Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 22

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Jed Rothwell

Just a short note, Jed Rothwell is considered banned and any commentary from him should be subject to revert, block, ignore. Guy (Help!) 10:52, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I am not Jed Rothwell, who according to Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 19#Jed's travelling IP roadshow has been editing only from DSL providers with geolocations in New York, Georgia, and Florida. I have been in California at IP 69.228.* exclusively for the past several months. When you deleted the section above, you didn't just revert me, you deleted several paragraphs by Paul V. Keller as well. 69.228.201.125 (talk) 13:46, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

"considered banned"? Could you kindly provide a link the exact conditions of his ban? Thanks. --Art Carlson (talk) 17:56, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

here.

Note: if you are unsure how this is a ban, then take WP:BAN and translate "no uninvolved administrator is willing to unblock" as "no uninvolved administrator is willing to lift topic ban" (if he hadn't got a dynamic IP, he would have been simply blocked. The only reason his account is not indef-blocked is that he hasn't edited again from it). If you disagree, then please don't complain here about lack of consensus or something. Go directly to AN, point to the discussion I linked, and ask for Jed's topic ban to be lifted. Be prepared to explain how Jed's contributions help improve the cold fusion article, and how they obviously contribute to enrich the talk page with non-soapboxing, non-POV-pushing and policy-compliant discussions --Enric Naval (talk) 01:55, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Got it. I see where your choice of words came from, and the consensus in the discussion you cite looks solid. --Art Carlson (talk) 09:20, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed Rothwell is not blocked, as far as I can see. I haven't looked at all the IPs involved, but the AN report linked by Enric Naval doesn't mention that any of the IPs are blocked. Like many such discussions on AN, What has happened is that Guy used his admin tools to place lenr-canr.org on the spam blacklist for en Wikipedia. When he encountered objections, he went to the global blacklist and requested that it be globally blocked. There being no contrary argument, his claims -- which were misleading or downright false -- were accepted and it's been added. So we have an administrator who edited this and related articles on December 18, then added the site to the spam blacklist so nobody could revert his edits, except for an administrator -- who would have to first remove the site from the spamlist. And now a local admin can't do that, unless he or she has admin access on the meta wiki.

As to whether or not Jed's contributions here help, or not, that would depend on one's POV. He's clearly not, shall we say, skillful at collaborating; but that's common with experts, in fact. He's highly knowledgeable in the field. He has explicitly rejected editing the article directly, and, in fact, this is what policy would ask of him, because of an apparent COI. So, then, when he says he's not editing the article, he's condemned for not wanting to improve the project, even though he clearly wants to see us improve the article, and he provides information and leads and sources. It seems to me that he's doing exactly what policy requires of him, and that the only problem is that he has an unpopular POV.

In any case, if he's disruptive, he can be warned and blocked. If he contributes off-topic or uncivil posts, they can be removed. If he's blocked and he block-evades, he can then be pretty much reverted on sight. I'm much more concerned at what I discover here, with editors writing things like: I will fight tooth and nail against anyone who attempts to once again create spin in this article by inserting POV-pushing tidbits and caveats into the middles of and between sentences other people have written. What is spin and what is not spin is dependent on one's POV, and fighting tooth and nail isn't going to prevent spin; it's more likely to create or maintain it. What eliminates spin is consensus editing, editing that considers the various POVs, what can be placed in the article due to policy restrictions; but, ultimately, policy is interpreted by us, collectively, and only rarely -- and unfortunately -- under outside constraints. If we can find consensus, including editors with various POVs, it is probably spin-free, or close. --Abd (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The effect of WP:RBI is similar to a block except for the history. Jed knows his way around here very well, going back to 2005. If he wishes to reestablish his account, he's perfectly capable of doing so. Meanwhile, his ongoing use of dynamic IPs to edit this talk page has only limited possibility of causing problems. The blacklist of the website he promotes here is another matter. I for one am not willing to take it on blind faith that the journal articles there are free of copyvio - if in fact that site has the original publishers' releases to host them all online, it should provide the releases for others to see. LeadSongDog (talk) 16:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The blocklist policies or guidelines are very clear that the blacklists aren't to be used to control content except in the face of substantial linkspam, and that blocking should be attempted first. Not to mention warning! Now, JzG blacklisted lenr-canr.org after removing a link to the site from Martin Fleischmann. JzG has presented evidence on here and meta that would lead a naive reader to think that Rothwell had been inserting the links. No, he wasn't. Who inserted that link? You did, LeadSongDog. If lenr-canr.org isn't to be used, why did you use it? I think I can guess. The link was to a paper by Fleischmann giving his history of the cold fusion affair, a paper presented at a conference in China, the publisher is the Chinese government. Lenr-canr.org claims to have obtained permission to host a copy, and we have no evidence otherwise, but we also don't know where else the paper could be seen. It serves our readers if they can look at the source, and, contrary to some claims, verification isn't the sole reason to provide links to copies of papers; they are very valuable for further research by a reader and, in fact, academia tends to use Wikipedia for that: as a place to quickly find sources, *never* as a place to directly cite.

Wikipedia refers to countless copies of documents, and insisting on specific proof for each one of them is excessive. JzG has asserted that there could be legal hazard from linking, but that seems to be his unsupported opinion, the case he cites was not one of inadvertent linking to a violating copy. Given that lenr-canr.org pops up on google as the first location to host these docuements, typically, they'd be astoundingly foolish to be lying about the permissions. The IP issue is a total red herring. He identifies himself, so there isn't sock puppetry, as such. When the spamming guidelines refer to IP editors, they clearly are assuming *anonymous* editors. Sure, Rothwell should use his account. Or should recover it. But that's irrelevant.

So you are saying, LeadSongDog, that lenr-canr.org should provide on-line copies of all the permissions? What's to prevent them from forging those, after all, if they would lie about the permissions, why not lie a little more deeply? What's adequate? Copies of e-mails (my guess is that a lot of permissions came by e-mail). Scans of documents with signatures? Notarized? And where is the policy or even guideline requiring this? Without such, it starts to look like a "rule" invented to harass a particular set of editors.

Now, LeadSongDog, you've suggested that we whitelist the bibliography, given that it seems to be the most complete one out there. But, wait a minute. Who owns the copyright on that? How do we know?

In any case, pending a settled outcome for this sordid affair (which now has at least four administrators a bit involved who seem to understand the issues, plus some blacklist admins, who, I'd say, have become a tad too involved with the blacklist and don't seem to see any problem with the blacklist becoming, shall we say, more powerful), could we agree on whitelisting the lenr-canr bibliography? If so, I'm sure it can be easily done. --Abd (talk) 16:35, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps this link will give some insight into why JzG considers lenr-camr.org a bad site: he caught them altering the 2004 DOE report. Additionally there is the problem that they post copyrighted material without permission. By the way, this is at least the 4th time this discussion of lenr-camr.org has come around. On another note, I believe it would be a mistake to consider Jed Rothwell an expert.Cardamon (talk) 08:45, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely agreed. We decided a long time ago that lenr-canr was far too problematic for us to have anything to do with. Of course Rothwell is not an expert. I would say that experts on this topic include only physicists who are publishing in the field but it is slightly more complex than that. An article by a science journalist might be RS for news of a development. We previously considered work by a sociologist of science and my view at the time was that it was out of date, but perhaps the discussion could be re-opened. And there may be experts in other fields whose work is reliable for statements about aspects of the debate. The barrier for who is qualified to speak on what should be set high. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:36, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) I've carefully reviewed that document and some of the history around it. There was no "alteration" of the report itself, and if you think so, you've been had, you've believed a thing because it's been repeated over and over. It's common, in publishing a public domain document -- which that is, I believe -- to provide an introduction. That introduction, if biased, could well be a reason to not link directly to the lenr-canr.org page. But it doesn't impeach lenr-canr.org's "reliability" at all.

No evidence has been offered that lenr-canr.org has any copyvio material at all; however, even if it did have an occasional document, our policies don't suggest blacklisting a site because it contains isolated vios; blacklisting is to be used only, in that case, for massive violations. There exists only a legal hazard if there is deliberate linking to copyvio, or serious neglect. Given that an admin whom I consider quite knowledgeable on this subject has reviewed this specific case and opined that lenr-canr.org wasn't, on the face, violating copyrights, there is no reason to use copyvio policy against lenr-canr.org

Now, you stated, Itsmejudith, that "we" decided that lenr-canr as "far too problematic," but that raises for me several questions. Who's "we," and "too problematic" for what? Lenr-canr.org isn't a reliable source, in itself, whether Rothwell is a fringe lunatic or even a sober and qualified scientist expert in the field. It's "self-published." However, it's, as Rothwell keeps saying, a "library." Libraries aren't "reliable sources," they are collections of documents, some of which may be reliable sources. The question here is whether or not we can, as a service to the reader which could save the reader quite a bit of trouble, link to a library so that they can easily find a copy of the document. It's commonly done, i.e., there is some reliable source, a published document, but the original publisher doesn't make it available on-line, but *with or without permission* someone else does, and an editor finds it and simply provides the URL in the place provided for that in a citation template. The document host isn't the publisher.

Nobody has suggested that writing by Rothwell is usable as reliable source. That you responded this way shows that you have missed the point. Fleischmann presented a paper at a conference in China, it was published there. Pcarbonn added a reference to that paper to this article. Nobody challenged it, it wasn't controversial. He didn't provide a URL. Later, though, LeadSongDog added the URL, to a copy of the document posted at lenr-canr.org. This was later copied to Martin Fleischmann by yet another editor, not Pcarbonn and certainly not Rothwell, who doesn't generally edit articles. It was this link that JzG removed as having been linkspammed, plus a link to newenergytimes.com. And then JzG went to the local blacklist and added these. He had made edits to the articles, so he was an involved editor; in any case, he didn't follow the normal procedure of proposing and letting someone uninvolved make the decision; he proposed simultaneously with listing it himself. He didn't log the listing, and he didn't give the site names in the edit summaries, it was a real pain to find the edits. By using his admin tools to directly add the sites, he made his own edits not undoable. There was no controversy over these links, here.

