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Is Storms RS? What about "heat dissipated into the lattice"?

Enric, I see that you have been discussing the removed material with Hipocrite. He's demanded that I not edit his Talk page for any purpose whatever, and I have no need to do so. I assume this is okay here. If not, please tell me.

However, some things should be said. First of all, Storms is RS, which doesn't automatically mean "unbiased," or "usable for fact" What independent book publication shows is notability. If RS states something, reference may be made in articles to that, it is, by definition, notable opinion; if it's controversial, it should be attributed.

As to undue weight, the guideline method for determining undue weight is to use the weight as it exists in sources. If we do that, and if we require peer-reviewed reliable source on the science, we have a problem: it would, I'd agree, create undue weight, if not done properly, as to overall scientific opinion, which probably remains very skeptical of cold fusion. However, we have, as you know, a major review of the field in 2004 that showed divided opinion, not nearly as skeptical as our article has typically shown. Editors have treated "not conclusive" as if it were "rejected." The two are quite different.

In the case of N-rays, the principal experiment alleged to show the existence of N-rays was conclusively shown to be a result of improper technique (reliance on subjective observation without double-blind). The situation with the original cold fusion report is quite different: there were two basic reports: excess heat and radiation. The radiation was an error, retracted. Radiation is reported, later, at either lower levels (neutrons) or of a different kind (CR-39 detection of copious alpha radiation, though I've been hearing noises that the level of alpha radiation is lower than would be expected.)

But the excess heat findings were never successfully impeached, and we have plenty of RS that indicates that the excess heat finding is worthy of respect; start with the 2004 DoE report, where, when we know that nuclear physicists are about 90% strongly anti-cold fusion (estimate of the physicist retained by CBS), we still had fifty percent (that would be 9/18 reviewers) saying that evidence for excess heat was "convincing." I haven't done the analysis myself, but I've seen an analysis that claimed that, if the nuclear physicists are excluded, the finding would have been 2:1 in favor of excess heat being convincing. Why exclude the nuclear physicists? Just for analysis! One could then exclude the chemists and see what result is obtained: from other evidence, it appears that "belief" in cold fusion is far more common among chemists (and even more among electrochemists) than among nuclear physicists. It's a turf battle, Enric, and the physicists had the money and power. There was hundreds of millions of dollars in hot fusion research at stake.

All I'm saying is that we should tell the whole story, as reflected in reliable sources including media sources. We just need to be clear about what is what; I'm coming to the conclusion that we should fork into at least two articles, one to cover the science (peer-reviewed RS preferred, with summary of the media and other findings from the other article), and the other to cover the history (academic sources still preferred, but increased use of media reliable source.) There is a ton of source on the history: Huizenga, Taubes, many others. We tell only a tiny fraction of the story that could be told, and all this tussle over undue weight is responsible; if we were following guidelines, our content would have expanded; instead, because peer-reviewed RS on the negative side is actually thin, I suspect that, long-term, this has functioned to keep out much adequately sourced material. The encyclopedia is being damaged, compared to what it could be. In no way and in no article should it be implied that cold fusion has won general acceptance, but we should not deprive our readers of knowing what the field is about!

Now, about the lattice absorption of energy. That was a theory given early prominence; in a complete history it should defintely be there, and I do think we should give the history of CF theory, it has evolved, it is not a static thing. But I don't know anyone still asserting that Mossbauer-link absorption of recoil is somehow responsible for the missing gamma rays. The energy in the classic Mossbauer effect is far lower than the energy released by d-d -> He4 fusion, and other mechanisms must be asserted.

Storms does address the Mossbauer possibility, to quote (p.179):

Direct coupling of nuclear energy to a lattice is observed during the Mossbauer process. The amount of energy coupled to the lattice by his process is very small compared to that being released by the cold fusion reactions. No evidence exists to support the belief that this process can couple high levels of nuclear energy. Consequently, a true absence of energetic particles resulting from the reaction of interest must be demonstrated before concluding that direct energy transfer to the host lattice can occur by a similar process.

Other CF theories don't require direct coupling. For example the theory that the lattice sets up conditions to promote quadruple fusion of deuterium to form Be-8 would result in the immediate fission of Be-8 to form two He-4 nuclei at 25 MeV each; these would then transfer their energy to the environment through ordinary absorption. Now, I've been reading that these nuclei would be expected to produce X-rays as they are slowed by the milieu, and it seems the X-rays are missing. (X-rays are reported, but, again, at low levels). It's quite a theoretical puzzle; but the absence of theory is no argument against experimental results. It merely increases their ultimate significance of confirmed, at the same time as it tends to depress efforts to confirm. (If a result is considered to violate accepted theory, then it can be considered probably that there was some artifact; this early skepticism was very appropriate. However, when there are confirmations, that kind of skepticism gets quite shaky.)

The biggest problem facing CF research early on was probably the fragility of the effect. Looking only at excess heat, first, it was only found in a certain percentage of cells. That looked really suspicious. However, the experiment was far more complex and difficult to replicate than the original publicity implied. "Negative replications" were merely examples of samples that didn't show the effect, and those experiments did not reproduce the actual experimental conditions. It was many more years before forms of CF experiments were found that were reliable, that didn't need more than following clear instructions. But there was a class of experiment that got around this problem, and I've tried to assert it in the article, being opposed by your edits. That's the "association" of Helium with excess heat. The article presently says, in the "association section," your version, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat.

That is not a description of an association, that was taken from the McKubre et al paper in a part that was about something else. To make that statement an association, an extremely strong one (making it up), it would become, in a run of 16 cells, where five produced excess heat, helium was detected in blind testing in all five cells showing excess heat, and, following the same procedures, not in any of the "dead" cells. That's a very strong piece of evidence that excess heat is connected causally with helium. The statement as it exists in the version you supported far, far weaker, and shows no association at all.

(The report seems to have been written by someone who did not understand the McKubre report.... The strong evidence in McKubre's paper was glossed over, and this weak finding (in appearance) was reported instead.)

From the McKubre paper:

The first and historically most important experiments were performed by Miles et al., to correlate the helium content of gas produced by electrolysis (D2 or H2, and O2) with the average heat excess during the interval of sampling. Because of the very low 4He concentration expected and observed (1- 10 ppb) extensive precautions were taken to ensure that samples were not substantially contaminated from the large ambient background (5.22 ppm). In an initial series of experiments, later replicated several times,55,69 eight electrolysis gas samples collected during episodes of excess heat production in two identical cells showed the presence of 4He whereas six control samples gave no evidence for 4He.

This is an association, and is substantially stronger. That was a very early experiment (I think it was 1989). Much more work was done later. Storms reports what I put in the article in this section, it is a much more comprehensive review of the literature on the topic. I gave the estimation of Miles that the (later, similar kind of) results were due to random association: 1 in 750,000. But what's even more important is the energy relationship established by comparing the energy generated per helium atom found: that's the 25 +/- 5 MeV value that would, indeed, result from d+d -> fusion. Some very careful research has supported this. When the excess heat goes up, the helium goes up, and vice versa.

If we are going to have a section on the association of excess heat and helium, we should show the claimed association of excess heat and helium, not a non-associated figure reported by some nameless bureaucrat who crafted the DoE report (that report is notable, in itself, but it wasn't "peer-reviewed." nor even subject to ordinary publication restrictions! Thanks for your consideration. --Abd (talk) 16:50, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I told Hipocrite about putting only the explanations that appear on the DOE 2004 final report, and the transfer of heat to lattice appears there (although we shouldn't it to Storms, for reasons outlined at Talk:Cold_fusion#How_much_weight_for_Storms_book.3F and Talk:Cold_fusion#Removal_of_Storms_material.). The Mossbauer effect was already rejected as an explanation in the DOE 1989, page 24 or so, in one sentence, and in Goodstein.

The problem with the DOE 2004 report is it says that the reviewers are evenly split in the evidence, but then it says that "Those reviewers who accepted the production of excess power typically suggest that the effect seen often, and under some understood conditions, is compelling" not that they found all the evidence compelling just the one meeting those conditions, and then it cites all the reasons given by the non-convinced reviewers, and then it says "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.". They found a lot of problems with the evidence, and they only found it compelling under certain conditions. The final paragraph of that section cites two-thirds unconvinced that the evidence showed low energy nuclear reactions, one reviewer convinced and the rest somewhat convinced. So simply saying that they were convinced, divided or that they found the evidence compelling, is an oversimplification and it misleads the reader. (also, as for what "most scientists" or "the scientific community" thinks, I already presented RS on both the article and the talk page here and also here).

I knew already that you don't agree with the assesmente made by the reviewers, but we are supposed to write the articles by what the RS say, and according to their weight, and that "Encyclopedias are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with current mainstream scientific thought", and you know that DOE 2004 had and still has tremendous weight in the how the field was is still viewed by mainstream science. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:58, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Enric, I just now saw your response to this. You've misunderstood. I agree with what most of the reviewers wrote. You have confused the summary of the reviews by an anonymous author with the reviews themselves. The DoE report is notable, for sure, but it is an unusual kind of review. The individual reviewer reports, which we have, are unreviewed secondary sources, and they are, as you should know, mixed, they do not agree with each other except in certain respects. The overall report is, itself, a secondary source, likewise unreviewed (except post-facto, outside). It's anonymous. And, as I've pointed out, in at least one case, it was dead wrong, it erroneously and very significantly misreported what was in the submitted paper by Hagelstein, showing a lack of understanding of the situation. We do not know if the writer of the conclusions was a scientist, we know nothing about his or her qualifications. But definitely this writer got it wrong about helium/excess heat correlation, and blatantly so, it's impossible to read the final report and the source, with respect to this issue, which is the most conclusive of all cold fusion evidence (except for later publication of CR-39 findings, which is still not as massively confirmed), and conclude that he or she understood it. And, from prior discussion, it's also clear that you don't understand it.

Mind you, I'm not talking about agreeing with it. I'm talking about understanding what the words mean and what is being reported, so that, if you are going to refute it, you will be doing so on the basis of understanding the issues. The particular final determination was based on a report of a single reviewer, and misrepresents even that; the reviewer also got it wrong, but not so badly. This was all documented in a section on Cold fusion talk. Thoroughly and carefully. Sometimes those "walls of text" are merely an examination, in detail, of an important topic. There is no way to present that problem with sound bites and snippy comments. The resistance to extended and careful discussion is precisely what has maintained conflict at Cold fusion for so long. --Abd (talk) 12:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I already gave my opinion in the matter in the relevant discussion: "If the only sources saying that DOE 2004 has errors/is unreliable are from cold fusion researchers, then it has to be attributed as a POV hold by them." Also, I add now that it has to be attributed to some reliable source, a secondary one if possible, and looking at the discussion again I don't see any such thing. I only see you quoting three primary sources (Hagelstein's preliminary report, the reviewers' comments and the final report) and making some OR with them. That simply fails WP:NOR.

That's mighty fine wikilawyering there! First of all, I mentioned the individual reviewer reports as background, and we can do all the OR we want for background, especially if it's easily verifiable. Secondly, is the DoE report "primary source." If so, why are we citing it in the article? If you will look at the discussion on the Talk page, no suggestion was made that we claim that the DoE report had errors in it. That would be WP:SYNTH. You have insisted on the summary statement by the anonymous reviewer be what we have in the article on correlation. Now, we have much stronger source on this, but you've waived it away. So, okay, suppose we keep that. It contradicts what is in the report. You could argue that this contradiction shouldn't be reported in the article, but if we do that, we are allowing a clear error -- clear to us! for you have not argued the substance, only the wikilegal technicality of WP:NOR -- to stand, when we do have *the same source* to quote from to show the error. We simply quote the DoE summary report, without synthesis the text from the report being reviewed, which text is incorporated in and is a part of the report. If part of this is RS, it all is. In fact, there are problems with all of it, it's questionable the degree to which this is a science publication, but in no way am I recommending an extreme view on this; rather that we not allow an obvious error to stand that we can balance with evidence of equal probity, without synthesis.

Remember, this quote is in a section on the *science*, not on the DoE report. Bad idea. Better it comes out and that it's replaced with sources that actually report what's being claimed in RS about heat/helium correlation, and it's not the Hagelstein paper nor is it the DoE, it's a series of reviews and publications, including Storms, the ACS Sourcebook -- which is peer-reviewed -- it's publications in EPJ-AP, peer-reviewed, and Naturwissenschaften, peer-reviewed, and it's He Jing-Tang and it's Biberian and it's others. You can denigrate some of these but they are all RS on a level higher than that of the DoE review. --Abd (talk) 21:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

(As a side note, I also liked how you hand-wave away Clarke's paper in the following discussion which was also in Hagelstein's report, which says that all hellium samples sent to him by McKubre contained only air, and how you even say that it shouldn't have been included because it would have confused at least one reviewer, which is again your OR and not the comment from any RS). --Enric Naval (talk) 18:45, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I seem to recall making a practical political comment about how the paper was presented, which is dicta and has nothing to do with the science. On the substance, this is what I wrote:

distorted Case effect results were presented by the DoE summary as if this was the strong evidence of helium correlation presented, when it wasn't. That's verifiably true. Are you really going to insist that it isn't? Putting it in the article is a separate question. My position is that we take both the distorted presentation and the contradiction then doesn't need to be there either. There is far stronger evidence of helium/heat correlation in the main body of the Hagelstein report, and we have similar evidence presented in Storms (2007) and in the ACS Sourcebook (2008) and in He Jing-Tang (2007) and I believe but don't have specific references in mind, in many other peer-reviewed or academic sources. So why would we present the weakest claim made, one which actually, on the face, contradicts correlation? (The case appendix in the Hagelstein paper actually shows, for a single cell, time correlation of helium generation and excess heat. It was a detail, a minor piece of evidence for them, which is why it was an appendix, I assume.)

Hagelstein responded in the DoE report to Clarke's criticism, which was not the paper you cite, it was an earlier paper where Clarke tried to replicate Case studies using a different protocol, according to Hagelstein (Appendix 1 of the 2004 DoE report, p. 18, footnote):

One study by Clarke did not measure any significant increase in helium levels in a mass spectrometer where levels

much smaller than 100 ppmV/V would have been easily recognized. Clarke, however, did not observe the procedures described by Case, which were in any case incomplete. Neither was Clarke able to measure any temperature effects and his geometry, which consisted of milligram single samples of “Case-type” catalyst confined with D2 or H2 in very small sealed Pb pipe sections, differed greatly from that used and recommended by Case.

Let me translate this for you, Enric: the Case results were presented by Hagelstein in Appendix B because there was one cell, not studied by Clarke, which showed time correlation of heat and helium. That's a kind of correlation, but it's only a single experiment. The powerful evidence is presented to some degree by Hagelstein in the body of his report, and by Storms independently, based on a number of published studies, and is reported as notable in other sources. Hagelstein is noting, in his footnote, that Clarke did not follow the Case protocol and didn't measure excess heat, which means that all that he may have been reporting was a cell where the nuclear active environment, for some reason, did not form. Or that he didn't set up the proper conditions, and this is all really an historical note, because later, apparently, nobody was able to get the Case effect to work.

Storms covers, briefly, the Case effect. Basically he says that he undertook to reproduce the Case effect and was unable to do it. SRI had reproduced the effect, previously, but the material was lost, according to Storms, accidentally discarded during a cleanup. Storms had tried to manufacture the material using the original specifications from United Catalyst, but, like much early cold fusion work, there were probably unknown characteristics of the catalyst that made it work with one batch and fail later. The original P-F work, with bulk palladium, was like that. It confused everyone, after all, isn't palladium palladium? Nope, the P-F effect depends on very high loading ratio, and if the palladium isn't pukka physically, i.e., if it has microcracks from how it was processed, it won't load, it leaks. It took years to figure this out, and that work was never invested in the Case material.

Clarke later published another communication on this, I think that Shanahan reproduced fragments of it on the Talk page in the discussion you cited. Enric, I can't make anything of this, and it's a primary source. What exactly, do you make of it, why would you think this important and relevant to the topic of Helium/heat correlation? He did no correlation study, because he didn't study heat. He found no anomalous helium in a few Case cells, which are a type of cell that were only studied narrowly for a little while, and we have no information about the heat behavior of those cells. What would this have to do with the substantial body of work on helium and heat correlation? --Abd (talk) 21:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

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Invitation

Hi, Enric. I added a section to Abd's userspace essay User:Abd/Majority POV-pushing, and I would be interested in your comments on it. I invite you to participate in discussion on the talk page. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 13:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe you may have the source, please comment on source misrepresentation claim by Mathsci.

