You can be skeptical and be mistaken, and it was a fairly subtle mistake in the scheme of things.

I think your benign, and even somewhat positive, response to this cold fusion claim is the result of you are looking at this from the position of someone who presumably knows nothing about cold fusion and the history of cold fusion. Steve is looking at it for a position of knowledge and experience but, in my opinion, he is actually far too restrained in his response. On the other hand, Karl Withaway is saying what I think is in the back of Steve’s mind and what is very likely the truth of the matter. This is almost certainly a scam. And I could almost certainly have left out the “almost”.

I understand your position, but I think you are not seeing my points. Thequiet1 is essentially correct.

This research did not just cross my path – it has achieved a certain level of attention in the media and in the free energy subculture. It is an active and new claim.

The main point of my post is to simply answer the question – how likely is it that their claims are true. I feel it’s very low because cold fusion is very implausible, and they have not provided anything close to compelling evidence. They have only provided the kind of evidence that is most likely to be misinterpreted or due to sloppy methods. So – not very likely.

In fact if you read my post again I don’t even directly criticize them at all – just point out that they have not backed up their claims.

Second – I tried to put this into the context of history. They are not responsible for what has gone before them, but it is reasonable to use past history as a guide to what is likely to happen. As I said – I will give them a fair chance and wait and see. Maybe this is the exception, but I doubt it. I am making a prediction based on past history because I am highly confident that is what will happen. I hope I’m wrong and the world’s power problem has been solved.

I will strengthen my only implied criticism – given the history of this field it is odd to the point of being irresponsible to make public claims with such flimsy evidence. They are not acting like responsible and serious academic researchers. That is also why I don’t hold out much hope for their claims.

Either the researchers don’t know enough to ask the questions and so have not formulated their research equipment and programs to answer those questions, or they have asked the questions, have the answers and are not presenting those answers.

The questions are not about the inner workings of their apparatus, things that might be proprietary to their process, the questions are about the equipment they used to measure what they claim is excess energy.

It isn’t just if they want to be taken seriously. If they want to not fool themselves they need to ask the right questions and then answer them with the right apparatus. I see no evidence that they are doing so.

I see Steve’s position being that if these researchers want to be taken seriously they need to provide answers to certain questions. That given the magnitude of what they are claiming, the onus is on them to provide compelling evidence to back it up, which they aren’t doing. He isn’t stating that they are wrong, he is taking a critical eye to the available information and forming an opinion on what is most likely going on.

Let’s say for argument’s sake that these guys end up backing up their claims and their method works. That doesn’t change anything Steve has said. They still went about things up till now very poorly and are proceeding in a manner you would expect if they were either bad researchers or fraudulent (not that Steve claimed fraud in the article, he’s very careful with his words).

To clear a point I think you are missing, Steve is not criticising the work because there is unanswered questions, he’s criticising the researchers for not answering these questions. Given past experience, that does not bode well for the research. I think that’s a fair summary of his position.

Your post criticizes their work, but your criticism seemed to be based on a lack of answers to your questions. It doesn’t suggest that they had inadequate answers, merely that you didn’t see the answers. And then you assumed that the historical actions of other apparently unrelated attempts would also be the actions of these researchers.

So my skeptical reaction to your post was – why does a lack of answers to your make them worthy of your criticism?

I appreciate that you didn’t want to address the issues that Karl is bringing up, but because you didn’t, I was left with the impression that you had chosen this research randomly and had critiqued for no particular reason than it crossed your path.

I’m glad your are out there using a critical and scientific eye on these things. I just need more than questions to assume the worst of people and things.

I don’t know if I am making sense, but that was where I was coming from. I hope you don’t take it personally. It was my impression.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20110005506.pdf

The only evidence they have of “fusion” is energy production. They don’t describe how they measured the energy production or how much it is. If they were generating this much energy, it would be trivial to show it with actual measurements that would be beyond doubt. They do not do so.

There seems to be a flipping back and forth between energy units and power units (energy per unit time).

They claim to demonstrate production of lighter elements by the presence of zinc, sulfur, calcium, potassium, silicon, chlorine, copper. They show two analyses of the post-treatment nickel powder, none of the pre-treated powder. It is extremely doubtful that they have a dozen or so fusion/fission reactions going on, producing tens of kw of heat and detect not a trace of ionizing radiation.

They claim that the Ni power becomes enriched in Cu after operation for some time. They house their Ni powder in a Cu tube. If they are exposing the Cu tube to fluctuations in H2 and O2 levels the Cu would alternately oxidize to Cu2O and then reduce to metallic Cu. This would cause exfoliation of Cu from the tube surface into the Ni powder. 500 C is plenty hot enough for Cu to oxidize in air and then be reduced to metal by H2. Impurities in the H2 could be oxidized or reduced and that could be generating some of the heat they see. Ni can form hydrides, that is the basis of the NiMH battery. The nickel powder could be oxidizing at one condition and be reduced at another. Without long term reliable measurements of the system it isn’t possible to demonstrate the steady state necessary to show net energy production.

There is quite a humorous comment at the linked to article which shows perhaps a lack of attention to detail in their marketing effort.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-01/italian-scientists-claim-dubious-cold-fusion-breakthrough#comment-98296

Or perhaps not

In looking at their description of how they measure the heat production, their method seems to be flawed (but it is hard to tell because the description is inadequate).

They say they use flowing water with a temperature measurement on the inlet and outlet. This is ok, but they “calibrate” the heat load of their system by electric resistance heating their apparatus. This might be ok, depending on the location of the temperature sensing devices. It might not be ok. If the presence of H2 changes the thermal conductivity of their apparatus (it could change it by a lot), then unless they take time effects and thermal conductivity effects into account, their calibration could be off by a large amount.

They talk about calibrating their system and needing to use a variable pressure of hydrogen. Hydrogen is very tricky to work with. It can easily diffuse into temperature measuring devices (like thermocouples or RTDs) and change their calibration. It is hard to tell what their apparatus looks like without a figure and without mention of what specific components they used. If they are using platinum RTDs (the most precise way of measuring temperatures in these ranges) and the Pt RTDs are not fully encapsulated and protected from the H2 atmosphere, hydrogen could affect the resistance, or the Pt could catalyze the reaction between H2 and O2 (from air leaks). They don’t mention having multiple and redundant methods of measuring temperature. Thermocouples are cheap. You could use dozens and log them every few seconds.

The need to have variable pressures of H2 seems strange. If it is due to impurity O2, then changing the pressure might be necessary to get more O2 into the system. If there are leaks in their system, it might be necessary for them to change the pressure to get the right H2 + O2 mix to interfere with the Pt RTDs. In the figure, there is no cylinder of H2. The only tubes that seem to be going out of view (presumably to that H2 cylinder) look like they are made of plastic. Plastic is not a suitable material for H2.

They don’t show any analysis of their H2, no diagrams of the equipment, no description with sufficient detail to understand how they do their measurements. My opinion from what I have been able to find is that their results are due to measurement error, maybe due to interference by H2 and/or simply bad placement. I see not even ordinary evidence of cold fusion or even of energy generation.