Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 5

message: One: I strongly object to the FA version but I will not revert it.  Let's work on making a better article instead.  However, while this version is up, it's gonna have the totallydisputed tag (because it is - see above, also see this entire discussion).
: Nope. Its not totally disputed, and you don't get to add the tag just cos you're presistent. William M. Connolley 18:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  William - yes, it is disputed.  I have described specific serious problems with this version.  You have not even tried to respond to the issues I brought up about this version, and neither has anyone else.  Other editors are disputing it as well, as should be extremely obvious from this talk page.  Heck, well-known experts in the field are disputing it.  Your original revert to the old FA version was counterproductive and heavy-handed, and it does not in any way represent consensus, since (1) the FA removal vote was not about a revert and (2) the votes for a revert just aren't there if you count them anyway.  In any event, I have refrained from reverting the page as a whole in the hopes of avoiding an edit war and moving forward.  However, removing a npov/disputed tag when there is an active ongoing dispute is just not done (see WP:AD and WP:NPOVD).  What you're doing is wrong.  Please stop.  ObsidianOrder 19:27, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ok, let's recap:  I added the totallydisputed flag for reasons which I explained right here, at Talk:Cold fusion#Problems with the FA version, exactly as I'm supposed to as per WP:AD.  Those include both factual and POV problems, therefore totallydisputed is the correct tag.  They are also very serious, since some of the key claims in this version of the article are not sourced at all (and perhaps cannot be sourced).  There are other editors which I beleieve would agree with the tag.  William M. Connolley has reverted it three times, with the following explanations: "Its not totally disputed, and you don't get to add the tag just cos you're presistent.", "rm'ing unjustified totallydisputed tag", "Nope, its not justified by the talk." and "you haven't justified it, and this is an FA"; and FrancisTyers reverted it once with "removing tag per WMC".  Whether an article was FA has absolutely nothing to do with whether it should have a disputed tag (unless you can point to a policy that says otherwise?  no?).  I've made a substantive criticism; you haven't responded to my criticism at all, or done anything else to attempt to reach a consensus; obviously as it stands now there is no consensus; but you think it's appropriate for you to remove the tag?  What makes you think that?  Just saying "not justified" is not good enough.  If the problems I point to above are not enough justification for you, what would be?  In case you guys need a refresher on Wikipedia policy and customs, you may want to read Wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute which discusses when it is appropriate to remove a tag.  ObsidianOrder 01:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: You're welcome to create a version in your userspace for you (and perhaps your friends) to edit. But since you control it, you can't really expect others to want to edit it too; or to watch it; nor can you take other peoples silence on it as endorsement. The other way is to create a sub-page here called "tmp" or somesuch. But then you don't get to control it. William M. Connolley 19:19, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That is a valid concern.  You're jumping a bit ahead though, considering I haven't actually undone any edits yet ;)  It was my intention to move the page out of userspace once I felt it is ready.  If you prefer I do so now, I'd be happy to, but I am sincerely hoping to avoid the back-and-forth edits of the type you and I are currently engaged in over the totallydisputed tag.  As much as possible, I will not revert, I will leave alone or rewrite instead.  Fair?  Anyway, the version incorporating the Storms draft is now at Cold fusion/tmp.  Edit away.  ObsidianOrder 19:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for improvement 