.

This has gotten way out of hand. It's supposed to be simple to get something whitelisted if it's needed, and the copyright arguments could have been raised -- and were raised -- with respect to every link that you got whitelisted. As we have seen before, it isn't simple. Whitelisting doesn't mean automatic usage, and a whole site can be available for linking even if it contains some copyvio, policy is clear on that. However, Mathsci's accusation is completely beyond the pale. You may have the source, I believe, from your Talk at Mathsci. Will you look at what I posted and his accusation, check the review to see that it says what I claimed -- which was, unless I made some mistake, exact quotation -- and comment? --Abd (talk) 15:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

This misrepresentation is argueable, so I can't really say "X is right and Y is wrong". I comment in the whitelist page. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:48, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll ask you to look again. I quoted from Sheldon, Mathsci responded, immediately below my comment, that I was misrepresenting the source. In context, that would not refer to something that I allegedly did elsewhere, but to the immediate preceding comment. If it referred to Talk:Cold fusion, why was this brought to a discussion of whitelisting some links, where Sheldon was mentioned purely to show notability of the web site. Yes, notability within the field." What other kind of notability would be important? How was my comment at the whitelist page "arguable" as misrepresentation? What in that comment could reasonably have been misrepresentation? You are aware, I presume, that this is almost entirely direct quote, and if it was cherry-picked, surely you could find some contrary text. --Abd (talk) 17:17, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Reply in whitelist page. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

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Cold fusion mediation

I have been asked to mediate the content dispute regarding Cold fusion. I have set up a separate page for this mediation here. You have been identified as one of the involved parties. Please read through the material I have presented there. Thank you. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Banned user

Can someone run a CU on 67.81.194.67? Appears to be NootherID. —Whig (talk) 23:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

As you can see below, I opened a SPI case. I'm tot 100% sure if it's the same person. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:47, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

This is nonsense. That's just a clueless user from New York who added a bit of information to the article, having no idea how contentious and well-guarded it is, and left a note on the talk page to make sure someone else verifies it's correct. It's obvious that the user isn't even familiar with talk page sections. --Hans Adler (talk) 01:42, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Hans is right, I look again and now it looks like some guy innocently posted in the wrong place at the worst time (and, like many new users, he didn't think of giving the details for the exact source). My mistake for continuing to build the SPI case even after discovering that the IP was from a wholly different place :-( --Enric Naval (talk) 17:48, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at anon 59.96.59.100. —Whig (talk) 14:11, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

This one does fit with Dr.Jhingadeey. I see that Bull already tagged him --Enric Naval (talk) 14:46, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Additional information needed on Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Dr.Jhingaadey

Hello. Thank you for filing Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Dr.Jhingaadey. This is an automated notice to inform you that the case is currently missing a code letter, which indicates to checkusers why a check is valid. Please revisit the page and add this. Sincerely, SPCUClerkbot (talk) 23:43, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

DrJ a troll?

I feel that DrJ is a troll intended to cause disruption and bring disrepute on homeopathy, quite frankly, and would not be surprised if he continues to turn up and act like he's never learned the rules because he's pretending to be new. —Whig (talk) 02:04, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I fear you are right. His past history shows that this is his MO. Fortunately I doubt that any editors at the homeopathy article will let this user's behavior affect their opinions about homeopathy one way or the other. Don't worry about that. This guy is just a sad case. Such people also plague other articles on other subjects. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

It does not alter the opinions of the skeptics and would not be intended to if his purpose is as I described. —Whig (talk) 05:27, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

He's no troll, if you mean someone "pretending" to be a believer in homeopathy. No, he is a real homeopath and he doesn't intend disruption, but intends to make Misplaced Pages stop including content that demeans homeopathy. That ends up being disruptive, because it violates our policies in several ways. He has a website and presence on the internet as a homeopath, and he linkspammed it many times, which is what got him one of his first blocks. IOW, he's not faking it. He doesn't understand Misplaced Pages and doesn't seem capable of doing so, as it's been explained to him many times. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

You posted the same thing on my talk and I replied there. I don't want to cut and paste myself here. —Whig (talk) 05:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Right. This was also for the sake of Enric. I have replied on your talk, and this matter seems pretty much settled. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:57, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Cold fusion topic ban

Say, it looks like there are a few kinks in the markup of your AN/I request for review of the topic bans (Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#need review of the topic ban of two editors from Cold Fusion). I suspect that there might be a closing bracket or two missing somewhere, but I don't want to tamper. Could you have a quick look? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:25, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Forgot to close one diff. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Uruk2008

I just created Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Uruk2008; it needs a second endorsement, so please endorse if you agree. Thanks, -- BenRG (talk) 15:17, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Endorsed. Please leave me a message here when the RfC goes live. Please feel free to use any of my comments in your evidence. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:27, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it's live now, but I'm kind of unclear on how the system works. -- BenRG (talk) 10:42, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

It's already listed at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/User_conduct#Approved_pages_.28users.29, so it must have been approved by someone from the mediation cabal. There are people who regularly look at the list and comment on the open request, so I wold just let it run its natural course. When the RFC is closed you can then ask in ANI that Uruk2008 is banned and checkusered. Unless, of course, he finally says something, acknowledges the problem, and starts trying to use sources of better quality. You already did your part by starting a community discussion, you should only participate to endorse views, to clarify points in the talk page of the RfC, and to reply to questions that people makes you about the question before participating in the RfC. It's now up to Uruk2008 to change his behaviour, you can't force him to reply to the RfC. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:40, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I moved it there. Should I undo that edit? -- BenRG (talk) 13:31, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Nah. I looked again at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/User_conduct#Instructions and it doesn't make any limitation on who can move it. The RfC already has two users certifying the dispute, so it complies the criteria. If there is some problem with the certification then someone will point it out and act as necessary. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:50, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I see that he has blanked the message you left warning him about the RfC. According to WP:BLANKING, this amounts to an acknowledgement that he read the warning. If the RfC closes with users agreeing in that he is being uncivil, and him not changing his behaviour at all, you can simply do as I suggested above: ask in ANI that he is blocked/banned and that the other accouts are checkusered. (ask me if you need help in making the checkuser petition) --Enric Naval (talk) 19:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Oppenheimer on WR

About this, that IP that did this edit is actually someone from the Sandia National Laboratories according to this. I don't know the subject matter, but are we sure that edit by them was technically inaccurate or just left bad language use? rootology (C)(T) 03:38, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The IP only means that the edit was made by some Sandia employee, who could have or not have knowledge in nuclear physics. It could be some informatic like me, trashing around in his free time in physics articles hoping that he doesn't break too much stuff while trying to improve the articles :P

The edit removed that " does not take part in the reaction". Why did he do that? Who knows, maybe the role of the proton is described incorrectly, and the IP decided to remove the whole thing instead of fixing it. In any case, the reaction is more complicated than that, see description in a book written by the son of the discoverer so my edits are also innacurate and the article needs way more wordsmithing.

So, *I* think that it's someone removing info instead of fixing it, a typical error that I have seen both in IPs and in registered editors. For all we know, it could even be a nuclear physicist from Sandia checking that the article was correct, and accidentally erasing part of the text without even noticing it.

And, coming from Sandia, I doubt that it's some bored vandal erasing stuff at random. Kudos for thinking of checking the origin of the IP :) I'm gonna add that description to the article and work a bit on it. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:57, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I gave the article a good workout. I think I got the descriptions right, and even lay people should now understand how and why the effect happens. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

That's one whopping big deuteron nucleus there, several times 10 cm. between the proton and neutron? That's about big enough to see with the naked eye, maybe, in good light. What would the whole atom or molecule be, about fist-sized? I haven't done the math. I don't have a reference, or I'd clean it up. That is, I know it's wrong, but not what's right. This is a problem with editing a nuclear physics article when you don't have any nuclear physics, it's word salad. There are cold fusion theories, by the way, which involve neutrons, I think Widom-Larsen goes that route. Okay, I did find a source, , I'd guess you used this, since you cite it, and it's 10 cm, but what is ten orders of magnitude among friends? The section was quite garbled; for example, a deuteron is not a molecule, it's a nucleus. I fixed that. And I'm still not thrilled, I was not familiar with this process and could have gotten some of it wrong. It would be best if an expert looked at it. --Abd (talk) 01:00, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the corrections, that size error is the sort of error that non-experts don't catch easily. However, I think that my explanation was clearer. I have used parts of your wording to fix it a bit. Both explanations had errors in it in some or other part. Notice that one of the nucleons of the deuteron has to touch the surface of the target nucleus in order for the process to happen, that the Coulomb barrier is not generated by one nucleus but by the interaction between them, that the energy of the proton was totally incorrect, etc. That article still needs a lot of work. In my reply to Moulton in the Wikipdia Review I listed some stuff that the article lacks. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Enric, your edit re-mangled it. You have a series of misconceptions that you are incorporating in the article. There is no "touching," for example, where did you get that from? -- you won't see that from a physicist! Touching is a contact of surfaces, and there are no literal, specified surfaces at the subatomic level, or the atomic level, for that matter; rather, particles come close enough to interact. The brief description you are following as a source uses the expression, for the neutron, that it "reaches the surface" but, in this case, that's simply shorthand for "close enough for the binding force to take over."

As would be common, it seems you have a classical understanding of particles as if they were "things," with defined surfaces. Nothing like that exists on the atomic level or below. A particle is not just in one position, it is characterized by a probability field, i.e., that its effect has such and such a probability of being found here or another probability of being found there. So as a neutron approaches a nucleus, there is no point at which they "touch." Theoretically, there is a probability of fusion between two deuterons at any distance, to return to our favorite example. But that probability is very low under almost all conditions, unless the deuterons approach to within a certain distance; as they approach, perhaps because of kinetic energy applied against the repulsive electrostatic force, the probability of fusion increases. Fusion means that the binding force between the deuterons overcomes the repulsive force; were it not for the binding force, which only exists significantly at very short range, repulsion would overcome any amount of kinetic energy, fusion would be completely impossible, because the repulsive force increases with the inverse square of distance. That force would deaccelerate the deuterons.

Which points out something: when this effect is happening, the deuteron is under deacceleration, not acceleration. It's being deaccelerated by the Coulomb field. But the deuterium nucleus is not uniformly charged, it's lop-sided, with the positive charge on the proton side. This may cause the deuteron to orient so that the neutron is on the side nearest to the nucleus, or it might not have time to do that, I don't know; the effect may simply be that if the incident deuteron's positive side is facing away from the nucleus, when the deacceleration is complete and the deuteron has been slowed to a small relative velocity, or at some point before this, the neutron is close enough to fuse. The proton, at that point, is subject to maximum repulsive force, and if this is great enough to break the binding energy of the deuteron, that's what happens and the proton is ejected, and accelerated by the Coulomb field between it and the nucleus to the energies found in emitted protons. If fusion of the neutron occurs before the deuteron has been deacclerated, if there is enough kinetic energy remaining, so that the proton itself reaches fusion distance, we will get full deuteron fusion. A detailed examination of this would be more complex than I'm competent for without a lot of research, but the idea that the neutron has to "touch" is completely wrong. Basically, with deuterons of a certain energy, the incidence of neutron capture by the nucleus would start to go up. This would get us into cross section (physics) and much more complication.

I did know what I was doing, Enric, and I suggest that you revert to my version, which is at least more respectable, should an expert look at this (there may still be errors!) and then we can discuss each change. That you don't understand the physics can be a help, actually, for the article eventually should well explain it to you. But extensively adding text that you don't really understand, not a good idea. You might think it is clear, but to anyone who knows the subject, it will be awful. We need both. --Abd (talk) 17:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I already knew everything that you are saying, and if you look the picture in page 507 of this source you will see that either the proton or the neutron actually have to strike the nucleus itself for the Oppenheimer-Phillips to happen. If the deuteron only passes near to the nucleus then the process breaking the deuteron is different and it has a different name (in page 505 of that source, it's called process II ("electric" desintegration of the deuteron), while process III is the actual Oppenheimer-Phillips process, and only at low energies, it also gets a different name ("stripping") at higher energies (I suspect that includes the case of having so much kinetic energy that there is a full deuteron fusion). Also, the sources clearly talks about "reaching the surface of the nucleus" and similar wordings, it seems that the nucleon reaches near enough that you can use that expression. And, yes, if you describe it in quantum mechanics terms then it's not like that, but I was not using those terms. I was talking about the deuteron as of a body "with a finite size" like that source says, and the source also adds a description in quantum mechanics term, which I didn't add. And if you add a description in QM terms, then don't add it in the middle of the other description because it will only confuse readers, add it in a separate paragraph, or add a explanation of how the process looks like in QM terms.

Finally, I suggest that, while you corrected some errors, you also introduced several others, so please don't speak to me as if I didn't know anything about the subject and as if you knew everything about it, and as if only your version was correct and "at least more respectable", ok? --Enric Naval (talk) 21:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

P.D.:Also, I suggest giving me until monday to finish polishing the article, and then submit it for review to Edchem (because I find that he did a good work reviewing one of the sections of Cold Fusion article that both of us edited, or to some member of WP:CHEMISTRY. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:12, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Sure, though why you'd want to give your version priority pending is beyond me; I thought, given the number of really blatant errors you made, that I took out and you reverted back in, you'd have some pause about it. I only discussed the first few! You think I introduced errors but you didn't actually point to one that was actually an error. The expertise, by the way, wouldn't be in chemistry but in physics, specifically nuclear physics or quantum mechanics or, better, quantum electrodynamics, though QM may be adequate (I note that your source claims, however, that the situation is too complex to determine the wave function of the deuteron approaching the nucleus.)

I don't know everything about it, just far more than you. You added in more bloopers. However, I asked you to revert your changes and then work on apparent errors one at a time, but it's up to you whether you do that or not, I certainly wasn't demanding it. By the way, I closely followed the source, and it's just that I probably understand the source much better.

The present state of the article is perhaps even worse than when you first reverted my edit. I won't bother explaining now, I'll revise the article to create a forked version which will be in edit history even if you revert it, and then a diff can show the two versions; quite simply, what you have done is so mangled that it needs to be completely rewritten, and, luckily, it's a short article. So if you really want to take your version to an expert, fine. I certainly would prefer that my own be reviewed.

Here is the bottom line. I have a fair amount of education in the specifics of the article. And, even with that, I feel hesitant to write it, I only took it on because what was there was so bad. You either have less education or, possibly, a lack of facility with the language. It's one thing to assist in the creation or modification of an article, finding sources, etc., one issue at a time; quite another to put together an article on a technical subject without really understanding it. You do have a rough idea of the Oppenheimer-Phillips process, but not of the field in general, so your explanations, which you alter from the sources since you don't want to directly copy, are off. It's true that the source uses "touch," but how I described it is more accurate, "touch" was just being used as shorthand for "approach sufficiently closely to fuse." The diagram you mention represents the target nucleus as a circle, sure, but, remember, that nucleus is made up of neutrons and protons just like the deuteron (but I don't know about relative distances under those conditions. The circle is a schematic simplification, and no "touching" is shown in that diagram.)

I'd give you more specific guidance, but it's just too much at this point, it will be easier when we have an article that is basically right and that then needs only polishing, and the fastest way to do that is to present two drafts to an expert. --Abd (talk) 03:25, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The underlying problem here is that, after seeing you being deauthorized by several Chemistry and Physics PhDs, I no longer have confidence in your expertise in physics.

