In fusion, when deuterium nuclei are fused to become helium nuclei, the amount of energy released is proportional to the reduction in atomic mass. The proportionality constant when mass is converted to energy is quite large (the square of the speed of light). This kind of heat doesn't just melt metals. It turns everything into a plasma. The mass to energy budget in those cells simply doesn't jibe with the hypothesis of atomic fusion.

The point? That's not "my company," that's one of my businesses. It's a mess, I've been neglecting it. Never was more than a pointer to an email address, hackers kept hitting it with vandalism, and I hadn't even looked for maybe six months or more. All that happens now with that business is that I receive checks (you are welcome to send one, but without the web site operating, you have no address, you'd have to email me) and I send half of that money to Brazil, where the ongoing design work is actually done. I'm running routine operations for another business. Neither of these businesses have anything to do with cold fusion.

Since I write about a Company, to be clear, there isn't one yet, but there will be. The only web site is a mailing list, which isn't the Company list, it is a list for the community interested in the commercial idea I've floated. coldfusionproject It has subscribers, none of whom have yet posted, the current discussion is on the Vortex list, which is a mailing list for a whole series of radical and nutty ideas, which became a place where cold fusion researchers may be most broadly reached. Because there is so much cold fusion traffic there, I suspect that almost all the serious researchers at least sometimes read the list, hence it is a place to reach them, which will be essential for the company. However, the plan doesn't depend on that list. That was just a way to quick-start it.

There is discussion of Wikipedia there. Most isn't knowledgeable as to Wikipedia guidelines and actual operation, but, then again, even experienced editors often don't understand it! It's arcane, folks, you can read "Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the sum of all human knowledge" and get some very wrong ideas, which, when you try to actually implement, you get blocked for. If Wikipedia were selling a product, and under California law, it would be consumer fraud, even though the slogan isn't wrong, as such, it's misleading, dependent on special definitions that we are so accustomed to that we don't even notice the difference. In fact, is the word "all" in there? People assume it is! If it is just "sum," it's correct if "sum" means "summary" and includes the concept of notability. But then why doesn't the slogan say "summary"? Marketing, folks.

The cold fusion community is cantankerous, disunited, and prone to see itself as a victim. There is real victimization, i.e., researchers have been harassed, careers ruined, some totally vicious stuff. I won't bother with it here, but I did read recently the report of the arbitrator for a case where Park (Voodoo Science) had used his government connections to get a patent examiner fired for cold fusion advocacy.

I've seen the phenomenon many times; when people can hide their evil under noble motives, such as saving the world from global warming, or from pseudoscience, or from any kind of "evil," they use their own supposedly noble motive to justify any action, most deeply evil stuff is concealed under noble motives. There is no limit to this, the worst atrocities have been committed by idealists. "My ideals are better than your reality." So I'll protect the world from the likes of you and all "landlords" or "bourgeois" or "royalists" or "Shi'a" or "heretics," or those who will "corrupt the youth." Or "inclusionists" or "POV-pushers." "I'm not a POV-pusher, I'm an NPOV-pusher. You, if you disagree with me, since I'm pushing NPOV, must be a POV-pusher, Q.E.D."

Science? Fah! We don't have time for that, [fill in the favorite nightmare scenario, from global meltdown, to millions dying from clogged arteries, to true religion being lost in a landslide of attractive heresies, to the murder of millions of innocent babies, even "potential babies," to Jews stealing our land, to everyone murdering the Jews so we must protect ourselves, to whatever, it's really all the same "side"] will take over and all goodness and truth will be buried. So kill them, root them out wherever they are found, crush everything they have done and bury it. Salt it, in wikispeak, an apt term. Crush Esperanza, a brilliant living metaphor if there ever was one.

It's a losing world view, ultimately, but it can get brutal along the way. Thatcher, congratulations. You've hit the nail on the head. Wikipedia will do just as well, in terms of bumbling along with massive inefficiency, burning out editors right and left, but still getting a little better each day, without me. I have no crystal ball, my intuition doesn't tell me what will happen with Wikipedia, because there are forks in the path and I don't know which one the community will take. My intuition guides me alone, not anyone else, it has no authority except the authority of my own insight, which, if it were imposed on anyone else, would be just as oppressive as any other imposition.

