Editors at the Journal Nature offer a plentiful source of data on pathological science

Why Nature persists in decades of diatribes against the branch of scientific research known as ‘cold fusion’ is a judgment best left to the reader

Here’s my rebuttal of the recent joint effort by Google and Nature to cast shade on cold fusion.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

The Google research described in the paper in Nature (May 27, 2019) is prefaced by a classic Nature spin mastering treatment via its scathing and hammering editorial titled:

‘Lessons from cold fusion, 30 years on. Why revisit long-discredited claims for a source of abundant energy, asks Philip Ball?

Because we are still learning how to treat pathological science.’

I am not sure one could write a more biased headline than this on any topic. Coming as the official editorial preface by the prestigious Journal Nature makes one wonder if the folks at Nature might need to be more diligent at staying on their meds. This post deals with the editorial intent of Nature, a later post will tackle the Google-funded research paper reporting on the null science that was performed and has been in an extraordinary act of Nature elevated to publication.

Surely the statement that the field is ‘long-discredited’ is not one that is reflective of what a person skilled in the art would make, but rather more braggadocio by the editor.  The facts ignored by Nature clearly prove that the cold fusion findings of Fleischmann (RIP) and Pons have been repeatedly and resoundingly affirmed by scores of top researchers in the finest institutions of science in the world for 30 years.

Lamentably Nature, for all of those 30 years, has been the most prominent denier of cold fusion. Their overt acts of denial might only be matched in the world of science by the denialists of climate change. Nature has a reputation to defend, and the time to defend it is now as the truth of cold fusion reality and promise is proving to outlive the mis- and dis-information of Nature. As that happens, likely few will ever again trust their unnatural reports on the world of science.

Here in red italics is what Nature has to say in their recent teaching of the ‘lessons from cold fusion’.

In early 1989, chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, made a claim that shocked and galvanized chemists and physicists, and excited society with its potential implications for clean, cheap energy.

At a press conference, Fleischmann and Pons announced what would become known as cold fusion — the nuclear fusion of hydrogen at room temperature rather than inside a star. They described a startling process in heavy water (that is, water molecules with deuterium atoms replacing the normal hydrogens) in which the electrolysis of a salt solution could, so they said, make deuterium atoms absorb into a palladium electrode at such a high density that their nuclei merged, producing energy and the neutron and γ-ray emissions that are telltale signs of fusion.

The findings didn’t stand up to the storm of scrutiny that followed. As a recent recruit to the physical sciences editorial team at Nature, to which Fleischmann and Pons had submitted their paper, I got a whirlwind introduction to the politics of scientific controversy.

This week’s publication of a study funded by Google (C. P. Berlinguette et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1256-6; 2019) that sought (unsuccessfully) to replicate the claims and to search for deuterium fusion led me to reflect on that past. My conclusion? The sociology is at least as instructive as the science.

Surely Phillip Ball gets this sociology interest side of the story correct. But is his interpretation honest and earnest or more diagnostic?

From the replication crisis of the social and life sciences to the mistaken report of faster-than-light neutrinos in high-energy physics, science is facing ever more claims that both defy conventional wisdom and are based on evidence at the threshold of what analyses or instruments can detect. Adjudicating such claims demands a community of researchers that is united in the spirit of inquiry, despite disagreements about evidence or interpretation. Cold fusion showed us the dangers of polarization, the distorting influence of commercial interests and the importance of being open about methods, data and mistakes.

The ‘ad hominem fallacy’

This lead using the age-old logical fallacy of ‘guilt by association’ is a solid red flag as to Phillips bawling to come.

The concept of cold fusion unraveled within weeks of its debut. Even secondary-school students joined the flocks of scientists who were trying to reproduce the findings. A few groups of researchers claimed to have verified the reaction’s excess heat or fusion-related signals, but most experiments revealed nothing unusual. Fleischmann and Pons made their claim in March; by June it had been widely dismissed as illusory — or worse.

Any honest presentation of the history of cold fusion would surely reveal the reports by major institutions of science, Stanford University, Texas A&M, the Electric Power Research Institute, and others of the nearly immediate success in the replication of the work. Surely these early replications were in need of many repetitions, but as the history of the field clearly showed that is precisely what was done by a growing number of prominent institutions. Nature, or anyone honestly interested in cold fusion, surely would visit the on-line library of cold fusion which contains over 1000 scientific papers (with many thousands additional references) that show it’s reality. Clearly, Nature doesn’t read as it’s relentless hammer reveals.

For some, cold fusion represented a classic example of pathological science. This term was coined in the 1950s to describe a striking claim that conflicts with previous experience, that is based on effects that are difficult to detect and that is defended against criticism by ad hoc excuses. In this view, cold fusion joins an insalubrious list that includes the N-rays of 1903, the polywater affair of the late 1960s and the memory of water episode of the late 1980s.

How many times does Nature find it needs to hammer on with this classic ad hominem fallacy of guilt by association. Are we reading in a respectable journal of science or being teased into a frenzy by the worst of tabloid yellow journalism? Here’s a Google-provided link for more study on the ‘ad hominem fallacy.’