Also, you are proposing a very confrontational approach, aka your draft vs my draft. If you see mistakes in the article then please comment on them in talk. When I ask someone to review then that person will be able to see them. Also, if you decide to correct something then please don't revert your corrections back if I take them out or replace them for some reason. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:51, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you understand. When an entire piece is written with an underlying misunderstanding of the topic, it's easier to write it more or less from scratch. I already did that, though I used your version as a framework, and you basically rejected most of it, continuing your misunderstandings. You can call it confrontational, but I'd say your massive revert was confrontational, indeed. Writing two different drafts is quite an efficient way to do it. Then when we have some kind of decision on which is best, or we get help in putting together a third version, we can readily work on details, one at a time. You may not have confidence in my understanding of this topic, but you have based that on judgments by some rather biased individuals. Your choice. I don't have credentials, and even if I did, it wouldn't matter, you wouldn't recognize them anyway. I don't need your permission to do what I plan to do, I'm just letting you know what to expect. And if we attract some better talent to the article, that's great, isn't it? So ... may the best draft win, or something even better. I was just suggesting that it would be better if mine stood until that review, with work on small changes from it, but, obviously, you disagree, insisting on putting nonsense into the article. Why argue further about it? If I had time, I'd fix it right away, but I don't. --Abd (talk) 21:13, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I edited Oppenheimer–Phillips process this morning, trying to make it both accurate and clear to a general reader with a modest understanding of basic physics. The explanation is classical, but I tried to be careful not to state things that would contradict quantum mechanics, thus, for example, I wrote of the increased probability of fusion rather than "contact" or "touching." Stripping can be understood with classical mechanics. I did not include the attribution of binding energy to the internal motion of the two nucleons, that's a detail that is not important. Glue would do just as well, and I considered that too much detail; it's merely a means of conceptualizing the binding force (imagine two particles in orbit around each other; the force attracting them is balanced by the centrifugal force of their motion. If one of them gets stuck while the other is repelled with a force greater than the binding force, the continuing particle will carry away the energy of its own internal motion as if it simply was cut loose. That's an oversimplified explanation, which is one reason why I wanted to avoid it. I did discuss the energy of the expelled proton and added the significant fact that the target nucleus may be left in the ground state, i.e, with the energy of fusion balanced by the apparent negative energy of the neutron.

The final fused nucleus is not necessarily radioactive, as in the original C-13 example. However, mention of the product possibly being radioactive should be there, since this is how the effect was discovered. I'd prefer, though, to have details of that experiment, which I don't have. In other words, we should have a specific example of radioactivity, and it should be an important one, and the most important one would be the one which occasioned the original discovery. There may also be other important examples of deuteron-induced transmutation.

I'd suggest that if any of what I put in the article is not clear to you, that it be discussed in Talk for the article.

I'm aware of one problem. I wrote the piece in this way: I first gained an understanding of the sources, which assume knowledge of physics and which therefore briefly mention things without details; those concepts must be explained in order for a lay reader to make sense of them. So I then wrote an explanation, not depending specifically on the sources for wording, but only for the concepts. It is possible that, through this, I introduced some WP:OR; more likely, I simply wrote what is well-known and which could be sourced if necessary. I don't think, for example, that we need to source the basic physical concept of the conversion of kinetic energy to potential energy as with an elastic collision, or a weight dropped on a spring, and then the recovery of that energy, its conversion back to kinetic energy, as the spring accelerates the weight back to its original energy.

I was very aware, writing this, that it's possible I could write things that a true expert would want to correct to make it most accurate, and it's also possible that I missed something important. But I removed much which was redundant, wrong, or oblique and inadequately explained. I assume we will solicit expert opinion before we are done. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 16:12, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I asked EdChem to review it here.

Also, Abd, next time you talk to me could you refrain from saying things like "continuing your misunderstandings" and "you disagree, insisting on putting nonsense into the article". As I said above, I saw several people with Physics PhDs disagreeing with your understanding of the topic. I'll have to search more sources to clarify stuff in the article.... --Enric Naval (talk) 04:43, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I request that you be specific about these "physics PhDs" so I can resolve misunderstandings. Otherwise I expect a retraction. As to the article, you have been, clearly, in over your head. Your efforts initially are very much appreciated, and you final input will also be valuable, but ScienceApologist, who understands the overall topic as well or better than myself, and with much more recent exposure, is now involved and has been actively editing the article. We are discussing it in detail, and I'm sure that we will end up with a better article. Please watch and if explanations aren't clear to you, let us know in article Talk. Or explain how you understand what we have written in the article, that will help us to understand if it has been clear. People with technical knowledge may think an article is perfect, yet the lay reader walks away mystified. Ultimately, the article isn't for people who already know, it is for those who wish to become informed. --Abd (talk) 13:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Good, you got it. --Abd (talk) 17:17, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixing the f&p refs

Change all of the broken F1990 refs to:

<ref name="FleischmannPons_1990" />

Hipocrite (talk) 14:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

MIT

It's not "The MIT" - it's either "MIT" or "The Mass. Institute of Technology." I don't know why, but I know I'm right. Hipocrite (talk) 21:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

If you say so... :-) I wikilinked the name too, since I can't find any mention of MIT anywhere else in the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:31, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

He's right, that's usage. MIT of course, is a drastically inferior school to the one I attended, which is likewise not known as "The Caltech," even though, if the full name is used, it's the California Institute of Technology. Technically, the name is Massachusetts Institute of Technology but if the name is spelled out, the definite article "the" is normally used. Not capitalized, unless it's the first word in the sentence. You can look at usage in the articles.

On the other hand, maybe since I now live in Massachusetts, I should switch my loyalties to MIT. Tough issue. :-) --Abd (talk) 00:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

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Croats

Hello,can you please give me a response to discussion on artcicle'Croats'.Thank you.I try to edit one thing but it always returns back,although I've explained it in 'discussion'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.252.236 (talk) 15:25, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know enough about this topic to help you, I only help with some vandal that alters the population figues.

However, you should stop reverting it back. Some people gave you explanations in their edit summaries:

• "RV. Croats are a South Slavic group, ethnically, linguistically and culturally."

  "RV. South Slavic is correct. They are a South Slavic ethnic group, in every sense. Please research teh term "ethnic group" then maybe you'll understand."

  "RV. Your edit summary is insufficient and incorrect. An ethnic group is a racial, religious, cultural, or linguitstic people, so South Slav is correct in at least 3/4 of the criteria"

You should explain in the talk page why you think that "South slavic" is mistaken, and let other editors opinate. Reverting all the time will only lead to blocks or to the article being protected. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Gracias por interesarte

Solo eso... gracias! ;) --MauritiusXXVII (Aut Disce, Aut Doce, Aut Discede!). 16:58, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Warning about sock puppetry accusation

You struck a comment by GetLinkPrimitiveParams claiming that this user is a sock of a banned editor. There seems to be an SSP report filed, Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/LossIsNotMore, however, there are reasons to doubt this. I'm quite familiar with the puppet master, and GLPP doesn't seem to match the profile, but it's possible I'm wrong. Nrcprm2026 would be quite likely to engage in a vendetta against me, I got him blocked more than once. I think that you should revert yourself on this, accusing an editor of being a sock, outside an SSP report, is a serious offense; indeed, I was blocked for even hinting at it last year as a speculation, you baldly asserted it. The editor GLPP hasn't even been warned of the sock puppetry charges on his Talk, the accuser is a new account registered today. --Abd (talk) 03:51, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I had already reverted myself when I saw your message. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Abd (talk) 12:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Restrictions

Restriction from User talk:Abd

I'm going to have to ask you to refrain from editing my Talk page for the time being, with these exceptions:

1. You may post brief notes requesting I discuss any matter with you on your Talk, or otherwise briefly dealing directly with some matter that should not generate controversy.
2. You may request that any material you find unfairly critical of you be removed or redacted; please do not debate it, but simply point to an edit with a diff and make the request.
3. You may make formal warnings as you find necessary, provided that evidence is linked, without argument beyond assertion of policy or guideline violation.

Thanks. --Abd (talk) 12:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

OK. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. I could have just written, as have others to me, "Don't edit my Talk page or else." But, in fact, communication with you is occasionally useful; I just needed to stop what was spinning out into what could amount to trolling for incivility, whether by you or by others. Thanks for understanding. --Abd (talk) 13:46, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Restriction from subpages of User:Mathsci

1. I hereby inform me that you are forthwith page-banned from all my user subpages. You may appeal to ArbCom about specific cases but only on an even numbered day.
2. You may contribute to their talk pages provided you write in esperanto.
3. I am contemplating starting WikiProject XIX to examine the importance of the number 19 on wikipedia. This is a formal warning that you may contribute to this project even if you do not wish to do so. You may not discuss this with MastCell (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log).
4. Please never troll on my talk page or you are likely to be indefinitely blocked.
5. Please refrain from using transparently disingenuous OKs.

OK? Mathsci (talk) 22:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, both you and Mathsci are welcome to post to my Talk page provided that:

1. Each post is a haiku.
2. They are kept in the same section.
3. They alternate, and the capitalized first letter of each post, seen together, spells DGAF, as many times as you like. ::Perhaps this will reduce damage elsewhere. Meanwhile, I have an article and Some Other Stuff to write, and, damn!, ordinary life keeps interfering. --Abd (talk) 13:43, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Ordinary life ??? Mathsci (talk) 16:21, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I know it's hard to believe. What could possibly be more important than Misplaced Pages? --Abd (talk) 18:37, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

ouyay rokebay hetay odecay! KOay Verbal chat 16:27, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

My code is strictly private and unbreakable. Verbal this is a formal warning that any further attempts at WP:OUTING will have grave consequences. Your username and that of any perceived wikifriend could be appended to User:Peter Damian's outlawed list. Mathsci (talk) 13:56, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

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WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Nrcprm2026

Hello Enric. I see you're one of the people who commented on this sock case. At present the checkusering is half done, waiting for more conventional evidence, so far as I can tell. Though I suspect that other accounts in the list are very likely to be socks, I don't have any time to check contributions, and someone familiar with Cold fusion is in the best position to gather evidence from contributions. So, in the great tradition of finding someone else to take care of it, I've hit upon the idea of having you do the work. Would you consider examining the remaining (unblocked) accounts in more detail, to see if you can build a conventional sock case? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 02:33, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. I added more details. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:21, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

By the way, on your reversion of the sock edit to Cold fusion. Most of those changes were spelling corrections of words that had, indeed, been incorrectly spelled. I see that Cardamon pickup up on that and fixed them. Splargo had made extensive changes to Instant runoff voting which is exactly where I first tangled with Nrcprm2026, and I left them because they were helpful or at least harmless. There is no requirement to revert changes or comments from sock puppets, it is simply permitted, and, usually, if there have been responses, comments won't be reverted. --Abd (talk) 11:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I should have left the typo corrections in place, normally I take care not to destroy intermediate reversions but this time I just didn't notice them and I inadvertently wholesome-reverted all the edits that other people had done after the sock edits, my bad. Cardamon did a good catch noticing that and correcting it.

It's true that banned editors can make some useful edits, but they also can make subtle POV pushing that can only be detected by people who is very familiar with the subject. It all depends on why they were banned. If it was for POV pushing in one area then all his edits on that area are suspect, but in other areas he could be making flawless edits, or at most edits that make no harm.

P.D.: No comment on removing comments from sock of banned users. We already had a conversation about someone removing a comment from from a banned editor, then you reverting it back and replying to it, then someone removing it again, and then you claiming that the comments of the banned editor couldn't be revered out again because there existed now replies to it, when there were actually no replies in the first removal that was done. (I made a half-spirited attempt to find the exact discussion but I gave up on having to wade through thousands of kilobytes over the archives of multiple talk pages). Normally I only strike out the comments by sock, specially when they are in the middle of discussions, or if they were done may days ago. I usually only remove in special cases, right now I can think of when a) they are very recent comments b) they are spreading the same misinformation for the Nth time after multiple opportunities and requests to provide good sources c) they are being obnoxious in purpose d) they are trying to influence the discussion after being banned for influencing them. As a rule of thumb, it depends on whether their comments are actually improving the articles and/or helping the discussion on what changes to make. Splargo was trying to push OR in primary sources, that's not very helpful, but the discussion is probably useful of sorts. Also, it's nice when you go back to a discussion and read only the non-striken comments, the discussions suddenly become better and the real issues surface very clearly, and you can see better if the sock's ideas had actual support or if it was just the same guy pushing the same idea over other people's objections. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's pretty long for "no comment...." Yes, this has been discussed, but never resolved. The general consensus is that any editor may revert back in comments or article edits from banned editors if the editor is willing to take responsibility for them as being useful. You've disagreed with that, to be sure, and I've never pushed it to a resolution. As you might realize, the patents, for example, had been cited in the article and were removed by the banned editor (from cold fusion) Hipocrite, restored by one or two editors -- not me -- then removed when WMC reverted to the May 14 version. Default: they had a (short-lived) consensus, and the issue is now in mediation, so.... Using a primary source to add verification to a secondary source or to show contradiction, without OR or synth, is perfectly legitimate. What we had was a statement, old, from the USPO that patents on "cold fusion" were not issued, and two patents, more recent, that explicitly claim energy generation from what everyone would agree was a cold fusion apparatus. (There is also secondary source on this, but that would involve considering newenergytimes.com to be sufficiently reliable for the purpose. Might be.) Yes, Splargo was a bit hysterical about it. I'm very familiar with Nrcprm2026, and this time he was pretty moderate where I've seen him be quite outrageous, I'd say his behavior at cold fusion was the worst this time (he was actually defending what seems to have been consensus at Uranium, which is why I reverted his last edit back in), but it wasn't any worse than some non-banned editors.... He tried to get me blocked back in 2007, if you look at my block log, you will see the (very short) block while the admin was figuring out what had happened. He actually created a sock to file the 3RR report, as his opponent did here. I was pretty raw, then, but I did effectively handle the situation. And didn't take undue advantage of the fact that the entire opposition, to my position, at that article, was wiped out in one fell swoop (two editors: an Nrcprm2026 sock and an IP, identity known to me to be a maximally COI editor, later registered and who mostly behaves himself. Sort of.). I actually do believe in NPOV, Enric. And I care more about consensus, real consensus, than any possible POV I might have developed.

You have noticed, I assume, that ScienceApologist has attended to Oppenheimer-Phillips process. I know what he's doing and why he is there, but the result has been a much better article, so far, and it may get even better. I also see why he's been so disruptive in the past, but I can handle it and turn all this into better text, and I look forward to discussions with him at Talk:Cold fusion. Be prepared. --Abd (talk) 13:48, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick note of thanks for all of your hard work to paint me as a sock. Your efforts there are duly noted. In the future I would appreciate it if you could take some of your own advice (see the top of this page) and WP:AGF. --GoRight (talk) 18:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Aw, come on, you know that you sound and behave like the sock of a banned user would sound and behave. (heck, you almost became a banned user yourself months ago, no wonder that you sound like one, lol)

I feel sorry for poor Nopetro, whoever he is, who got caught in the case. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:48, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I was going to let this comment slide, but since I seem to be the topic of discussion below I might as well respond in this thread. WTF does "I behave like the sock of a banned user" mean, actually? You made your (now recognized as baseless) accusation that I am a sock and were summarily shot down. Get a clue, Enric, there are people with legitimate disagreements to your POV. --GoRight (talk) 18:33, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

And you don't "feel sorry" for GoRight? Your POV is showing, Enric. You should actually apologize for your bad judgment. But that's up to you, suit yourself. --Abd (talk) 14:30, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

GoRight has been a real pain in the last days making conspiracy theory accusations and trying to undermine any ban for technical reasons even if it improves wikipeda. So, no, not sorry for him, and nothing to do with POV. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:05, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

You seem to have a hard time following the events of the past few weeks. "making conspiracy theory accusations" - Did I openly wonder about a conspiracy? Yes. Did I make the accusation you are now claiming I made? Absolutely not. Exactly the reverse. I specifically stated that I alleged no such conspiracy. "trying to undermine any ban" - Where have I tried to undermine a ban. I have not so stop making baseless accusations already. I have questioned the validity of a purported ban which is not at all the same thing as undermining (subverting) a ban. I have always stated that I supported an enforced cooling off period, have I not? --GoRight (talk) 18:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd claim that your analysis, here, is warped by your POV. What appear to you to be "conspiracy theory allegations" aren't. What "improves Misplaced Pages" is a content judgment and can be highly affected by POV. It all helps, in the end, Enric, so, please, suit yourself, you don't have to satisfy me, personally. I'll say, though, that when I made a sock puppet allegation that turned out to be unsupported, even though I had much stronger evidence than you alleged, actual IP coincidence, I ended up apologizing. You ought to try it, it doesn't actually hurt, though many of us seem to fear it. --Abd (talk) 20:53, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

No, that stuff of Hipocrite "throwing himself on his own sword" in order to get you banned and then claiming that it was all part a premeditated plan when Hipocrite got himself un-banned by being reasonable, it's all 100% bullshit. I made a mistake? Yes. Did GoRight deserve it? No. Does GoRight behave like the sock of a banned user? Yes. And seeing his behaviour now, I can understand why Raul tried to get himself banned for "baiting and harassment". GoRight ought to get himself a clue and stop making allegations of dark conspiracies and then refusing that he ever allegued anything so he doesn't get blocked for it. He shouldn't be doing stupid allegations in the first place. Also, insisting in that a ban is not "technically" correct even while recognizing that it would be upheld if the banned editor tried to challenge it = 100% bullshit again. I don't come to wikipedia to be fed bullshit by people. I come here to edit articles, and then I discuss in a reasonable manner with other editors about stuff in the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 05:33, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

"throwing himself on his own sword" - Well, in all honesty, this is precisely what appears to have happened ... but this is merely my own interpretation of the events that transpired. To me it it appears to be not only a plausible explanation for how things played out but probably the most plausible amongst the alternatives. Again, merely my own opinion, nothing more.