It doesn't matter what ArbComm decides, at this point. It's not united, there is no real consensus there, and ArbComm isn't fixing its own problems. How can ArbComm facilitate community consensus if it can't facilitate its own? Consensus is crucial to Wikipedia; without it, where controversy is involved, it is nothing but a huge collection of battlegrounds, with one side or another being victorious for a time, but requiring continuous vigilance against "POV-pushers." And with this, burnout is inevitable.

And, contrary to what one user here expresses in his signature, it is not Jimbo's fault. Jimbo grabbed the tail of a tiger, and now what? The problem is not the WMF board, the problem is not the Cab's fault, there is no secret conspiracy to blame, and I never said there was one; that ArbComm refuted, in its finding on the "cabal," an argument that was never made is a demonstration of part of the problem.

The problem is us, and until we realize that and wake up, we will never be able to solve it. There are plenty of sins of commission, but they would be of little effect if structure were in place to efficiently find consensus, real consensus. It can be done with small groups, even when the members of those groups think themselves divided in deep disagreement, as long as there is some common goal. Half of the technology I've been working on for thirty years was developed in small groups where people realized that their own personal survival depended on "group unity," and a massive world organization was built by leaving those small groups autonomous and independent and merely collecting consensus from them.

For human society as a whole, we will not successfully face the challenges coming, from global warming to nuclear terrorism to whatever you can think of, if we do not unite. And "unite" doesn't mean the formation of a coercive fascist (or the mirror on the left) government, it means the exact opposite.

The technology I've conceived is often most quickly accepted by libertarians and anarchists, they have been early acceptors, though there is still very little formal implementation anywhere, the beliefs that prevent this from being applied are very deep, it will take time. (informal implementation is actually the norm in very small voluntary organizations, but it gets lost with scale if not formalized, and there is substantial doubt over whether or not it's possible to implement formally once the oligarchy has set in.)

But I'm not a Libertarian, politically I'm a Progressive Democrat, that's how I vote, but .... I'll always work, where I can, to expand consensus. I live in a state where so-called "gay marriage" is allowed, I believe it is possible to find a compromise that will be acceptable to all but the most dedicated fanatics on either side. But as long as it is framed within "good vs. evil" as seen by both sides, that can't be done, at least not with the overall community. It can still be done on a small scale, and then the result of that expanded, which is the nature of my implementation work.

Cold fusion was crushed through a political victory, not a scientific one. That's very clear, it can be shown with reliable source, and that fact doesn't mean that cold fusion is real. There never was a "scientific consensus" that appeared, which is where cold fusion differs radically from N-rays and polywater, those affairs ended fairly quickly even though "it is impossible to prove a negative." What happened with them was that the original reason to suspect the reality of those phenomena was shown to be artifact, it was conclusively explained (observer expectation error with N-rays, which depended on "seeing," subjective reports, refuted when an experimenter secretly removed the supposed cause of N-rays, and the observers still reported seeing them, and with polywater, a convincing spectrographic demonstration that the effect was due to concentration of previously unidentified contamination.)

With cold fusion, the original reason, excess heat, was not only never refuted but there are good reasons to consider that it is already, by now, "scientific consensus" -- or at least majority opinion among the informed, and uninformed opinion isn't "science" -- that the anomaly is real, unexplained by chemistry, the only real controversy is whether or not the origin is nuclear, and recent research has probably nailed that one as well. It's nuclear. But I see no clear basis for claiming that this is "scientific consensus" or "majority informed opinion" yet, it is pure inference.

