From: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Subject: RE: A plea for more responsible debate
Reply-To: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 13:26:58 GMT


Originally-From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE

>Dick Blue (an official skeptic in my book) writes:
>>"I have an alternative explaination:  Cross talk between electrical signals"
>>In his discussion of the McKubre et al paper.

>Dieter Britz (a neutral observer to me) writes:
>"I have not seen the the McKubre paper, and don't want to iether, until it's
>out as a proper publication."

Well, prompted as I was from several quarters, I did get hold of a copy of the
McKubre+ paper and did read it this weekend. Speaking not as bibliographer (who
will still wait for the proper, refereed, paper), I must say it is one of the
most carefully executed experiments in this field that I have read about. I do
have my small doubt about the loading figures (based on measurement of the
resistance of the Pd cathode) but I'd have to read the Baranowski papers
referred to, to make that more definite. It seems clear, however, that they
got loadings well in excess of 0.8, where there is a resistance maximum. This
team went to tedious and pedantic trouble to eliminate problems and to
check obvious quantities. Their precision appears to be about 0.3% (they
say 0.1%) or - better: +-50 mW. So when they get up to about 1W excess power,
and a clear difference between an H2O and a D2O cell (respectively, zero
and 0.5 W excess), their restrained conclusion, that this heat (at 490 eV/atom
Pd) is too large to come from a chemical or mechanical effect, seems very
reasonable. It is possible that they have overlooked something but it is not
something obvious.

 As for Dick Blue's <BLUE%MSUNSCL.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU> point:
>Subject:  Carping about CF experiments
...
>back on the McKubre case.  While it is true, as Tom says, that cross
>talk between signals should have been found during calibration runs there
>can be lots of reasons why it didn't show up.  Only one more fact to
>support my notion:  The run P12 which was early in the series of
>experiments showing excess heat is the only run that shows the proportionality
>I have been wondering about.  In subsequent measurements made after the
>cells were obviously reconnected in new configurations there is no simple
>relationship between excess heat and input current.  This was a non-
>reproducible effect that is of course one hallmark of cold fusion.

The authors themselves mention the irreproducability, although they did manage
to get their effect in several cells. I had asked about time delays in these
signals, and I note now, looking at the paper (Fig. 7, and the comment near
the bottom of page 434, that a step change in the current is followed by a
change in excess heat, with a time constant of a few tens of minutes, the time
constant of the calorimeter, NOT an instantaneous change as would be the case
if it were due to electrical cross talk. Whatever this is, it seems to be heat
in response to current. To relegate this clear effect to something random is
grasping at straws, this time by a skeptic.
 Fig. 8, in which we see the H2O and D2O cells in the same bath, one giving no
excess heat, the other 0.5 W excess, has a puzzling feature, and I suspect
there is something wrong with the time axis on either current or power: in two
places (t = 490 h, t = 610 h), the excess heat change precedes the current
change by a definite amount. The final (t = 610 h) is the most dramatic: here,
the current is cut off, but the power zooms down about 4 hours prior to that.
Surely this is sloppy overlaying of recorder traces?
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Dieter Britz alias britz@kemi.aau.dk
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
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