"insisting in that a ban is not "technically" correct even while recognizing that it would be upheld if the banned editor tried to challenge it = 100% bullshit again" - WTF? I challenge the view that any individual administrator can unilaterally impose a ban at their sole discretion. Nothing more. And in both the case of Rothwell and more recently Abd all I did was to keep the facts of the situations out in the open and strictly correct.

Fact: Rothwell is currently prevented from editing due to a WP:BLOCK placed on his account by MastCell.

Fact: No community ban of Rothwell was ever declared by an uninvolved administrator nor was one ever recorded at WP:RESTRICT as is the custom in such matters.

Fact: Abd has disputed that WMC is uninvolved and therefore is NOT in a proper position to be able to declare a ban against him.

Fact: After the community indicated support for a ban and it was duly reviewed and closed by a neutral administrator Abd has accepted and honored the ban which was so placed.

Fact: Misplaced Pages user WMC blocked Abd for making edits that resulted in ZERO change to Cold Fusion.

Fact: Misplaced Pages user WMC took no action against Hipocrite for making edits to Cold Fusion which DID alter the article in spite of the fact that just a day prior Hipocrite had declared he had no desire to continue editing Cold Fusion in an effort to have his ban lifted.

Now, again, I am making no specific allegations here either way. I am merely recounting the facts as they are plainly visible. Others are free to come to their own conclusions about what they mean, if anything. --GoRight (talk) 19:20, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

"the facts as they are plainly visible"? Bullshit. Jed has not used his account for a long time, he edits from IPs and he was happy to learn that this made it difficult to enforce any ban. Your list of facts misses important "facts" like Abd making those edits only after saying that he was going to test his ban prior to making that edit, the Arbcom members seeing no reason to overturn Jed's ban and seeing no problem with no recording at WP:RESTRICT, SA banning Jed only after he saw this thread on ANI and after several editors, including myself, asked in Talk:Cold fusion that he was banned from the page, including this request that I made to WP:AE that was closed by Jenochman because Jed had temporally stopped editing. Hipocrite's edits "which DID alter the article" were consolidation of references which didn't alter the content of the article in a significant way , and they were done after his ban was explicitely lifted . About " he had no desire to continue editing Cold Fusion in an effort to have his ban lifted" I'll point out to for people to see themselves the full context where he said that. Abd has been pointed to where he can dispute WMC's involvement, and his ban was WP:SNOW-endorsed in ANI.

Soooo, I find that your list of facts is full of misrepresentations, omissions and errors, so, sorry, but it still looks something that I can safely describe as "bullshit". Get your facts right and then I'll start taking them seriously. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:00, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

"I find that your list of facts is full of misrepresentations, omissions and errors" - Really? Misrepresentations? Errors? Please illustrate these misrepresentations and errors in my list of facts. Which of them are not bald facts (and therefore incapable of being misrepresented)? Which of them are in error? Please explain.

Here, let me show you what I mean.

You claim "the Arbcom members seeing no reason to overturn Jed's ban and seeing no problem with no recording at WP:RESTRICT". I claim that is both an error AND a misrepresentation of what occurred. The simple fact of the matter is that when asked to do so Arbcom EXPLICITLY refused to ENDORSE a ban on Rothwell. They refused to ENDORSE a ban. In other words there is no ban. They never even mentioned anything with respect to WP:RESTRICT that I can recall. Bottom line: they were NOT asked to OVERTURN his ban as you imply, they were asked to CONFIRM it and they refused. That is the fact of what happened.

Here is the key portion of JzG's opening statement:

"I think it's probably worth requesting clarification that, in cases where someone exhibits similar behaviour and supports the same agenda as a topic-banned user, and that person is known to be a close collaorator of the restricted user in an area where the restriction applies, and the individual is a single-purpose account, then the same restriction may be applied."

He is explicitly asking Arbcom to sanction his actions with respect to Rothwell by confirming that those actions were an appropriate application of the PCarbon ban. They refused to take up his case so, in effect, they refused to confirm his contention.

Knowing full well how this might be argued in the future I explicitly asked Arbcom to correct me if my summary of my understanding of their meaning was incorrect:

• "I just want to be sure that I understand the facts and intentions expressed in the arbitrator votes/discussion below and that I come away from this proceeding with the right message in mind. It would appear to be in the best interests of the project over-all for everyone to do so. I think that I am hearing the following:

1. They are collectively and EXPLICITLY deciding to NOT endorse a topic ban against Rothwell, although some have expressed a willingness to do so if that became necessary.
2. They are collectively agreeing that the existing policies already in place are sufficient to deal with Rothwell and, therefore, no such endorsement of a topic ban against him is required at this time.
3. They are collectively asserting that the entire issue can and should be dealt with by the community before bringing it to this forum.

I don't presume to speak for the arbitrators so if any of this is incorrect, please by all means correct me on these points. --GoRight (talk) 02:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)"

I then received an explicit confirmation that this was correct from at least one of the arbitors, Carcharoth.

How you are spinning things inside your head to turn this Arbcom discussion into a complete acceptance of JzG's actions and claims is beyond me. Let's just say that, given all of the above, I have a different recollection of what actually occurred than you seem to.

"SA banning Jed only after he saw this thread on ANI and after several editors, including myself, asked in Talk:Cold fusion that he was banned from the page, including this request that I made to WP:AE that was closed by Jenochman because Jed had temporally stopped editing." - While this is technically a true statement it is also an example of a misrepresentation of the facts. It seeks to imply that the discussion being referenced actually justified the declaration of a ban. The bald facts suggest exactly the reverse:

Fact: The first discussion contained of a significant number of involved editors.

Fact: The first link doesn't contain any discussion of banning Rothwell.

Fact: The first discussion was not closed with a ban on Rothwell.

Fact: The second link doesn't contain any discussion of banning Rothwell.

Fact: The second discussion was not closed with a ban on Rothwell.

Given this, I fail to understand how you seem to think that this demonstrates that I was in error or that I misrepresented anything or that JzG was justified in making any such declaration of a ban on Rothwell.

On a side note, if I personally were in your shoes, I would try to avoid disseminating that second link at all. The discussion there tends not to be particularly flattering. Kevin Baas was spot on, IMHO, and this is likely why you got no action there at all despite your best efforts to do so (which also, ironically, resemble your failed attempts to paint me as a sock). Were I you, I would be saying "hmmm" just about now. But perhaps that is just me.

"his ban was WP:SNOW-endorsed in ANI" - Yes, as I said above it is a Fact that after the community expressed support for a 1 month ban and it was closed by an uninvolved administrator that Abd accepted and honored the ban. What's your point? --GoRight (talk) 00:38, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that you are again omiting stuff, like "In addition, the correct route is for Guy to issue a topic ban (if he thinks that is the right route to go), and then for the person who was topic banned to appeal." in the reply of the arbitrator, which is quite at odds with your idea that the ban doesn't exist because Jed didn't appeal.

The first discussion first discussion was started by yours truly, saying "I would thank an uninvolved admin to give him a formal warning ({{Pseudoscience_enforcement}} will do) so he can be sanctioned if he keeps on with his behaviour.", and I can assure that I had a topic ban in mind. Also, I disagree with your statement: I think that any uninvolved person reading it will realize that Jed was really soapboxing, despite all that Kevin said, so I think that it's a good link for arguing in favor of Jed's ban. Saying that the second link does not show support fore a topic ban because only JzG says "ban" is plain wikilawyering. No, seriously, it is.

About other editors asking for a ban, even if nobody said the word "ban", it was bleedingly obvious that his edits were not welcome by many editors. See for example here, Verbal was asking that his comments were reverted in sight, just below Olonirish is saying that he is violating WP:SOCK, and just below him SA is saying that people can apply to administrators to get him blocked. A month I am telling Jed that I will have to start arguing for his ban if he doesn't change his behaviour. So, they were asking for Jed to be blocked and reverted in sight, and you are going to say that they were not asking for a topic ban? Or, rather, are you going to say that these comments can't be interpreted as support for a topic ban?

About why editors were calling for his ban, if you look back at the period going from 30 November - 15 December 2008 (approx), in Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_20, if you search for the word "jed" and you read the replies given to his comments, you will see that most people were still being patient with him and giving him advice. It was Jed's own continuing behaviour that changed over time how editors treated him, not the existance of some obscure anti-CF cabal. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:47, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

So what happened December 15, if people were so patient with him then? Enric, that's about when the IP was blocked by JzG. About two weeks later, JzG blocked another IP, claiming it was Rothwell, which it wasn't. The only similarity was familiarity with cold fusion. Thought crime. People were giving Jed advice? The kind of advice I've seen has been, usually, "go away." Sure those people were asking for a topic ban. They were also very, very involved. Olorinish? Verbal? ScienceApologist?That was absolutely not the kind of discussion that could determine a ban. Watch.

I wonder if it has occurred to you that if an expert appears at an article, and sees it is full of nonsense -- as our article currently is (i.e., perfectly reasonable text from twenty years ago, when the science has moved on, and the errors made twenty years ago -- on all sides -- are now well understood, documented, covered in reliable secondary source, and on and on -- and the expert says so, and tries to provide information, that could look like "soapboxing"?

Banning people for soapboxing is quite dangerous, you might as well ban people for their POV. And if you imagine that you will end up with POV text by banning everyone who disagrees with your POV, well, quite simply, you won't. What you will get is narrow-minded POV and bad writing and continual disruption, as new people continue to arrive who think for themselves and don't take their knowledge from Misplaced Pages but from the actual sources. --Abd (talk) 21:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I know that it's dangerous, but I think that in Jed's case it was clear that he was soapboxing. Editors who are soapbxing all the time are not helpful in writing articles and they can be quite a nuisance. There are people who have a POV and can keep it to themselves and be neutral when writing articles or commenting in the talk page. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:20, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Nrcprm2026 arbitrary break 1

(Outdent)

Enric, you should stop digging now. But since you haven't let me toss a bit of this dirt back in on top of you ...

(1) "I think that you are again omiting stuff, like ... which is quite at odds with your idea that the ban doesn't exist because Jed didn't appeal." - A possibly fair point on your part, however I would rate that comment as ambiguous at best. It is merely articulating what Carcharoth sees as the correct procedure to be followed. It is not making a comment on the existence, or lack thereof, of a valid ban either way, at least IMHO.

I don't know what you mean by "my idea that the ban doesn't exist because Jed didn't appeal." I don't believe that I have ever said anything remotely resembling that position, but if I have let me clarify things here by clearly stating that this is NOT what I am saying. I am most decidedly NOT claiming that Jed's ban, or lack thereof, has anything whatsoever to do with whether he appeals or not. Such a concept is nonsense. Of course he can be banned without his having appealed it.

His current block, however, is a separate issue. He does remain indefinitely blocked by MastCell. This block remains in effect because it has never been appealed, which is not to say that an appeal would automatically be successful in removing the block. The simple facts are that he is currently blocked and has not appealed the block.

My actual claim is that he is not banned simply because there was no community discussion in which the community actually (a) discussed banning him, and more importantly (b) was closed by an uninvolved administrator who explicitly stated that there was a ban.

My claim is not rocket science or even wikilawyering. The simple fact of the matter is that there was never a community discussion held among uninvolved editors which ended with a declaration of a ban on Rothwell. If there is please point me to it because neither of the two links you provided above (i.e. the first link or the second link) fits that bill.

(2) Cold Fusion is generally considered to be Fringe Science, not Pseudoscience, so I fail to see how an appeal to the Pseudoscience Arbcom ruling even applies.

(3) Assuming it does apply, however, in reading the Pseudoscience template you provided we find that "This notice is only effective if given by an administrator and logged here." - To the best of my knowledge no administrator has issued such a warning to Rothwell, and if they have that warning is rendered ineffective by the fact that Rothwell has not been logged as having been notified in the aforementioned place.

Given this it will be hard to claim that JzG's assertion of a ban is covered by the Pseudoscience ruling, and as we have already seen there has been no community discussion of imposing an actual ban. This was, perhaps, Carcharoth's point in the quote you highlighted above and why Arbcom refused to take up the case at all and calling such action premature. Why? Because there is no community discussion to even review on the matter beyond a hand full of involved editors.

(4) "I can assure that I had a topic ban in mind" - That may be, but you never SAID that was what you were asking for. In fact you explicitly asked for a warning, not a ban. A warning is not a ban. This is a fact. Given this I find it ridiculous for you to try and contend that this discussion justifies your assertion that a ban on Rothwell even exists.

(5) "Saying that the second link does not show support fore a topic ban because only JzG says "ban" is plain wikilawyering. No, seriously, it is." - I stand corrected. JzG (aka Guy) did mention a ban in that thread. I missed that bullet when I skimmed it apparently. OK, so Guy mentioned a topic ban in one comment. No one supported that comment. The most severe thing mentioned by anyone else in the thread was a semi-protect and THAT was denied!

Come on, Enric. One editor mentioned a ban in a nine comment thread and you call that evidence of a ban. It is simply prima facie ridiculous.

(6) "So, they were asking for Jed to be blocked and reverted in sight, and you are going to say that they were not asking for a topic ban? Or, rather, are you going to say that these comments can't be interpreted as support for a topic ban?" - They? Who's they? Are you talking about the WP:RBI comment? That was JzG too.

The only other mention of reverting was from JoshuaZ and that appears more like an attempt to give these guys something so that they will simply go away and stop plugging up AN. Even so, suggesting that you revert disruptive comments is nothing new, and NO, SUGGESTING REVERTING IS NOT supportive of a ban.

(7) "It was Jed's own continuing behaviour that changed over time how editors treated him, not the existance of some obscure anti-CF cabal." - This may be, but what does it have to do with whether Rothwell has a ban or not? And for the record, I have made no claims of there being an anti-CF Cabal. --GoRight (talk) 06:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

about (1):

Your comment above "I am most decidedly NOT claiming that Jed's ban, or lack thereof, has anything whatsoever to do with whether he appeals or not." is at odds with this statement you made one week ago: "I still maintain that Rothwell is not technically banned, even though he is effectively so unless he challenges his block which he is unlikely to do.". So, what is that difference between being "technically banned" and being "effectively banned", why is it so important that you feel that you need to bring it up in the first place, and why doesn't it happen unless Jed challenges his block?

I told you some 3 weeks ago that you didn't need such a community discussion because of WP:BAN#Community_ban "where an administrator has blocked the user long term or even indefinitely, and where no uninvolved administrator is willing to unblock him or her" and you said that it didn't apply because " uninvolved admins have been asked to unblock him and refused (...) MastCell has blocked his account, true, but even that has never really been appealed. For all we know that too would be reversed upon examination of a full set of evidence."

So, yes, you actually contended that the ban on Jed is dependant on whether or not an appeal is done (and on whether the appeal is rejected or not). P.D.: Ooooh, and on your comment right you repeat again your argument that he is not banned because he is only indef-blocked by MastCell, which is very clearly an argument to bypass the second condition at WP:BAN#Community_ban cited above, because you know perfectly that "no uninvolved administrator is willing to unblock him or her". Nice wikilawyering there. And now go appeal Jed's ban somewhere instead of repeating flawed arguments every time that we discuss about Abd's ban.

about (2)(3) Ugh, I botched my comment above, the only reference to WP:PSCI should have been " "I would thank an uninvolved admin to give him a formal warning ({{Pseudoscience_enforcement}} will do)"". To clarify, my request to WP:AE invoked WP:PSCI, but I realized the problem about Cold Fusion not being covered by it and later requests didn't invoke it.

