August 2008 (UTC)

[unindent]
Like the CFers, I don’t think voting defines this issue, particularly when critical information has been withheld from the voters.  Let's look at tat briefly...

From the Wiki page on pseudoscience we find:

“As it is taught in certain introductory science classes, pseudoscience is any subject that appears superficially to be scientific or whose proponents state is scientific but nevertheless contravenes the testability requirement, or substantially deviates from other fundamental aspects of the scientific method.[3]”

From the Wiki page on the scientific method, we find:

“Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce a biased interpretation of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.”

From my comments in the “Bias on both sides” section on this page we find:

The assertion that published studies on He in ‘cold fusion’ experiments came from air leaks, that this necessitates that the CFers perform ‘full disclosure’ on their experimental results and methods, and that that has not yet been done.

and:

The assertion that heavy metals found in cold fusion experiments comes from a) contaminants or b) improper analysis of data, that this necessitates that the CFers perform ‘full disclosure’ on their experimental results and methods, and that that has not yet been done.

And from my other comments on calorimetry (incl. edits to the CF  Wiki page), we find:

The assertion that apparent excess heat arises from an analytical method problem, that the CFers exclude these concerns based on a dislike of a proposed speculative physical/chemical mechanism that might or might not be a source of a calibration constant shift problem, while ignoring the mathematical fact that a 1-3% change in cal. constants can account for the large majority of such heat claims.  One fundamental aspect of the scientific method is the concept that if two alternative explanations exist for a given set of observations, then the situation is undefined and more new work must be done designed to test each alternative and distinguish between the two, because two distinct, conflicting explanations for a phenomenon can’t both be correct.  Failure to do that substantially deviates from other fundamental aspects of the scientific method.  Failure to incorporate a viable alternative into experimental protocols produces a biased interpretation of the results.

Seems to me we need a new vote…     18:48, 22