Who should you believe

Nature never published the manuscript by Fleischmann and Pons — the authors withdrew it to focus on follow-up work. But a paper reporting similar findings by a group at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, was published in April of that year (S. E. Jones et al. Nature 338, 737–740; 1989). The only report at the time from Fleischmann and Pons was a short paper, lacking in detail, in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry (M. Fleischmann & S. Pons J. Electroanal. Chem. 261, 301–308; 1989).

Nature here is resorting to the shady condemnation of the J. Electroanalytical Chemistry as if it is not respectable… here’s what you’ll find if you do a Google search for that highly respected journal.

“The Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry is the foremost international journal devoted to the interdisciplinary subject of electrochemistry in all its aspects, theoretical as well as applied.”

Hardly a minor player in the field of electroanalytical cold fusion which was clearly the topic at hand, and by the renowned Prof. Fleischmann one of the fields most respected professor emerita, member of the Royal Society, and with a lifetime of impeccable scientific credentials.

Nature did publish follow-up studies by other groups, including one that used the actual equipment of Fleischmann and Pons (M. H. Salamon et al. Nature 344, 401–405; 1990). None observed any hint of cold fusion, and no convincing evidence has since materialized.

The small community that insists that cold fusion is a genuine, if elusive, phenomenon is unlikely to be satisfied with the negative findings reported in this issue, in part because these findings suggest that interesting questions remain about the conditions under which fusion might occur.

What Nature did not publish, it seems, they simply don’t acknowledge exist at all.

A dear friend in Venice has reminded me of a historic root to this mess.

“The Greeks maintained that Hybris (Roman name Petulantia) brought about Phthonos Theōn, the envy of the gods, with swift and deadly retribution. Sadly, we no longer have any Theoi on our side.”

Here’s my own introduction to cold fusion, a field I now refer to as Atom-Ecology. Its reality has proven to be a life long fascinating field of science outside of the box.

In late March of 1989, I was working at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto California. The morning after the cold fusion announcement in Utah at my usual 10 am coffee time I walked from my office to the coffee break room on my floor of the institute. The room had been taken over by the nuclear engineers who called the Institute home.

As I walked in I was made to place my thumb on the screen of a large TV set, on-screen was a freeze-frame from a video of the press conference in which Pons was holding a cold fusion test tube like the many in which cold fusion was routinely being produced in Utah. The EPRI nuclear scientists measured the width of my thumbnail, with the average width of all the male thumbnails in the room they had the scale by which they were able to reverse-engineering the historic cold fusion experiment.

Within a week they had experiments running in a number of labs. I was able to beg some samples of palladium and a bottle of heavy water in which I was able to begin my own experiments on my kitchen shelf. Before April was gone the inside story at EPRI was that ‘It Just Works.” Within a month or few, there came storm clouds of outrage in the world of physics by upset and petulant scientists declaring that it was impossible or worse.

By winter one of the EPRI directors confided to me that he had given testimony to congressional hearings on Cold fusion in Washington DC in the fall where he affirmed the effect. Others from MIT responding to questions by the congressional committee declared that they were unable to repeat and obtain the cold fusion effect.

He noted that immediately following the sworn testimony to Congress the same MIT scientists button-holed him on the steps of Congress saying that their testimony was just for the record and to throw the competition off the trail.

Their pitch was that indeed they were convinced of the reality and potential of cold fusion and that naturally, EPRI ought to consider spending as much of the millions it had allocated for cold fusion research within their prestigious MIT. Many years later the US Navy obtained the MIT researchers raw data and showed in a carefully peer-reviewed study and paper where and how the MIT researchers had modified the data that showed cold fusion to be real into a graph that showed they failed to see the excess heat in their Fleischmann style experiments.

The US Navy has a multi-decade history of supporting cold fusion research and a vested interest in cold fusion as it is one of the many major organizations in the world who have been issued patents for their cold fusion inventions. Amongst the major institutions in the Navy’s company with decades of cold fusion research and inventions are Toyota, Airbus, Mitsubishi Heavy, and many many more. A fair statement would be to say that cold fusion has long been part of their diligent exploration of the atom-ecology found in nature, in spite of Nature.

Cold fusion is truly transformational science and today technology that makes it a ‘take no prisoners’ target in the world of energy. You may read everywhere on this blog about how ‘it just works.’

Null vs Negative Findings, Remembering Science 101

Here’s Nature’s proof, in their own words, of their incompetence and vested interest in throwing shade on cold fusion. They say cold fusion scientists are unlikely to be satisfied with the negative findings reported by the Google-financed team. By all that is holy, and the Goggle team makes it perfectly clear in their paper, there were NO NEGATIVE findings, rather the team reported on their NULL results.

