At 02:46 PM 2/25/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
You seem to know something about this research. Surely you have read
McKubre, Fleischmann and Storms and seen the graphs. Yet you persist
in calling these results "marginal." You are either technically
illiterate, or you are a liar. Anyone who glances at the graph on
the front page at
<http://lenr-canr.org/index.html>http://lenr-canr.org will see you are wrong.
That's P13/P14. There is another graph of this that was page 2 in the
review paper presented to the DoE in 2004.
Seeing these graphs in isolation, with a background if distrust and
rejection, can be less than convincing. The caption on that image on
your page, Jed, is accurate. But people will not necessarily grasp
the implications.
What that shows, and clearly, is that deuterium behaves with a
radically different response to current density, than does the
hydrogen control. These are two cells in series, that needs to be
understood. It should be understood that both cells were highly
loaded. Suppose Kort's AC power noise theory had been correct. Then,
with increased current, there would be increased bubbling, and with
increased bubbling, more AC power noise, and, with that, a
corresponding error in power.
But what about the hydrogen control? Well, the skeptical mind will
assert, hydrogen bubbles are twice as bouyant as deuterium bubbles,
so the noise is less....
So something else needs to be known. What is being shown there is the
response to a current excursion that was run three times. The first
two times, the deuterium results -- we are told -- matched the
hydrogen results. No excess heat phenomenon.
It was the third time that the beast deigned to appear.
This is a result that is indeed very clear, very far above noise.
Excess heat. The "dead cathode" results show that the calorimetry is working.
And the third time, the charm, shows the chaotic or not-understood
nature of the phenomenon. A naive student would think that the same
loading, same current, same materials, same exact cathode, would
produce the same results.
It doesn't. Sometimes this strange heat phenomenon appears. And
nobody has explained it, except with what appears to be an
explanation from the helium results: deuterium fusion, under unknown
conditions (as to what exactly allows it) and by unknown mechanism.
If someone else can come up with a better explanation, great! I'd
love to see it. So far, no.
Cude's position is to reject experimental evidence because?
The bottom line has to be "because it does not match expectations."
And this is why Cude is, indeed, rejecting the scientific method.
People have a theory, and that theory produces expectations. If
experiment doesn't match expectations, the scientific method suggests
that we should question the theory.
If the theory were well-established, there can be some sense to this.
But, in fact, the theory in question here was speculative. Nobody had
done a systematic search for fusion evidence in highly loaded
palladium deuteride, *because nobody expected to find it.*
The only difference with Pons and Fleischmann was that they thought
that it was *possible* something small could be detected. Because of
the fact that palladium deuteride was widely used and known, they
thought the effect couldn't be large, but just maybe something would happen.
This was basic research, testing a commonly-accepted theory, that the
approximations of two-body quantum mechanics, that readily predict
undetectable fusion rates at room temperature, would hold. They knew
that the conditions of the solid state might shift this *a little*
toward increased fusion cross-section. How much?
Theory was inadequate to answer this question, they knew that. The
existing theory depended on the approximation. Otherwise the math was
way too difficult. Takahashi has taken a vastly simplified condition
to make the math doable, and predicts fusion from that condition.
Nobody would have even thought to try this if not for Pons and
Fleischmann's results.
Cude is showing standard pseudo-skepticism, attachment to existing
theory and interpretation, denying experimental evidence under
whatever excuse he can find. It's transparent. You are right, Jed,
he's not fooling anyone here, at least not as to those who actually respond.