A number of uninvolved admins have now looked at this, or aspects of this, and what I've been saying is certainly not my isolated opinion. I'm proceeding step-by-step. On the metablacklist, lenr-canr.org remains blacklisted, but the ball is now back in our court. Watch this space.... --Abd (talk) 16:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Ref broken down

The reference <ref>{{harvnb|US DOE|2004|Ref=DOE2004r}}</ref> used in the article can not be accessed. Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 02:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Fixed now Phil153 (talk) 03:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Adding a review section

I recently added more info on the DOE review, but I think it's important that we have a section of reviews of the field. Both DOE reports can go in there, the Indian government review, as well as Storms 2007. I'm not sure about Biberian since it's a highly uncritical study published in an unreliable source.

Wanted to canvass opinion on this and check if Paul V. Keller wasn't already working on it since reading Storms. Phil153 (talk) 19:47, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

It will take a little longer for me to get around to the remaining edits I have planned. Those edits will pertain to summarizing the experiments and data that are at the heart of what cold fusioners claim to be their support.

Some details from the DOE report have been quoted in an inaccurate and misleading fashion. I particularly take issue with misrepresenting the report as a panel vote. Only nine of the reviewers ever met. Nine were outside. They had diverse areas of expertise: some were better able to comment on certain issues than others. There was no expectation that each should independently recognize every hole in the data. Look at these quotes:

"However, the results were not convincing to some reviewers in regard to the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions. Experts noted many deficiencies in the techniques, methods, and interpretation of the data presented."

"Many reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented."

"The reviewers who did not find the production of excess power convincing cite a number of issues including: excess power in the short term is not the same as net energy production over the entire of time of an experiment; all possible chemical and solid state causes of excess heat have not been investigated and eliminated as an explanation; and production of power over a period of time is a few percent of the external power applied and hence calibration and systematic effects could account for the purported net effect."

What these show is that some reviewers identified some problems, and other reviewers others or none. This was to be expected as they were chosen from diverse fields to get various points of view. The fact that some reviewers did not see certain problems is a far cry from saying that some reviewers denied that such problems existed. Nine of the eighteen submitted their evaluations without seeing any other reviewers notes.

The crux of the matter is that the basis for accepting data as evidence for LENR is that all other interpretations of the data, including experimental error, alternate explanations, and flawed analysis, have been excluded. The DOE report shows that has not happened.

What the report says most strongly is that nothing changed since 1989:

Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not, stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented.

Several reviewers specifically stated that more experiments similar in nature to those that have been carried out for the past fifteen years are unlikely to advance knowledge in this area.

That can't be true, IF they are just dissimilar enough to begin obtaining, reliably, repeatable excess heat. That's the crux. Mere claims that excess heat is present, or not, should be replaced by reliability. It should be obvious that "more experiments similar in nature" should give similar-to-past results, which INCLUDES occasional claimed observations of excess heat. So, only a slight dissimilarity should be all that is needed, to observe it reliably.

Personally, at the moment I'd rather see some more focus on the newer co-deposition experiments with the pitted plastic. This mostly started being done after the 2004 review, and certainly falls outside the "similar in nature" experiments that were deemed insufficiently worthy of pursuit, but if these can be repeated often enough, then DOE might be encouraged to do another review before waiting another 15 years. V (talk) 20:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

In other words, same old same old. As before, there was no objection to funding well designed experiments that might shed new light on the subject. ~Paul V. Keller 23:06, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Do we get to editorialize that much though? I mean, if the review was limited to the most competent nuclear physicists, there could be an objection of systemic bias. Ultimately, we have to write what was given in the most impartial reviews. This was my attempt at summarizing it.

I'm avoiding editing the article until you're done with your work (which is much appreciated btw). Phil153 (talk) 23:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Hubler (2007) is a secondary source review. Why not use it to balance the DOE panels? The Navy, unlike the DOE, has actual experience in the field. There is a courtesy copy at www.newenergytimes.com/Library/2007HublerG-AnomalousEffects.pdf but that domain is blacklisted on Wikipedia so you will have to copy/paste to read it. 69.228.81.109 (talk) 12:45, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure, but it's one man's opinion (who doesn't even appear to be a notable academic) published in journal that isn't related to nuclear physics. Many of his references are of primary research published at the Nth International Conference on Cold Fusion. Part of his presentation makes the same reference that McKubre does to Energetics Research Ltd, a private company founded and run by a medical doctor (not a physicist) found guilty of defrauding his patients[1]. In addition, the reviewer is NOT independent of the field in question, but a hardcore advocate. Exactly how much weight should be put on this one review?

Also, there is no need to "balance" anything, we're here to create an article that is NPOV and uses the best sources possible with appropriate weight. Phil153 (talk) 13:45, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

"Dr. Hubler received his B.S. degree in physics from Union College and his Ph.D. in physics from Rutgers University. He held an NRC-NRL Post-Doctoral Fellowship from 1972 to 1974. Dr. Hubler received NRL Publication Awards in 1980, 1980, 1991, and 1994; an NRL Invention Award in 1983, 1988, 1989, 1991, and 1992; an NRL 75th Anniversary Tech Transfer Award in 1998; a Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1999; an NRL Technology Transfer Award in 1994, and 2000; and an NRL Special Act Award in 2004. His publications include 82 journal articles, 47 proceedings articles, and 20 reports. He has edited four books and written three book chapters. He holds six patents. Dr. Hubler is a member of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi, Materials Research Society, and the Böhmische Physical Society."[2] It doesn't seem odd to me that a secondary review would cite primary research, even if some of it has been authored by discredited people. 69.228.81.109 (talk) 14:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

He's obviously a credentialed researcher within the Navy, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. But he's not Hagelstein or McKubre. BTW, APS membership is meaningless [3]. Phil153 (talk) 15:25, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

How meaningful is 82 journal articles? It would seem that, along with his awards, establishes notability to Wikipedia's standards per WP:ACADEMIC. 69.228.81.109 (talk) 15:53, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is arguing the's not notable enough for a biographical article. The question to address whether his expertise is relevant to the topic: is the work a reliable source on the topic. The publication was in a low impact conference proceedings on surface chemistry, both of which mitigate against treating it as reliable.LeadSongDog (talk) 21:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

In this case, the topic of the conference ("Surface Modification of Materials by Ion Beams") directly corresponds to one of the lines of inquiry recommended by the DOE 2004 research suggestions. In any other article, this kind of a secondary review from an established academic with an industrial technology transfer background would be treated as very authoritative. The only reason it isn't here is because the ArbCom, incumbents from which were soundly defeated at the polls, has decided to impose WP:MAINSTREAM as their method of dealing with death threats "made in jest" by an editor who I can only imagine must be frustrated coming to terms with the emotional investment made in choosing sides early on. 69.228.206.231 (talk) 07:09, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Are there any reasons that Hubler's NRL review should not be given as much weight as the DoE reviews? GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 13:19, 22 January 2009 (UTC) (sock of User:Nrcprm2026 --Enric Naval (talk) 16:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

Are you the same IP that asked the question above? The reason I asked is because you previously responded to a question to that IP as if it was to you, here.

Anyway, I thought that was explained above. I'll reiterate the points:

• It's the opinion of a single reviewer, (who's not even an academic, just a navy labs researcher).
• It's published in a journal called Surface & Coatings Technology. While that may be a fine journal for surface and coatings technology, the peer review process of such a journal is totally indequate to look at claims of nuclear fusion, nuclear products, and probably even excess heat. It's like posting proof of a disputed organic layering technology in the Journal of Nuclear Fusion It's totally absurd.
• It's hardly an impartial review given his involvement with the field. The DOE had 18 reviewers, some of them clearly impartial.
• What the mainstream thinks about the truth of a fringe topic is more important than what the fringe advocates thinks about the truth of a fringe topic. DOE (although flawed) is the best representation we have of the mainstream view since most ignore it.

It's obvious to me that Hubler's review is not worth mentioning. On the other hand, I certainly think Storms has a place in the article, at least on par with the DOE review. I've been waiting for Keller to add it since he spent much time reviewing it. That's not stopping anyone else from doing it though. Phil153 (talk) 13:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

A couple of other points as well. The DOE review has a very notable event in and of itself; it attracted in depth coverage both before and after by major newspapers, and was widely seen as the last mainstream review of the field. So the reason for inclusion and weight of the DOE is on other grounds as well (that Hubler does not meet). Phil153 (talk) 14:22, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

You are making a number of distinctions which I don't see the basis for. Firstly, what do you mean by Hubler's involvement with the field? Do you mean that people in his organization actually have experience with empirical study of the questions, unlike anyone in the DoE? And why do you say he isn't an academic? Is it impossible for someone to be an academic and be employed by the Naval Research Laboratory? He has 82 academic journal publications. How many academic journal publications does it take to be an academic, in your view? And yes, I often edit without logging in, for a variety of good reasons. 69.228.197.195 (talk) 15:21, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Researchers do research, and get it published. It's what they're paid to do. An academic is someone like Hagelstein who is employed for broad subject knowledge and has standing in the academic community to authoritatively review the field. Read the definition at academic carefully for what it means. I'm just using standard English language. I don't really care though since they're side issues. What about the more important points, about the journal it's published in, and the fact that it's one reviewer vs 18? How much weight should we put on a review of nuclear fusion detections in Surface & Coatings Technology. Is the peer review process of such a journal sufficient to vet the opinion of a single person in an unrelated field? Can it be considered a reliable source for these claims? Does it compare in notability to a major mainstream review widely cited by the top newspapers in the world? Phil153 (talk) 16:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Surrealistic discussion of LENR-CANR.org and Jed Rothwell

I do not know if I am allowed to contribute here, but someone informed me there is a surrealistic conversation underway here about me. So perhaps you will allow me the liberty to straighten out a few things.