message: After reading over the majority of the comments here on this page, I have to state that in my opinion the article in its current form is informative, interesting and balanced. I feel it does not require major surgery, although certainly cleanps and more information will definitely help it. I further agree that the version from Storms is biased, and versions suggesting CF to be total pseudoscience equally so.
As to the Storms version, I certainly think the ISSUES IN THE DEBATE section could be included, largely in its current form. As some have rightly pointed out, the "header" section under "Continuing efforts" seems highly arguable, and Storms has embedded a large number of emotional-based arguments in the text itself -- for instance "The stakes are now too high for trivial skepticism". But these can be easily removed without effecting the overall flow of the article, and the content within strikes me as an excellent overview of the topic in its current state of the art. 
I argue for its inclusion.
Some have suggested (even in the block header on this page) that the history of the P&F experiment be condensed. As the primary author of that section, I have to argue against this. For one thing it runs to about one written page, which is hardly excessive for such a topic. But much more importantly, I think the Jones/P&F "argument" is absolutely vital to the understanding of the topic's cold reception in the scientific community. This is not the only concern, of course, but the "rush to publish" or "science by press release" that occured certainly taints the topic for many.
Does anyone disagree with this comment? I'm certainly open to the possibility that its not as important as I think it is.
Finally, I would argue that the Other kinds of fusion section could easily be reduced to a "see other" point form. This is an article on cold fusion, not other "coldish fusion" topics. Those are already listed in their proper place, the general fusion power article.
Maury 13:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *I must strongly disagree with your characterization of the need for that much material on  PF. First nearly the whole 'Pons and Fleischmann's experiment' (10 paragraphs) and the 'Experimental set-up and observations' (3 more) are about that one experiment. Yes, some  about it and the reaction to it are needed, but currently that's half the article, and is way to much for proper balance. - Taxman Talk 20:32, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Maury - what do you think we need to change in the "issues" section in Storms before we can include it?  I had gotten rid of the "stakes are too high" bit and other similar problems already (the latest version is at Cold fusion/tmp, I hope that's the one you're reading).  Also, would the "issues" secion replace the "issues in the controversy" in the present article?  Let's see if we can polish this and get it in.  ObsidianOrder 23:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I absolutely see your point about the importance of history, I'm just not sure how well it can be covered in an article that also covers everything else it should.  It will be pretty long... then again, I'm not that concerned with length, as long as it's good ;)  Anyway, that was the main reason for the suggestion to move it into a sub-article.  If it was split, the history can be covered in more detail, listing all of the reproductions (successful or not), and a mini timeline, while the summary on the main page talks about why it was important, and the fallout from it.  ObsidianOrder 23:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Maury - unfortunately I have to disagree with the "it's fine" view... a lot of good information was simply tossed out in the revert.  Please have a look at the old version, , for example the "Continuing efforts" section (a prime example of the kind of thing that was deleted: ).  The old version badly needed a rewrite - ok; but deleting key information like that is not ok and will not stand long term.  The current version amounts to misinformation by omission (even aside from the few wild unsourced statements for which it has a disputed tag).  I haven't engaged in a revert war over this only because I think we can come up with something even better and I'd prefer to work on that.  The Storms version is also not perfect but should provide the basis for a short-term solution.  Anyway, I hope you can understand why I don't think that it's fine as it is.  Now, let's actually come up with something better ;)  We have our work cut out for us.  ObsidianOrder 01:02, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Thank you!  It started out as just a list of what was missing, but then I kept working on it and it turned into... this, whatever it is ;)  You are absolutely welcome to work on it.  We can also probably reuse quite a bit of specific wording from various existing versions.  One suggestion, let's nail it down in outline form, then flesh it out?  I am somewhat concerned with overall length and verbosity, do you think this will cover too much or in too much detail in any area?  I have most of the references needed, after that it is just a matter of going through and picking the best ones.  Oh, and writing a bit of stuff (grin) ObsidianOrder 23:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: btw "Palmer" is just Dr Paul Palmer who was working on geofusion.  Not very important, brief mention since he probably used the term first.  