(4) Ooooh, maybe I wanted a formal warning by an admin under WP:PSCI so I could send him flowers and kisses. As opposed to, you know, being free to invoke the discrectionary sanctions to get him kicked out of the article? And you say that me requesting a formal warning of discrectionary sanctions is not evidence of a ban because I didn't say explicitly that my final intention was getting him banned if he didn't change his behaviour? In spite of me saying that I actually wanted that? That's wikilawyering. And bullshit, too.

(5)(6)(7) If it's so clear that a community discussion was needed and it's so clear that it didn't happen, and it is so clear that there wasn't a consensus anyuwhere for a ban.... then, in that case, an appeal on Jed's ban will be easy and it will be most surely successful, so go appeal Jed's ban already dude.

This is becoming silly, we are starting to go into circles, and your behaviour entered WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT territory days ago already. If you keep bringing up the non-existance of Jed's ban in the middle of discussions of Abd's ban then I will report you for tendentious editing and general disruption. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:22, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

If anyone is exhibiting WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, it is you, my friend. The problem you seem to be having is that you do not understand, or refuse to acknowledge, the difference between being WP:BANned and being WP:BLOCKed. They are not the same thing at all.

So when I say that Jed is not banned, I mean simply that he is not WP:BANned because he isn't and never really was. This is what I mean by he is not technically banned (i.e. there has been no community WP:BAN issued against him).

On the other hand we both know that Rothwell is WP:BLOCKed by MastCell, and given that he is not allowed to evade that block by posting under another account or an IP. This is the rule that allows you to revert his comments on sight, BTW, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with a WP:BAN. This is what I mean by he is effectively banned (i.e. in the sense that he is not currently allowed to post because he is not allowed to evade the block). None of that makes a block a WP:BAN, though.

"So, yes, you actually contended that the ban on Jed is dependant on whether or not an appeal is done (and on whether the appeal is rejected or not)." - No I didn't as I just explained. Any such appeal with be applicable to his WP:BLOCK, not a WP:BAN that does not exist. Hopefully this clears that distinction up for you.

"he is not banned because he is only indef-blocked by MastCell" - You need to choose your words more carefully. A more accurate statement would have been "he is not banned but he IS indef-blocked by MastCell". Your statement implies that I contend Rothwell is not banned BECAUSE of the indef-block by MastCell, which is obviously nonsense and I never made any such claim. My claims are simple. (1) Rothwell is not WP:BANed. (2) Rothwell is WP:BLOCKed. (3) Being WP:BLOCKed does NOT imply that you are WP:BANed. (4) Being indefinitely WP:BLOCKed has a similar effect to being WP:BANned without actually being a WP:BAN.

"because you know perfectly that "no uninvolved administrator is willing to unblock him or her"" - No, I do not know this and neither do you because Jed has never challenged the block. THAT is the whole point.

"To clarify, my request to WP:AE invoked WP:PSCI, but I realized the problem about Cold Fusion not being covered by it and later requests didn't invoke it" - OK, well at least we have found a point that we can agree on. I am curious though, if you truly believe that Rothwell is already WP:BANned why are you still lobbying for a ban? If that is the case haven't you already won?

"And you say that me requesting a formal warning of discrectionary sanctions is not evidence of a ban ..." - This is correct. Requesting a formal warning does NOT constitute evidence that a ban already exists (if anything is suggests the exact opposite). It does not, for that matter, actually constitute evidence that you were ultimately seeking to have him banned (although I certainly accept that this would have been your intent). That statement only serves as evidence that you requested a formal warning of discretionary sanctions and nothing further ... and this is something that you failed to get BTW. Let us not forget that little point.

"so go appeal Jed's ban block already dude." - Sorry, not my place. That is for Jed to do, not me.

"If you keep bringing up the non-existance of Jed's ban in the middle of discussions of Abd's ban then I will report you for tendentious editing and general disruption." - Well, you do what you think is right but in that case it would be you creating the disruption, not me, just like when you took Abd's declaration that he was going to ignore wikiepdia user WMC's purported ban to AN. There was no real point to discuss but you made a big flap anyway. --GoRight (talk) 02:23, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

You are choosing again to ignore the conditions set at WP:BAN#Community_ban by wikilawyering about Jed not being really banned until he contests his indefinite block, which is not a requirement that appears at that page. Btw, I notice that you make incidence in that I failed to get that WP:AE petition, without mentioning that Jehochman closed it because Jed had stopped editing, so misrepresentation again. About other stuff in your comment, hey, at least we can agree on some points :P

Well, this is going in circles. If you bring up again Jed's ban in the middle of other ban discussions, then, well.... first I'll check if your comment is actually causing disruption... and check if you brought it up as a legitimate example... you know, in case I'm just being too picky about stuff, or simply blinded by my annoyance at this sort of circular discussions. If I see that you cause disruption, then I'll just go and report you somewhere for disruption and dead horse hitting, and point people to this comment and to this discussion. Other people can decide who is the one causing disruption. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:46, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

"You are choosing again to ignore the conditions set at WP:BAN#Community_ban by wikilawyering about Jed not being really banned until he contests his indefinite block ..." - I am not ignoring anything. Like I said, because of the indefinite block he is effectively banned in the sense that he is not allowed to evade his block (which is all WP:BAN#Community_ban means). My position is in 100% agreement with that section. So, like I have said many times before and you still don't seem to understand the point ... Jed is effectively banned, although not technically so, by virtue of being indefinitely blocked which is not at all the same thing as being WP:BANed by community discussion and consensus (there, is that precise enough for you?). Note that he is not listed at the location designated for recording such discussions and community bans.

Again, unless and until Jed challenges the block we won't know whether any uninvolved admins will be willing to unblock, and until then any declaration of his having been banned are premature.

"I notice that you make incidence in that I failed to get that WP:AE petition, without mentioning that Jehochman closed it because Jed had stopped editing" - My statement was a simple statement of fact. You asked for a warning and none was issued. Period. Jehochman's reasons for closing aren't particularly germain to my point which is why I didn't mention them. For example, now that you have pointed out his rationale for closing notice that the validity of my point remains unchanged. You still haven't received the warning that you asked for. Thus, the point you raise is irrelevant and unnoteworthy in the context of my statement.

And if Jed has stopped editing who's comments are those that keep being reverted? Do we have a Rothwell imposter on the loose or something? This point is similar to when you keep going on and on about how we need to ban Rothwell while at the same time claiming that he is already banned. --GoRight (talk) 22:45, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Dude, stop getting stuff wrong. Jehochman closed the AE thread because Jed had stopped editing in those days. Jed edited again later, but only days after after Jehochman's close, and his edits finally caused the ANI thread. He hasn't edited in a while, but that's been in the last few weeks, not when that thread was closed.

(and about WT:BAN, yeah, it seems that you were right about an unblock request being needed for the second condition to apply. Hum, the ANI thread probably doesn't show enough consensus by uninvolved editors to declare him banned by the first or the third conditions :P And, since he hasn't been editing in the last few weeks, it's probably not worth the pain of opening another discussion just to ask the community if he should be considered banned, unless he starts returning again.... or unless people start reposting Jed's comments with the argument that they can do that because he's not banned :P ) --Enric Naval (talk) 04:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

You have been on this kick for a long time, Enric. Anyone may revert back in edits of a blocked or banned editor, and the "ban" makes no difference. The editor reverting back in is responsible for the edit, as if they had made it themselves. This is very well established. I reverted back in the removed spelling correction from ScienceApologist to Cold fusion, as one example. The argument you imagine people will give is stupid. The editor signs his edits, so you can know it's Rothwell, and JedRothwell is blocked, and no new account has been established. So the IP edits are "block evasion," technically, though Rothwell isn't exactly making true evasive moves, or else he wouldn't sign the edits. You can revert his edits, but you are not required to, just as you were not required to remove the edits of that Nrcprm2026 sock, and it was petty to remove them if they were standing. However, when you have removed my restoration of useful material from him, you were, in fact, revert warring with me. You could have been sanctioned for that.... but I very rarely request sanctions over something so trivial. Strike that. Not very rarely. Just not. --Abd (talk) 21:11, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

That isn't policy, practice says it isn't policy, it is not "establishied" policy, and simply repeating it doesn't make it policy. Verbal chat 21:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Abd, please see WP:BAN#Enforcement_by_reverting_edits, there is an actual difference between reverting the edits of indef-blocked editors and those of banned editors. And see WP:EVADE, for block evasion it doesn't matter if he signs his posts or not, he is still evading his block. If he pretended to be someone else then it would be both block evasion and sockpuppetry. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:56, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't say that there is an "actual difference," for, in fact, this is true for blocked editors as well. As to block evasion, that's tricky. An editor doesn't use an account for three years, but edits IP, which is his right. The old account is then blocked. Is it suddenly ban or block evasion and sock puppetry? Sure, you can consider it so, but only technically. Generally, Rothwell IPs aren't blocked, even though he doesn't rapidly hop, there are a few exceptions. (JzG charged block evasion in January, but, in fact, there hadn't been any, and certainly there was no deliberate evasion. JzG had misindentified and blocked another IP, not Rothwell, showing how much disruption can be caused by zealous enforcement of blocks and bans, sometimes.) I am now researching a case of an editor who was blocked for sock puppetry in 2007, and who continues to be blocked when discovered; there were POV issues, the blocking admins have been heavily involved in issues of interest to the editor. It's unclear what happened, but there wasn't any reason for indef block other than a single alleged sock puppet, which actually wasn't checkuser confirmed, but was only asserted based on WP:DUCK, which sometimes is misapplied. I didn't see evidence, so far, of actual disruption, aside from what ensued as a result of the blocks. Human nature is to defy restrictions, among a very substantial set of the population. We create disruption by blocking, there should be very good reasons. --Abd (talk) 18:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

No, WP:BAN is for banned editors, not for editors who are "only" indef-blocked, and not for editors who are temporaly blocked. It's only for banned editors.

Jed knew that he was banned from the talk page and edited it anyways. JzG blocked the wrong IPs, but the intent was clear. Jed knew that he was topic banned because he posted at the thread reminding of it right before he was blocked (this time JzG got the right IP), and the first posting that he made the IP already had a notice from JzG announcing the ban (just search for "considered banned" to find it). I can understand that in his first edit he didn't understand it, but it should have been clear to him by the time he made his last posting under that IP. And, yes, you are right that he wasn't technically evading a block since no IP that he had used had actually been blocked, so JzG made a mistake in his block summary. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:32, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Jed knew that JzG, an involved administrator with a long history of negative interaction with Rothwell, had declared a ban. Rothwell isn't particularly wiki-sophisticated. All this meant to him was that an admin was throwing his weight around.... This is why admin use of tools when involved is quite serious, it completely trashes our reputation for neutrality. --Abd (talk) 19:54, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

He knew that he was banned from the page and he posted anyways. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:43, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Nrcprm2026 arbitrary break 2

(Resume original indenting)

I'm not going to argue this extensively here because it's a waste of time. Just one point: You described a "premeditated plan." A premeditated plan is not a conspiracy, which, by definition, is a preplanned plot by more than one person. There was reference to this apparent game plan of Hipocrite's before he was unbanned, the unban was just an occasion for a specific mention. There is strong evidence that Hipocrite knew exactly what he was doing, and he had a specific goal. You came here to edit articles? Fine. If you throw shit at other editors and contributors, don't be surprised if some of it falls back on you. --Abd (talk) 12:05, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

You mean throwing shit like baselessly accusing people of conspiring to ban people? Sure enough, some might fall back on you XD --Enric Naval (talk) 12:58, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

No, that's not what I mean, because I made no such accusation. If I'm wrong, please point it out, and please distinguish between a possible plan by Hipocrite (perhaps alone) and a "conspiracy," which means more than one person acting according to a plan. If you have no evidence, please retract the accusation. Otherwise, duck and cover, shit coming down. --Abd (talk) 15:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I had too much free time in my hands, so I searched for some diffs:

• "Hipocrite, through the ban, had accomplished his mission at the article, (...) WMC may have been guilty of an overreaction, an understandable one, but Enric Naval knows what he's doing. To set the stage here, he was, at the least, in reckless disregard of the truth, framing and presenting a highly misleading picture (...) I now believe that Hipocrite's goal was to provoke responses from me that would result in a ban or block."

• "You have been trying to get me banned for quite some time, that will all come out. It's all in the history, Enric. And you helped ban the other experts from the article or talk page, two of them, it's a long-term pattern. (...)" (at least you then recognize that I am actually helpful sometimes)

Anyways, I was trying to parse one of your latest comments in a moment of boredom, and I found this funny statement "(...) with the virtual cabal that I'm facing (...)". I suppose that you should read WP:TINC (There Is No Cabal). I'll just quote the best part "If you attack people who oppose you as if they were a collective with an agenda against you, then whether they were or not, they will certainly become one. There is no cabal conspiring against you unless you created it. Also, consider that if many people disagree with you, it may be just because you are wrong and/or in violation of the site policies (such as WP:UNDUE)." --Enric Naval (talk) 16:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

"Virtual cabal" means a group of editors who act cooperatively in maintaining or asserting content or wikipolitical positions without actually being a cabal, i.e., a specific conspiracy. We see this, for example, with fringe editors who will back each other up and who may be able to get away with it underneath the radar. More of a problem, though, because it's more persistent, is Majority POV pushing. In other words, "virtual cabal" means "there is no conspiracy." That's why the word "virtual is there." If I'd meant conspiracy, I would have just said "cabal." That you think it means the opposite shows how you jump to conclusions. Watch, Enric, we'll see how many people disagree with me when the matter is raised where a few editors shouting won't have any effect. If you are right, hey, I win, because I end up spending more time with my children and grandchildren. --Abd (talk) 01:35, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

*I* think that this means that you want to have your cake and eat it too. in other words, saying that there is a cabal while at the same time denying that you ever implied such a thing. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:00, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I am curious as to how you would describe the situation that Abd refers to. Hypothetically, of course, if you believed that there was a group of editors, or several disparate groups of editors in different topic areas, whose editing practices had the effect of being a Cabal without their actually being in a conspiracy how would you describe such groups? What term would you use to convey the concept? --GoRight (talk) 16:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but no hypothesis for me, they tend to end up in long argumentations taht lead nowhere, see my other comments about me coming to wikipedia to edit articles and not to have long-winded arguments. Point at a group that actually exists and I might look to see if it's a cabal or if it's just something else. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm saying that there is a significant constellation of editors who have an effect similar to that of a cabal. There are probably quite a number of these, but I've only encountered and been able to clearly identify one. Like many other distinctions, this one seems lost on you. Above, responding to GoRight, you string together events that were quite different, i.e., "he said this then did that," when there were intervening events that made a shift in intentions clear. The ready manufacture of ABF accusations is one of the cabal traits. I've had occasion, now, to correspond extensively with Jed Rothwell, and your concept of how pleased he allegedly is to discover that he can IP sock is laughable. He really WP:DGAF. Misplaced Pages is not anywhere near the center of his universe. When he stopped editing articles, he stopped using the old account; from his point of view, why bother? He comments on cold fusion issues because that is what he does. Not just here, all over the internet. He's been doing it for more than fifteen years. He's not, under present conditions, suited to be a Misplaced Pages editor, he considers it a waste of time, which is why his block hasn't been challenged. But I've reviewed a lot of his past posts, and he was generally quite accurate on the science, just quite blunt and judgmental about the intelligence of some Misplaced Pages editors. It's not uncommon for experts to think like that, look at Shanahan's attitude.... --Abd (talk) 12:30, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

About Jed, I'll quote his own words "(...) If there is some mechanism within Misplaced Pages that is supposed to be blocking me, evidently it is not working. That is no concern of mine. I am pleased to learn that your methods of censorship sometimes fail, but I am not taking any steps to overcome them, since I do not what they are are. (...)"

Also "Ah ha! I see that the "talk" pages are IP based. That's a dumb way to do it. And apparently you people are trying to ban me by banning the IP. Good luck! You will have to ban all of BellSouth. Apparently they assign IP addresses dynamically. I did not realize what "IP hopper" meant, but I am glad to see that I have stumbled upon a method of defeating you, and annoying you."

