, and that we ultimately make all decisions by consensus, that guidelines guide but do not control. What's been lost is that a majority of editors may be able to create an appearance of consensus by consistently rejecting minority positions, one by one, the minority editors leave or are banned. Rather, we need to unwarp the process by dealing with the issues of tendentious argument in more sophisticated ways than simple exclusion, and we need to understand that any change that increases consensus (percentage of involved, informed editors who approve of the text) is an improvement, and reverting back, even if accepted by a lesser majority of editors, is "contrary to consensus."

I suspect you are misleading yourself, in some of the above. I greatly doubt that there is no statement anywhere in any Official RS location to the effect that Cold Fusion was debunked approx 1990. Next, certainly many highlights of the CF story are available in respectable publications not normally considered to be RS, and it would be a Good Thing to expand the RS list. But is there an RS statement anywhere to the effect that many CF researchers are doing that research simply because they think they've seen enough evidence for something unusual, that more research is warranted? Then there are isolated stories that can be hard to find a second time (once upon a time I was looking at on-line information about some large company that did a lot of R&D, and it was mentioned that the CEO pursued cold fusion experiments for a time, in the early days, found a "simple explanation", and then abandoned it as useless. The explanation was not mentioned on that web page, and I didn't have time to pursue more details, and now, of course, I don't remember what company it was!). Anyway, there's a great deal of Interesting stuff that simply does not exist in RS. Note the fact CF is controversial is also Interesting (most controversies are), but holding the reader's interest will require presenting stuff from both sides of the issue. The lack of recent Anti-CF RS material is a problem, most easily solved by going to non-RS material. Finally, there is the News. As I pointed out in the arbitration page, Recent Developments, even if published as RS, can't qualify for the CF article until after we have follow-up publications about them. Meanwhile, Wikipedia manages to keep most of its other article up-to-date without that problem...a clear case of uneven Applied Policy.

It's a subtle argument, lost on many at first. We should make decisions by majority rule, is the apparent paradox I'm asserting. The majority, in a functional deliberative environment, always has the right of decision. But if the majority rides roughshod over minorities, it increases their motivation to disrupt the process, hence we build a wiki that requires constant and tedious maintenance, with more "majority" editors burning out because of having to deal with the waves of "POV-pushers" and "trolls" and "vandals."

One fix for that, although I don't know what it would take to implement on a wiki page, is for each editable section of any page to be controllable in terms of edit-locking. Then, any section that has painstakingly acquired consensus can be locked from fly-by POV pushers (or simple vandalism). Who might be asked, to look into implementing such a thing?

I encountered serious interest in the concepts at WikiConference New York. It will take time, but the long-term, serious, administrators and other participants do largely grasp the problem.

By arguing for making some exception for Cold fusion, you feed into the perception that opposition to the status quo there is from fringe fanatics who have ideas that can't get published in serious journals. But that's not the case, there is plenty of publication.

I stand by my argument that there is non-RS material on BOTH sides of the issue, which the RS rules prevent from being mentioned in the article.

The argument that the mainstream ignores cold fusion because it's been proven to be bogus is simply a theory. The reality is that many of those who might be able to understand cold fusion did personally conclude it was bogus, though that conclusion, to my knowledge, is not found in the most reliable sources; it was a sociological phenomenon, not a true scientific consensus, based on conclusive refutations of the basis for the theory. Simon (Undead Science, 2002) is an extremely valuable source of the reality of what happened; Enric loves to cite Simon with cherry-picked confirmations of the rejected status of cold fusion, but Simon actually tells both sides, and when I've discussed material from Simon that told the other side, Simon was rejected by cabal editors on the basis that he was biased, perhaps because he actually did assist with some cold fusion experiments, and was a sociologist, not a physicist or chemist. (And the cabal wouldn't be content even if he were a physicist, and if he were nuclear physicist, they would then say that he was an isolated lunatic. He Jing-Tang may have written bad English in his brief review in Frontiers of Physics in China, 2007, but the paper is secondary source, was peer-reviewed, the journal has a prestigious and non-fringe publisher (Higher Education Press, one of the world's largest publishers, in cooperation with Springer-Verlag), and He Jing-Tang is a nuclear physicist working with hot fusion. You'd think....)

Regarding cherry-picking, if inside even a pro-CF article in a RS source there is mention that the field is looked-down-upon by the majority of scientists, then that is RS enough for the detractors.

Naturwissenschaften is mentioned in the article. LeadSongDog, I think it was, tried to insert that Naturw. was a "life science journal." The implication was that they wouldn't have the expertise to review the paper properly. In fact, Naturw. is a multidisciplinary journal with access to the best possible review resources, and its impact factor is number 50, just below Scientific American at number 49, as I recall. In the mediation, this came up, as you might have noticed, and even though LSD had mentioned it as an example of how unreasonable I was, since it was obvious that Naturw. was a life sciences journal, since it is so classified by Springer, but that was actually synthesized from primary sources by misinterpreting them. Springer has only one multidisciplinary journal, and each journal needs a category, so that there is general managing staff for the journal, and they aren't going to set up a managing group for just one journal. Since most of the articles do have a biology aspect, it's rather obvious, they stuck it there. But the overall management has nothing to do with peer review, which is apparently the responsibility of the Max Planck Society. It's an example of how the cabal has attempted to maintain the appearance of the bogosity of cold fusion.

See my Chinese conspiracy theory above (the strike-out text), heh.

It's hard to point to a specific dividing line, but, very clearly, by 2004 and the DoE review, cold fusion could no longer be reasonably considered simple fringe science, much less pseudoscience, for one-third of the 18-member panel considered not only the heat to be real, but evidence at least "somewhat convincing" that the origin was nuclear. That would not happen with a "rejected field." It's emerging science, still very controversial. And when there is controversy, Wikipedia should not be promoting one side or the other, but should be presenting the evidence in the highest-quality sources neutrally and with balance.