The famous refutation of neutrons was bogus, however; the studies that actually did refute neutrons were not the ones that got the publicity (i.e., Albagli et al from MIT). The conclusive refutation on that was a careful study of Fleischmann's own operating cells, ones showing excess heat, but no neutrons that could be detected using that technique, which would have handily detected the levels that Fleischmann had reported. To refute neutrons, one has to have the excess heat effect operating, otherwise it's nothing at all, all control and no tested hypothesis. If there is no excess heat, there is no reason to suspect neutrons or nuclear ash, and no reason to go to all the trouble of measuring the nothing. They got the cart before the horse, and because they found no cart, they used that fact, politically, to deny that there was any horse.

But they were experts in carts and Fleischmann et al were experts in horses.

Political polemic. We are vulnerable to it. What can we do about that?

How do you spell logorhea?

There are real idealists in this world, but the evil that you describe is done by people who merely feign idealism, just as in the synthetic world of Wikipedia. Otherwise, I too have seen the phenomenon many times.

I met Martin Fleischman briefly in 1989, and I have an autographed copy of an interview he did with EIR. What kind of price do you think that would fetch on ebay?

You quoted Mizuno recalling that electrolyte disappeared in 1978 and "understanding" that it must have been cold fusion--a realization that is frankly absurd given the whimsical nature of the effect. You demand that MIT load palladium for months, but you are not so critical when Mizuno offers his foggy recollections of ghost electrolyte.

Look, I think you're right to point out the coincident of excess heat. But then you overplay your hand (the original sin committed in 1989), and you start talking about palladium melting through the floor. Where's the peer review for that?

At least pretend to act like a scientist and stick to reproducible results. You'll win more hearts and minds that way. Or you could continue to tell ghost electrolyte stories. Good luck with that.

Hold on to it. I'd put about even odds on Pons and Fleischmann winning the Nobel prize in the next decade. If so, it will become much more valuable. Otherwise, it's not likely to lose value. Was that interview published? Was the interview transcript different from the eventual publication?

If you hold it long enough for cold fusion (or "low energy nuclear reactions") to be proven real, maybe quite a bit. It would also help if Fleischman were deceased (law of supply and demand).

I'd pay $20. It's at least a curiosity. Thatcher's also right that it would become much more valuable if he was vindicated. Has some upside potential.

Mizuno's "understanding" -- realization is more the word -- came much later, after there were other reports like what he saw. Mizuno is a scientist, a careful one. He saw something much earlier, I reported his description, that without the Pons-Fleischmann effect was a pure unexplained, mysterious anomaly. With that effect, it is still just as mysterious as the effect, but is at least consistent with other reports, no longer so completely surprising.

Mizuno's report was of palladium loaded with deuterium. How loaded was not reported, nor do I know how long the electrolysis proceeded. However, CF effects sometimes appear below the standard loading levels. He obviously kept records of what happened, though. If I'm correct, he later saw "heat after death" phenomena.

Your bias is showing, One. "demand.." "not so critical." "foggy." It's polemic, One. Why? What are you defending? Or attacking?

There is no peer review for the melting through the floor, but we have reports of a witness. I'm not trying to win a debate here, I'm just reporting what I know. We have reports of a witness, and testimony is presumed true unless controverted. People can sometimes exaggerate, we take that all into account in the end. I don't think it's debatable that there was some kind of meltdown with the Fleischmann report. The depth of damage to the floor may be debatable, unless there is an actual report of a measurement, in which case it becomes stronger.

The continued evaporation of electrolyte at rates far above normal evaporation is a common report, and some of this may be under peer review, I'd have to check. You have confused, One, what I'd say here with what I'd put in a Wikipedia article. This is open discussion, and it was said that cold fusion cells don't get hot. I provided contrary evidence.

What kind of "science" was that statement? What peer-reviewed publication was it based on? The Wikipedia problem is being replicated here: a double standard. Not surprising. Normal, in fact.

Folks, One is one of the "good guys." Q.E.D. This is why I'm largely dropping out of Wikipedia, even if ArbComm doesn't site-ban me.



M O U L T O N

based on quality. One word can be too much.

The ratio of information conveyed to words posts has become vanishingly small.

(Just like the ratio of energy produced to energy consumed in those cold fusion cells.)