To conclude, about your words above "your concept of how pleased he allegedly is to discover that he can IP sock is laughable. He really WP:DGAF". a) he was not "happy" like I said above, and he was not " pleased" like you said, in his own words he was "pleased" and "glad" at his disvocery b) I don't know why you considered that concept laughable, I personally found that Jed was getting enormous amounts of amusement from seeing us run in circles over his edits. In hindsight, I also find it slightly amusing, even if I was one of the editors running in circles. I suppose that in a few years I will be laughing when I remember the situation :P

About the cabal, I think that you should read WP:TINC with more attention, and start asking yourself if maybe so much people opposes simply because they think that you are wrong. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks like all your scheming was for nought, as Hipocrite has retired. Curses! Honestly though, sad to see him go. Never good to take this place at all seriously. Verbal chat 20:32, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, my very evil plans schewed by the human factor, how would have seen that coming. Yeah, Hipocrite took it too seriously. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia request for comment

Since you have in the past taken part in related discussions, this comes as a notification that the Centralized discussion page set up to decide on a comprehensive naming convention about Macedonia-related naming practices is now inviting comments on a number of competing proposals from the community. Please register your opinions on the RfC subpages 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:35, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Page numbers for harvnb refs

Hi Enric, you might want to check out {{rp}} and its doc page. LeadSongDog come howl 18:22, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Cold fusion neutron claim date

The findings were reported in 2008. The Naturwissenschaften paper was published on-line October 1, 2008, and then in print for the January, 2009 issue.

From the first page of the paper: Naturwissenschaften (2009) 96:135–142 DOI 10.1007/s00114-008-0449-x

Received: 30 July 2008 / Revised: 3 September 2008 / Accepted: 14 September 2008 / Published online: 1 October 2008 (c) Springer-Verlag 2008

We may cite the print publication as January, 2009, but the "report" is definitely 2008. I believe this work was announced earlier at ICCF-14, as well, but I haven't checked that today. --Abd (talk) 16:02, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I sort of remember that it had been announced sooner, but I think that it didn't get repercusion in mainstream media until it was announced during the ACS meeting in the 20th anniversary of Cold Fusion? That sentence should probably read "In 2008 Mossier-Boss reported (...). It received wide media coverage when it was announced in the 20th Anniversary of CF during the 237th ACS' annual meeting." --Enric Naval (talk) 16:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

That's correct. Except that this wasn't simply a commemoration of the 20th anniversary, it was an unprecedented extended seminar. The press release should be read. By the way, I disagree with the theory that this got coverage merely because of the 20th anniversary. Neutrons were the holy grail of the skeptics. "Where are the neutrons? If there were neutrons, we'd believe this was nuclear." Now, definitely, there are vastly too few neutrons to account for the excess heat, so there is still the problem with classical fusion theory, unless we realize that, indeed, there are other possible reactions than simple d-d fusion, but ... if there is no nuclear reaction, there should be no neutrons at all, other than the few from cosmic radiation, and the SPAWAR neutron findings are roughly ten times background, repeated in many experiments. Neutrons got attention, like nothing else has since 1989. --Abd (talk) 01:26, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

From the press release. The actual report was presented in 2009, even if the related paper was published 3-4 months before "The report, which injects new life into this controversial field, will be presented here today at the American Chemical Society’s 237th National Meeting.". From the same source "It is among 30 papers on the topic that will be presented during a four-day symposium, “New Energy Technology,” March 22-25, in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the first description of cold fusion".

So, yeah, the sentence would be more accurate if instead of "announced in the 20th Anniversary (...)" it said "presented in a symposium held at the ACS' 237th annual meeting in conjuction with the 20th Anniversary".

As for being an "unprecedented extended seminar", I see that the APS already held several meetings, in 2007 having two sessions of about two hours each: Cold fusion I and Cold fusion II. And the ACS also had a symposium in 2007. I suppose that we could be using this source and some other to say that the interest in the field appears to be increasing in the last years, with the ACS and the APS accepting symposiums and stuff. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:05, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It's continuing. There is a new Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook being prepared for publication this year. More papers are appearing in Naturwissenschaften. You mention the pop sources as the reason why the SPAWAR neutron work is in the article. Great. But what about what is supposed to be our preferred sources? Peer-reviewed secondary sources. Hipocrite was reverting out text that had two or three peer-reviewed secondary sources and one academic published secondary source behind it. And you stood and watched, and cheered when I was banned. It will fall back on you, Enric. That's the way the universe works. There will be an alternative energy sources session at the ACS meeting in San Francisco in 2010, even more cold fusion work. The Italian energy agency, ENEA, has issued a new report on cold fusion that essentially confirms that excess heat is simply a fact, there is so much evidence for it (which is quite consistent with the 2004 DoE review, the 50% "not conclusive" rejection there simply represented skepticism because of the presumed lack of theory. 50% "convincing" and 50% "not conclusive" is more than half, almost certainly, "weight of evidence favors." I today was reading the EPRI report from 1998. It considered excess heat as an established experimental fact, the only question was nuclear origin.

You should be aware that hydrino theory proposes a non-fusion cause for excess heat, right? It's a form of chemistry, if it's real, simply a very unexpected one. I don't favor that theory, but it's notable; it was in the article, and accepted, when WMC took it out while under protection. What do you think? Do you think it was proper to remove reliably sourced and balanced information from the article about notable theories which propose explanations for cold fusion, and continue to pretend that there aren't any? --Abd (talk) 21:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

When mainstream sources say that this these theories are accepted by the scientific community, then that will be a different situation. We already had discussions on why there were problems with those sources. That being said, no problem with adding in the article that the ACS and APS now make cold fusion meetings when they didn't make them before. I'm still a bit stuck with the patents thing. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:32, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Problems with your response, Enric.

• Misplaced Pages depends on WP:RS and not on subjective editorial judgment of what sources are "mainstream." We have RS secondary source coverage of the theories, from independent publishers. If they have not been widely accepted -- or even narrowly accepted -- that is a matter for how the facts are framed. If they are covered in RS, and particularly in secondary sources, they are notable. If they are notable, they belong in the project somewhere.
• The article has a section on "Proposed explanations." It is not a section on "Explanations accepted by mainstream science."
• "Cold fusion" is itself a theoretical explanation of a set of observed experimental phenomena. You wouldn't argue that we shouldn't cover cold fusion because it isn't accepted, would you?
• My position on the article has been that we should firmly stick to WP:RS, but only that we should apply it evenly; what I've seen in the last six months is that weak sources are asserted to deny cold fusion, and stronger sources are excluded. For the science, we should rely on peer-reviewed secondary sources or academic secondary sources, but it seems that if a source appears to favor cold fusion, ipso facto, it will be claimed, that's not a "mainstream source." This is long-term POV pushing.

As to patents, you should see what's pending! .

In my view, the material on patents has ballooned out of proportion for the article, and relies on primary sources (or secondary sources for law whose application to the article's topic is speculative). We have some very simple proposed text in the mediation. What's wrong with that? --Abd (talk) 18:35, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

See "scientific focus" at the Fringe science Arbcom case and other principles like "Relevant comparisons", "Advocacy", "Citations", etc. Other editors don't agree with your assessment of the sources.

About the patents, I'll reply to your question if you post it at the mediation page. I don't see any benefit from forking the discussion to this page, so I won't start discussing here. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:45, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

(noindent) Abd knows very well that hydrino theory has been discredited, yet he continues mentioning it. He has also stated that science articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica are not written by experts. What he writes never ceases to amaze me. Mathsci (talk) 23:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, this is an encyclopedia, not a science textbook. I do not support hydrino theory. However, it is a notable "proposed explanation" for some of the phenomena called "cold fusion." As originally proposed, you would know, I assume, it is a non-nuclear explanation for the excess heat and lack of radiation, through there may be versions of hydrino theory that allow the alleged hydrinos to shield the coulomb effect. Do you deny there are reliable sources regarding this theory? If you do, that does indeed amaze me. It's notable enough that there is reliable source arguing against it! (Though mostly primary source.)

I don't think that I've exactly said what you claim about encyclopedias, what I do claim is that encyclopedia articles are not, in general, edited by experts. They may or may not be written by them; some experts would assign the writing to someone else anyway. Depends. What is a fact is that experts review the articles. That is often missing here, but the reverse situation, that an expert controls the article, is sometimes just as bad. With no expert review, we get inaccurate articles. With expert control, we may get unintelligible articles, or, sometimes, a POV with no extra charge, if there is any significant controversy in the field.

If you want to be useful, Mathsci, there are theories now that don't involve new physics, and conceptually I can understand them, but the math is beyond me. Perhaps you could take a look? I have a friend who is a quantum physicist working on it, but the more the merrier. Kim, Naturwissenschaften, May 2009. There is also a video available of Kim explaining his Bose-Einstein theory for LENR at a seminar sponsored by Robert Duncan (physicist) at , and if you would like to not be so totally ignorant of what's been going on in the field, you could look at some of the other videos as well. The math is more intense in Takahashi's latest papers. I don't know if you can get a copy of the peer-reviewed Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, published in 2008 by the American Chemical Society and Oxford University Press, those obscure fringe science advocacy groups, where Takahashi goes pretty thoroughly into the math of his Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate (TSC) theory, but there is another paper of his just published in the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, pp 33-44, which appears to cover much the same territory.

It seems to me, and I've been checking this out, that both these proposed explanations, that of Kim and that of Takahashi, are variations of each other. Takahashi's TSC appears to be a Bose-Einstein condensate. When Takahashi's theory was first mentioned at Talk:Cold fusion, the idea was pooh-poohed by assuming what would be true for free space and plasma fusion: if 2D fusion is rare, 3D fusion would be very very rare and 4D fusion utterly insanely rare. However, this isn't Kansas any more. It's a lattice, and inside the lattice, deuterium is dissociated; but at the surface, we have D2 gas, the molecular form. As I understand Takahashi's theory, if one D2 molecule becomes confined by a cubic site in the lattice, all that happens is that it dissociates and moves inward, as individual deuterons, or it escapes outwardly. If a D2 molecule and a single deuteron are confined, the same. However, if two D2 molecules become confined even transiently, the four deuterons would presumably be arranged in the most efficient packing, i.e, they would be in a tetrahedron. Similarly to the Oppenheimer-Phillips process, presumably they would be polarized, "proton ends" out, so the neutrons could approach more closely and the strong force might take over. The phenomena of Bose-Einstein condensates, specifically the behavior of the electrons, may also shield the Coulomb repulsion to some degree. What Takahashi predicts from his mathematical techniques is that, if the TSC forms, it fuses 100%, I think it takes a femtosecond or so.

I wondered why ScienceApologist thought the obscure O-P article so important that he put it first on his list of articles he was asking ArbComm for permission to edit. I think I know now. I was totally naive about it, I became interested in that article simply because I'd noticed that Enric, who means well but is clueless about the science, had rather badly mangled it. Enric, of course, did good by his efforts, by attracting correction, though it was a little iffy for a while when he reverted total nonsense back in, perhaps based on your generous opinion about my lack of knowledge, but when SA showed up, Enric sensibly disappeared for the most part. And I think we ended up with a much better article.

Enjoy. --Abd (talk) 00:16, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Remember to post that question at the mediation page. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:09, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

What question? --Abd (talk) 16:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The question "What's wrong with ". Although I made later a comment at the mediation that probably answered your question. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:27, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Again what Abd writes is simply wrong about the Encyclopedia Britannica or dedicated mathematical encyclopedias. Does he write this kind of thing because he believes it should be true, even if it's contradicted by the publications? There are some very serious problems here. Mathsci (talk) 06:08, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

"Dedicated mathematical encyclopedias." Mathsci is welcome to describe the actual process, say for the Brittanica, but Misplaced Pages is a general encyclopedia, not one written solely for people who are already reasonably expert, and Misplaced Pages articles should be generally intelligible and informative. Articles aimed only at specialists don't belong here, in my opinion, but usually even a quite abstruse topic can be described sufficiently and intelligibly, with external links for more detailed and specialist information. If it's not generally intelligible, it's poor writing, no matter how "accurate" it is.

In general, we depend on how publishers function for notability decisions. Publishers designate editors, and editors edit in pursuit of the publisher's editorial policy. Writers often have different motivations, unless they are merely hacks, i.e., anonymous writers who work solely to put text together intelligibly, who frequently aren't experts in the field. The distinction between writer and editor is often lost on Misplaced Pages, where we call everyone an "editor," and much disruption is actually the classic cats-and-dogs relationship between writers and editors. Writers originate content, frequently from their own knowledge, and frequently can't be bothered to source everything unless forced to do so; sensibly, though, with good writers, who are quite valuable, careful sourcing will be done by an editor, in communication with the writer. "How do you know this? Is it just your own opinion? If so, shouldn't we state it as such?" Etc.)

The old saw about attorneys also applies to writers: The writer who self-publishes without independent review has a fool for an editor. And editors who don't respect writers should be fired. A good editor develops rapport with the writers and the product is thus both accurate and interesting to the intended readership. --Abd (talk) 16:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

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Conflict on Wikipilipinas about DZAM & DZAR

Is there a Radio Station like DZAM Commando Radio 1026? Is there a frequency like 1000 KHz in the Philippines? User:Lianlaspinas is the one responsible for doing DZAM Commando Radio 1026 & DZAR. Try fixing this problem in Wikipilipinas. Superastig (talk) 12:35, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

replied in Talk:DZAR#name_change_from_DZAM_to_DZAR. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Please see my additional comments on DZAR's talk page and Superastig's talk page. Thanks! -danngarcia (talk) 15:53, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Anti-Flame Barnstar
		For not taking the bait and keeping a cool head, despite provocation, in multiple areas that (apparently) provoke strong feelings. Verbal chat 13:18, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks :) It takes a bit of effort to keep my cool, more than once I have started writing a reply after just reading some thread, and I have had to rewrite it a few times until it's civilized enough to post it. Many times I write a reply and then I spend some time doing something else, and I re-read it to make sure that I'm not just saying something wrong in the heat of the moment.

Certainly, I spend too much time arguing in controversial articles. Let's see if I can get back in track and start making again actual work in article text :D --Enric Naval (talk) 20:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy

For your enlightenment:

• Mitchell and Webb: If Homeopathy Beats Science

• "Don't drink water - it remembers all the shit it had in it."

-- Brangifer (talk) 06:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment regarding conduct of User:Frei Hans

I have requested comment on the conduct of User:Frei Hans. As you have been involved in this dispute to some extent, I would appreciate it if you could comment. Papa November (talk) 14:59, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Harold Pinter

Hi. I have been working on the Harold Pinter article (you previously commented on the proposed ban of NYScholar from that article). If you are interested in the article or willing to help out, your input would be most welcome. Best regards! -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:54, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

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AGF-related suggestions

In your 12 July Cold Fusion/Cryptic_C62 post, does this symbol represent sticking a tongue at the reader?

  ":P"            

If so, could you do me a favor and express yourself a different way? Also, could you do me a favor and avoid calling CF a damned article? Some of us have worked very hard on it. Thanks. Olorinish (talk) 18:03, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't know that people would find those things offensive, I use them all the time at internet chats with no problem. I'll try to avoid those terms and that emoticon. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for you fast response. Maybe I am being prickly, but considering the combat that article has seen (including sock puppetry and arbcom attention), it is probably better to stay on the safe side. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying you are as bad as this guy: Olorinish (talk) 18:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem, you are right in that the article requires extra carefulness. Btw, about the video, I love it when he says "That's okay, we can just go to the edit history and click undo". --Enric Naval (talk) 19:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Anyone familiar with these papers?

Well, moi. Enric, there is plenty of reliable secondary source on charged particle radiation from cold fusion cells, it's a bit beyond me that you would think there was only primary source. Perhaps you believed people like Mathsci, ScienceApologist, Hipocrite? I stopped trying in the middle of May to put new sourced material in the article, and only later reasserted prior material, baldly reverted by Hipocrite, with additional sources. I was really seeing how far he would go with his brazen revert warring, one secondary RS should have been enough. There was one academic publication and two peer-reviewed reliable secondary sources for the Takahashi Be-8 theory by the time it was last reverted out by WMC. I'd have done the same with charged particle detection, and will, now that Hipocrite is probably out of the picture. I do still have a detail to take care of first, but I predict that won't be long. Thanks for your comments at the RfAr, they will, I predict, help encourage ArbComm to take the case, as will Mathsci's. WMC has not addressed the charges at all; JzG tried that tactic, it didn't work. I don't know if you realize what you may be calling down on yourself by making yourself a party before ArbComm. I was trying to confine this RfAr to the narrow question of admin action while involved, and you were merely an incidental part of that story, but now you are likely to be more centrally in the spotlight. Good luck.