Several issues have been raised here, but perhaps the two most important ones are:

1. Am I stealing papers without permission and uploading them LENR-CANR.org?

2. If I am not, how can I prove my innocence? (Conversely, if I am, how can you prove I am guilty?)

I think it is easy to show that I am not stealing anything, and you can confirm this independently without asking me for proof, and without depending upon my word. I recommend the old fashioned, commonsense approach. First, let’s look at some evidence, including evidence you can find in a bookstore or university library, off the internet, away from LENR-CANR, where I could not have had a hand in creating it or faking it. Then, let us draw some conclusions from this evidence. First:

There are a number of books in English and Japanese that mention LENR-CANR.org, and include acknowledgments to me, as the operator of the site and also as someone who helped write the book itself. See, for example, the books about cold fusion by Beaudette, Storms, and A. C. Clarke (“Profiles of the Future Millennium Edition”), Mizuno and Takahashi.

There are number of cold fusion papers in journals and conference proceedings that include hyperlinks to papers at LENR-CANR.org. Several papers mention me, in footnotes or acknowledgments. Two of the proceedings list me as an editor.

Several of the proceedings list me in the back as a participant, and they include me in the group photo.

So, what does this tell you? It tells you that the authors of these books and papers are aware of LENR-CANR.org. It tells you they know who I am. They know how to reach me. Anyone does: my e-mail address, phone number and mailing address is on the front page at LENR-CANR.org. It is proof that these authors have no objection to my uploading their papers. Some of them, such as Miles and Storms, have their own web sites, with pointers to LENR-CANR.org, so clearly they have no objection to the content there.

You can safely conclude that I am widely known to many researchers in the field, and that if I were uploading papers without the author and publisher’s permission, they would quickly hear about it. They would know where to find me, and they would tell me to stop.

You can also independently confirm, by various methods, that people download thousands of papers per week from LENR-CANR.org, as shown in our News section.

In other words, I am not uploading papers secretly, without anyone noticing. If I were doing it illicitly, without permission, I would soon be caught. It is also obvious that I have the cooperation of authors and publishers, because I have several original manuscripts in Word format converted to Acrobat. (Not the final journal format.) Obviously, I could only have acquired them from the authors themselves, and it is not likely that I am a cat burglar or master Internet hacker who has acquired them without permission.

In point of fact I have more than a thousand other papers in scanned format plus a few thousand others on paper that authors and publishers have NOT granted me permission to upload, and thus are not available at LENR-CANR.org. You can see the list of them. Several of these are critically important to the field and it is shame I cannot present them.

Let me address one other issue that has arisen here, which is: How do you know that the copies of the papers at LENR-CANR.org are correct? How do you know I am not changing the content, as at least one person here alleges? This sort of question would only be asked by someone who is totally dependent on the Internet and never knew the world as it was before 1995. You can confirm the accuracy of my copies by comparing them to other copies in libraries. All of the journal papers at LENR-CANR.org came from the libraries at Los Alamos, Georgia Tech., the University of Utah and Aarhus Univ, and the proceedings were published by the Italian Physical Soc. and other organizations listed at LENR-CANR.org. So anyone who wants can read original sources and find out whether I have copied them correctly or not. And by the way, if you find I have not copied one correctly because of an OCR error for example, or because I have preprint manuscript from the author, please let me know.

That also applies to the official documents published by the DoE that people here accuse me of faking or changing, such as the ERAB report. Did it not occur to these people to go to the DoE, get the original document, and compare it to my version? Did they imagine I am betting that no one, anywhere, will have enough sense to do that? Such accusations are mind-boggling. Anyone with an ounce of sense can catch me or prove that I am innocent.

Anyway, carry on! No doubt you will come up with some other reason to censor LENR-CANR.org.

- Jed Rothwell Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.50 (talk) 02:36, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Look, there were some valid concerns. Not valid enough for blacklisting, in my personal opinion, but let's not pretend that all is sweet with the presentation of your site on Wikipedia. Not least of which is you claiming that you're a Librarian, when you're more accurately described as a webmaster. (Librarian does sound nice and neutral and formal though, doesn't it? Not at like webmaster and site owner, which is what you are). And there are definitely spammy elements with your constant self posting of the name of a website you own, which would be deleted under just about any other circumstances. "Jed Rothwell" or an account works just fine to identify you without needing to appened "Librarian, LENR-CANR.org" at the end of every single post (except for this one, obviously).

Anyway, blacklisting aside, I think the point being made is that if the sources are available from other, non COI advocate sites, then we should be linking there instead. As an example, I'd much rather link the same study hosted at pubmed than at homeopathycurescancer.com, even given the rationale you've provided above. Phil153 (talk) 02:53, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

Look, there were some valid concerns. Not valid enough for blacklisting,

Valid concerns? Just out of curiosity, what are they? I thought I disposed of the big two. Not that I care whether you censor me or not. Any organization that would ban Pierre Carbonnelle is a disgrace, and I consider it a badge of honor to be censored along with him.

(Librarian does sound nice and neutral and formal though, doesn't it? Not at like webmaster and site owner, which is what you are)

Now you presume to tell me what I do all day! You are amazing. Maintaining the web site takes a few hours a year. It is written in rudimentary HTML using Namo Web editor, a program with attitude. I spend nearly all my time editing, translating and OCRing papers, and trying to persuade authors to hand in papers they were supposed to hand in months ago. It is like pulling teeth.

Anyway, blacklisting aside, I think the point being made is that if the sources are available from other, non COI advocate sites

And if they are not available elsewhere? What about conference papers that are only available on line at LENR-CANR.org? What about DoE papers that are no longer available on line. (You have have ask for them.) When papers are not available elsewhere, you cut your readers off from original sources. I expect that is your real purpose, and the rest is making excuses to do what you want to do, which is to drive away people like Carbonnelle, and to create a biased document that no cold fusion researcher thinks is fair or accurate. It is entirely YOUR POV and yet you accuse Carbonnelle of POV violations. You are blind to your own faults.

And by the way, you may not care for the fact that I sign all of my messages with contact information and what I do -- librarian -- but I think even less of you people when you sign messages with nicknames and fake names, leaving the reader no way of knowing who you are or where you get your information. My activities and my sources are an open book. Anyone who doubts my expertise can read hundreds of pages of papers and books that I authored about cold fusion, and you can judge for yourself whether I know the subject or not. You people are hiding behind Internet anonymity. Have any of you published a paper on cold fusion? Do you have any knowledge of the subject? Any expertise or standing in this or some related field? Nobody knows! If you had any guts or professional responsibility you would use your real, full name.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.50 (talk) 03:37, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Jed,

I have no problem with you signing your name, it's your constant posting of LENR-CANR.org (a site that you run) which would fall afoul of our spam guidelines just about anywhere else. As for me, I have zero expertise in nuclear physics and zero standing as an academic. But I work in optics, and have a BSc in physics. I understand that you have a BA in Japanese. While commendable, I fail to see how this gives you expertise in either chemistry or physics. Not that I think it matters in what is largely an attempt to write a NPOV editorial summary of secondary sources, but you brought it up.

As for my POV, I suggest you review my edit history. I have been strictly NPOV and in fact have moved the article away from POV against CF on many occassions. [4][5][6][7]. Claiming suppression, especially when supposed suppressions are backed up by uninvolved parties, is the hallmark of crackpots. It doesn't do you or your field justice.

As for the issues surrounding your site, your point on checking the sources doesn't really cut it. It is simply too time consuming to check every one against paper sources for evidence of changes. In this regard, this needs some comment. You say above: Did it not occur to these people to go to the DoE, get the original document, and compare it to my version?. Well, apparently someone did, and in the link above, JzG (Guy) claims that In one case I found that a purported link to a major paper started with an editorial by the site's "librarian", [[user:JedRothwell], spinning the content to promote the fringe view that he promotes. Are you categorically denying having ever added a lead or other commentary to a source paper? Phil153 (talk) 04:41, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

I understand that you have a BA in Japanese. While commendable, I fail to see how this gives you expertise in either chemistry or physics.

Again I suggest that you read the papers and books I have written about cold fusion, and judge whether I understand the subject -- and whether I know my own limitations. I have edited over 200 papers in this field. Do you think the authors would trust me to do that if I accidentally changed their meaning or messed up the documents? Please, use your common sense and your judgment to evaluate my work.

As for the issues surrounding your site, your point on checking the sources doesn't really cut it. It is simply too time consuming to check every one against paper sources for evidence of changes.

As I said, you can easily establish that the authors trust LENR-CANR.org. They would not give me their papers or add links to the site in their papers and books otherwise. They always check my version for errors -- I tell them to.

Wikipedia points to millions of documents. You do not go around checking every one of them. Once it is established that a site has credibility, you assume that all documents there are legitimate. It is much easier for you to check the bona fides and establish credibility for LENR-CANR than for other sites, because every one of our documents lists the original source at the top.

Are you categorically denying having ever added a lead or other commentary to a source paper?

Oh for crying out loud! This is ridiculous. Read the document and see for yourself. It is here: lenr-canr.org PLUS /acrobat/ERABreportofth.pdf

As you see, I wrote a two-page introduction, in a different font, signed by me. No, I do not "categorically deny" writing something and signing it. The document begins:

"ERAB, Report of the Cold Fusion Panel to the Energy Research Advisory Board. 1989: Washington, DC.

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.