ObsidianOrder 23:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: josh - you are quite correct.  There are no D atoms or D2 molecules, what is actually in there is a form of d+.  We should also mention the anomalous conductivity of the D/Pd system, it is very important since it is precisely what led P&F to the experiments they did.  This is in my outline User:ObsidianOrder/Cold fusion redux, as "rationale for the experiment: combination of monoatomic absorption and high conductivity in deuterated palladium" and "setup: D2O electrolysis to load up palladium cathode with monoatomic deuterium produced in situ".  Perhaps you can help write a paragraph describing this?  ObsidianOrder 01:51, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Describing them as protons is not very accurate, though it's useful to make it clear that they dissociate.  They're usually referred to in the inorganic chemistry literature as hydrides(H-), a convention that makes sense as hydrogen is more electronegative than palladium.  (Transition metal-H bonds often have considerable covalent character so H- isn't the complete story, but is a zero-order approximation reflected in the nomenclature.) η2-H2 coordination is possible on transition metals, but usually only as a short lifetime intermediate, but modeling shows that the η2-coordinated H-H bond distance is greater than in molecular H2(as would be expected with the loss of H-H bonding character.) If a site in palladium did have a H2 unit (I don't know if this happens or not) the H-H distance would be longer than in molecular H2.  This isn't in the article as there's no chemical theory to properly explain "cold fusion", in much the same way that there is no physical theory.  --Noren 02:34, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Noren - this is an interesting subject.  The electronegativity of hydrogen is pretty much exactly the same as that of palladium, so an assignment of H- or H+ on those grounds is arbitrary.  What is present in Pd/D is most certainly not D- ions, and is it probably not anything involving covalent bonds.  You're quite right in that a lot of the complexes Pd forms when acting as a chemical catalyst do have substantial covalent character, but that is on a Pd surface, not in bulk Pd/D.  Any explanation of what Pd/D actually is has to account for the anomalous conductivity, which strongly suggests that it is something in between an ionic conductor and a metal alloy, rather than a covalent hydride or even typical ionic hydride.  Also, there are at least two known phases of Pd/D (alpha and beta), and they have very interesting transitions that can be observed with Xray spectroscopy and neutron scattering.  Some evidence suggests that fusion occurs in a third phase, possibly one involving D2-; in any case it appears to only occur at D/Pd ratios > 0.8, and possibly locally closer to 2.  A lot of the reproducibility problems here seem to come from the fact that most Pd samples simply cannot be loaded to such a high D content, regardless of how you go about it.  I think it would be fair to say that chemical or physical theory does not adequately describe Pd/D at this time.  ObsidianOrder 06:11, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right about the (Pauling) electronegativities of Pd and H; I should have said that the hydride nomenclature is for all transition metals, many of which are much less electronegative than H. In ternary (alkali/alkaline earth)(second-row transition metal, including palladium) hydrides, metal-H bonds are often well described as covalent bonds or as 3-center, 4-electron (H-Pd-H) interactions analogous to the bonding found in hypervalent main group compounds.  These compounds that I'm more familiar with didn't have Pd-Pd bonding, but were better described as salts.  I can imagine and would expect that this binary Pd/H combination would be different.  I would expect that the hydrogen would still be tightly bound to Pd rather than ionic... but I haven't worked much at all with metallic palladium, so we move out of areas in which I have direct expertise.  I can certainly believe that there is interesting and inadequately explained chemistry in a Pd/H (or Pd/D, though I would expect any difference to be results of kinetic isotope effects) --Noren 19:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "the hydrogen would still be tightly bound to Pd" - ah, you see, this is the crux of the anomalous properties of Pd/D right there.  You are correct to expect that the hydrogen would be tightly bound, that is the conventional prediction.  However, both the high speed of hydrogen diffusion, and the fact that Pd/H has greater electrical (and thermal) conductivity than bulk Pd metal, suggst that it isn't tightly bound.  Some of that conductivity pretty much has to be carried by electrons from the hydrogen and some by migration of the hydrogen itself (diffision is accelerated by electic fields).  On the other hand, if the hydrogen isn't tightly bound, then why the heck does it spontaneously dissociate and form a hydride?  That would seem to imply that the Pd/H state is more energetically favorable, wich suggests tight binding.  The combination of these two contradictory properties is precisely what led P&F to look for other oddities in Pd/D; they pretty much expected to find some kind of multi-D-nucleus cooperative phenomenon, if not specifically fusion.  ObsidianOrder 19:28, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