The sources for the Be-8 theory: Independent academic publisher: Storms, 2007. Peer-reviewed secondary sources: Frontiers of Physics in China, He Jing-Tang, 2007. Mosier-Boss, the Triple Track paper, Naturwissenschaften, 2009, refers to it. Remember, all we are doing is mentioning the theory as a proposed explanation, not claiming it's valid! Charged particles, again, we would be mentioning as reported by multiple groups. This goes back to about 1990, with a Chinese paper in a PR journal that reported CR-39 evidence, which is necessarily charged particles. It didn't get a lot of attention, but it was covered by Hoffman in his Dialogue on chemically assisted nuclear reactions, which is secondary RS, in 1995. --Abd (talk) 00:07, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

"Frontiers of Physics in China".... haven't we talked previously about this journal? .... --Enric Naval (talk) 00:20, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure we have. It's a peer-reviewed journal, mainstream. Not terribly noticed here, to be sure. But it's Springer-Verlag and Higher Education Press. Editorial board. That we don't have an article on HEP shows how insular we can be, this is one of the top publishers in the world. I wrote a lot about the publisher, etc., in Talk:Cold fusion, back when I was doing more talking than editing the article. That's what I do when I'm learning about a subject, I research it and discuss it. You ought to try it sometime. Don't be confused by arguments over source quality that have to do with contradiction of sources. There is no contradiction of sources involved here that isn't synthesized by you. --Abd (talk) 02:08, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

My weak memory seems to recall a very long discussion in which you failed to accept the consensus that it was a new journal of unknown quality/reliability that shouldn't be taken as proof of anything. My weak memory also recalls that you kept bringing up the journal regularly saying that it was a RS, once and again and again and again and again, and that it was in that last discussion where I gave you that formal warning for bringing up the same issues again and again. And you bring it up here again, and if no other editors of the article had ever found a lot of problems with that source. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:00, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

If we follow RS standards, it's RS. In any case, this will be at mediation, right? You imagine consensus because you take a position, and a few editors who take consistently anti-cold-fusion positions agree. There was no consensus, and, in the last edit warring -- which I did not participate in -- the source in question was reverted back in, not by me, and was there as protected. The only "problem with the source" is that information in it is favorable to cold fusion, I'm quite sure that if it had been negative, you and your friends would be all over it claiming it was very important. As it would be! There is hardly any peer-reviewed reliable source negating the published research in the field. What you, and others, have done, is to confuse standards that are used when there is conflict of sources with standards that are used to determine inclusion. There is no conflict of sources on this. Do you have any peer-reviewed reliable source to assert that shows the conclusions of the Chinese paper are wrong? Can you claim that the publisher is not independent? Exactly what is the basis for the rejection of this source? Be specific. And, remember, this source was only being used to show the notability of the Be-8 theory by virtue of its mention in peer-reviewed secondary source, and this was only a supporting source, additional to Storms and Mosier-Boss, and are you really going to try to challenge the reputation of Naturwissenschaften? --Abd (talk) 16:31, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't ask me to rehash the arguments for you. Go to the very long discussion that I linked above and read it yourself, in the second and fourth comments on the thread Phil153 already raises a lot of issues, I raised that it contradicted higher quality sources, OMCV raised more problems about the quantity and quality of the references used in the paper. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

"Contradiction" is a synthetic judgment unless it's clear. What "higher quality source" does the Chinese paper contradict? I had, as I recall, three reliable sources on the Be-8 theory. The "quantity and quality of the references" used in the paper simply indicates that it was a brief review, not a deep one, that's all. You raised "contradiction," yes, but without citing any at all. And what guidelines indicate that is, if there is contradiction in reliable source, we include it all, somewhere. Please remember what the source was being used for, it was merely to establish notability for Takahashi's TSC (Be-8) theory. All we do in the article, if we use the section that, actually, you had helped edit, Enric, is to describe the theory as a proposed explanation. Do you deny that it is a proposed explanation? Again, what contradiction?

I think I know what contradiction you have in mind, and it is a diffuse one, and it's called "POV." It appears to you to contradict your POV, which you imagine to be scientific consensus. And that's what comes out with detailed discussion. --Abd (talk) 12:27, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

First, Phil153 also told you about the contradiction, second you proposed it to show that CF was accepted as a valid phenomena which does contradict other sources, third a low quality journal does not help to show notability for the Be-8 theory (mind you, if the theory had better sources I wouldn't have a problem to add it, altough making clear that it was not accepted by mainstream as a likely explanation at all), fourth read WP:FRINGE again, fifth I don't agree with your assesments of the sources and neither did other editors, sixth you are still refusing to accept consensus, septh mediation is thataway.

Eight, notice that in all the threads I linked above above you were using it as a RS to claim that the scientific community accepted cold fusion as a valid phenomena, it was only on the last one that you said that it also cited Takahashi's Be-8 hypothesis, no wonder that the debate on that journal got polarized. If this wasn't polarized we would have just said that it was low-quality and discarded it, but you refuse to accept that. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:00, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Enric, too often you have no clue as to what sources mean, nor to what editorial comments mean. I proposed the source to show that there is some acceptance of what we call CF phenomena, and, in particular, that there is notability, which is, indeed, in this case, an incident of acceptance as worthy of comment of the Be-8 theory, by the author and by the reviewers, and this is utterly undeniable. I have not proposed, and would not propose, "general acceptance," but your comment above implies that, thus confusing the issue. The context of the article makes clear that there is no "general acceptance" of cold fusion, as it should, but it is not necessary to repeat this with every attributed statement, and to imply that the general scientific community has rejected the Be-8 theory is not only unsourced, but untrue. Mostly it is unaware of it. However, if we were to limit our consideration to those at least moderately informed about recent research, it's quite obvious that, by now, the underlying experimental observations are widely accepted, possibly even by a majority, though there is no general agreement about theoretical explanations, not even in the CF research community. RS is RS, and judging it as "low quality" is highly vulnerable to subjective POV.--Abd (talk) 16:45, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Above you imply that the paper in Frontiers of Physics in China is not reliable source. On what guideline or policy do you base this? It meets the criteria, quite clearly, for independently published peer-reviewed reliable source, and it is also a secondary source, not a primary one, and thus a candidate for being preferred for the article. The issue of contradiction of sources remains, but you do not state any contradiction above. I will review the prior discussions to see if there was any specific contradiction with specific reliable source asserted. It's quite clear that there is contradiction with POV or conclusions as expressed in many non-peer-reviewed sources.

Reasons were explained to you in the discussions I linked above. As I also stated above, other editors just plain don't agree with your assessment of the sources. Also, without being an expert myself, I find that those editors consistenly give much better and more reasoned arguments than your own arguments. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, in the first thread, when I merely reported the existence of the source and it was attacked, even though eventually it was acknowledged that there might be some possible usage for this source, you wrote this:

It's probably contradicting the 2004 DOE report and Nature, the scientific consensus as reported by several New York Times article, the university press books that I added at Martin Fleischmann describing how most scientists don't think that cold fusion has shown any definitive proof, etc., although it's hard to say without seeing the conclusions, and the list of studies to see if it's covering experiments already covered by the other sources, and if it's raising points already criticized at the other sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Sources:

• 15
• 16

There is no contradiction with the peer-reviewed sources from 1989, nor with the 2004 DoE report (which was not peer-reviewed, and which showed major difference of opinion in the expert community), with a secondary source reviewing the body of research in 2007, showing recent evidence. Please show a contradiction, specifically. Statements in non-peer-reviewed sources to the effect that "cold fusion has not shown any definitive proof" may have been accurate as of the time of publication, but would not negate later review with different conclusions, since the statement is time-dependent. It means "not yet." Later claim that there is such definitive "proof" -- the word evidence should be used, not proof -- doesn't contradict the earlier claim. And the earlier claims you mention were not themselves based on peer-reviewed secondary source, but were only widely-held opinions. That's what Simons shows, if you were to actually read the book instead of just cherry-picking extracts as it suits you.

To address one point specifically, one of the Nature articles attempts to set an upper bound on cold fusion taking place, but it relies upon an assumption that free-space branching ratios and therefore neutron emissions would apply to whatever was taking place in the CF cells. It's quite clear that this assumption was just that, an assumption, and the Be-8 theory is a counterexample; if the TSC forms and collapses to Be-8, as Takahashi hypothesizes (and shows that the collapse would occur if formation occurs), no direct neutron emissions would be expected. There would be low-levels of indirect neutron emissions, as are actually found. It's being argued in the CF community that, if the Be-8 hypothesis is true, neutron and gamma emissions would be higher, from secondary reactions, though I've not seen any actual quantitative calculations showing that, but whatever is actually happening as the main process, it does not normally generate neutrons, so the basis for the Nature paper was off. Basically, the cold fusion community, with vast experimental work, has confirmed the experimental observations that were the basis for the Nature paper, though not the conclusions, which were reasonable at the time, but not later. --Abd (talk) 17:14, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Claims made in bad-quality sources that contradict statements made a few years ago from very-good-quality sources. Guess what, you need sources of comparable quality to say that those statements are no longer valid. Other editors don't agree that "Frontiers of Physics in China" is a RS even after hearing your arguments, you are just refusing to accept consensus. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Re: Temporal databases

Hi, i replied to your comment on temporal databases (basically, TSQL has nothing to do with TSQL2, despite the names) RonaldKunenborg (talk) 14:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Replied in Talk:Temporal_database#Why_end-date.3F. Thanks for the expert advice. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:19, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Ryan Postlethwaite 12:20, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much :) --Enric Naval (talk) 23:59, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley/Evidence

Hello Enric. I've just taken at look at your evidence in the Abd-William M. Connolley Arbitration case and I've noticed it is currently over 1650 words long. The maximum limit for evidence is 1000 words. Please can you cut your evidence down to the 1000 word maximum ASAP? Many thanks, Ryan Postlethwaite 10:16, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I was just about to ask the same thing; please try to cut this down some by Sunday (I noticed you said you'd still be working on it through then). If it's still over the limit by then, I will be refactoring it to bring it below that limit, which may remove some portions of your evidence or the points you're trying to make (although I will make an effort to avoid doing so if possible). Also, keep in mind there is a limit of 100 diffs as well; while you're not there yet, you are getting close. Hersfold 14:12, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

If necessary, I can put some of your evidence up under my name. Abd can't complain because he doesn't see anything wrong with proxying. Spartaz 15:26, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, please, the section called "Abd has received many good faith advice, etc" would be good, because I can't really shorten it. Later today I will shorten stuff and I will add parts from the last few months just to make sure that people can't argue that the evidence doesn't cover the time period of Abd's topic ban. Pity that I can't add all the warnings and advice that he has received over many months, because that would make it clear to him that the problem was about him not interiorizing advice received from multiple editors, and that it wasn't just me being picky about length of posts.

I'll leave you a message on your talk page when I'm done, then please review the section and make sure that you agree with what it says before moving it. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:14, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Cool. saves me looking through their contribs to find evidence. I lost the will to live just skimming their outpourings. Spartaz 19:20, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

@Ryan. I got it down to 1088 words, hope that's enough. I can't really cut it more. I'll make a statement now on the talk page about what stuff I wasn't able to include due to length issues. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:11, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

If necessary would you be willing to use a subpage or something? The reason I ask is I am someone that is an outsider in all of this who is trying to learn and understand this case which seems very detailed and the opinions differ greatly. I have been, though, reading your links that you are providing and links others provide. You are being a lot more detailed in your summary of things and you are also attempting to show a more rounded idea of things. I hate the fact that there is a word limit if it would prevent me from being able to form an informed opinion because the word limit prevented you from posting difs of information that would be useful for me and hopefully others that are uninvolved from seeing as many difs as possible. I would hope the arbcom members would also like to see as many difs as possible prior to them make any decision too. This case involves very active editors and should be given a full disclosure of things. Also, I am having trouble finding out so maybe you know, is there any off project conversations that uninvolved editors should be aware of? I got this hint that there could be on my talk page, a hint but not a definitive yes, that is there is outside conversations going on. Thank you in advance, I also thank you for all the time you have taken to try to show everyone what is going on. --CrohnieGal 18:01, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I already made one. I'll probably go and expand the envidence with more diffs (past tomorrow, because tomorrow I might be too busy), to really nail down how much advice was given to Abd over time. I'll also make a motion to expand and clarify the scope to consider Abd's overall behaviour over time, as this is giving problems in the workshop. I don't know of those off-wiki discussions, seeing who participates in your talk page it's probably about Abd asking TenOfAllTrades by private email to talk to WMC about his ban? I'll read your talk page and make some comment if necessary, and I'll notify you if I find another one while I search for diffs. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Thank you, you really have found so much already so take your time. I just wonder how fast it's going to move when the arbitrators start making their comments. I knew about the comments at TenOfAllTrades which was brought to my attentions by both editors at my talk. I appreciate though when you get that together you let me know so I can read some more. Thanks again, --CrohnieGal 19:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Abd/ADHD

Noticed you referred to that - I seem to recall during a discussion he claimed he could write shorter amounts of text but didn't want to - something about losing information by being concise, words to that effect. That would somewhat contradict his claim ADHD makes him write so much. Think it was an AN/ANI thread? Minkythecat (talk) 18:37, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

• undoubtedly an interminably long comment on their talk page during the JzG RFC. I lost the will to live at that point. Spartaz 19:19, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
  • See here in evidence and the subsections below it. The last diff is probable the one you are looking for. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:06, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Siberian tiger edits

Please see my comments on the talk page regarding the edits on the Amur tiger article. I created a new section instead of adding on the bottom of the "Internet hoax and "Youtube spammer" nonsense. My understanding was that the talk page already explained why some of those edits were proper but in looking at it maybe it was unclear. Anyway, I have attempted to summarize the reasoning on the talk page and ask that you review that paragraph when considering my edits. Note that I'm only actually removing one cited source (for reasons explained) and substituting another that I believe is more helpful (generally explaining that bears have been known to kill tigers rather than asserting 12 instances). I apologise if my reasoning for making the edits was unclear, hopefully the passage on the talk page is a suitable explanation. 71.248.14.64 (talk) 01:52, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Typo on ArbCom evidence page...

...I suspect you ask for time to July 27th. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:07, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Damn.... well, I fixed it. Thanks for warning me. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:41, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Controls in original cold fusion claims

Hi Enric, I know you removed it almost as soon as you asked it, maybe because it could have started a discussion that may have sidetracked your point, which was a good one. But if your question about a control experiment was intended as a serious question, I've been studying the history of cold fusion (not for Misplaced Pages; I doubt I'll ever care to get involved with that article again, but for something I'm writing in RL) and I can tell you that the question of whether Pons and Fleischmann did controls and what they found was answered in so many different contradictory ways by the researchers themselves that it's almost anyone's guess what they actually did and what they actually found. On March 28, five days after their press conference, Fleischmann was asked by researchers at Harwell if they'd done a light water control; he answered that they "hadn't had time;" in other words, his answer was no. When the paper was made available (unofficially by someone getting hold of a copy and faxing it to colleagues who faxed it to other colleagues) on March 31, it was immediately obvious to everyone who saw it that it didn't include a control experiment; neither did the final (published) paper, nor did the errata published a few weeks later mention any controls. Surely by then they must have realized that the lack of a control was a big problem, so if they did have results to report from a control experiment, you'd think they would have added them to the errata, at least. That they didn't, suggests to me that either they didn't have a control, or that they'd done a control and that the results didn't support their claim and they didn't want to publicize that.