This organization has not posted any other papers about cold fusion.

Cold fusion researchers consider the ERAB report highly prejudiced for many reasons. It was concluded in a rush long before there was time to perform and publish serious replications. . ."

The LENR-CANR index for the document says:

"A copy of the ERAB report has been prepared by the National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS) organization (www.ncas.org). It is available here:

http://www.ncas.org/erab/

This library contains a brief introduction to the report and a copy of the NCAS version of the ERAB report."

We have similar short introductions to many other documents, listing -- for example -- where the document came from, who translated it, or noting that different versions have been published.

Now let us look at the statement by Guy:

"In one case I found that a purported link to a major paper started with an editorial by the site's "librarian", (JedRothwell), spinning the content . . ."

A purported link? You can click on the link and see in an instant whether this is a good copy or not. What is "purported" about that?

An editorial? I told the reader where the document came from, where to get the original, and what the researchers think of it. Is the reader so vulnerable and suggestible he cannot survive reading my introduction and still judge the ERAB document?

"In one case" Guy found a document with an introduction? He did not look very hard. There are dozens of others, as I said. In all cases the introduction is clearly marked and signed.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

The following comment from Noren was made in the archive, not here. I'm moving it here, since I'm deleting the archived copy and this comment should have been made here in any case. --Abd (talk) 05:00, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

You have not addressed the relevant question. Having the permission of the authors is not sufficient (in fact, in many cases it is legally irrelevant.) For example, authors submitting to Elsevier journals are required to transfer their copyright to Elsevier. The legally relevant question is whether you have permission from the copyright holder (in many cases, Elsevier) to print the papers that they own the copyright to. Obtaining the permission of the authors is legally irrelevant for many of these papers. Do you have permission from Elsevier to publish their copyrighted material? --Noren (talk) 18:47, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

If an author of an accepted paper won't or can't transfer exclusive copyright (because, for example, their ethical stance is opposed to doing so, their institutional policy forbids it, or any other myriad reasons that they might not control the exclusive copyright to begin with) it would be highly irregular if that ever stopped publication of the paper. For Elsevier to be able to prevent a journal from publishing anything simply because they don't control exclusive copyright would be an impingement of the editorial board's academic freedom by a commercial interest, and would raise profound ethical concerns. That doesn't stop them from slapping a "(c)" notation indistinguishable from an exclusive copyright notice on everything they publish and charging the same as for anything they do have exclusive copyright control over, of course. And permission to do that is granted at the time the paper is submitted, not with a separate form after it's been accepted for publication. 69.228.197.195 (talk) 12:59, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm puzzled. Jed's argument above speaks directly to that point. However, he has also, in many places, in response to this question, replied that he has permission from the editors and the publishers for every paper he hosts. It says this on the web site, at the top of the home page, which, of course, I can't link to because of the blacklist, but I can give the URL using nowiki. http://lenr-canr.org/ . He also answered specifically about Elsevier on User talk: Phil153. --Abd (talk) 05:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed's response about Elsevier that you quote was made after I asked the question above, in response to my asking about it. I asked because Jed's argument above was primarily about authors, mentioning the relevant party (publishers) only in passing. --Noren (talk) 07:28, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed, let me suggest that you begin using your account. That account is not blocked. If you need help recovering the password, it can be done. It's been claimed that you are banned, but I've seen no evidence of that. I highly recommend that you back off and confine yourself here to comments helping the rest of us improve the article. You have a probable conflict of interest but it is totally proper for you to make suggestions here, though brevity would probably be appreciated. In addition to myself, there are several administrators working (glacially, but working nevertheless) to delist lenr-canr.org from the blacklist, as well as newenergytimes.com, or supporting that work. Your comments here were removed, I've restored them, and if I'm reverted, and if the editor doing that insists, I don't edit war, I call in help. If you need help recovering your account, ask. That you use IP edits vastly complicates helping delist your site (removing it from the blacklist), which is a shame. It isn't that it's wrong or against policy, it's that it looks like it is to some who are used to seeing IP socking and IP linkspamming. In any case, if you use your account, editors can then use your Talk page and you can reply there, etc. Don't argue or debate here, it will just irritate and cause disruption. Let others defend you. The errors of your critics have already been pointed out in delisting discussions on meta and for the Wikipedia local blacklist. There has been administrative misconduct in this affair, but those who are concerned are proceeding very carefully and hope to avoid major confrontation and disruption.

If you use your account and you follow policies regarding civility and edit warring -- I've seen no recent edit warring from you -- and you are nevertheless blocked, we can help you. However, as you know, this is a minefield. Please be careful. --Abd (talk) 03:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

One more very strong suggestion. Watch out for any hint of incivility in your writing. Writing to an entire community as "you people" telling us what we are going to do, obviously claiming bias and bad faith, is the kind of thing that can get you blocked and truly banned and lenr-canr.org permanently blacklisted, if you keep it up. I recommend rereading what you wrote, most of which was on point and cogent about yourself and your web site, and then noticing the uncivil comments. Strike them. Use <s> before the comment to be struck and </s> after it.. Be professional. I've already pulled in a professional librarian who is also a Wikipedia administrator who opined that there was no reason to consider lenr-canr.org to be in violation of copyrights. But Wikipedia politics and procedures can be arcane and Byzantine, it will take some time to untangle this mess. --Abd (talk) 03:44, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Abd, he is not "banned", he is "topic banned from Cold fusion's talk page". See Talk:Cold_fusion#Jed_Rothwell and links there, my comment there (3rd comment) has the steps needed to lift the topic ban ---Enric Naval (talk) 13:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

The comments weren't deleted, they were correctly archived here as off topic chat from a constant off topic poster (I'm just as bad in replying, and my comments were removed to). This is totally in line with article talk page policy. We can easily discuss the topic at Jed's, my or your talk page if you want. Phil153 (talk) 03:32, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, this discussion isn't off-topic, in my opinion, which is why I brought it back. Yes, Phil, you did archive. I should take that out, since it's redundant. The blacklisting of lenr-canr.org impacts this article. I've been discussing with LeadSongDog the suggestion he made that the bibliography at lenr-canr.org be whitelisted, which I consider only a first step, there was no reason to blacklist it. Is it improper for Jed to sign with his website name? If it is, why don't we ask him to stop? The comments above are principally on the topic of whether or not lenr-canr.org hosts copyvios, which has been asserted by a number of editors with no evidence whatever other than "it's obvious." Which really doesn't cut it. If there is obvious copyvio, then *one* example would show it, and JzG's story that he somebody from Elsevier told him that they didn't give ever give permission to copy material they published is not an example of copyright violation, only of what someone told JzG about who knows what. Jed's points above are cogent; I essentially made the same argument on his behalf on meta and in the blacklist here; that the site wasn't delisted says more about how mission creep afflicts the blacklist, which was not intended for the kind of content control that it is now being used for, and we will have to address that. --Abd (talk) 03:44, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I didn't archive, I had nothing to do with removing anything. Jed's points are fine and I agree with them, and I don't think there's a case for blacklisting based *only* on copyvio given his responses. Other thoughts are on my talk page. Phil153 (talk) 03:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, got confused by your comment. It was Verbal. --Abd (talk) 04:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Whitelist

You guys, the local blacklist removal was already done, and it was defered to the local whitelist. The meta discussion also defers to the local whitelist.

If you want the link unlisted then you need to go to the whitelist, show good links and where they you want to use them to provide valuable content to articles. If they are accepted, then those specific links will be whitelisted. When/if you have enough links whitelisted, then you can go to the blacklist and say how it is silly the website blacklisted when it has so many valuable links used on articles. Hint: it's not enough that you say here "but there are lots of valuable links, see this one for example", that will get you nowhere since whitelisters don't read this page, you need to go to MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist and present specific links adequately. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:41, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

See MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org --Enric Naval (talk) 15:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

The local blacklist removal was done, yes, of course, but only because JzG went to meta and got it globally blacklisted, before those who might have argued against it became aware of that request. You can see the debate over removal at meta. Yes, we are quite aware of the whitelising, and I intend to request whitelisting of some sources. There was some substantial sentiment for whitelisting the bibliography at lenr-canr.org, for example, see discussion on User talk:Phil153. What say you? There is no sign that the bibliography is seriously biased, it seems to be the best around, etc.

However, newenergytimes.com is locally blacklisted only. There is discussion on the local blacklist talk page.[8]. Removal was just declined. Evidence of linkspamming is given. Evidence which is utterly inadequate to establish a present need for blacklisting, the last edit that added a link was in August of 2008 and doesn't seem to qualify as linkspam. It stood until it was removed by JzG as from an "unreliable source," as part of his blacklisting actions, though it was just to a copy of an article that had been published in a reliable source and which was hosted on NET. The link seems to have been added with helpful intent. The whole affair sucks, in a word. --Abd (talk) 15:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

well, I can only say that you (and other interesed on whitelisting lenr-canr.org) should watch the whitelist petition I made, note down the problems raised there, and try to address them when you make your own petition for some other link. I'm not sure of what "the bibliography at lenr-canr.org" is, but if it's a whole directory encompassing many pages then you'll need to prove that *all* material under that directory is a) reliable b) with no copyvio problems (copyright/permission/whatever) c) necessary to improve a certain article in a certain way. Good luck with that, I already have problems enough whitelisting two PDFs. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:53, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah. I see this discussion has popped into existence again.

I do not wish to take the trouble to contribute, because some person or robot erased my work previously, and they may do it again. However, I made some additional comments about this subject that may be of interest here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Phil153#My_response_to_your_message_at_Cold_Fusion_talk

I hope these other comments remain unmolested.