As long as it is possible to say, "So-and-so claimed such-and-such" (and provide a reference), then that is a non-POV way of presenting any information at all, so long as the article makes clear to the reader that claims are not automatically facts. And, it is just as easy to present opposing claims, phrased the same way, thereby achieving a balance of quantity of claims in the article, at least.

And how do we determine balance? This is an old problem in democracy. For immediate decisions, it's been hammered out over centuries that the majority has the right of decision; but whenever majorities stick with that for the long term, and do not recognize the value of increased consensus, revolutions can be fomented, disruption can last for a very long time, with huge damage. What it takes to increase consensus over simple majority is typically discussion in depth, lots and lots of it. And the majority sometimes has no patience for that. So what works is that the minority discusses the matter with a few among the majority, those willing to discuss it. And if those can be convinced, there is then a larger group supporting change, and that can become a majority, and if the arguments are sound, the new majority, after a transition period, becomes a truly expanded consensus, much more difficult to disrupt.

See above. It doesn't have to be complicated.

I'd urge you to moderate your views, bring them closer to the mainstream of Wikipedia editors, and argue for better application of the guidelines, not invention of new ones, which we actually do not need. If we were following the guidelines, we'd have a much better article, and readers would be able to come to conclusions for themselves, and they would also have, through the article, access to much deeper sources. Including critical sources, by the way.

The guidelines explicitly allow exceptions when the article can be improved as a result. You could say that the exception I'm requesting (and apparently couldn't describe well enough) is that there be lesser up-tight-ness, not unlike what you just wrote.

If you'd like something to do, I posted a list to Talk:Cold fusion, of lenr-canr.org pages that I'd gotten whitelisted for use as convenience links in the article, and I was about to start adding those when I was banned. There will be some opposition, but that's okay. Just put in the convenience links that were listed, they are to papers that were, at the time, already in the list of sources, so that people can easily find them. I will watch and help you with supporting arguments, or suggest abandoning one or another of them if there are reasonably cogent objections. Just getting a few in will help the project in the long run. It's almost time to go to meta and get the global blacklisting lifted, and the actual usage of a few more sources may help.

I confess my efforts at adding references have been less than successful. There appears to be some trick to getting it right (on the CF page, not others I've seen) that I haven't studied well enough (lack of time).

Enric, if you read this, you could help with this, too.

V, I also managed to get http://newenergytimes.com delisted, as you can see. But it turned out, I hadn't noticed, that NET relies on a fair use claim to host certain important works, such as the 2009 Naturw. paper by Mosier-Boss. They can get away with that, apparently, because they have author support, for sure, but that does mean that the specific link was properly disallowed by an editor here. There are other possible links to NET, though, whenever we want to cite opinion within the field. NET interviews or publishes correspondence with all the notable scientists working in the field. Those sources can sometimes be used with caution and attribution. Usage of NET is tricky, because there is a publisher bias that can be asserted. In fact, NET's goal is to be neutral, but obviously they have a specialized interest. We do have the article I created, New Energy Times. There is also an article on Infinite Energy, which actually does publish some very interesting articles, with authors notable in the field, and some pretty wigged-out ones. We had these as See-alsos for a while. They should be there for further reading or as a see-also. I put them in for the former, but it was changed to a see-also by an editor, which I accepted, six of one and a half dozen of the other. But then they were both taken out, tradeoff is that the Britz bibliography was inserted. They should all be there, in fact. Britz refers to lenr-canr.org, which helps. But it's crazy that there are two regular publications (print with IE, web with NET) which exist that extensively cover the topic of the article, and they aren't listed. It's a reflection of cabal bias. "Fringe" is not an argument for exclusion, but for balance and caution. --Abd (talk) 19:08, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

It is possible that a "fringe" publication of any sort is one that consistently presents an unbalanced view. There is no doubt that both IE and NET are tilted from a level balance, which suffices them to be condemned by the CF detractors.

On Kitamura and Arata.

[7] I don't have a copy of the actual paper, but it doesn't matter at this point. You are correct. From the abstract alone, this paper is a confirmation of Arata, establishing notability. Kirk is COI and does not agree with RS and NPOV policy. He rejects the content of the paper, as he rejects all positive cold fusion results and review, he always finds a reason. But we depend on the peer-reviewers and what they pass and don't pass, Wikipedia is not concerned with Truth. More accurately, we leave that judgment to others: publishers and peer reviewers.

The argument he raises is a generic one: most cold fusion experiments are not exact replications. The application here is a bit poor; the Kitamura work is, in fact, a replication, though it reports on different aspects, it seems. The level of the effect is known to depend on the exact alloy and preparation, which affects surface area per weight, and so this would likely explain the quantitative differences. Kitamura used an independent fabrication (which makes it more of an independent replication).

Kirk's original research on the content is of low relevance to our inclusion standards. We can criticize, for example, very cogently, Albagli's work in 1989 from MIT, but we don't. The paper was accepted by peer review, however flawed it was. If we are going to criticize, it will be because the criticism is found in a review, under peer review, and we will present it neutrally, in apposition, probably with attribution.