But aside from the lack of controls reported in their published paper, there were conflicting reports about controls elsewhere within the first few weeks. On April 5, Chase Peterson, president of the University of Utah, told the press that there had been a control with light water and that it "produced no significant heat." On April 9, according to Taubes, Pons told a colleague privately that they had done a control and got excess heat with light water as well as heavy water, and that "This is the most exciting thing, this cold fusion works in light water too" but said he wasn't allowed to talk about it (presumably by the DOE). At the ACS meeting in Dallas on April 12, Pons was asked if they'd done a light water control and said yes, and then after a pause, added "Several people are looking at that right now, including ourselves... ..that sort of reaction might be interesting," but no followup questions were asked. On the same day at a conference in Sicily, Fleischmann answered the same question by saying "I'm not prepared to discuss it." There are many more examples of inconsistent and even mutually contradictory answers to the question, but that gives a flavor and I wouldn't want to swamp your talk page. A year or so later, Pons and Fleischmann published another paper which listed, according to Taubes, "fourteen control experiments, five of which had palladium electrodes in light water, and two of these, they claimed, had been done before March 23, 1989..." which begs the question, why, if they had those controls prior to March 23, they didn't publish them in their original paper. It makes no sense, and scientists were left to draw their own conclusions, which they have. Woonpton (talk) 16:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

diff of removal for reference.

You are right, I thought that it would just derail the discussion.

Ah, the article doesn't mention the control thing? Gotta love these controversial topics with their contradictory sources and their main characters contradicting themselves in those issues that might make them look bad.... Also, yet another important bit of info that the article lacks -.- .... I'm still angry with myself for failing to notice this problem before. God knows for how long was our article saying that it was P&F who decided to betray Jones in their own, instead of them caving in to the pressures of their university. Way to comply with WP:BLP. Misplaced Pages, Fuck Yeah!! Coming again to save the motherfucking day. Funny that supporters of cold fusion didn't notice that bit either, mind you, it reinforces my belief that nobody ever actually reads the articles, lol.

Well, I normally solve these problems by using the same strategies that I use in historic articles: I cite some secondary RS that has noticed the same problem and has made an analysis of it. I think that Simon's book has a recount of those days where this issue might appear. As a secondary source, I sort of recall that maaaaybe it makes some statement about how it's not clear how and when the controls were done, and how this helped casted doubts at a certain important moment of the process of rejection of CF, although Simon uses much more complicated words to say it. Park also makes his own conclusions out of the incident, and maybe also Huizenga. I'll have to purchase from Amazon a few of these books (simon, huizenga, park, taubes, maybe Close) so I don't have to rely in books.google.com with its non-viewable-pages-in-the-middle-of-the-section-that-I-need-to-verify. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:23, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Taubes covers this in some detail, both in the text and in a lengthy endnote, and Huizenga also gives it good attention. Simon's lack of neutrality, which I suspect is an inadvertent result of his spending too much time with cold fusion advocates and not having the scientific background to understand the thing from a scientist's perspective, rather than a deliberate promotion of the aims of cold fusion advocates, makes his book less useful as a reliable source. There's a definite POV to his portrayal of science's dismissal of cold fusion as a conspiracy to suppress good science as a way of protecting the interests of physicists; the record, and the reports of neutral secondary sources, simply don't support that. Woonpton (talk) 17:49, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I have noticed that. Still, his book has restricted view at books.google.com, so I can check it out, and the others don't, or they have less pages available. Which is why I want to buy the dead tree version, so I can use 100% of all the sources. I think that other sources mention that Huiznega's book was the most influential book in the post-announcement debacle, and I have only seen from it a few quotes.

Also, Simon seems to cover the little details quite well, and it's interesting because he tries to cover the events from the philosophy of science and ethic of science viewpoints and not just from the narration point. This mean that I can use him to nail the relationship of the naked facts with the evolution of the perception of the field by the scientific community. It's not just that X said Y, it's that X said Y becasue of Z and because of R and S had just happened, and this later caused T to happen due to its influence in the thinking of U. I want to see if those other books say that too.

Also, Simon is from 2002, so it has a bit more perspective, and it can see how the field evolved years later. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:13, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Umm, this is so different from my perception on having read the book, that I wonder if we're talking about the same book. Bart Simon, Undead Science? If so, I think you're putting much more faith in this as a reliable neutral source than it merits. Taubes and Huizenga are both much better on supplying minute detail and context than Simon, and besides, as I said before, the "context" Simon puts everything in is a false context, that of a conspiracy against cold fusion which simply isn't supported by the facts and by an objective view of history, and what few details he chooses to include tend to be details that support that theory.

As far as the issue under discussion here, the lack of consistent information about controls coming from the researchers themselves, he provides almost no detail but simply refers to it very generally in passing, saying that Pons and Fleischmann's answers to questions about controls were "troubling," adding that scientists varied on how they viewed this evasion: "Some suggested that their hands were tied because of patent restrictions, others suggested that they did not have enough data to talk about their experiments competently." Then he goes on to say that the troubling nature of Pons and Fleischmann's replies to questions about controls was mooted by an independent replication, including controls, by Robert Huggins of Stanford; Simon's description of this research says "More importantly, Huggins also ran a series of control experiments using light instead of heavy water. The light-water cells produced no discernible excess heat..." This description fits Simon's theory, but is simply not consistent with the facts. Huggins' controls with light water gave heat approximately 1.5 degrees lower than the experiments with heavy water, which according to Chuck Martin of Texas A&M, who found the same thing, can be explained by the difference in conductivity between light and heavy water. In other words, Simon dispenses with the inconsistencies about P-F's controls or lack thereof by stating that the controls provided by Huggins were definitive and settled the question, when that's simply not the case. My impression is that Huggins' "replication" was later withdrawn entirely, but I got that from Seife and I don't seem to have made a note of it, so I can't confirm that precisely, since Seife has gone back to the library. Seife would be a good source BTW. Sun in a bottle: the strange history of fusion and the science of wishful thinking, by Charles Seife, 2008. It covers all the various discredited claims of discoveries of fusion so there is just one chapter on the Pons and Fleischmann version of cold fusion, but it's quite good.Woonpton (talk) 20:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I went to the library and checked out Seife again to check my vague recall that Huggins had later withdrawn his report of replication. That turned out to be not quite accurate; he didn't withdraw the report of replication, but the problems that had been found with it by other scientists had pretty much destroyed its value as a "replication of cold fusion." Woonpton (talk) 00:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Since I haven't read the other books, I can't really compare and see if Simon is selectively citing details. I assume that you are correct in that Simon does. However, Simon is a science sociologist, and as such he gives insights that other sources are just not going to give. Anyways, I'll just try to get a hold of those books, and cross-check the details in the article that are sourced to Simon to make sure that I didn't source anything incorrectly.

By the way, couldn't you add Seife's book to the article and add Huggin's experiment and cite the problems with the controls? --Enric Naval (talk) 00:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Um, no, I couldn't, sorry. Rather than try to explain why not, I'll just point to the email from Kirk Shanahan that Mathsci posted on the case somewhere; that echoes very well my own view about trying to edit the cold fusion page, or any page where science and superstition meet. Not that I'm an expert in cold fusion as Shanahan is, but I am very solidly grounded in science and especially in statistics and in reading, interpreting and summarizing research literature, and like Shanahan, I don't see any hope in ever getting that article to NPOV and keeping it there, nor do I see it as a good use of my time and energy to work toward that end; it would be as futile as tilting at windmills, or ploughing the sea. The cold fusion advocates will never allow it to stay neutral, and the quality of content, unless Misplaced Pages takes strong steps to curb such advocacy, will forever be compromised by their efforts.

Simon does give some good context for the aftermath, in describing the dynamics and interconnections and sense of persecution by which scientists who have marginalized themselves by hanging onto discredited science become more and more insulated and self-reinforcing, and certainly that should be part of the article. But he doesn't seem to understand enough about science to be able to understand and cover why cold fusion was so thoroughly discredited in the first place. It's really pretty simple, why scientists turned against cold fusion. For example, I was at a family reunion this week, and one of my brothers-in-law, a chemistry professor emeritus, asked me what I've been thinking about lately. I said, "Well, as a matter of fact, I've been thinking about cold fusion." He proceeded to tell me about his reaction to the cold fusion business at the time it was happening. He said that a colleague in his department brought him a pre-publication copy of the Pons and Fleischmann paper and asked his opinion. He read it over, said it was a bad paper and that some of it, like the estimate of the pressure within the lattice, was just plain wrong and the rest looked fishy; he didn't see enough data or rationale to back up their claims to make it worth his time to try to reproduce it. This was just one chemist, not in a big research university on the east coast but in a state college in the midwest. The idea that was begun by the Wall Street Journal on April 12, 1989 and quickly taken up by cold fusion advocates, that the opposition to the research came from physicists in big research labs on the east coast, is just, well, not supported by evidence. It makes a comforting excuse for their research not getting funded and so forth, but the data just don't support it. And it's instructive, I think, that Simon simply repeats that meme without questioning it, even though most of the people who criticized the research and couldn't replicate it were chemists, not physicists. At any rate, I'll leave you to your own devices; I'm sure you'll do the best for the article that you can. BTW, I haven't read the below and don't intend to; the first phrase was insulting enough that I didn't care to read any further. At any rate, one thing about Abd's writings is that they are endlessly repetitive, so I expect I've seen it all before, on the case pages of this case and the previous cold fusion case, on various user talk pages, and on the cold fusion talk page, and I haven't seen anything persuasive in any of it yet. Good luck, Woonpton (talk) 00:16, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll take care not to source scientific stuff directly from Simon (I have also seen the same critic at some places, even from CF advocates, that Simon's book was weak on the scientifc part)

Notice that the article doesn't currently say anything about chemist being more positive towards CF than physicists. That's partly because I asked Abd for a RS on that a couple of times, and he didn't give me any, he just asserted it again, using his own research as proof. The WSJ is not a good enough source because there no other sources supporting that interpretation, which is really weird because experts in philosophy of science would have gone like vultures over such a thing, and written volumes on how these two groups interpret "boundary work" in a different way, and given it names like social-epistemological, deconstructive, relativistic, methodologically-symmetryc, asymptotically-convergent, etc, and talked about how this bias affected how "closure" happens in scientific fields where both physics and chemistry are involved. There are a book in philosophy in science mentining CF and they don't say anything about this division in opinion. That means that RS that should be discussing it at length are not even giving any indication about it. So, no RS = no appearing in article.

P.D.: that WSJ article must be the one titled "Groups of physicists, releasing reams of data, dispute claims of cold fusion". --Enric Naval (talk) 17:34, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's a relief anyway, glad to hear it. I guess it's not hard to get confused about what's in the article when there is (or was, anyway) so much stuff being floated on the talk page that isn't actually in the article and shouldn't be in the article. That's very interesting information, and reassuring, thanks, to know that this myth that it's a division between physicists and chemists has no reliable sources to back it up, because it seems pretty obvious to me that it's a complete myth. To me, from what I've seen and read, it's a division between scientists, regardless of their field, who stayed grounded in the principles of what science is about and were holding their colleagues to those standards, and those who succumbed to wishful thinking to the extent that they forgot to be scientists. Actually Seife develops that idea quite a bit.

As to the Wall Street Journal, no, from the headline, that sounds like the story that would have reported the meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore on May 1, after most of the large groups working to replicate the effect had given up and reported negative results, and several of the important early but prematurely reported "replications" had been withdrawn as artifactual. The interesting thing is that the presentation at that meeting that seemed to be most persuasive to the attendees was not by a physicist, but by an electrochemist who, using actual data (which Pons and Fleischmann had never yet provided) effectively disputed the P-F claims, and received a standing ovation. The Wall Street Journal piece I'm talking about, to which Taubes and Seife trace the beginnings of the entrenched, self-interested physicists vs innovative, searching, new-paradigm chemists meme, was an editorial, an opinion piece rather than a news article, that ran on April 12 (strangely enough, while the jury was still out on the scientific merit of the claims, in other words, before it was reasonable to be drawing any conclusions); I don't know how its headline read. Woonpton (talk) 22:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

(Unindent) Woonpton, it is a huge relief to me that you have obviously done as much research as you have. The issue of controls in CF experiments is a deep and complex one. Yes, P and F did run some controls with light water, but the results weren't what they expected, for whatever reason. It should be realized that the P and F work on excess has been confirmed by hundreds of research groups, from peer-reviewed studies (I think the count is at 153), and much more from conference papers, and some of these groups report control results with light water. It's clear that with palladium electrodes, light water controls generate far less excess heat than do heavy water experiments. P and F did not report the light water controls because they didn't function as a clean baseline; part of the problem may be that light water does normally contain some deuterium; further, it is not impossible that some level of fusion or other reaction takes place with hydrogen. (There are non-nuclear explanations proposed for the excess heat; hydrino theory would be one, that don't necessarily involve any fusion, they they do involve new physics.) Given that in the early days, most experiments showed no excess heat at all, the conditions that result in the P-F effect were very poorly understood. So it would have taken many more experiments to make some kind of consistent sense out of the light water/heavy water comparisons. In addition, Fleischmann was functioning under some severe legal constraints coming from the University of Utah, the field was hampered for years by those restrictions.

This issue of light water controls is a fascinating aspect of the history of cold fusion, and the article -- or a fork -- should cover whatever we have from reliable source on it. I do recommend Simon for general reading on the subject. It's not expensive on-line for a used copy, if you can't get one from a library. Simon researched the history with more depth than any other source we have, though he doesn't cover, obviously, the very significant developments after his publication.

One part of the story I've read in many places, but I'm not sure it was RS, is that when they ran out of the original batch of palladium, and for a time, Fleischmann and Pons were unable to replicate their own work, all the experiments were flat, no excess heat. We do have RS on the problem of experimental variations that are likely to lead to excess heat or no excess heat, including the exact palladium condition needed, but it wasn't until 2007 that we have secondary peer-reviewed source showing that some groups had reached 100% excess heat success. One of the techniques is co-deposition, which is far simpler and far more reliable and far faster than the earlier bulk palladium work, this is what the SPAWAR group has done most of their work with. Good luck with your research.--Abd (talk) 15:46, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

One more comment, Woonpton. I have Taubes, Huizenga, Hoffman, Mizuno, Simon, Storms, and the ACS LENR Sourcebook. Hoffman is fairly early, 2004, and a skeptic who is very neutral. Simon is neutral, in my opinion, and he is simply much more informed than most of the skeptics, he interviewed both "believers" and skeptics. Hoffman should be read, I'd suggest. He lays out the issues and doesn't force any conclusions on the reader. He reviews Taubes and Huizenga pretty accurately. Taubes had an agenda, which is revealed in a number of sources, and Huizenga had a huge axe to grind, but both are valuable sources as to the history. Park, which I don't have, appears to be far from neutral. Storms is generally quite accurate; obviously, he believes the effect is real, you don't devote twenty years of your career, even at the end of it, to something you think is totally bogus, and Storms is secondary RS, for the most part, and that gives us RS access to some of the conference papers, i.e., what he considers notable. The ACS sourcebook, unfortunately, is quite expensive, but it is peer-reviewed. There is another one coming out this year. Notice the publisher, not just the ACS, but Oxford University Press. Cold fusion is coming out of the cold, and being welcomed. Whatever we have of RS on this, we should not withhold from our readers, per the Fringe science arbitration. As always, it should be presented with balance and attribution where there is no clear scientific consensus; the fact is that at this point, there is no longer any clear scientific consensus on cold fusion. There is a general atmosphere of rejection, but whenever neutral experts have reviewed it, the support for the reality of low-energy nuclear reactions is significant, far above what would be expected for pathological science or even for fringe science. I'm contending that it is now emerging science, still quite controversial. .... We should follow the guidelines to determine due weight. --Abd (talk) 15:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Your comment

Please learn to read timestamps. That discussion was a week old. --Stephen 09:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, for some reason I was reading one of the archives of ANI instead of ANI itself. My excuses, I need to remember to take the morning coffee before starting to edit wikipedia in the morning :) --Enric Naval (talk) 10:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

No problems, let me know if I can ever help you with anything. --Stephen 12:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Notice to all users involved in Abd/WMC

This is a general notice to all users involved in the Abd/WMC arbitration case that further disruptive conduct within the case will not be tolerated and will result in blocks being issued by Clerks or Arbitrators as needed. More information is available at the announcement here; please be sure to read that post in full. Receipt of this message does not necessarily imply that you are at risk of a block or have been acting in a disruptive manner; it is a general notice to all that the Clerks and ArbCom are aware of issues in the case and will not be tolerating them any longer. If you have any questions, please post them to the linked section. Thank you. Hersfold 23:55, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration suggestion

TenOfAllTrade's had a good idea vis-a-vis the Abd arbitration case. Please see here Raul654 (talk) 19:02, 23 July 2009 (UTC)