- Jed Rothwell, who dares not speak his name, but remains, Yours Truly, Your Humble Servant, etc., etc., Librarian, LENR-CANR.org. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.153.157 (talk) 17:31, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed, the link was helpful. But the rest wasn't. Please start to use discretion. It's the better part of valor. --Abd (talk) 15:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Balance in the 2004 DOE report

As it was notably missing, I added the comment in the 2004 DOE report about further research, as an exact quote. It was reverted.[9] We have consensus, apparently, that the DOE report is to be treated as RS. Certainly it's newsworthy and is reliable on it's own content! In the edit summary, Enric wrote: rv good faith edits, was discussed on the talk page that this is just a standard recommendation.

Now, normally, if text that is reliably sourced is inserted, it's improper to simply remove it unless:

• It's not notable, i.e., irrelevant.
• It's redundant.
• It is better placed in another article.

None of these apply here. There are two arguments which are -- commonly and improperly -- advanced for such removals:

• The edit creates an improper spin.
• It's too much detail, it will confuse the reader.

And these are precisely arguments that will be used by those who want to preserve spin in an article. Rather, there are far better responses which guidelines suggest:

• Counter spin with improved wording or additional balancing fact.
• If there is indeed too much detail, consider creating a specialized article, then summarize this article back in the original.

And in all of this, civil and persistent seeking of broad consensus is essential.

Enric's revert was done in good faith, I'm sure. However, the article as it stands is clearly imbalanced. The 2004 DOE report was not a simple, clear rejection of LENR, it's more complicated. I see in discussion history that the text had, at one time, the proportion of members of the panel who supported the various recommendations. That's been removed. Particularly with a field which has been asserted to be junk science or fringe science, the existence of notable dissent among experts is crucial; otherwise there is no way to distinguish true fringe from what is merely minority opinion in a shifting field. With true fringe science, there will be almost no neutral expert opinion supporting it. I see, in this article, strong evidence that a group of editors has decided that the topic is fringe, and that readers need to be protected from fringe science. The first view seems, to me, to not be supported by the latest material in reliable sources, and that includes the DOE report, with a continuing shift after that, plus readers don't need to be protected from anything except unreliable text and spin.

If it's true that the report recommendation for further research was a "standard recommendation," then this could be stated, if there is reliable source for it. However, it doesn't look like that to me, at least it is not that simple. The recommendation was "almost" unanimous, which means it was controversial, that is, there was dissent. That would be unusual for a "standard recommendation." Rather, it seems to me, the recommendation reflects the substantial minority of panel participants who thought there was something worthy of investigation here. At the very least, the cause of so many reports of excess heat should be investigated, otherwise the world would continue to be plagued with contentious argument over this. There is an obvious possible cause: hundreds of researchers look for excess heat; most of them don't publish. If there is a publication bias, it could be that only reports of excess heat are published. However, this would only happen with minor excess heat, within range of experimental error. I suspect that we will see a fairly dramatic shift in this field within the next year or two, because it seems that it's been discovered how to get excess heat quickly and reliably and that evidence of nuclear reactions, the smoking gun, has been found by the SPAWAR researchers, whose work is not easily dismissed, and which has started to see confirmation.

However, of course, we must be very careful with the article, and my personal crystal ball isn't a reliable source.

I ask that another editor review my edit and restore it if proper. Obviously, if there is no support for that, it would be useless for me to revert simply based on my own opinion. And please, and I am here writing to "cold fusion supporters," don't edit war, and I will also ask IP editors to refrain from reversion as well. Let's begin seeking consensus here, all of us. It takes time, but it can be done, even with highly contentious topics, such that editors with various POVs can agree, "this is fair and balanced." There may be exceptions, but they will stand out and be relatively harmless if the rest of us truly work together. --Abd (talk) 16:25, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That statement doesn't really add useful information since it is well known that the adminstration has a duty to entertain proposals related to nuclear physics. It doesn't really matter whether it is in this article or not, so I lean toward keeping it out to keep the article concise. I do object to phrasing that way using the word "however" since that implies that the 2004 panel's view of the cold fusion field is significantly different from the 1989 panel. A phrase such as "It also states..." could be used instead. Olorinish (talk) 16:41, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind making an edit somewhere along the lines proposed by Abd/Olorinish, but I would like to see the actual quote in the 2004 DOE report. I didn't happen to see it in the article at this link: http://web.archive.org/web/20070114122346/http://www.science.doe.gov/Sub/Newsroom/News_Releases/DOE-SC/2004/low_energy/CF_Final_120104.pdf I think I did see something like it in the 1989 DOE report, but since Abd was talking about the 2004 report, that's where I wanted to see it. Also, possibly of equal importance for those against "spin", is this quote from http://www.ncas.org/erab/execsumm.htm in the the 1989 report: "The Panel also concludes that some observations attributed to cold fusion are not yet invalidated." Does this not plainly imply that this CF article should not excessively describe all the presumed faults with the experiments, because the 1989 analysts already did that, and some of the experiments passed, with results-yet-to-be-explained? V (talk) 17:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The sentence I quoted is on page 5, at the top, in the document you found, V. Yes, V, that's pretty much the situation. There were "unexplained results." Those are where science grows; many "unexplained results" simply remain that way, maybe the janitor spat in the soup, but others lead to new science. Experiments are performed, sometimes, to confirm what is known or suspected, but it's the unexpected that leads to growth in science. "Keeping an article concise" is valuable, if NPOV is preserved. It's often impossible with a complex subject. In any case, I have no attachment to specific wording, Olorinish's suggestion would be fine with me. Objections to restoration with the changed wording? --Abd (talk) 03:22, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you.

I disagree with the policy you're citing, that if text that is reliably sourced is inserted, it's improper to simply remove it. Writing an article is about editorial judgment. I could easily add 20+ pages of reliably sourced material that adds more information to the article, and claim the same policy you are when you try to remove it. The policy you cite, blindly applied, would create articles tens of megabytes long for some topics.

The panel's funding recommendation seems like needless extra information to me. The current version accurately describes the view of the panel on the two main issues, heat and evidence of nuclear reactions, and makes it very clear that some think it actually exists, while some think it may exist. Whether they include standard text related to funding is irrelevant. The fact that none of them recommended a focussed funding program (which the report notes), is very pertinent information however. If there was any kind of reasonable possiblity that cold fusion could ever be a viable energy source, then a focussed funding it would seem a no brainer. The fact that even the "convinced" panel members didn't recommend it is very telling. However, when I added the DOE report section I left that out as well, as the current version covers what needs to be covered related to a review of the evidence. Phil153 (talk) 04:34, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, come on, Phil153, any policy, blindly applied, leads to nonsense. If you'd like, I'll find and quote the actual policy or guideline. You are free to disagree with any policy or guideline, after all, WP:IAR and all that, but ... the wikihighway is littered with the remnants of editors who insisted on ignoring that level of community consensus that's reflected in the policies. No danger from me! I'm not an administrator and I don't call them in except when vandalism or blatant edit warring is involved. Nobody around here would even dream of doing that, right?

Little experiment, here. I had never read the 1989 DOE report. From the article here, I assumed it was really, really negative. Because I'm asking to get lenr-canr.org unblocked, over on meta, and because JzG asserted a problem with lenr-canr.org was a page they host where Rothwell added a prefatory comment to the 1989 report -- he shouldn't have done that!, but it's irrelevant, just don't link to that page! -- I did finally read the recommendations of the report. While it appears there were quite a few errors in the report, the conclusions were not nearly as negative as has been presented. They actually seem to have been more in favor of further research than the 2004 DOE report, except that the 2004 effectively incorporates the conclusions of the 1989 report, which *don't* depend on the errors. I'd urge reading it, if by chance you have not, and see if it matches what you expected. The report on lenr-canr.org can't be linked here because of the blacklist, but they had taken it from, and referenced, another copy, and the recommendations and conclusions section is at http://www.ncas.org/erab/sec5.htm. I think it's about time we got some balance on this. What I see above is "reading between the lines." I.e., "if they had thought.... then they would have said ...," instead of looking at what they did say and taking it straight, without synthesis.

I agree with almost every word of the recommendations given the evidence they had at the time. The matter had shifted to some degree by 2004, but not enough for them to recommend a focused program of research. SPAWAR, essentially, finally did what the 1989 panel had recommended: A shortcoming of most experiments reporting excess heat is that they are not accompanied in the same cell by simultaneous monitoring for the production of fusion products. If the excess heat is to be attributed to fusion, such a claim should be supported by measurements of fusion products at commensurate levels. Other researchers have also addressed this, but the SPAWAR work claims (1) reliable excess heat, quickly produced, and (2) alpha particle detection; alpha particles are, of course, helium nuclei and thus are fusion products (though they are also produced by radioactive decay, but that's not what's happening in the SPAWAR cells unless someone spiked the electrodes! If SPAWAR's work is extensively confirmed, it's all over. Given that they figured out how to do it cheaply, they are either going to be confirmed or they are going to be laughed off the planet, and DOE funding isn't necessary for this. I'd say, personally, that the evidence is now strong enough to merit a focused program, but ....

Actually, I had acquired the impression that some of the older measurements DID find fusion products at commensurate levels ... PROVIDED we define "products" as "helium-4 and thermal energy". That is, the amount of excess heat measured seemed to be in line with the amount of 4He detected, ASSUMING that D-D fusions managed to reliably release 23.8Mev as heat instead of gammas. So that would qualify as a semi-sensible "what", even if the "how" remains unexplained. Alas, those who think we know all the possibilties for "how" have insisted that that particular "what" is impossible. But can they prove we know all the possibilities? Hah! V (talk) 13:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Even if fusion has been shown, that doesn't necessarily mean practical energy production. In 1989, the DOE saw that practical energy production wasn't an immediate prospect, the evidence wasn't there yet. And that was their main concern, quite short-term. Given how much work has been done in the last twenty years, they were right. And I know what CF advocates will say: but the billions in hot fusion research! Come on, folks, people have to make a living! Lighten up!--Abd (talk) 06:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I would appreciate the link to that policy, I know it exists but I haven't been able to find it to figure out how much consensus it truly has. It's obviously a stupid idea, useful in preventing certain kinds of edit war but not useful in building a serious reference work using good editorial judgment. And it's rife for abuse. As for highways, the highway of human achievement is littered with the remnants of people who conformed to bad policies.