text: "in much the same way that there is no physical theory" - I would politely disagree with the implication that (a) such a theory could not ever be developed and (b) since it is theoretically impossible, the observations must be wrong.  I certainly wouldn't claim that there was a physical theory which offers a full explanation, but there are several proposed theories which do point the direction to a possible explanation.  The typical approach deals with things like Bose condensates, many-body wave functions, coherence, non-local momentum transfer, etc.  If you'd like to read up on it:  Chubb&Chubb, Fusion Technol 20:93;  Hagelstein, ICCF8; Kim&Zubarev, J Phys B 33:1; Preparata, Trans Fusion Technol 26:397; Schwinger, Progr Theor Phys 85:711  (and by the way I'm shamelessly cribbing these from the much lengthier list of references at the end of ch. 5, pg 91-110, of ).  ObsidianOrder 11:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't claim a), note my use of present tense.  b) seems to be a commonly used strawman by the pro-cold fusion crowd, I never said anything of the sort.  Competent scientists who were not attempting to bilk the credulous for "research" money did experiments and saw no energy/neutrons/etc.  For that matter, I haven't read any reports of electrodes melting since the original paper... so if we believe all the pro-cold fusion papers it would imply that the wattage produced has drastically decreased since 1989.  Modern "cold fusion researchers" associate themselves with "science" of similar merit- energy from zero point energy and from perpetual motion machines. --Noren 19:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry if I took your statement to imply something it didn't.  Yes, there still are occasional reports of random high energy release events, e.g from Mizuno's lab (a single electrode which released ~500GJ/kg over a couple of days).  However, the occasional report of that is far less interesting than the fact that reproducibility is vastly improved (see e.g. the Navy labs' work on Pd-B alloys and electrodeposited Pd).  You are quite wrong to dismiss cold fusion researchers, many of whom are extremely competent scientists working in major research institutions.  "Competent scientists did experiments and saw no energy/neutrons/etc" - true, sort of (since some of them did see energy, e.g. at MIT), but the factors required for reproduction were not well understood back then.  It may be time to revisit these experiments.  ObsidianOrder 19:28, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article is fine 

