RE: Arthur C. Clarke on Cold Fusion

[William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com>]

On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Shapiro, Mark wrote:

> Martin makes an important point.  The skepticism about "cold fusion"
> arises not because of any "conspiracy" on the part of "orthodox"
> science, but rather because literally hundreds of competent scientists
> have attempted to reproduce the effect without success.

Very, very true.  From what I understand of "CF", the biggest problem
throughout it's history has been the mistaken idea that the experiment was
easy to perform.  While it's easy to slap together a palladium/D2O cell
and try out the Pons/Fleishman claims, such an experiment is guaranteed to
fail.  I saw nothing about this problem in early discussions of "CF", so
the usual conclusions regarding "Cold Fusion" are understandable.  If all
we must do is to stick some palladium into some heavy water and look for
neutron radiation, then obviously it is easy to test the validity of the
experiment. 

If in reality there are unknown variables here, and if the experiment does
not work unless performed exactly right, then it becomes very hard to
"disprove" the phenomenon.  Are Pons and Fleischman mistaken, or instead
are all the teams who obtain zero results simply making experimental
errors? 

Later reports showed that only certain "magic" batches of palladium would
demonstrate the effect.  How many of the replicating teams knew of this? 
I don't know if P & F were even aware of this problem in 1989.  If my CF
experiment works, yet nobody else's does, then am I practicing
pathological science?  Or is there some contaminant which poisons the
reaction, a contaminant which is present in most (but not all) palladium? 
A similar situation occurred with the first atomic pile.  Graphite blocks
from certain sources did not behave correctly.  The problem was traced to
Boron contaminant.  Lucky that ALL graphite did not naturally contain
Boron.  If it had, then perhaps the failure would not have been traced to
the faulty graphite, and the entire "atomic pile" idea might have died at
birth. 

Another problem I heard about later: unless the palladium is melted down
under vacuum and recast, and the process repeated a number of times, the
palladium will contain large amounts of Hydrogen, and the Deuterium will
never build up to the 100% loading level within the metal.  Did all the
replicating teams process their palladium properly?  I think this
information was coming out at the same time that all the bad-mouthing of
CF had started up.

Another: the surface of the palladium was critical.  I don't remember
exactly what the issue was, but I vaguely recall that sanding or polishing
the palladium would eliminate the "cold fusion" results.

Another: unknown factors cause the experiment to fail, and so it was
common for P & F to run a great number of cells simultaneously, and then
only obtain interesting results for a tiny percentage of them.

Another: the "window" of V and I versus T, the place where the CF effects
would turn on, is said to be narrow.  Without contacting P&F themselves,
this and other required information would be unknown to those who
attempted replications.  Yet Pons and Fleichman complained that very few
researchers actually contacted them and learned how to reproudce what P&F
actually performed.  It sounds to me like most of the purported
replication failures were not replications at all, but were instead based
on what the researchers thought the P&F procedure SHOULD be.  This "ego
improvements" effect was well known to the Heathkit people.  Electronics
kit-builders would make changes in order to make the kit be their own
invention, and then complain that the components were bad or the kit
instructions were wrong.  I suspect that the problem would be far worse
among professional scientists.

Another: P & F claimed to obtain neutron radiation and excess heat.  In
hindsight, the neutron radiation was most probably a mistake, and the
excess heat was not.  Those who insisted that the "fusion" must produce
neutrons, and who also specifically ignore the existence of unexplained
heat, would have an easy time showing that the whole "CF" idea was bogus. 
Yet they would be mistaken. 

In addition, I've heard it said that there are a number of "secret" 
techniques involved, although most of them were not so secret since
electrochemistry experts supposedly know them.  In other words, if an
electrochemist took the several months needed to perform the experiment
correctly, interesting phenomena might take place.  If a chemist who had
little professional experience in the field of electrochemistry tried to
do the same, some mistake would accidentally be made.  Perhaps the chemist
might set up and run the experiment in an obvious way, while the
electrochemistry expert would be absolutely horrified to find that the
chemist did not maintain stringent clean-room environment, did not use the
usual expensive ultra-pure materials, or perform all sorts of standard (if
bizarre)  cleaning rituals, etc.  What is "normal procedures" is very
different in electrochemistry than elsewhere, and is not something easily
communicated to the untrained.  If the CF experiment is like french
cooking, and if it only gives proper results when a world-class chef does
the skilled parts, then thousands of amateur cooks would rather say that
the recipe is at fault, than admit that they are not world-class french
chefs. 

> The nuclear reactions associated with fusion are well understood, and
> have well known signatures (reaction products such as neutrons and gamma
> rays).  These have been looked for with the most sensitive of detectors,
> and have not been found.  Since fusion is a nuclear process, it is these
> nuclear reaction products that carry away the excess energy.  If you
> don't have any nuclear reaction products, then it can't be a fusion
> reaction that is taking place in these "cold fusion" cells.

Exactly.  The neutrons did not match the excess heat output at all.  For
the amount of thermal variation being reported, there should have been
hundreds of radiation deaths.  In CF this is called the "dead grad-student
problem."  One could either conclude that "CF" was bogus and nothing of
interest was happening, or one could conclude that, whatever was producing
these weird results, it had to be unknown physics raising its head.
Unknown procedural mistakes, or unknown physics which resembles "Alchemy",
which is the answer?  For most of the scientific community the choice was
totally obvious.  Only a tiny minority continued (despite ridicule) to
investigate the phenomena, to fight against the unknown variables which
block easy replication, and to scrounge for nonexistent funding.  When the
odds against them cause them to give up, then the anti-cf crowd claims
that this is evidence that CF was bogus to being with.

> Rather than taking someone's word for it (even if that someone happens
> to be Clarke or Schwinger), I prefer to base my own judgements about
> "cold fusion" on the evidence.  And right now the evidence for "cold
> fusion" is pretty meager, while the evidence against it is pretty
> strong....at least IMHO.

Are you following all the CF publications?  If not, then it's not
suprising that you percieve the evidence to be weak.  If on the other hand
you have been reading all the "taboo" papers, then I do respect your
opinion.  But if you judge the literature to be worthless and so never
actually read any of it, then doesn't that create a closed loop of
prejudice?

It all comes down to reading the continuing papers on the subject.  I
myself am a dilletante, and have not done so.  I watch others discussing
such things, and only pick up occasional fragments of interesting stuff.
For example, Claytor at LANL found tritium in the palladium electrodes.
There had been claims of tritium associated with CF years ago, but this
was attacked by skeptics as obviously having come from atmospheric
sources, or the glass of the containment, or from some unexplained
contamination source.  I've heard that the Claytor results are strong
enough to eliminate these alternate sources from consideration.  His
papers are online at 

  http://wwwnde.esa.lanl.gov/cf/tritweb.htm   

They are not water chemistry, they involve low pressure electrical
discharge.

For more literature, including pro and con reviews of several of those
blasphemous ICCF and ILENR conferences, try here: 

  http://www.skypoint.com/members/jlogajan

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