What makes you say the article gives the impression that the 1989 report is negative? I can't find anything that suggests that. As for your 2004 comments, the DOE's own report says that the conclusions are similar to the 1989 report. In other words, not much real progress on the proof of nuclear fusion, which is all that matters as far as our article is concerned. Phil153 (talk) 11:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil, we must keep in mind that the SPAWAR experiments were basically done after the 2004 DOE report. Sure, as an encyclopedia article, it is important to say things that are in the DOE reports, but they are not the Last Word on research in this field, mostly because the SPAWAR results are much stronger evidence for fusion than had previously been available. I see on the Front Page of Wikipedia that there is a "News" section. I wonder about how that, in an encyclopedia, can be required to come from reliable peer-reviewed sources...do you see what I'm getting at? This medium allows for articles to be easily updatable with News. Why not have a section in the main article here, indicating that there are recent results that are "making a splash" so to speak, and which are awaiting significant confirmation? If they turn out to be erroneous, then that can be reported, too, in due course. If they turn out to be correct, then no detractor will feel like an idiot for having tried to keep it out of the article altogether. V (talk) 12:50, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Are the results "making a splash" though? Can you find reliable independent sources that document this? Can you find reliable independent sources that document that these are considered to be "much stronger evidence" by people other than advocates? If so, and if we have some kind of reliable replication, then by all means it should go in the article.

As discussed on this page some time ago, there have been thousands of "breakthroughs" and new evidence in this field over the last 20 years. If we constantly included them, there'd be a new sentence documenting the latest "promising" research in cold fusion 3 times a week for 20 years, which is obviously ridiculous. So I think we should at least insist on something significant that's attracting attention from reliable independent sources before putting it in the article. An extraordinary claim is being made here (evidence of fusion reactions in an electrolytic cell at room temperature), we need something more than a single published report IMO. Phil153 (talk) 13:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a Talk page discussion, where we may consider news and new research. Nothing that I wrote above about SPAWAR should be construed as a claim that we should include this in the article at this time. Consider it a "heads up!" On the face, though, SPAWAR peer-reviewed published articles are RS; the only problem is that we must maintain balance. We will discuss that issue, I'm sure, much more in the coming weeks and months. I should say that I intensively followed the original Pons-Fleischmann announcement and early work, but generally concluded that it was probably all a mistake; certainly I'd agree with the general conclusions of the DOE report, now that I've actually read it. It was at the time presented in the media as much more negative than it was. Phil, the SPAWAR work stands out because (1) it was a very simple experiment, and if their claims hold up, it should be very reproducible at low expense; (2) they found the smoking gun in a way that isn't nearly as easy to impeach or at least cast doubt on as instrumental error, contamination and all the other common objections made to other findings of nuclear reaction products. An inexpensive piece of plastic! It was the combination of these two that led to their results, the plastic alone wasn't enough; the rapid generation of heat, though, is remarkable on its own. If nothing else, the body of researchers should not be much better able to identify the cause of that heat! -- even if it isn't fusion. --Abd (talk) 15:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil, in one sense the SPAWAR results are making a splash, as evidenced by what Abd wrote. That is, someone (among how many others?) who wasn't impressed by the original idea that fusion was occurring, is now thinking again about the chance that fusion was occurring, that that chance has gone up considerably. Also, regarding "thousands of breakthroughs" over the years, don't be silly. How many DIFFERENT experiments have really been done over the years with deuterium-stuffed metal? I only know of about three basic types: electrolysis into bulk metal, pressurized gas into bulk metal, and now electrolytic co-deposition with thin metal. And the recently published hypothesis I've mentioned in other places on this page suggests a pure-metallic-deuterium experiment (extreme pressure required). How many others do you know about? V (talk) 16:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I should make something clear. I was originally impressed by the idea that fusion was occurring at levels sufficient to generate measurable heat. So impressed that I put practically all of my available cash into palladium (I was a little late getting there, the price had already started to rise). The palladium sat in a Swiss bank for about a year, when it was sold. I forget, I think I broke even, more or less. By that time it was pretty clear that spectacular confirmations were not coming quickly, and that it was very, very possible that Pons and Fleischmann had simply erred, and that the excitement of many others had led to a proliferation of experiments; given the difficulty of doing accurate calorimetry and dealing with all the confounding factors, the existence of scattered reports of confirmation wasn't at all conclusive, it was weak. It now appears that the DOE report may have been premature, that confirmations were neglected, and there were other problems, but, still, even with all that, the DOE report wasn't very far off; I'm sure they were under pressure to come up with quick answers. With hindsight, this much is clear: it's taken the better part of two decades to find what may be a clear smoking gun, reproducible, with very strong evidence of nuclear ash -- and that is under active challenge; contrary to what some seem to think, LENR researchers, at least many of them, are quite actively skeptical, which is a good thing. The best confirmations come from skeptics who decide to test the damn thing anyway, who are actively looking for what's wrong with a thing. However, that approach can also go too far, and did go too far in 1989. ("We didn't find it, we are smart, so they must be stupid!") Experimenters made errors that showed excess heat, and then proclaimed that these were also Pons and Fleischmann's errors. A reasonable hypothesis, to be sure, but very dangerous to science as an assumption. Basically, because there could have been error in their work, and because the results didn't make sense with established theory, the jump was made that there must be some error, hence any possible error was seized upon. And it appears that Pons and Fleischmann did make errors, but it also seems that they did see real excess heat. (We should know soon. If it turns out that palladium-catalyzed fusion does occur, it becomes, by Occam's razor, the probably cause of the original apparent excess heat. What a coincidence it would be if there was no excess heat, but ... palladium catalyzed deuterium fusion does occur! That could be the case, of course. They had reasons to suspect it might occur, in spite of contrary theory, and they simply got excited too soon.)

Why did I show up here? Well, I watch User talk:Jehochman He and I had some conflict at one time, quite well resolved by following the first step of dispute resolution with some diligence and cautious persistence, so sometimes I notice activity there. Questions were raised there about User:JzG's removal of links to lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com from here. My concern was apparent administrative conflict of interest: JzG made some edits, then locked them up by using his admin tools to add the site to the spam blacklist. Now, as linkspamming goes, there doesn't seem to have been anything like the level necessary for blacklisting, according to the blacklist description. However, JzG had apparently come to conclusions about fringe science, alleged distortion of sources, etc., and therefore made the edits and did the rest. It's a fairly clear abuse of admin tools, these are content questions, to be resolved by consensus of editors. Sure, admins can do whatever they like, even in apparent conflict, but if it becomes apparent that there isn't consensus behind it, they should withdraw. JzG didn't, when it was questioned. So my interest here wasn't content-related. I had no opinion about lenr-canr.org, for all I knew it was total fringe, looney-tunes advocacy, or the opposite. Same with newnergytimes.com. What I saw was an admin making a content decision and stonewalling it.

I'll no longer consider myself neutral on the topic though, I've become a bit too convinced. But, definitely, I started out as a skeptic here, but had to do some research in order to understand what was going on, which caused me to read some of the crucial sources..... etc. --Abd (talk) 23:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The funny thing is that I had the exact opposite reaction. I started off thinking there might be something to it (lots of smoke for no fire), and every bit of research I read from CF researchers caused me to become more and more skeptical due to the quality and nature of the "evidence". It has all the hallmarks of error and pathological science. As for SPAWAR, http://www.earthtech.org/CR39/index.html is very telling. Phil153 (talk) 00:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly how telling is that personal web page when in fact every single one of the issues it raises is addressed by the peer-reviewed Mosier-Boss et al (2008) "Reply to comment on 'The use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments': a response to Kowalski" Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 44: 291–5, p. 292? Where is the intellectual honesty? 69.228.206.231 (talk) 07:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Now, kids, be nice! The web page is interesting, and not conclusive in itself. I don't see that Mosier-Boss et al responded to the issues raised there. They addressed the issues raised by Kowalski. Look, this is the point. If it's fusion, it's extraordinary. Because of the magnitude of the claim, extraordinary evidence is required. CR-39 gets close, so too does reliable extra heat, if it really is that reliable and fast. But with the CR-39, there are obvious possible errors, and chemical damage is one of them. Mosier-Boss claims that chemical damage was ruled out, but nothing can be ruled out in this field, unless it's totally conclusive. Too many variables. It's going to take experiments with tiny changes in variables; my guess is that this work is going on now. How about varying the distance of the material from the electrode and seeing the effect on track density and depth? How about doing the same in the same solution with an americium source? How about a lot of things that I'm sure clever experimenters would think of. Editors and others are right to be skeptical. *Very* skeptical. My only point here is that we shouldn't pretend that skepticism is knowledge, nor that someone coming up with a hypothesis as to how the experimental results could be deceptive means that it has been debunked. One of the results from the web page is quite telling. They were finding SPAWAR-like pits; when they substituted normal water for heavy water, they also got the pits. "In several cases, we also substituted light water for heavy water in the electrolyte. These tests showed no discernible difference in the quantity of SPAWAR pits produced. This seems quite significant as the nuclear behavior of deuterium, at least in high energy experiments, is significantly different than that of protium." Indeed. Anyone know of a secondary source that reliably reviews the work? --Abd (talk) 19:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