Good luck. I will be paying less and less attention to Wikipedia, but if you have questions, you are welcome to email me. The kit project is finding some support from names in the field, which is probably crucial to its success. To work, the engineering must be a solid representation of the art, and the art is not fully published. That is, in fact, one aspect that we will be addressing, because the documentation necessary to manufacture the kits will be the missing publication. These kits will enable massive exact replication. Theoretically, they could also enable massive disconfirmation! If we are unable to develop engineering to make kits showing a consistent effect (at least, if the actual phenomena vary from cell to cell, statistically significant), given all the work that has been done and the reports of 100% success (secondary review, He Jing-Tang, Frontiers of Physics in China), I will insure that this fact is published. Further, should we show a consistent effect, there is then an experiment for skeptics to examine and debunk, if they can. It's quite possible that calorimetry won't be part of the first kits, it's too tricky, but kit design is still very, very open. --Abd (talk) 15:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Note to Abd Arbitrators

I formally grant Abd permission to say anything he wants on this page. I won't guarantee to read all of it, :) --but he has no significant dispute here, and therefore no formal editing restriction applies here. V (talk) 19:25, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Will you then please ensure that when Abd discusses other editors, as he did me above, that you will provide courtesy notices to them on his behalf? LeadSongDog come howl 15:29, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

A not unreasonable request. Do note, though, that Abd hasn't written anything here since I opened this page to him. V (talk) 16:29, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Noted. Thank you.LeadSongDog come howl 17:03, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Just to note, I've many times had things to say to you, V, over the last few months, but I'm also under a topic ban, and what I'd say has to do with sources relating to that topic, which I know increasingly well. If you'd like to communicate with me about this, you will have to do it off-wiki, either by email or at Wikipedia Review (which will require an email address, but they will keep it confidential). As would I. Naturally, anything I say to you relating to Wikipedia articles covered by my topic ban, you would have to verify before passing on, likewise anything that comes from the IP that has popped in here, otherwise you would be open to charges of "proxying for a banned user." --Abd (talk) 13:55, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm curious to know why an article-topic ban should be enforced on a USER page. It can make sense to ban a user from the pages formally devoted to a topic, but so far as I know, it doesn't make sense to ban from user pages a discussion about an article, that the users want to discuss. V (talk) 15:18, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Civility warning

Objectivist, I have noticed a downward trend in the civility of your comments. You have used the comment "chosen-to-be-ignorant"[8] and "heh" [9] in ways that I consider insulting. Please be more polite to other editors, and please refrain from posting so much text that does not discuss edits to the article. Olorinish (talk) 22:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

A reminder of the content of the "ways and means" section, higher up on this page, appears to be in order. I could do a lot worse than I have been doing, with respect to someone who appears to fit the profile described in that section. Please note the point about public exposure; what do you suggest as a better way ("more effective!") to successfully deal with such persons?

I will make the same suggestion to you that I made to Abd: discuss edits to the article, and, as far as possible, refrain from commenting on other things. I know I occasionally break that rule, but I do try to follow it. In my experience, it is usually better to let people say their "crazy" things on talk pages without any comment. I look at it as a form of ostracism. Talk pages are, in this view, not for finding out who is "right"; instead, it is for finding out what can pragmatically be done with the article. FWIW. Olorinish (talk) 00:22, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

In this particular case, though, a false statement was made that could be used to influence the editing of the article, if it wasn't challenged. The POV associated with the false statement does not matter in the least; what matters is that the false statement must not be allowed to stand unopposed. I therefore took pains to oppose it. And I would do so again, and again and again, in the future! Also, note it is completely true that if a hot-fusion expert has ignored the experiments in the CF field for twenty years, then that expert must logically be ignorant of recent developments --by choice. I do try to be careful in my wording, even when stepping on toes! Also, in my last post on the discussion page, I made something of an effort to reiterate a hint I've mentioned elswhere on that page, which is is quite relevant to editing the article; I've been hinting, to spell it out: "There does not need to be so much focus on associating fusion with every aspect of the anomalous-energy-production experiments; we can in theory heavily focus on details of the experiments and the heat produced, while noting almost-in-passing that fusion is a controversial explanation for it." That is, the article could be updated to reflect more closely the present state of the field, since controversy is starting to fade, regarding the experimental production of anomalous energy. V (talk) 00:56, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

sources for cold fusion

V, I'll look for possible sources in the SPAWAR papers, as you requested in the cold fusion talk page. In the meantime, I would appreciate if you could comment on my proposal change for the lead (privately here, if you prefer).

I noticed that it's not possible to send you private e-mails. If you want to change this, you just need to enter your e-mail address in your preferences. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:15, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

60 minutes

Real heat, not to mention neutrons! Maybe [10] will help? 76.254.70.144 (talk) 09:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. Not much experimental data presented, though. V (talk) 14:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Two overlooked cold fusion secondary sources from 2008

I find it amusing that the talk page for the cold fusion article asks for sources, but ordinary non-wikipedia people can't add any. Did you know about these two recent peer reviewed literature reviews?

Biberian, J.-P.; Armamet, N. (2008) "An update on condensed matter nuclear science (cold fusion)." Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie. Volume: 33, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 45-51. Abstract: The discovery of Cold Fusion was announced on March 23, 1989 at a press conference at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The two discoverers: Stan Pons and Martin Fleischmann described their electrochemical device that produces more heat than the electric energy used to run it. Since then lot of progress has been made, and it is more and more obvious that this phenomenon now named Condensed Matter Nuclear Science is a genuine scientific research field with many important potential applications. It is the purpose of this paper to present an update of the worldwide research.

Sheldon, E. (2008) "An overview of almost 20 years' research on cold fusion. A review of 'The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction: A Comprehensive Compilation of Evidence and Explanations about Cold Fusion.'" Contemporary Physics. Volume: 49, Issue: 5, Pages: 375-378. Full text: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a906882120&fulltext=713240928

They say that Wikipedia is supposed to reflect the secondary sources. If you would, please bring those secondary sources to the attention of the other cold fusion article editors. I want to see what they have to say about them. Thank you.

128.32.83.52 (talk) 00:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thank you.

(: Biberian's links through Google to http://www.ensmp.fr/aflb/AFLB-331/aflb331m629.pdf 99.38.150.198 (talk) 02:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Archive after Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion. 99.22.95.69 (talk) 00:24, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I see someone commented (on that page) about "Elsevier has been known to publish volumes of less than reliable conference proceedings for monetary gain." This could be interpreted to mean that Elsevier is making invalid claims about peer-review. I don't know how to get at the truth of that matter (duh, every publisher publishes for monetary gain...). Certainly it is a reason why "larger" and more-widely-known publishers are preferred as Wikipedia sources. V (talk) 14:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

For whatever it's worth, conference proceedings aren't usually peer-reviewed. Cardamon (talk) 07:47, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Elsevier's Encyclopedia of Electrochemical Power Sources isn't a conference proceeding, it's a peer reviewed tertiary source. 71.198.176.22 (talk) 08:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This NASA report from 1989 found excess heat. Will the cold fusion editors want to include it? 71.198.176.22 (talk) 08:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

We shall see. Thank you.

