
It's Not Cold Fusion but It's Something - curtis
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/its-not-cold-fusion-but-its-something/
======
dekhn
I think it's already been fairly well understood by a subset of physicists
that F&P probably had demonstrated a legitimate, previously unexplained
phenomenon and that the primary mistake was in overinterpreting the results
and allowing the U's PR department run too far with it.

What I find interesting is that when confronted with that idea, many physcists
just get stuck at the original claims and don't understand that there is
likely a novel phenomenon of some sort, deserving of study.

~~~
mysterypie
I was struck by the viciousness of attacks against Fleischmann and Pons in the
months after their cold fusion announcement. A few physicists even went out of
their way to call them frauds and charlatans -- it wasn't enough to say that
Fleischmann and Pons were mistaken.

As if two quiet, humble, respected PhD's in electrochemistry were crackpots
orchestrating some kind of scam. I feel sorry for the decades of shaming they
had to endure (Fleischmann died 4 years ago; Pons is still alive).

The attitude was that if their claims weren't 100% right and 100%
reproducible, they're scum. When some of the results were turning out to be
negative, it seemed that almost no physicist was willing to say, hey wait a
minute, it's not cold fusion but maybe there's a new interesting unknown
phenomenon there.

~~~
myowncrapulence

      The attitude was that if their claims weren't 100% right and 100% reproducible, they're scum.
    

You're describing every internet forum I've ever encountered.

~~~
wallace_f
To respectfully offer a different point of view, I have never found an
internet forum that requires the veracity of claims be held to that level of
scrutiny.

In fact, I've been downvoted and ridiculed for things like requesting a source
be given, or quoting a mainstream textbook (which disagreed with a user.

HN is better than most imho, but most internet forums seem to be characterized
by groupthink rather than vehement adherence to an ability to verify the truth
of what one is claiming. I'd rather be in the company of the latter, even if
they do ridicule you if your claims are not verifiable.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I can think of one such forum, which deals with issues around audio and
compression. From observing that I'd suggest it's very hard to maintain both
friendliness and an adherence to the scientific method, simply because there
is an endless number of people who have no understanding of or respect for
what you're trying to do.

They'll interpret friendly corrections as rudeness, and won't actually stop
making wild unsubstantiated claims until you escalate to genuine abrupt
rudeness and/or banning.

Also, they'd probably be accused of "groupthink" for trying to maintain that
objectivity by those who disagree with the conclusions. Humans are hard to
deal with.

------
jcoffland
It is a grave problem in science that humans generally insist on putting ideas
in to one of two buckets. Those buckets being the almost-certainly-true and
almost-certainly-false. We need to be comfortable with allowing some, if not
most, ideas to remain in the we-dont-really-know bucket for extended periods
of time. Only then can we reason effectively.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Ideas don't need buckets, they need degrees of confidence - which are a tool
that research uses internally, but which have never percolated outside of
science to the general public.

When crazies tell you that evolution or climate change are "Just a theory"
science should be able to point to a confidence estimate and say "But we're
really sure about the evidence for them."

With something like CF, it would have been completely appropriate to assign a
low confidence to the possibility of sustainable fusion while assigning a
higher confidence to the presence of unexplained results that needed further
research.

Something similar could apply to a lot of fringe phenomena. "That's odd" gets
a lot more traction when you can dissociate it from "That's theoretically
impossible so let's pretend it's not happening."

~~~
beevai142
Incidentally, for climate change, the IPCC reports do define the words they
use to indicate degrees of confidence, similarly as RFCs use MUST, SHOULD to
indicate degrees of requirement.
[https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-6...](https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-6.html)

------
ChuckMcM
If find the discussions around this area interesting. In many ways this is
exactly how science operates, people come up with new things, either through
observation or theory, they think about them and write about them and everyone
else gets to decide if they are right or wrong. And there is never all right,
or all wrong, but really just more questions. So if A is true does that mean B
is true? Can we test to see if B is true? How about C, D, or E? All lead to
investigation which leads to experiments which leads to discussion and
arguments and finally to something useful.