The problem the Google team makes clear is that they were admittedly unable to recreate the conditions widely reported as being vital to obtaining the difficult (for some) to achieve ‘cold fusion.’ For Nature to stoop to this gravest of all sins in the world of science, that of declaring a failure to perform a sufficient experiment as is this case, then representing the clearly declared NULL, aka no consequence, results as NEGATIVE findings, would result in the failure by any freshman student in whatever course of science they were taking.

Wikipedia defines NULL as follows, “In science, a null result is a result without the expected content: that is, the proposed result is absent. It is an experimental outcome which does not show an otherwise expected effect. This does not imply a result of zero or nothing, simply a result that does not support the hypothesis. The term is a translation of the scientific Latin nullus resultarum, meaning “no consequence”.

The US National Institute of Health advises on the topic of null findings. By stating, “When scientists have null findings, the information they gather can inform what should be done differently or more effectively in future research. This communication provides the grounding for knowledge about what not to repeat in order for the science to advance by understanding what has been found lacking in well-controlled trials. Null findings are also important in informing and advancing future directions in policy and practice.”

Accentuate the Positive,
Eliminate the Negative,
Latch on to the affirmative,
Don’t mess with Mister In Between

I knew Martin Fleischmann well and greatly benefited from many personal conversations and even the loan of his personal experimental apparatus to repeat his work. He was always and forever the consummate professor. I recall many times where he reported to me, in confidence, his true NEGATIVE findings. He viewed his sometimes failed modifications to successful protocols as the best learning experiences.

Discovering that a working cold fusion protocol can be made into a non-working stone-cold dead experiment by the introduction of some slight change, teaches, no, forces one to learn more about the fundamental physics at the heart of the matter. I certainly have found in my own work that as exciting as the successes are when one thinks one can make a big improvement and it does just the opposite you are really and truly exploring this very complex atom-ecology realm. I tend to defend the premise that without proof of being able to produce a POSITIVE one is NOT eligible to claim a NEGATIVE.

The Stinger

Although often held up as a textbook case of science’s self-correcting capacity, the cold-fusion episode is instructive for how it brought out both the best and worst in scientists.

We should not too quickly judge, and thereby alienate, scientists who make controversial claims. The ridicule that was sometimes directed at Fleischmann and Pons was bound to make them double down. When researchers turn out to have been mistaken, they must be allowed a way back without disgrace. Nor should the science under scrutiny be reflexively regarded as being pathological. Some assertions at the time, along the lines of “I knew it was nonsense,” scarcely exhibited the openness to surprise on which science depends.

Yet the architects of cold fusion were their own worst enemies. Fleischmann launched ad hominem attacks on his critics; he and Pons were obstructive about their methods. The ill-advised, short-lived attempt by their university to capitalize on cold fusion made matters worse. Some researchers faced unconscionable legal threats for simply trying to do good science. The discipline-led triumphalism — with chemists claiming to have achieved in a cheap test tube what physicists failed to do with high-tech equipment — was trite and divisive. Without a tolerant and collaborative spirit, feelings can rapidly sour.

WTF

Nature it seems want’s to have it both ways in that in these final words they seem to condemn those who would ‘ridicule’ scientific reports. Have they read their own ridicule of this field and especially it’s brave founders and dedicated scientists who continue the quest for knowledge? In 1990, barely a year after the March 1989 announcement of cold fusion in Utah, Nature was seen to be hammering nails into its coffin by declaring it with the headline “Cold Fusion The Non-Event Of 1989“.

At least at that time, they make mention of reports of its being repeated by many scientists around the world. Yet Nature resorts to twisting the modified phrasing used by successful scientists who now report the fusion energy as being ‘anomalous heat’ as opposed to cold fusion as evidence of their backing away from the discovery. Yet in this 2019 jibe they refute their own former declaration of reports of success in repeating the cold fusion discovery by declaring the field to be ‘pathological science.’

Keeping a handle on such a fast-moving story in the days before the Internet meant that cutting and pasting required scissors and glue, and that sending a fax was the quickest way to share a document. Would the cold-fusion saga play out differently today, with social media, fake news and an even more urgent need for clean energy? Probably — but not necessarily for the better.

On Pathological Narcissistic Disorder – gleaned from a simple bit of Google supported research

Narcissistic personality disorder — one of several types of personality disorders — is a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.

Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and the severity of symptoms vary. People with the disorder can:

• Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance
• Have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration
• Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
• Exaggerate achievements and talents
• Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance
• Believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
• Monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior
• Expect special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
• Take advantage of others to get what they want
• Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
• Be envious of others and believe others envy them
• Behave in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious

At the same time, people with narcissistic personality disorder have trouble handling anything they perceive as criticism, and they can:

• Become impatient or angry when they don’t receive special treatment
• Have significant interpersonal problems and easily feel slighted
• React with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make themselves appear superior
• Have difficulty regulating emotions and behavior
• Experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change
• Feel depressed and moody because they fall short of perfection
• Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation

There are those in the cold fusion community, principally the ‘consultants,’ who believe that even this powerful badmouthing by the Journal Nature ought to be taken as attention to the field and therefore of some use.  For a more milk-toast rebuttal of the Google/Nature you might follow this link.