[undent] Kowalski incorporated the complaints in that 2007 web page into his critique. The editors of Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. sent his paper to their reviewers. The reviewers contacted SPAWAR with questions. SPAWAR submitted their reply to the editors, who forwarded it to the reviewers, who agreed that it should be published back-to-back as a response to Kowalski's critique. SPAWAR got pits from light water, too -- in the same proportion that deuterium exists in natural light water. The 2007 earthtech.org web page authors repeatedly assume that the pits are alpha particles and compare the pits to those from known alpha particle sources, but Mosier-Boss et al (2009) "Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons" Naturwissenschaften 96: 135–142 suggests pretty convincingly that alpha particles are not the source of the pits. 69.228.206.231 (talk) 15:33, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

If there is going to be so much fuss raised about CR-39 pits, then perhaps an alternate way to detect fusion products should be attempted. I'm thinking about the Super-Kamiokande detector as an example to imitate, heh. V (talk) 18:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Szpak & Mosier-Boss (2007) "Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles" Naturwissenschaften 94: 511–4 shows one of the methods of detecting protons. 69.228.197.195 (talk) 08:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

arbitrary section break

The core policy is WP:NPOV which should be carefully read. In the lead to the policy, Wikipedia should be "representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles, and of all article editors." We also have issues to address about reliable sources. I don't want to re-invent the wheel and am new to this article; but a source shouldn't be considered unreliable merely because it focuses on the field of low energy nuclear reactions; that is a legitimate research field; the issue would be more complex than that. Further, the usage of a source affects the meaning of "reliable." Cold fusion is both a science topic and a social history topic. For the science, the standard would be peer-reviewed publication. For the social history, and such, ordinary publications may be allowed. For opinion, attributed, even fringe publications might be allowed; the key is whether or not the opinion or the one giving it is notable. --Abd (talk) 19:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

That's different to what you quoted though, and I don't think it supports if text that is reliably sourced is inserted, it's improper to simply remove it. I've had that quoted at me before so I wonder if that's actually written somewhere.

I see you've reinserted the text. I think the current version is misleading - for example it doesn't mention, as the report does, that no reviewer (even the convinced ones) recommended a focussed federally funded program. And with the quote immediately following the bit about the recommendations being similar, it looks like that's the way in which in the recommendation are similar. And of course I still think it's unnecessary. But I'm not reverting it. Phil153 (talk) 00:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there seemed to be no sustained objection here. Thanks for not reverting, but if you had reverted, we'd simply have continued to discuss it. The text you suggest should be there *should* be there. Why not put it there. As to the policy I gave the sense of earlier, it's interesting that others have said this to you. It may be in another document; or it may have been an old revision, these documents wash back and forth sometimes like the rest of wikipedia. That statement about impropriety, taken as if it were rigid policy, would be blatantly false, that was intended as a general advice.

As written, the edit seemed to imply that the sentence cherry picked from the body of the report (in charge element 3) was part of the report's conclusions. Carefully selecting the one slightly positive sentence from the entire report and presenting it as if it were part of the conclusion of the report is not appropriate. --Noren (talk) 02:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No, the sentence isn't "cherry picked," and it is part of the conclusions. This is the document: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEreportofth.pdf. Notice: no "alteration." There is either another copy hosted elsewhere on the site or the copy with the introduction has been removed and replaced. The sentence quoted is a specific response to Charge element 3, in the section of the report called "Detailed Summary of Reviewer Response to Charge Elements," just before the final "Conclusions." These are the final words of the DOE report:

While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review.

The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods. The reviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

That is, the final conclusion repeats the recommendation for further research, and this was, indeed, similar to the recommendations of the 1989 report. Note that these recommendations can't be fulfilled if "archival journals" refuse to publish research! But, apparently, some are publishing research. --Abd (talk) 17:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I see that Noren reverted. Sigh. Look, the use of reversion to improve content is not recommended. There is a purpose to the edit, which is to restore balance. I'm not reverting, at least not today; anyone who does work on this, please try to come up with a consensus before barging ahead. I made that edit in expectation of consensus, and we had that, close enough, from everyone participating here. I hope Noren will reconsider, I'd ping the editor on user talk if I had time..... --Abd (talk) 17:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The quote you gave is completely different from the one Noren reverted ([10]. The one that was inserted was unbalanced and misleading given its placement and lack of mention that no one recommended focussed funding, whereas your selection above is from the same position in the report's conclusion and is more balanced imo. Phil153 (talk) 17:48, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Of course, this is what I stated above: the quote in the article was from the "Summary response," which just precedes the conclusion I quoted here. If there is imbalance in the lack of mention that no one recommended focused funding, the fix is obvious: mention it! However, the significance of that isn't quite clear; it simply means, to me, that as of 2004 the situation was the same, roughly, as in 1989 as to conclusions: no focused federal program, but individually considered proposals and funding as considered appropriate under existing programs or procedures. I'd recommend the same thing, probably. I don't see a focused program as appropriate yet. There is prior work to be done that doesn't require something so drastic. Just a little research, just as the report recommends, to determine more clearly WTF is going on in those excess heat experiments and is there or is there not the presence of fusion products that aren't simply background, calibration errors, or experimental error -- or possibly those. The even-handedness of the 2004 report was concealed, essentially, by how it was only partially reported. However, the 1989 report, if I've got it right, is more fully reported. I'll look again later and see what's happened here and maybe make more edits.

However, this much is clear. The report is not treating cold fusion as "fringe science." They are taking it seriously; something unexplained is going on, the explanation as fusion is unlikely as hell from established theories, but the road to that place is paved with established ideas that were taken as if they were clear facts. So a balanced response is to leave the door open to finding out what's happening in the reaction vessels. "Fringe science" dismisses it. --Abd (talk) 01:26, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I added the funding recommendations bit using as neutral and non wordy language as I could muster. Let me know if this is adequate (or feel free to edit it, of course). Phil153 (talk) 18:03, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that wording is much better and sums it up well :) --Enric Naval (talk) 19:02, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

No offence Phil, but I've replaced it with a direct quote. There's no need for an interpretation that's nearly as long as the original, even a well written one like yours, will require ongoing defense against the introduction of POV, whereas a quote is straightforward and needs no counterspin.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:23, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

*grumble* I was going to complain that we should be using the part that appears under "conclusion" and not that one, but, reading them again, they say almost the same thing:

(under "charge 3", page 4) The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review. No reviewer recommended a focused federally funded program for low energy nuclear reactions.

(under "conclusion" on page 5) The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods. The reviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

Indeed, the part about federal funding is probably the most important and cited part of the text. The original addition quoted the text on the left, but it stopped at "a few eV", this made it look like the reports was recommending research, but two sentences later it was denying CF access to the big milk cow of federal subventions. I'm sure that it was an involuntary error. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:57, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'd disagree. Why "most important"? What is required to get that "big milk cow" is pretty substantial. Just for starters, suppose that there are nuclear reactions taking place. That doesn't mean that this could be practically scaled. It would mean that it might be. But until the evidence for LENR is conclusive, which in 2004 it was reasonable to conclude that it wasn't, a massive federal program would be premature. If or when the balance tips, to where the consensus is that it is not only a mystery, it's LENR, then massive investment starts to become more reasonable. There are, I'd say, still too many unknowns. We should cover the 1989 and 2004 DOE reports more thoroughly. The lead, right now, says The majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 1989 found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. In 2004, the DOE convened a second cold fusion review panel which reached conclusions that were similar to those of the 1989 panel. There is no doubt that this statement is true. However, that doesn't mean that it's balanced. What does "not persuasive" mean? Is that a polite phrase for "rejected?" It seems it's been treated that way. What we had in 1989, and really continue to have, are experimental results that haven't been explained satisfactorily, given how widespread they are. Does this equal "cold fusion"? Certainly not. The experimenters in the field don't think so! They think it's something else, indeed a new process, but they really don't know what it is. The DOE reports recommended further research under existing programs. As I keep saying again and again, they wouldn't say that if this were "fringe science." However, there certainly is a lot of fringe science going on, various quacks promoting various forms of "cold fusion" or whatever. It's a serious mistake to lump the serious research in with that. In any case, the apparent "error" Enric sees isn't there. There is no contradiction. --Abd (talk) 05:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

This is more or less how it went down:

CF Researchers: Please put together a funding program for cold fusion. We've proven that LENR occurs beyond any doubt.

DOE: No. Your evidence is unconvincing and most of your studies are poorly done. We'll fund individually, well designed experiments to hone on in some of the anomalies you're reporting on a case by case basis, just like we always have in speculative research. But we're not creating a funding program based on what you've shown us. Phil153 (talk) 07:14, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)Phil153 just gave us a very good demonstration of why we don't do synthesis except with consensus. There was substantial opinion among the consulted experts (majority, I think,) that something anomalous is going on, and some opinion that it was or could be nuclear in nature (strong majority that this wasn't yet "conclusive"). The big problem has been, of course, replicability. As an, at best, poorly understood phenomenon, and obviously something that doesn't happen easily -- or else we'd see much less stability of nuclei -- , that it has been difficult to replicate is the precise reason why it hasn't been accepted. Now, the judgment of an independent panel of experts, probably not intimately familiar with the large body of work, and especially not the most recent work, isn't the same as the judgment of experts active within the field. New fields create new journals, precisely for this reason. Your summary, Phil, is a reasonable one, but not a neutral one in terms of balance. Other reliable sources are developing, more recently than the 2004 DOE report, and I expect we will be increasingly relying on them. --Abd (talk) 15:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

You are mistaken, there was no majority on the question of anomolous heat- the panel was 'evenly split' according to the report, with one of the eighteen panelists fully convinced that fusion was occurring. Thankfully, we do have a mainstream, reliable source to summarize the findings of the panel - Physics Today. The reporting from Physics Today was that "Cold Fusion Gets Chilly Encore." Shouldn't we should use it, a mainstream secondary source, rather than quoting directly? --Noren (talk) 02:57, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

A Parting Comment on RS

The biggest problem I see with the Wiki approach while writing about cold fusion is the lack of reliable sources for the ‘anti’ position. To quote the current Wiki CF article:

'In 1994, David Goodstein described cold fusion as "a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between cold fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here." '

What this means is that there are almost 0 reliable ‘anti’ sources, because the mainstream quit publishing in c.1993-4. Now, you can find newspaper articles, and these serve for the historical./social contexts of the article. But how do you get ‘reliable sources’ for technical aspects of the field, like what constitutes ‘reliable experimental work’? Answer, you don’t by and large. In fact to my knowledge, my work, the Jones/Hansen calorimetry papers (c. 1995), and Clarke’s work represent the only examples of this from that latter period (’95 to present). Those papers do not address every claim made by CFers, yet there are valid conventional reasons not to believe the vast majority of such claims. What you are left with after applying ‘common’ chemistry knowledge is a few experiments here and there that do not have enough numbers to constitute anything other than a suggestion something might be going on. What Wiki editors do however, is attempt to apply the ‘policies’ as iron-clad rules, especially when they have a pro-POV to push, to keep out the ‘common’ knowledge. This seems to occur because no one editing knows chemistry or trusts a chemist to explain it to them. Instead they shout ‘COI’ and ignore expert advise.