message: I just added a couple of diagrams:  and .  
Steven Krivit added this photo: 70px.  I think the first diagram could replace the one there now, and the picture be used in addition to the Charles Bennet pic which is used now.  Comments? ObsidianOrder 11:16, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New images 

message: Hello, a quick explanation of the changes I just made: I copied the list of papers cited in the Storms draft, and merged the "Issues in the debate" section of that with the "Continuing work" section of this article (thus leaving the "Arguments in the controversy" section intact).  The "Continuing work" section  was also moved down after the "Arguments", in order to give the "Arguments" more prominence.  All of the new information is well sourced (much better than the rest of the article anyway), and has been looked over for NPOV by several people; any other changes are relatively minor and should not affect the balance of the article.  I believe based on prior discussion that this set of changes would in principle be supported by a majority of the editors here (although possibly not the exact way I did them).  I think this is a reasonable compromise state.  If you object to it, please point out what exactly you object to, and I will try to fix it.  ObsidianOrder 09:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What would make you think that would be supported by many users here? Multiple people have pointed out that Storms draft is unnaceptable. At best I said it was better than Jed's version [IT IS NOT JED'S! - JR], but since many problems with it have been pointed out. Not only does it violate NPOV by making way too many opinions stated as facts, but giving that much space in the article to a view clearly shown to be the minority also violates NPOV by giving it undue weight. Just for specifics "The source of tritium is still unknown although it clearly result from a nuclear reaction that is initiated within the apparatus.", "Clearly, unusual nuclear processes are occurring in material where none should occur.", "In spite of these well documented and replicated observations..." (POV), "In contrast, other prestigious journals such the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics continue to publish well done studies on the subject." It has already been discussed that the peer reviewed status of the citations in Sotrms draft is very weak compared to other areas of science. So yes this is just another example of trying to tilt the POV towards pro CF. - Taxman Talk 18:00, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (I took the liberty of correcting the above text to avoid confusion. It said: "At best I said it was better than Jed's version . . ." I uploaded Storms' original version. I have not written or uploaded any version of my own, and I would not want to take credit for Storms' work. To answer Taxman's rhetorical question: "What would make you think . . ." It would take a miracle to make me think that. The "skeptics" would have to suddenly reverse course, reject the party line, and allow references to the literature and statements based on actual science rather than their opinions. Taxman and others have already demonstrated that will reject all facts and squash or delete any POV but their own.) --JedRothwell 21:17, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Jed - you're not supposed to edit other people's comments, this is considered really bad around here.  I restored it.  Obviously you werent trying to do anything underhanded, but most people who would edit other ppls' comments are, hence the reason for the policy.  ObsidianOrder 22:04, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ObsidianOrder wrote: ". . . you're not supposed to edit other people's comments, this is considered really bad around here." I realize that, but you exaggerate a little. Other people here, including Taxman, have changed my statements to avoid confusion. I see nothing wrong with that. Anyway, let me insert a comment in brackets, and perhaps Taxman will edit the paragraph himself. While he is at it, he should delete this paragraph and the two above it. --JedRothwell 22:42, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure when Taxman says "Jed's" he means the pre-revert version, up until Jan 2 or so .  ObsidianOrder 22:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Taxman - you had said "This is better than the current state of the article and does represent a great starting point to move forward. There are some problems, but overall I believe they're all reasonably easily fixable." (talking about Storms' original version).  That's what made me think you would support it; I'm sorry if I misunderstood you.  Maury also said earlier that he is in favor of including only the "Issues" section from Storms.  That's what made me think it would have a fair amount of support.   I did go through and remove a lot of POV language that was pointed out by you and others.  Thank you for pointing out more things that need to be changed, I will go and change them now.  ObsidianOrder 21:38, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I did say that, but remember what version I was referring to. It wasn't the FA version that you inserted this material into. I also thought you would take into account the problems that were discussed in the material since then. - Taxman Talk 22:29, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Ok, I think I cleaned up all of the specifics you mentioned (and I do think the new state is an improvement, btw).  Regarding citations - you may be correct, however I must point out that before this the article had essentially no citations (peer reviewed or otherwise) to specific sources for any of the important points (except the original P&F paper, of course).  How would you propose to address the citation problem? ObsidianOrder 21:52, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It simply wasn't custom in the past to extensively use inline citations--for various stange reasons. That's not a good thing, but neither is citing low quality sources just because they are there. The section is about twice as long as it should be and should be accompanied by a more detailed discussion of the lack of acceptance of CF papers by mainstream journals. I'm not saying we shouldn't report cold fusion research. We just can't report it's results as fact, it can't have undue space in the article, and it can't be reported as if they are accepted science. And changing is to appears to be isn't helpful either. It only appears to be to CF proponents, so why not just state CF proponents believe x because of y. By the way, the above were just what I happened to point out first. There's many more problems in there. Honestly going through it I see more and more that are simply Storms asserting his opinion. In the spirit of there being no support for the added material I think it would be better if it were taken out. Why not instead of shoving material like this in, just work on fleshing out the outline you're working on? - Taxman Talk 22:29, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Why not ... just work on fleshing out the outline you're working on?" - Indeed, I wonder about that myself ;)  That's what I probably would have done if not for the revert.  Arguably that's what I should have done anyway.  I guess I wanted to get the article to some kind of reasonable short-term state before starting to work on the outline.  Also, I wasn't sure how much traction the outline would get - still not sure actually, even if it was completed today it would probably face a pretty steep opposition to replacing the whole article with it en masse.  "undue space" - ok, but the new material is less than one page out of six (in the body of the article), and a lot of the references are actually for the other sections (cites for Paneth, Huzeinga, etc).  "There's many more problems in there." - I do see problems with it, but I don't think it is that terrible.  Let's leave it this way for now?  I am happy to leave it alone at this point (aside from fixing any problems that people point out, of course).  ObsidianOrder 23:54, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Lubos - thank you.  I sincerely hope to be able to come up with something that presents all of the important information in a reasonably neutral way.  Let me also apologize if I have been too argumentative here on the talk page - arguments are much easier to get into than out of ;)    ObsidianOrder 05:15, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New and improved: Storms draft partial merge 