Science is not done via recalled 30 year-old anecdote. That's the extent of my bias. Stick to science, please.

I've never confused what you write here with whatever you've written elsewhere. I haven't passed judgment on it--as you should recall, I'm recused from your case. Frankly, I don't even know what you've written elsewhere (other than the fact that you've written a lot of it).

The anecdotal annals of cold fusion are a monument to wishful thinking vs evidence-based scientific analysis and coherent reasoning.

This is complete pseudoscientific non sequitur bullshit. Nobody has claimed that even runaway CF causes fusion of more than a tiny amount of the deuterium in a cell. Moulton has made his blatantly false assumption a few times.

What's surprising about these massive "heat after death" reports is that the reaction continues with a large increase in temperature, because it would be self-quenching at meltdown temperatures, which are nowhere near hot enough to cause normal fusion, not even to increase the rate perceptibly; meltdown will destroy the NAE (Storms' term, Nuclear Active Environment) that allows cold fusion to occur; it requires the metal lattice to be intact and probably for loading ratios to remain high.

Normal "heat after death" continues with apparent temperature stasis; the temperature may initially rise, but nowhere near enough to cause meltdown, merely to cause boil-off of the electrolyte, and remains fairly steady for extended periods (with no energy input).

To explain a meltdown requires that somehow the energy generation increase very rapidly for some unknown reason (I've never even seen an attempt at a theory for this), enough to cause meltdown, to make the palladium hot enough to melt, all in one release over a short time.

Local melting is a known and published effect. Small melted spots appear on the palladium, visible microscopically. Further, in solid palladium Fleischmann-type cells, the effect is pretty erratic, as can be seen by looking at what happens with reported series of these types of cells. Heat released may vary from nothing to substantial multiples of energy input. This was one of the reasons for discounting the effect, it was erratic. But that objection can be answered statistically,, and has been.

The CF effect is generally considered to be a surface effect, but it's possible that it can sometimes take place deeply in the solid. Fleischmann's big meltdown was with a cube of palladium, a fairly large one. (He stopped doing that kind of experiment because of the meltdown, he went to thin rods and others went to wires and foils, and ultimately, to codeposition, which creates loaded palladium immediately, a very thin layer plated on platinum, generally.)

If some condition, such as a shock wave in loaded palladium, causes a sudden formation of many internal sites, the simultaneous creation of many NAEs, which tend to be very small spots normally, there could be a sudden release that would get the palladium very hot, and there is no limit to how hot it could get, it's limited only by the probabilities of NAE formation, which are normally very low. Truly massive NAE formation, if it happened rapidly enough, could cause the palladium to reach nuclear fusion temperature, and the kind of effect that Moulton seems to expect. Bang. Very Big Bang.

Rather obviously, that has never happened, and it's possible that the details prevent it, i.e., there may be some theoretical limit to how many NAEs could suddenly form. Rather fortunately, nothing truly explosive has been reported, and explosions would occur far, far short of the temperatures required to trigger hot fusion. Hmmm.... if some sudden oversupply of NAE in a small region were to occur, this would cause a mini-explosion, an ordinary shock wave, which might trigger more NAE to form. You could get a runaway effect, and it might explain meltdown. Falsification: the shock waves should be detectable routinely.

And, in fact, these cells are reportedly noisy, you can pick up the sound of the reactions, I'm told, that is one of the suggested kinds of instrumentation suggested for the simple replication kits. There is a lot of work to be done...

Bingo. That's why Fleischmann and Pons will not win the Noble Prize even if they were right.

They weren't doing basic research; they were looking for cold fusion. They didn't spend their own money because they were idly curious, but because they wanted to become wealthy for their anticipated discovery (negotiations between them and the University for intellectual property were edgy). When their equipment was damaged, of all possible interpretations, they decided it was a meltdown--that was the result they hoped it would be. They wanted to find excess heat, and they found it. They wanted to find neutrons, so they found them (except they didn't really find them). They wanted to find gamma ray spectra, so they found those too (except they were utterly mistaken). When they announced their findings in a press conference, they overstated them--giving the findings they wish they had.