Talkback

Hello, Objectivist. You have new messages at Abd's talk page.
Message added 17:28, 27 February 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hello, Objectivist. You have new messages at NYyankees51's talk page.
Message added 20:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

June 2010

Please do not add original research or novel syntheses of previously published material to our articles as you apparently did to Talk:Beginning of human personhood. Please cite a reliable source for all of your information. Thank you. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:05, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Please stop. If you continue to violate Wikipedia's no original research policy by adding your personal analysis or synthesis into articles, as you did to Talk:Person, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:05, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

ERAB report at NCAS

Hi. I shouldn't, but from time to time I look a the Talk section at Cold Fusion. I noticed you mentioned the fact that my copy of the ERAB report includes an introduction, which is ostensibly why LENR-CANR.org has been banned from Wikipedia. That's funny for three reasons You May Not Be Aware of:

1. The skeptics inserted a link to the NCAS version of this report instead: http://www.ncas.org/erab/

As you see, that version has an introduction too. So the skeptics do not object to an introduction; they object to an introduction they disagree with.

2. The LENR-CANR version is an exact copy of the NCAS version, and it includes a link to the original. You can compare the two. If I were trying to sneak in a distorted version, why would I put a link to the original?

3. My introduction is signed by me; it is in a different font; and separated from the text by a page break. Does anyone seriously suggest that I intended for people to think it was part of the original document?!?

- Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.88.200 (talk) 01:00, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. As it happens, I think I was the one who originally found the document at the NCAS site (it was the only copy on the Web I could find outside lenr-canr.org). If there is a link to the original document in the copy at your site, then I'm going to get it (downloading as I write this). Finally, whatever you intended, when you added your introduction to it (and to other documents?), it was not spelled out clearly enough, which led the anti-CF crowd to misuse it against you. Perhaps you should re-edit all your introductions to indicate plainly that your added material "ends here", and after it follows the original unedited source-document. You might even add a link at the very start, just to allow someone to jump past your introduction and go straight to the original unedited source-document. Perhaps the blacklist can be lifted afterward... V (talk) 17:11, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

You wrote: "Finally, whatever you intended, when you added your introduction to it (and to other documents?), it was not spelled out clearly enough . . ."

The first sentences in the document are: "A copy of the ERAB report has been prepared by the National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS) organization (www.ncas.org). It is available here in HTML format: http://www.ncas.org/erab/. It is converted to Acrobat format in this document, below. . . ."

I cannot imagine how I could spell it out any more clearly than that! Seriously. In any case, even if I were to do all that the skeptics demand, they would simply come up with another excuse to ban LENR-CANR.org. If I had not put that introductory sentence in the NCAS document, listing where it came from, they would accuse me of plagiarizing it, and they would ban me for that reason instead. They are determined not to allow anyone's point of view but their own.

I do not recall adding an intro to other documents. At the top of every document in the library, I list where it came from. In some cases the document already showed that. In other cases I added the name of the journal, proceedings, or website. In a few cases I added "housekeeping" information, such as: "This document is: Ikegami, H., ed. Third International Conference on Cold Fusion, "Frontiers of Cold Fusion". . . . The printed book is in one volume, but this version has been split into two parts to facilitate downloading. . . . This is Part 1, title page to page 252 . . ."

- Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 17:40, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, it is better for all that LENR-CANR.org be banned. I prefer not to see it associated with Wikipedia. Having a link here is a bit like posting a business card in the lobby of a House of Ill Repute. You don't want that clientele. - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 18:01, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, I had started to inquire here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard (bottom of page), but won't worry about it too much (although I won't stop wishing all those convenience links were available to the article here). Here's a link you might find interesting: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cold_Nuclear_Fusion:_A_Hypothesis --I'm pretty sure you won't have a problem if you want to add a copy to your library (see the License at the WikiSource site). V (talk) 23:02, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I added a note to the Noticeboard discussion, to clear up any confusion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Regarding_LENR-CANR.ORG

(Actually I did this partly to use as a legal defense in case one of the fanatics here ever tries to stir up legal trouble against me, as some anti-cold fusion people have done.) - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 19:56, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Someone deleted the whole discussion. Fortunately, I was able to recover my comments from the archive. I need to preserve that statement in case someone attacks me. - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.41.126.65 (talk) 13:57, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Around Wikipedia the word "deleted" usually doesn't mean the same thing it means at other places. The discussion was automatically "archived" by a "bot", probably due to inactivity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AReliable_sources%2FNoticeboard&action=historysubmit&diff=379322666&oldid=379320882 V (talk) 15:14, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks.

[11] Thanks. FYI, http:/lenr-canr.org has been delisted, my request at meta was successful, and it may be freely used now for convenience links, and under some circumstances for original work hosted there by a recognized expert. See the prominent mention of lenr-canr.org at [12]. That is, a highly reliable source has referred readers to the web site so that they can readily read papers that may otherwise be quite difficult to find.