Pons and Fleischman got a raw deal, it was perfectly reasonable for people to
say "I don't believe you did your experiments correctly" or "I don't agree
with the interpretation of the data you received." But it was wrong to call
them fraudsters. It was also wrong to attach a stigma to people who were
investigating things that were not supposed to be possible as cranks or
gullible.

And yet a number of scientists of various levels of skill have continued and
very slowly over time there have been experiments that could be repeated that
exhibited behaviors that are not easily explained by the existing rules (which
mostly are "no nuclear events at these temperatures and pressures.") As the
article points out the micrographs of the metal surfaces are of particular
interest because even if you don't believe in these events being nuclear, it
is equally challenging to come up with a chemical explanation for the features
found on the electrodes. Physical scarring that does not look like either
plating or erosion, and chemical constituents which are not known to have any
sort of exothermic reactivity.

So there is something there, not sure what it is and current theories don't
explain it well or at all. That should be a source of excitement for
scientists right? Doesn't seem so, instead you attacks on the people just
trying to run the experiments!

When I see people unable to embrace a result for what seems like it would put
them in the position of having been wrong earlier, I wonder "What drew this
person into science in the first place?"

~~~
dhimes
_Pons and Fleischman got a raw deal_

Maybe in the end, but they kind of brought it on themselves. They were
excoriated for going to the press before peer review. That's something that
you _just didn 't do_. Then when nobody else could get their results they were
in a bad place.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13130002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13130002)

------
ahazred8ta
It's not a SciAm article, but a blog post by someone we're not familiar with.
There's no new information, it's just a retrospective review.

~~~
singularity2001
Thanks for pointing that out! The last two times I dug into it, I wasted two
weeks just to find that their 'phenomenon/discovery' was near the limits of
measurement error (or even below). Did anything change since then?

UPDATE: One of the authors is a self-proclaimed expert in cold fusion and the
other one is a lawyer. I wonder why there were no physicists among the
authors. They didn't have any experiment description in the article?

Please change the title to "Blog:..."

------
Everhusk
According to quantum mechanics, the probability of a D-D fusion reaction at
300°K is ~10^-3800.

That being said, I still think it's wrong of mainstream science immediately
reject Cold Fusion/LENR or even Em Drive research.

Just take it for what it is, an anomaly. Which may or may not lead to a
breakthrough.

~~~
gus_massa
Is that an anomaly or just an experimental error?

All the reports of the Em Drive are not conclusive. The force that they are
measuring is very small and very close to the experimental error. It looks
more like involuntary p hacking that a good incontrovertible experiment.

I was not following the resents advances of the LENR. IIRC they heat a device
with an electric current and they estimate how much heat it release. Measuring
heat is a very difficult task, so the measurements are problematic. The
additional heat is not too much. They don't have a device that can
autosubstain the reaction, and that can silence all the critics.

If you want an to see how the physic community reacts to an anomaly, consider
the high temperature superconductors. They are clearly impossible, well at
least unbelievable, and the old theory forbid them. But 20 years ago they gave
a foolproof method to build a high temperature superconductors in a good lab.
The experiments were conclusive. You can even tweak the recipe and get a
better superconductor. You can put them under high pressure and get more
temperature. You can make many experiments with them. But still there is no
good theory to explain how they work. Someone told me that the explanation was
flux pinning, but apparently it still disputed and perhaps that explanation is
wrong. But anyway, in spite there is no good theoretical explanation, you can
make conclusive experiments with an relatively easy to build superconductor
and some liquid nitrogen.

Mainstream physics love anomalies. You can get a Nobel price for confirming or
explaining it. You can enclose a few graduate students to study it. You can
get money from grants. But you must have to ensure a minimal probability that
the anomaly is real, because you must release the graduate students someday
...

~~~
visarga
By the way, we now have cheap flexible and powerful superconductors - REBCO
tape. It can achieve 35T magnetic field. Fusion needs from 10T up.

~~~
spangry
Whoa, that's very cool. Achieves superconductivity above liquid nitrogen
temps. You wouldn't happen to know what the cooling setup looks like for REBCO
superconductors? I wonder if you could use some kind of clever magnetic
refrigeration setup to create 'electrically activated' superconductors? (i.e.
use electricity to run a conventional motor in a rotary mag fridge setup
discussed here: [http://sci-hub.cc/10.1063/1.4880818](http://sci-
hub.cc/10.1063/1.4880818))

~~~
visarga
All I can give you is a link to a conference (it's pretty good) about the ARC
reactor based on REBCO superconductors

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4)

------
out_of_protocol
Don't forget Muon-catalyzed fusion exists -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-
catalyzed_fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion) Which
is _kinda_ cold fusion (and was labeled as such).