message: No, I'm not talking about CF, but you may like to view http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia2/. Its not as funny as the first one, sadly.
William M. Connolley 17:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you are not talking about cold fusion, why did you post the message here? --JedRothwell 17:02, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Did you not read section 5? I thought you might be interested... http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia2/Section_V.html William M. Connolley 20:35, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Haha, nice to have some light relief! :) Jed, read down, it relates to Cold Fusion. Their use of etc is second to none. - FrancisTyers 20:46, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, there he goes again . . . Correa is one a strange dude. You are right, this does connect with cold fusion in a nutty way.  Well, I am relieved that he is still on my case. I would worry if he praised me. --JedRothwell 22:42, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incoherent rant... 

message: My friend Séamus (now Professor of Bio and Electro Sensing at Cranfield) was at Southampton in the early 90s and actually ran some experiments for Martin Fleishmann.  I think his conclusion was that there was something going on, but not fusion.  There was a heck of a lot of energy released, though.  All controlled by a BBC Model B computer, as I recall :-) - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C]  RfA! 17:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wow, is this ever a blast from the past! 

message: In other but related news, you-all might be interested in knowing that Connolley is applying for Wikipedia adminship.  You can vote here:
  64.48.73.126 01:54, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Connolley applying for adminship 

message: This paragraph: 
"It should be pointed out that the term "cold fusion" has also been used to describe generally unrelated research. The term was first coined by Dr Paul Palmer of Brigham Young University in 1986 in an investigation of what is today referred to as muon-catalyzed fusion. "Cold fusion" was also used by Steven Jones, also of BYU at the same time, to describe potential high-pressure events now referred to as piezonuclear fusion."
seems to contradict several established references:
1. The first paper to list the term "cold nuclear fusion" is credited to "Rafelski, Johann and Steven E. Jones," Palmer is not listed. 
2. Several historical texts on this subject say nothing about Palmer. Even if Palmer did have a role in the BYU cold nuclear fusion work, to fail to primarily attribute the term to Jones appears to be contradictory to the established texts. As well, such failure to note Jones's role diminishes a very key aspect of the historical controversy; that of the conflict between Jones and Fleischamann/Pons.
Huizenga's "Fiasco" pp. 8
"Fifty miles from the University of Utah, a group of physicists, headed by Professor Steven E. Jones, at Brigham Young University (BYU), also claimed cold nuclear fusion."
Beaudette's "Excess Heat" pp.41
"Jones and a physicist at the University of Arizon had co-authored an article just the year before in "Scientific American" (July 1987) entitled, 'Cold Nuclear Fusion.' Jones's work offered two sources for the use of the term cold fusion."
Can anybody show qualified references for Palmer's role in this? If not, I suggest the following may be more accurate:
"The term "cold nuclear fusion" was first used in the scientific literature by Johann Rafelski and Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University in 1986 in an investigation of what is today referred to as muon-catalyzed fusion.. This research was generally unrelated, however, the distinction was not immediately understood by the press in 1989. Consequently, the term "cold fusion" became associated with the Fleischmann-Pons experiment."
STemplar 19:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. —James S. 07:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FIX THIS .I added the original form of the comments because they appear in that form in Jones' own history of the topic: . Look for section II.A1 - " Dr. Paul Palmer used the term "cold fusion" beginning in early 1986.". Note that the next few sections always have him using the term "cold", and Jones using different terms. We have to revert this, although rewording might be in order. In fact it appears that many of the links to geothermal processes were his idea. Maury 13:11, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say that "first used in the scientific literature" is more encyclopedic than relating recollections of private communication. James S. 14:17, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely, you jest. The "recollections of private communication" are by the very person in question! The article states Jones invented the term, but Jones himself specifically credits Palmer. Are you seriously suggesting we should not consider this to be authoritative?? Maury 18:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Aha. A newbie page. Thanks for sharing the wikilove James!
STemplar 09:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, what do you expect when you complain about the way things should be on a wiki without changing them?  That  template is designed to be especially civil and polite.  Why would you waste energy complaining about the way you think things should be when you could more easily be changing them that way? Be bold. --James S. 21:45, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Term Cold Fusion 

message: several hundred researchers:
ICCF12 abstracts: http://newenergytimes.com/Conf/ICCF12/ICCF12-Abstracts.pdf
JCF6 abstracts: http://newenergytimes.com/Conf/JCF6/JCF6Abstracts.pdf
ICCF11 abstracts: http://newenergytimes.com/ICCF11/ICCF11Abstracts.pdf
ICCF10 abstracts: http://newenergytimes.com/ICCF10/ICCF10Abstracts.pdf
STemplar 06:31, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Continuing efforts

message: I will encourage this recent addition to be removed or justified:
"(Nature has published papers regarding other types of "non-traditional" fusion, such as pyroelectric fusion)"
1. I don't see how it helps explain cold fusion
2. Attacking Nature may be counterproductive.  
STemplar 19:38, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll do that one if you incorporate your Palmer concerns per above. --James S. 21:34, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jabs at Nature 

message: James S wrote: "I really want to cite  from what I believe is the leading commercial firm,"
James, take care with your assumptions. The Web is a Wild Wild World.  
STemplar 02:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What exactly are you trying to say?  It's been years since I've looked at the companies involved. --James S. 04:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commerce vs Science 

message: James, does this help?
Over the last 5 years, turn-on time, the onset of excess heat, has decreased dramatically. Dennis Letts, along with Dennis Cravens pioneered a laser-triggering method which brought turn-on down to seconds.
Stan Szpak et al at SPAWAR San Diego use a co-deposition method. This electrolytic process facilitates the proper D/Pd ratio immediately, consequently excess heat is reported to start instantly.
STemplar 02:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm familiar with Szpak's method but the problem with it is, as I mentioned above, the duration of the effect after surface imperfections start to appear. --James S. 04:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hi James, I've had a little trouble following the thread; Maybe I shouldn't drink and type at the same time. But I think you've got a point. From what I've heard, the reactions do stop after the cathodes either get crudded up or damaged.
STemplar 06:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Turn-on" Time vs. duration of over-unity gain