Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 3

message: These aren't quite the same thing.
:I agree, whoever you are. A little explication would do some good, though it might require a pointer to a more throrough treatment that probably hasn't been written yet. With or without the "pathological" label, there should be a clearer distinction here between science badly practiced (of which F&P have been accused) and pseudoscience, a charge that can hardly be made against them but is made against the later attempts to salvage something from their experiments. Dandrake 17:33, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
::Agreed, so remove 'pseudoscience' category and change to another? Chris Wood 12:54, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  pseudoscience -> pathological science 

message: The DOE report recently added can be used to improve the NPOV and factual correctness of this article. It asked for the best available data and evidence from the specified proponents of cold fusion and then peer reviewed it in a few ways. A 5 page summary pdf is available here. An important excerpt is the following:
:"Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not, stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented." (Page 3)
I suppose it is interesting to note that at least one of the reviewers was swayed by the evidence and did accept that there was some effect beyond the "ordinary chemical or solid state sources".  Overall, two thirds of the reviewers did not find the evidence compelling, one did, and the rest were somewhat convinced.
For the second review question, the standout quote is "The reviewers raised serious concerns regarding the assumptions postulated in the proposed theoretical model for the explanation for 4HE production"
Good stuff. - Taxman 03:23, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
:As someone who knows almost nothing about the subject, I'm asking that the article be made more clear with regard to the recent DOE work.  It says that DOE decided in March 2004 to conduct a review.  I'm not clear about the "unofficial Summary Paper" (and I'm having some problems with .pdf files at the moment): Was this an explanation in March of why the review would go forward?  Or is it part of the December 2004 report on the review, mentioned at the end of the section on "Current understanding of physics"?  Why was it "unofficial"?  Also, there's POV in introducing a quotation favorable to cold fusion by noting what it "clearly states" -- the word "clearly" is emphasizing the part that fits the writer's POV.  More important is that the DOE material shouldn't be quoted selectively.  The skeptical comments noted by Taxman above should also be included.  I suggest that the date of the decision to conduct the review is now unimportant, unless the "unofficial Summary Paper" came well before December.  Would it be accurate to say this:
::In 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) conducted a review of all previous research of cold fusion in order to see whether further research was warranted by any new results.  Its unofficial Summary Paper stated: "The experimental evidence for anomalies in metal deuterides, including excess heat and nuclear emissions, suggests the existence of new physical effects".  It recognized indirect evidence in support of the D + D --> 4He + 23.8 MeV (heat) reaction, although the measurement of 4He quantity was imprecise.
:The same paragraph would also present the skeptical portions noted by Taxman. JamesMLane 00:00, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: DOE report

message: I have trimmed several external links to news articles about cold fusion developments. (We could probably trim more!) They were repetitive and superseded by events, and wikipedia isn't a link farm. In general, links should be limited to deep background or source information. - DavidWBrooks 18:18, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  external links 

message: While it's true that the page is quite long, I must disagree with Susurrus' removal of the "Arguments in the controversy" section  for a number of reasons (Indeed, I think such a dramatic change in a feature article probably should have been mentioned here first): 
First, if sub-pages are decided to be appropriate, I believe that the section heading should remain and a summary paragraph should remain in the main body- A good example of this might be the United States Constitution page has sub-pages for  Preamble to the United States Constitution and United States Bill of Rights but retains a summary giving the gist of the material along with a link.
Secondly, the choice of which material should go onto a sub-page seems inappropriate to me- the arguments in the controversy section is the most important part of the article, and should remain on the main page.  I would prefer to see almost any other section be summarized- perhaps the "Experimental Setup and Observations" which is rather technical and the "continuing Efforts" which is mostly a list of people rather than an explanation.
Finally, although I obviously don't know what Susurrus' motivations are, I believe there is an appearance of bias in this action of the removal of most of the skeptical material to a poorly labelled, easy to overlook link while keeping all of the nonskeptical material in the main body of the article. --Noren 17:18, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The 01:49, 27 Dec 2004 edit removing a section and leaving a link