Also, you can can make energy with it, just not enough to make it commercially
viable

------
guard-of-terra
Is it just me, or they didn't have any experiment description in the article?

They talk about LENR but don't mention under which conditions it would take
place, even in layman terms.

~~~
Everhusk
They didn't. In layman terms: It is the electroysis of heavy water (D2O) on a
palladium electrode.

~~~
greglindahl
In layman terms, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

~~~
greglindahl
p.s. I see that this comment is getting a lot of up-votes and down-votes. The
reason I made it is that I have discovered that my non-scientist friends,
especially my smart engineer friends, really need this important principle
repeated.

~~~
adwn
Maybe the reason is that you keep repeating this meme which – although
technically true – oversimplifies things and doesn't help with resolving
unexplained experimental results. Sure, extraordinary claims require
extraordinary proof, but now what? Should further experiments be funded in
order to provide that proof, or should the unexplained results be buried,
since there is no conclusive proof? Proclaiming "Extraordinary claims require
extraordinary proof" is a way to immediately block this discussion.

~~~
greglindahl
The purpose of the phrase is to be a reminder that the results are mostly
likely experimental error. It doesn't block anything, it just reminds everyone
what the most likely explanation is.

If you want to see a good example of this in action, look at the folks who
thought they showed neutrinos went faster than light. They constantly kept in
mind that the most likely explanation for the data was experimental error, and
eventually showed that their experiment had an error. Nothing was "buried",
nothing was "blocked", and good science was eventually done.

------
maverick_iceman
Hmm, one of the authors is a self-proclaimed expert in cold fusion and the
other one is a lawyer. I wonder why there were no physicists among the
authors.

------
eric_br
I looked into this a bunch earlier in the year, if anyone wants a collection
of links to sources: [https://curiositycontinuer.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/are-
lenr...](https://curiositycontinuer.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/are-lenrs-stuck-
in-a-status-trap/)

> Low Energy Nuclear Reactions have been, for a long time, the archetypal
> crackpot technology.

> Huge promises. Failed replication attempts. Dismissal by the academic
> community. Accusations of handwavey pseudoscience. Advocates generally
> having low status. Associations with conspiracy theorists.

> Anyone associated with it or even expressing anything less than absolute
> certainty that it’s an unscientific non-starter is risking not just a
> reputation hit, but aggressive ridicule.

> Based on my understanding of the history of science, I think that the
> feelings I have around talking about this, that fear of that ridicule,
> should be a red flag. If the incentives are stacked too strongly against an
> idea (for good or bad reasons), it can become impossible for respectable
> people to entertain the idea. Often this is a correct approach, the vast
> majority of amateur science with big claims is nonsense. But what if
> something valuable was stuck in this trap?

> If not for observations of current dramatic failures of the scientific
> process in nutrition and medicine, my priors against a demonstrable
> discovery of this magnitude being ignored would be very formidable. As it
> stands, this would still be shocking civilizational inadequacy, but I can
> see a process by which it could have occurred.

> So I decided it was worth a couple of hours of investigation. Low chance of
> turning up anything of value, but low investment and in the worst case I’ll
> know a few more things and be able to hold up a conversation using actual
> understanding about why it’s bunk if someone ever tries to sell me on it,
> rather than simply using the “experts are probably right” heuristic.

> And now.. I’m not quite sure what to think.

------
imaginenore
Also let's not forget the Lugano report, an independent attempt at
reproduction of Rossi's E-cat claims. It produced more heat that was put in,
and the isotopes got formed.

[http://www.elforsk.se/Global/Omv%C3%A4rld_system/filer/Lugan...](http://www.elforsk.se/Global/Omv%C3%A4rld_system/filer/LuganoReportSubmit.pdf)

And later reproduced by the Russians, with similar results:

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz7lTfqkED9Wdm1NeEtxMFJLTmM...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz7lTfqkED9Wdm1NeEtxMFJLTmM/view)

[https://geektimes.ru/post/243787/](https://geektimes.ru/post/243787/)

~~~
est
You know what all recent LENR breakthroughs lack? Gamma rays.