When someone wants to believe something, they often find a way to do so.

I'll say.

This is Wikipedia review, not a peer-reviewed journal, nor even a secondary or tertiary source discussion cold fusion. Nobody claimed that "science" was being "done via recalled 30-year old anecdote." Further, it wasn't 30 years. Mizuno published the book in Japan in 1997, the incident in question took place in 1978. That's less than 20 years, and he probably had lab notes. There is another incident of extended boiloff which took place in 1991, where he kept records of the amount of electrolyte added and when it was added, estimating 12 MJ heat release initially in three days after turning off electrolyis current, and then at least 85 MJ after, over roughly one more week. At the time, he thought that this should be replicable. He never again saw that level of heat, he regrets that he didn't call for more witnesses, and I don't think this was ever published outside his book.

He also reports another anomaly before 1989. 1981, he had loaded a titanium foil with deuterium through electrolysis. He happened to turn on an X-ray detector near the cell, and it began to register "continuous bursts of X-rays." They checked everything they could think of and concluded that the apparent source was the electrolytic cell. But they "never imagined electrolysis could produce X-rays, so after careful consideration we decided it must be some kind of electrical interference."

This is about history, One. Human beings are sources for history. It is often said, as an argument against cold fusion, that surely these effects would have been noticed before. What Mizuno's account shows is that the standing theory, that such effects were impossible, operated strongly to suppress investigation of anomalies, they were not reported. I think I've read other such reports from researchers who worked with metal hydrides. Thinking back, there were indeed anomalies seen, but discounted as due to unknown cause, probably nothing to write home about.

(X-rays from deuterated titanium foils is one of the reported effects, by others.)

I'm not expecting anyone to be "converted" by some yakking here. But this is the core of AGF, and beyond that, a little more should be routine. Call it ATR: assumption of truthful reporting. It's a basic principle of common law, in fact. I'm not blowing smoke. I've read extensively in the field, far more, it's obvious, than anyone else participating here. Nobody should accept me as an "expert," but, on the other hand, that I was a skeptic and changed my mind by reading the published literature should count for something.

For Wikipedia, the issue should be RS guidelines and editorial consensus. Not my opinion or the opinion of any real or declared expert. If we were working on the article, we would pick narrow issues and work specifically on them, not engage in extended general discussion like this.

By the way, discussion of the ACS LENR Sourcebook on WP:RSN today, might be of interest.

History should not be written by the credulous.


As a common law witness, Fleischmann is more than adequately impeached by erroneous neutron reports and incorrect gamma spectra, not to mention the strong incentives he has to vindicate himself ("Now Mr. Fleischmann, isn't it true that you hoped cold fusion was true for your own financial and professional gain?").

Nobel. Maybe. Maybe not. Your opinion, One.
In other words, One, you believe that Fleischmann was lying, or that he spent years working on the problem of the boundary between quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, and had no idea what he was doing and couldn't remember it in 2003. Sure, he was "looking for cold fusion," in a sense. He believed that he would not see it. Maybe you should actually read what he wrote?
That all happened later. Much later.
It was a meltdown, what caused it is speculative. Now, Fleischmann was apparently the foremost electrochemist in the world. He was close to retirement.sure, that meltdown got their attention, but I don't recall exactly when it occurred.
You are radically confusing the original goal of the research with what it became. Once they were convinced they had excess heat, which they had originally not expected, and that it was above levels they could explain by chemistry -- and remember, that was their expertise -- everything did shift. The expected, at that point, that it was deuterium fusion, so they expected neutrons, and when they saw the neutron measurements, absolutely, they failed to check them carefully enough. Again, I don't know the timing of that.

Everyone expected neutrons. The very first thing that Mizuno did, given that he was quite experienced with palladium deuteride, was set up a cell and look carefully for neutrons. He didn't find any. He looked for gamma rays, he didn't find any. This was strong evidence that what was going on was not ordinary deuterium fusion. It also shows that a major cold fusion researcher was not about to imagine neutrons into existence.