It was never true that I was the only person interested in using links to the site; when the site was blacklisted, links were removed, and this was before I ever edited in the topic; as well, the link at Martin Fleischmann was extensively debated, and efforts to remove the link, under the usual arguments, were roundly rejected. But the links will not be used unless an editor is bold enough to replace them, and follow dispute resolution process if that's resisted! --Abd (talk) 13:50, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

You are welcome. -And, good show! V (talk) 06:55, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

V, you have suggested that problems on theory at Cold fusion might be resolved with a link to v:Cold fusion. That's no solution. The Wikiversity page should be an interwiki link from the article, using a template in the External Links section, and not a reference for any subtopic. It is a place for students of the topic to explore it, to ask for expert opinion, share research, etc. Original research is indeed allowed there, and, for that reason, any specific Wikiversity page may not satisfy Wikipedia NPOV and sourcing standards. That is not an obstacle to an interwiki link, though, the position that a WV page is "self-published" isn't the case. It's a wiki, and it is a WMF wiki, which requires a neutrality policy, it merely deals with neutrality in a different way. As it happens, almost nobody other than me has edited those pages in a long time. But it's not for lack of invitations! It should be a general guideline that interwiki links, to other WMF wikis, are allowed and encouraged. That is the implication of the guideline already.

Wikiversity does not host encyclopedia articles, generally, though it's been used as an incubator on occasion. That is, a class there might work on pages intended for wikipedia, to be exported to Wikipedia, it's been done many times. And original research on Wikipedia can be moved to Wikiversity. And an interwiki link placed if the resource on Wikiversity is sufficiently relevant to the Wikipedia article. This, then, encourages more people to see and work on the learning resources on Wikiversity.

The problems on theory at the Wikipedia article should be resolved by covering in the article the notable theories that are discussed in secondary sources, for sure. There is plenty on this. I've started a Wikiversity page on Cold fusion/theory, but it isn't sourced yet. Care to help? --Abd (talk) 19:45, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

When I can find the time.... :) V (talk) 03:48, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

(later) Well, I did not see the theory page you mentioned. But I did add a "Hypotheses" section to the main CF article. And it definitely needs more material added to it. V (talk) 04:46, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, perhaps there are great riches you didn't notice. There is a series of seminars on the page. Each one is a subpage. This is Wikiversity, where subpages may be used in mainspace. Way cool, actually. --Abd (talk) 00:40, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps. On the other hand, I originally did type in a web-page address that ended with something like "Cold_fusion/Theory", which is all I had to work with based on your earlier post, and got a page-does-not-exist-do-you-want-to-create-one error. I do now see the subpage you specified in your latest message, so perhaps I can do something. I do see something of an error near the top (will post about it in discussion page). V (talk) 03:16, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, "electron catalysis" is now described on the Theory page. Note I object to the word "theory" as explained in the "hypotheses" section of the main CF article. Anyway, perhaps you can tell me if you think what I wrote makes sense. :) V (talk) 04:43, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cold_Fusion_Hypothesis --just so I don't have to hunt this link down in the future.

A section for Jed Rothwell

I noted that someone mentioned my name in the Cold Fusion talk section. I am permanently banned from there and the rest of Wikipedia too as far as I know. However, it seems I can write messages here. Anyway, you might want to inform Mr. Mouse that:

In the first report of heat after death, the energy release exceeded the amount of energy that could have been stored by hydrogen by a factor of 1,700 (650 J versus 1.1 MJ), and the event happened 116 times faster than a hydrogen release would allow (6 hours versus 696 hours). Some subsequent heat after death reports have exceeded the limits of chemical storage by even larger margins.

- Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 22:59, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• Hi Jed. You can edit as an IP without logging in. Just be sure to manually affix a signature block that identifies you. If your IP is blocked, you might be able to change it, if you are using an ISP with dynamic IPs. Your IP, however, appears to be static, so you probably shouldn't use it to edit the pages related to Cold Fusion. Abd can tell you how to edit on Wikiversity, if you want to discuss items of mutual interest with Montana Mouse. —Barsoom Tork 13:59, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Someone sent me a note saying I am banned. I don't know the details. I would not want to contribute in any case, since I feel that Wikipedia and the article about cold fusion are an abomination. Anyway, I thought you would like to know why the hydrogen storage hypothesis has no merit. Anyone familiar with the literature knows that it fails by 5 orders of magnitude. I suggest you read the literature more carefully because otherwise you will again repeat elementary errors that people have been making for 21 years. - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmmmm . . . As a test, I added a comment. It is still there a half-hour later. Maybe whoever it was who banned me has been banned in turn. Or they have lifted the ban. Or it was a lie. Anyway, I have no desire to participate. I am sure Mr. Mouse will continue to insist that hydrogen storage can explain heat after death, even though that is like saying anyone can jump over Mt. Everest. Skeptics opposed to cold fusion never pay attention to quantitative proof that they are wrong. - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 20:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Some nitwit will probably erase this. Let me copy it here in case you don't get a chance to read it --

The hypothesis that unboiled water left the cell was tested rigorously by several methods, in hundreds of experimental runs at Toyota, the French AEC and elsewhere. It was shown to be incorrect. Some of the methods were: 1. A careful inventory the salts left in the cell showed that only D2O left the cell. 2. Heat after death was confirmed with closed, boiling cells, using different calorimeter types. 3. Boil off events in null cells were induced with high powered electrolysis (instead of cold fusion heat), and the input power required to drive the water out agreed with textbook heat of vaporization. The cells are designed with buffers and small holes at the top to prevent unboiled water from leaving the cell. This is essential for various other reasons, such as keeping contamination out of the electrolyte.

It is amazing how these skeptics imagine they are the first people to come up with the idea that unboiled water might have left the cell. They imagine that hundreds of the world's top electrochemists never thought of that!