In the meantime, copius contributions from the ‘pro’ side are found, and cited liberally in the article. What that does is give the Wiki reader the impression that, in the fact of scads of ‘reliable’ reports of CF, the mainstream stubbornly refuses to accept the facts, probably due to some nefarious government plot, instead of the correct impression that the mainstream detected the psuedoscience in the field long ago and moved on and nothing reliable has been added since by the CFers. Oh well, if that’s what Wiki wants, that’s what it will get.

I think I’m done. No more for me thanks. {[{My opinion...noone else's}]} Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Revert by TS of substantial new material in lead

A newly signed up editor, Gen ato (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), has added around 2 kilobytes of new material beginning with the following text:

On May 2008, cold fusion finally become a reality.

The source of this information appears to be an eyewitness report by Steven B. Krivit published in New Energy Times. The added text also references a 1998 paper published in Proceedings of the Japan Academy and some articles from the proceedings of a 2003 conference on Cold Fusion held in Cambridge, MA. It is not in good English and it probably doesn't belong in the lead. I have reverted it pending discussion. [11]. --TS 04:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the revert. Because there might possibly be something usable there, I'm copying the wikitext here below. --Abd (talk) 05:53, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

copy of edit by Gen ato

On May 2008, cold fusion finally become a reality. Yoshiaki Arata, a senior esteemed japanese Physics Professor and his colleague Yue-Chang Zhang, made a famous demonstration in front of many journalists and researchers. They presented a cold fusion reactor that was able to move a Stirling engine. Yoshiaki Arata e Zhang Yue-Chang, after a work of many years performed on 1998 a previous experiment.

Before Arata's experiment many theoretical studies was made from him and many others. We quote those of Giuliano Preparata, at the ENEA [Infm-Lab][12] (National Institute of Physics - Frascati Italy).

What seems to have happened here is the anomalous production of heat. Arata says it's fusion. The claim has been met with skepticism. [13]--TS 06:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

As is to be expected, Tony. Arata, though, isn't some backyard bozo. I'm not sure that Arata says it's fusion. Got RS on that? (just a question, not a challenge!). He may well say it's nuclear in nature, I think he has published evidence on that, but I don't keep all of this in my aging head. --Abd (talk) 15:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

• More of the usual nonsense. I have rarely seen so many WP:WEASEL words in a supposedly serious scientific topic. It goes, pending coverage in reliable mainstream sources, for all the usual reasons. New Energy Times is emphatically not a reliable independent source for such claims. Guy (Help!) 09:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The editor is clearly inexperienced. Expect more of this, much more, where Wikipedia lags seriously behind what is available in sources considered reliable by the public. As to NET being a reliable source, it's an edited news magazine, primarily. Looks quite reliable to me, actually. Opinion is attributed. It's not a peer-reviewed journal, it's actually a secondary source, like a newspaper; just one specialized in a fairly narrow field (which certainly is not only "cold fusion"). The whole question of the usability of a source like NET, which was here reporting the personal experience of a writer, is interesting. That personal experience doesn't establish a "scientific fact," but may still be notable. I'm not pretending that the solutions here are easy and obvious, but neither are they as knee-jerk simple as JzG has proposed, and has he used as the basis for his actions. It already went, JzG, and I concurred. So what are you arguing here? Nobody is maintaining that it should be reinserted! Please beat dead horses elsewhere, if you must, it makes me queasy.

By the way, it may look like a scientific topic, but the scientific topic would be Condensed matter nuclear science, redirected here by one of our friends. Cold fusion is actually, properly, about the history of science and about a social phenomenon that involves science. There is no active research maintaining "cold fusion" as originally claimed. The original cold fusion claims should be covered under CMNS as a section, a rejected hypothesis to explain experimental data that apparently has some other explanation, which may or may not be nuclear in nature. We should, here, have much more about the splash that the original announcements made, the history. Much less about the science itself. --Abd (talk) 15:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I would certainly agree with Abd on his final point regarding the relationship between CMNS and Cold Fusion. It is clear that the claims of actual fusion in the traditional sense are dismissed within the mainstream scientific community, but there is also acknowledgment that some as of yet unexplained phenomenon may be occurring and that additional funding should be invested in researching that. --GoRight (talk) 15:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Abd, please try to be civil. JzG is not beating dead horses, he is establishing consensus for an editor who is contesting the removal of the material. See User_talk:Gen_ato and the recent history of continued insertion by Gen ato. So somebody is indeed maintaining that it must be reinserted.

As for NET, NET is blacklisted, and you are arguing it's a reliable source that we can use for original claims in the article. Maybe take it RS noticeboard?

You CMNS distinction seems unfounded. It's the same horse with a different saddle, and cold fusion is by far the most well known name for both low energy nuclear reactions and condensed matter nuclear science, and the set of experiments and reported anomalies surrounding them. Per our title conventions, this isn't even close. I know that you already know this. Phil153 (talk) 16:10, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil, you will note above that I agreed with the removal. I'd have done it myself if someone else hadn't gotten to it. "Dead horse" is a reference to the fact that there isn't the slightest danger that the improper text would remain. No established editor has supported it, including myself. "Somebody" is maintaining it, yes. A new editor who probably doesn't know the history, I'd guess. The editor has been warned about edit warring, and properly so. Yes, dead horse. That's not an uncivil comment, it's a standard argument; it means that a point being made is moot, already accepted. Now, consider this: Gen ato is a new user. Was JzG's response, above, "civil"? Is this the way to welcome a new editor? Yet you think "beating a dead horse" is uncivil? --Abd (talk) 00:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Can somebody explain me why the scentific publications and works of some important scientists on cold fusion are simply cancelled or not reported on the english version of the wiki? For example the works of Giuliano Preparata, Yoshiaki Arata and Yue-Chang Zhang, T. Ohmori and T. Mizuno, Francesco Scaramuzzi, Francesco Celani (considered fundamental from many scientists) are not quoted. In the italian version of wiki for example they all are quoted very well. Sorry but there is something that I don't understand. It seems that in the english version of the wiki the term "cold fusion" it's treated in a very "non neutral" way. Of course rules are fundamental in an enciclopedical work. But they have to grant neutrality. If we don't use rules in a soft way, if we exceed with the legalistic use of rules, we can transform them as the best stones to cover the scientific evidences and not as milestones to spread knowledge. This happened many times in the history of science. My text for example was completely cancelled and not trasformed or changed with a mutual cooperation. And cooperation (and not chensorship) is basic in every project! I agree that "New Energy Times" is not a scientific isitution (but it's quoted on the italian version. Here it's not blacklisted?) and I cancelled this reference from the first version. But what about the others? Are they not scientists? Can You please answer on a rational basis to all of these points? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gen ato (talk • contribs) 19:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Your description of the article as it was before your additions is false. Arata, Zhang, Mizuno, and Scaramuzzi were all referenced. A difference in content between the English and Italian wikipedia articles does not mean that it is the English one that is written from a biased point of view. The reliable secondary sources on the topic are much more negative than the selection of primary sourced proponent articles you are repeatedly inserting into the lead. You might want to consider that you might be the one attempting to force a point of view on this article. I'm reverting. --Noren (talk) 03:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Gen ato, you've attempted to insert the same text (with minor modifications) 5 times in the last 36 hours. It's been reverted 5 times by three different editors. This is not censorship, but disagreement about the place where it's included, the weasel words being used, the reliability of the sources used for the claims made, the weight given to one particular experiment. To a first approximation, Wikipedia reports what is published and noticed in reliable secondary sources with appropriate weight, especially in the lead. Please do not continue to edit war and insert text that other editors have removed; instead, seek consensus on the talk page before adding something controversial. Also note that the 3RR rule that I informed you of is not an entitlement. Phil153 (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Gen ato, I'm sympathetic to your point of view. I'd agree that the article can be improved, but it's a highly controversial subject. Edit warring isn't the way to fix the article. You now know that your changes are controversial, and no other editor has supported them. Consider what small changes you might suggest. If they aren't accepted, do not revert. Under some conditions, even a single reversion to restore previously removed content can be considered edit warring and can result in a block. Discuss. It can be a slow process, please be patient. --Abd (talk) 00:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

It's my opinion that 3 of the five Wikipedia's pillars are not respected at the voice "Cold fusion". For this argument I open another section to discuss what to do. (Gen Ato): Gen Ato--Gen ato (talk) 01:19, 29 January 2009 (UTC)