Gamma rays don't lie.

~~~
oulu2006
The article says something to that effect:

"The Widom-Larsen theory offers a plausible explanation—localized conversion
of gamma radiation to infrared radiation."

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _localized conversion of gamma radiation to infrared radiation_

How does that work? Gamma penetrates matter pretty well. It should escape to
some extent.

------
gnufx
Unfortunately it's not clear to most people how obviously bogus the cold
fusion thing was to an experimental nuclear physicist at the time --
especially if they routinely used palladium targets. (No, that's not having a
closed mind or whatever -- just being clued-up.) Anyhow, it had classic
characteristics of pseudo-science if you you were familiar with relevant
history.

------
snarfy
It reminds me of the 's-process':

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlBG_A4Djp4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlBG_A4Djp4)

Some elements were formed from slow neutron absorption. Maybe they reproduced
it in the lab.

------
lostmsu
Clickbait. It's not something. If you read the article (which you shouldn't,
because there's no physics), you will notice, that no new confirmed idea came
out of it.

------
sean_patel
Who else came here thinking this was about Cold Fusion, the Markup Language
from the 90s? I once met an 'Old Timer' at a Startup Interview here who had it
in his resume. He felt threatened by my mere presence and kept referring to me
as 'You Millenials' lol.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion_Markup_Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion_Markup_Language)

~~~
steverb
I had CF on my resume for quite a while as well, although I took it off to
reduce the number of recruiters calling me.

Back in the age of classic ASP, Perl scripts and CGI scripts, Cold Fusion was
a very decent technology choice. It was my introduction to a controller/view
styled programming pattern (called Fusebox) back in 2000.

Then they (Macromedia) got bought out by Adobe and the whole thing descended
into weirdness and MS came out with .Net.

Now get off my lawn you millenial! :-)

~~~
sean_patel
> although I took it off to reduce the number of recruiters calling me.

Why? If it was in demand due to scarcity, couldn't you have done freelance
work at a ridiculously high hourly rate? I've come across another ol Indian
dude (my Pop's age, we called him 'uncle') who was making a killing
programming in some mainframe language called COBOL.

Answer this and I'll get off your lawn LOL.

( He also made fun of my node.js and react.js and said "You young kids are
always moving on to the next shiny thing")

~~~
flukus
That limits your career long term. You might make good money for a while, but
the well will dry up and not many would hire someone that's been doing nothing
but cold fusion for 20 years.

~~~
sean_patel
Didn't think of that. Thank you for the career advise. I'm glad you
highlighted the risks (it'll help me when I become old and think I am being
clever working on then-outdated tech :)

~~~
matt_kantor
> (it'll help me when I become old and think I am being clever working on
> then-outdated tech :)

It depends how old you mean, but if you're a few years away from retirement it
could still be a good plan.

~~~
flukus
It might even let you naturally do a "soft retirement", gradually wind down
the workload as clients move on to New Tech.

~~~
sean_patel
> "soft retirement"

Love this phrase! I'm a Millennial, so I have ways to go, but this makes sense
for when I hit my early 50s (if I am still alive and well that is)

------
dzdt
This is pseudo-scientific crap. There is a small echo chamber of LENR
researchers, egged on by outright swindlers and dreamers whose desire to
believe outweighs whatever scientific ability they had. Mainstream physics
mostly ignores this sideshow. But articles like this keep popping up, selling
the fringe crap to the public as reality.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Thank you for providing a perfect example of the hubris-filled, ignorant
attitude that this article has described in the "scientific community".

~~~
dzdt
I am not surprised by the downvotes. I know I stated my position brashly. It
was a conscious decision to call it like I see it even knowing it would be
unpopular in this forum.

But let me quibble: my attitude, as that of dismissive mainstream scientists,
is based on education not ignorance.