I must stop posting messages there. It is a bad habit. - Jed

If you are truly banned from all of Wikipedia, then while that can't prevent you from posting most places (I think lots of places are still editable without logging in), it might mean any editor is supposed to delete what your write after that editor encounters/recognizes it. However, I don't recognize any politically motivated ban at this my personal talk page, so don't worry about posting here. I do, however, have to be careful about repeating what a banned person writes. V (talk) 00:22, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah. I got a message about this:

Blocked

This IP has been blocked for 1 month, as it appears to be used to circumvent a block on a named account. If you'd like the IP to be unblocked, please use the unblock template, or see the guide to appealing blocks. MastCell Talk 07:36

From Jed (not MastCell) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.120.10.38 (talk) 22:11, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Surprise surprise! The Rossi device made it into Wikipedia. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.190.106.112 (talk) 21:19, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah! MastCell banned me again. What an incorrigible scamp he is! Over at the Energy Catalyzer article one of the skeptics deleted the output power from the description, leaving a vague impression that the power was 400 W or 80 W (the input power). Anyway, if Rossi succeeds, eventually these skeptics will go away. If he fails, I fear there may not be many more chances for cold fusion. The $280 million investment is what matters now. I hope it is real, and the deal does not fall through, and Rossi is able to make a 1 MW prototype unit. I cannot understand why he is making a 1 MW machine when Defkalion plans to sell much smaller ones. I suppose there is a reason, but I have no clue what it could be. Unless Levi is in cahoots with Rossi, I think that fraud is ruled out, for the technical reasons given here: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3214604&posted=1#post3214604 And here: http://lenr.qumbu.com/fake_rossi_ecat_v310.php - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.232.7.250 (talk) 14:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Rossi subsection

I haven't much studied the descriptions of the Rossi device. However, I will express some doubt that it actually does BOTH of these things: (1) Generate energy than it consumes and (2) does so by fusing hydrogen with nickel to make copper. That's because of something called "the curve of binding energy" of atomic nuclei. It is thoroughly documented that for all atomic nuclei more massive than Iron-56 (which includes all naturally stable atoms of nickel), the amount of energy it takes to cause such a nucleus to fuse with another is always more than the amount of energy released by the fusion reaction. Such heavier-than-iron nuclei are Naturally made in supernova explosions, where lots of energy is available to force them to be made. Thus we can use a small amount of energy to split a uranium nucleus, and obtain a lot of energy. THINK of a fission event happening "backward": You have to start with potential fission products and force them together to make a uranium nucleus, an action that will require adding the same large amount of energy that could be released by fission. Thus backing-up what I wrote about only getting a small amount of energy out of fusing those nuclei to make uranium --on a much lesser scale, the same is true of fusing nickel with hydrogen to make copper --to cause "copper fission", if the nucleus was hit by an energetic particle and as a result it broke apart into nickel and hydrogen, the released energy would be greater than the amount needed to do the breaking. So, if Rossi's device works to generate more energy than it consumes, it must be doing something more than ONLY (if it does this at all) fusing hydrogen with nickel. I'd say it more likely is fusing hydrogen with hydrogen. (grin!) V (talk) 06:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I think most experts agree with you that some sort of H-H reaction is more likely, and if there are heavy element transmutations, they must be a side-effect of that. The Cu isotopic distribution indicates it is contamination, but I can't imagine how all the Cu would get into the cell. More mysteries. Rossi understands conventional nuclear theory and he realizes that most people consider his model is impossible. That does not bother him. I don't see why it bothers anyone, really. He is making an experimental claim. He is not trying to publish a theory paper. Who cares what his theory is?

There are interesting comments by Mats Lewan here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Energy_Catalyzer#Response_by_Mats_Lewan

Prof. TenOfAllTrades has locked me out of all articles again, which -- as I said before -- is actually a favor. It keeps me from wasting time. One thing irks me, however, which I told LeadSongDog and the Wikpedia authorities, to no avail. In the cold fusion discussion section, various people accuse me of committing serious Federal crimes: either uploading a leaked (stolen) DIA document, or forging a fake document with an official seal on it. If I did either one it would bring the FBI to my door. It is irresponsible for people to make unfounded accusations of serious crimes in public, especially when they prevent the accused person from responding. I would suggest you note that there, but they would only throw YOU out, so there is no point. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:99.120.10.38#JedRothwell_sockpuppet

Anyway, that's the kind of people they are. - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.88.147.207 (talk) 18:30, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I've already noted that I have to be careful about repeating what a banned person writes. As for people having trouble with Rossi's claims, the problem is that if they are true, then it becomes possible to build a perpetual-motion machine, since all the obvious explanations involve violations of the Energy Conservation Law. Finally, regarding the DIA document, I don't recall seeing the accusations you are talking about. If I had, I would have left some sort of comment (to the accuser: "How do YOU know that?") V (talk) 05:43, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

You wrote: "I've already noted that I have to be careful about repeating what a banned person writes." Ha, ha! Darn right! They'll run you outta town. No point in doing that on my account. Heck, they are trying to run Brian Josephson out of town.

". . . regarding the DIA document, I don't recall seeing the accusations you are talking about." Right here: "This DIA document appears to be leaked, not published . . ." (Leaked = stolen, as far as Uncle Sam is concerned, AFAIK) And here: "More importantly, though, whether or not it is legally hosted . . ." (Do they think I would illegally host something with official seal from the DIA? How stupid do they think I am?!?) (Elsewhere, someone claimed I forged it . . . can't find.)

As far I know Rossi's machine is just another cold fusion reactor. No indication it violates Energy Conservation. There have been many previous Ni-H reactors, albeit none as big as this. Essen sure would have noticed. He would have been upset. Nothing upsets a member of Skeptics Society more than violating the Conservation of Energy. - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.88.147.207 (talk) 21:18, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I seriously mean it. If nickel can be fused with hydrogen to make copper, and more energy can be released than is used to force it to happen, then some other device can be used to fission copper back into nickel and hydrogen, releasing energy per the Known Curve of Binding Energy. Which means you can constantly generate energy by cycling between both reactions. Potentially forever. Except, of course, the Conservation Law has yet to let us get away with anything remotely like it, which means that particular claim needs to be significantly doubted. But a claim that inter-hydrogen fusions can occur in a nickel metal lattice is not significantly worse than a claim it can happen in a palladium lattice --much more acceptable than Ni/H fusion, even if we never ever identify the precise mechanism that could allow H/H fusion to happen. V (talk) 02:34, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I do not think many people agree that that hydrogen is fusing with nickel. That may be Rossi's theory or model, but my impression is that most experts believe something else is going on. The Cu -- if it is a product and not contamination -- is a side-effect of the main reaction. Transmutations have often been reported with Pd-D cold fusion, but they are considered side-effects.

Rossi sent Essen et al. some samples of before-and-after material. So far they found no Cu in the starting material, and lots in the used material. Yet the Cu has natural isotopes, which points to contamination. But such large amounts of contamination in a stainless steel cell seem impossible. It is a mystery. Rossi is giving Essen and another group their own E-Cats so they can run them and look for other stuff. That's supposed to happen later this week. One for U. Uppsala and one for U. Stockholm.

This section is getting kind of long. Why don't you delete most of it to make it convenient to edit? - Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.88.147.207 (talk) 22:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll probably archive part of it sometime, but for now will simply subdivide it. Yes, if the Rossi device does lots of deuterium fusion, a side-effect could be forcing some fusion of deuterium with nickel to also occur (absorbing some of the energy released by deuterium fusion). Regarding the details of the results of such fusions, it seems to me that some radioactive copper isotopes should be produced. Let me see... stable isotopes of nickel have mass-numbers of 58, 60, 61, 62, and 64, while stable copper isotopes are 63 and 65. Possible reactions creating copper from nickel and hydrogen isotopes are Ni58+H1-->Cu59(r), Ni58+H2-->Cu60(r), Ni58+H3-->Cu61(r), Ni60+H1-->Cu61(r), Ni60+H2-->Cu62(r), Ni60+H3-->Cu63(s), Ni61+H1-->Cu62(r), Ni61+H2-->Cu63(s), Ni61+H3-->Cu64(r), Ni62+H1-->Cu63(s), Ni62+H2-->Cu64(r), Ni62+H3-->Cu65(s), Ni64+H1-->Cu65(s), Ni64+H2-->Cu66(r), Ni64+H3-->Cu67(r) --where (r) and (s) mean "radioactive" and "stable" respectively. If you look at the Isotopes of copper page you will see that Cu61, Cu64, and Cu67 have hours-long half-lives, which is plenty long enough to be detectable by their radioactivity. Some thorough isotopic analysis of the nickel that is removed from a Rossi device is strongly recommended, to see which isotopes of nickel are depleted, and the ratio-of-formation of copper isotopes. Because if no radioactive copper forms, that discovery should be much more important than the notion that nickel and hydrogen is fusing at all. V (talk) 08:31, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Arggg! It turns out Rossi is not shipping systems to Sweden anytime soon. He just told me he will not. He did say there will be another test soon with improved calorimetry. I think he said it will be in Bologna. He is in Florida, and he is stuck here for while, so they will do the next tests without him. That's good news!

He says all kinds of stuff in his blog. It is hard to follow, and sometimes contradictory. I compiled a list of his statements, which someone else converted to Wiki format here:

http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_A._Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Generator:Rossi%27s_Hints

- Jed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.88.147.207 (talk) 22:18, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

LENR-CANR subsection

There's some recent stuff at the bottom of the CF Talk page concerning the LENR-CANR web site. Looks to me like some of it is more of the same nonsense you have defended against before. Jed, if you reply here about it, I can try to keep your remarks "alive" longer than they tend to survive on other WP pages (heh, one more reason to delay archiving stuff). V (talk) 16:26, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Soap box

I saw your comment on MFD, about someone referring to "soap box". I took a quick look at your edit count, and it looks like all you've done on Wikipedia is talk.[13] Wikipedia isn't a debating club. Just a suggestion. I have only read a small part of your output, so I won't comment on the quality or content. But I'd suggest that if you're offended at the term then you might think of spending more time improving articles and less time sharing your views, no matter how correct or insightful they may be.   Will Beback  talk  07:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

RFAR WikiProject: Conservatism

Your request for arbitration has been declined. The voting arbitrators felt that this was not as it stood a matter for the committee, noting the MfD that has been initiated. For the Arbitration Committee Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 11:59, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Soapbox

I was going to try to ignore your soapboxing but it doesn't appear that you're going to stop anytime soon. These remarks at WikiProject Conservatism [14] [15] and this long thread [16] at MfD are disruptive. Please read WP:SOAP for more info. – Lionel ^(talk) 07:46, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

RFC/U discussion concerning you (Objectivist)

Hello, Objectivist. Please be aware that a user conduct request for comment has been filed concerning your conduct on Wikipedia. The RFC entry is located at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Objectivist, where you may want to participate. NYyankees51 (talk) 22:31, 14 October 2011 (UTC) Thanks, NYyankees51 (talk) 22:31, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Regarding your statement, the soapboxing issue, as I understand it, is not about what is or is not added to articles, but about the content of your posts on article talk pages being not about the content of the article, but about your personal opinion, or rhetorical questions, about the topic in general. For example, the first thing cited as "antagonistic ranting" is:

I'm curious to know how conservatives address issues in which they exhibit hypocrisy (besides deleting posts that point it out). For example, many conservatives claim that human life is valuable (a reason to oppose abortion), while simultaneously opposing any Minimum Wage Law that is designed to help keep alive humans that are already born. Also, conservatives generally oppose the idea that if somebody wants something, then someone else should pay for it --prime example: women on Welfare having more babies at public expense. Logically, however, it follows that if conservatives are against abortions, then that means that conservatives should pay for the births they want to happen, and for the costs of raising those children.... Well, that's just a couple of the obvious hypocrisies of conservatives. There are others. But these are enough to get started, in seeking answers to such issues. Thanks in advance! V (talk) 10:12, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Now, that's something you posted[17] on the talk page of the Conservatism project. We can argue about whether this constitutes "antagonistic ranting", but that would be missing the point.

This statement is not about the content of any conservatism articles, but a general statement about your understanding and opinion of one aspect of it. It would be helpful to everyone involved if you would acknowledge that you understand why posting such a statement is inappropriate. If you're not sure why it's inappropriate, please review WP:NOTAFORUM, which states:

Wikipedia is not a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda, advertising and showcasing. This applies to articles, categories, templates, talk page discussions, and user pages. Therefore, content hosted in Wikipedia is not for:
...

2. Opinion pieces. Although some topics, particularly those concerning current affairs and politics [like abortion, perhaps? -B2C], may stir passions and tempt people to "climb soapboxes" (for example, passionately advocate their pet point of view), Wikipedia is not the medium for this.

Talking about what you're curious to know about conservatism is appropriate on countless conservatism talk forums on the web, but not Wikipedia. If you still think posting such statements is not a problem here, please explain. Otherwise, again, I strongly suggest you do understand, and will refrain from making such posts in the future. Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:29, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Arata replication

Second source [18] page 8 and 9 report about Arata replication by McKubre. Maybe that will do ? --POVbrigand (talk) 16:41, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:AN/I

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. causa sui (talk) 20:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

November 2011

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for abuse of editing privileges. If you would like to be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. causa sui (talk) 17:21, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

MfD nomination of User:Objectivist/Abortion Debate

User:Objectivist/Abortion Debate, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Objectivist/Abortion Debate and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:Objectivist/Abortion Debate during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:54, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Silly post; inviting a blocked editor to edit something is like adding insult to injury. V (talk) 05:28, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I blame Twinkle. You can post your opinion here though. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:02, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, in one sense I already did. See the "not an unblock request" below, where I point out that NYyankees51 made a statement on that MFD page that is obviously false. (I'll add here that it is so obviously false that it qualifies as a "stupid lie".) However, neither his remark nor mine have anything to do with the Rules around here. I cannot contest the proposed deletion, therefore. But I can wish that people would stop telling lies or other distortions regarding the things other people say or do. V (talk) 07:54, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Objectivist (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

Actually, this is not an unblock request yet; this is mostly just a test. Because I don't know enough yet about how this is supposed to work. The "appeal guide" indicates that this should be added to the bottom of my user page (check). In theory this new text should have been located just below the block notification, but before I got around to it, something else got added first. So now, if some sort of overall unblock discussion is supposed to happen, it already has been interrupted. So, should this text really have been added to the previous section, to keep it together/consistent? Next, when I get around to actually requesting an unblock, I will have to gather a lot of data showing the difference between my actions and how those actions were described/distorted by those who favored the block. Simple immediate proof of such distortions can be found on two discussion pages mentioned above, which I now can't edit due to the block. In the discussion page linked just above, User:NYyankees51 claims that a certain other page has "zero chance of ever potentially being useful", implying that events in the far far future are predictable. Obviously a false statement has been made, therefore, even if it looks to be reasonably true with respect to the short-term future (if the page wasn't deleted). There were a lot of equivalent distortions of reality made; I specified a few others on the Noticeboard/Incident page that is mentioned a few sections above this one. Also, please note on that page how a completely new reason for a block entered the discussion, shifting it abruptly from the reasons that were originally offered, even though only those original reasons were specified when the block was done, and not the new one! Is that not another distortion of reality? Thank you! V (talk) 06:15, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Decline reason:

Procedural decline, since this isn't actually an unblock request. To answer your question, the formatting/placement is fine. However, please note that when you do make an unblock request, it will be far, far more beneficial to your chances if you describe how you will act differently going forward than to argue the merits of the block itself. 28bytes (talk) 06:47, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

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edit article "Cold Fusion" Refefences to Pathological Science Should Be Moved to Historical Footnotes

To improve the article:

1) Wiki needs to view it as science.

2) Wiki needs to recognize which scientific journals are utilized and sourced by scientists in this field of physics.

I predict a tremendous increase in the readability of the article.

Query to the Scientific Community: To the Directors of Physics Departments,

LENR - Low Energy Nuclear Reaction and Widom Larson Theory, aka Condensed Matter Nuclear or Lattice Enabled Nuclear; historically misnamed "Cold Fusion"

1) Is this science or pathological science?

2) Do you offer a class in this discipline? If so, please provide information.

3) Are you developing a curriculum of this science? If so, when will you offer it?

4) What peer review journals do you source in this field?

Diza, P>S> 1) Any suggestions or criticisms before I move forward with this? 2) Is this direction of query able to yield opinions the Wikipedia forum on Cold Fusion may value? Thank you for your time, Gregory Goble gbgoble@gmail.com (415) 724-6702--Gregory Goble (talk) 00:03, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

To the extent that researchers in any field follow the Scientific Method, that field can be properly called a "science". To the extent that researchers ignore criticisms of experimental procedure, or don't take all the relevant data into account, or even unconsciously bias their experiments toward desired results, then those researchers could be committing "pathological science". There is nothing wrong with the label "cold fusion" if it is an accurate label (about nuclear fusion happening at relatively low temperatures) --and, personally, I tend to think that to try to change that label to something else is to admit there is something wrong with it (in other words, a bad idea, if the CF researchers are actually correct!).

I'm not a formal teacher; I haven't studied the Widom-Larson theory enough to comment on it, and I can't afford to access ordinary peer-reviewed journals. V (talk) 05:51, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Abortion amendment request

Hello. I have made a request to the Arbitration Committee to amend the Abortion case, in relation to the structured discussion that was to take place. The request can be found here. Regards, Steven Zhang ^{Join the DR army!} 04:09, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Abortion article titles notification

Hey Objectivist. This is just a notification that a binding, structured community discussion has been opened by myself and Steven Zhang on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. As you were named as a involved party in the Abortion case, you may already know that remedy 5.1 called for a "systematic discussion and voting on article names". This remedy is now being fulfilled with this discussion. If you would like to participate, the discussion is taking place at WP:RFC/AAT. All the best, Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 22:57, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

No can do at this time; see block above.