That's an ABF description. What was really true about that press conference is that they had some very exciting results, some of which later turned out to be bogus, some not. Once they had excess heat, and they were certain of that, and their calorimetry was sterling, and later confirmed, yes, they then expected (not "wanted") neutrons and gamma rays. In fact, at the conference, they were only very shallowly reporting their work, the situation with the patent lawyers and the university was difficult. For a long time, there remained secrecy about their work, which created replication problems. It was, indeed, a mess, and Fleischmann, in a recent interview this year, volunteered that.That's absolutely true. For you as well, One. But I didn't "want to believe" in cold fusion. It's a bit of a nuisance, in fact. However, when life deals you lemons, make lemonade.

I've been convinced by reading as much of the evidence I could get my hands on, and that's continuing, and I read all the skeptical stuff, and consider it. Like your objections here, One, it's most ignorant speculation, but Taubes and Huizenga are valuable for the history, they are apparently accurate on it, it's when Taubes descends into mind-reading and Huizenga infers science that doesn't exist that they get dicey. Their testimony is sound, their conclusions, not.

What you and others are doing, One, is rejecting testimony. That's fatal for science and fatal for the project. Your position is diagnostic.

Do you realize that if I cared about preserving any direct influence over Wikipedia, I'd not be telling you this? I'm not entirely dim, you know!

A motley collection of irreproducible anecdotes culled over a 30-year period does not provide a credible foundation for constructing an otherwise implausible theory.

History is written by the victors, One, and, with the position you are taking, you are losing, like all the people attached to denial. The problem isn't skepticism, that's normal and healthy. It's denial, that goes out of its way to invent reasons to discard and discount plain evidence, and it comes out when discussion reaches a certain depth. Consensus can be found beyond that depth, when there is shared purpose. Unfortunately, One, it seems we may have lost that shared purpose, I may be bailing out.
What we are seeing here, playing out before our eyes, is the effect of deeply embedded belief. A scientist is not impeached by error, unless repeated often. A scientist is impeached, and a witness is impeached, by fraud, deliberate misrepresentation. Scientists make mistakes, lots of them. They make mistakes especially when they rush to publication.

This affected Fleischmann's first publication, hastily put together, and if affected the early negative replications, which were so sloppy that with one of them, the sloppiness is so bad that there is some level of evidence that it was actually fraudulent, if not originally intended that way, then effectively fraudulent by later failure to retract when the blatant data alteration problem was pointed out. There have been no credible allegations of fraud by Fleischmann. There were allegations of fraud by Brockris, eventually discarded.

Enough. I have stuff to do today, and it's obvious that this is going nowhere fast, some editors will go to any lengths to make up objections, pure speculation (like Moulton's idea that the palladium wouldn't just melt, it would vaporize, or the allegations of greediness on the part of Fleischmann, as if those were actually relevant to anything. Greedy people can do good calorimetry.)

Frankly, I don't want to spend time with people like that. Someone else can do it, and will, I predict.

I may start a thread here on the cold fusion article. Maybe, maybe not. The format here isn't conducive to dispute resolution, just to extended useless discussion, much of the time. I can do more with mailing lists and other web resources.

History consists of anecdotes. What implausible theory is based on the anecdotes told? None that I know. I wrote that there is no theory that explains the meltdowns.

Moulton stated, with no evidence at all, that cold fusion cells don't get hot. Science, most definitely, is not based on pure polemic speculation. It's based on actual experimental results, the formation of hypotheses and the testing of them. What Mouton presents is his ignorant opinion, based on nothing but his belief in his own unimpeachable rightness, his ignorant opinion and the fact that there are others with the same ignorant opinion. And that's a fact, it's clear, and plain to see for anyone looking.

I'm not writing for those who don't look, I'm writing for the people who already have at least one eye open. Often, that's only a few, at present, I'm writing for the future as well. Open another eye, and they will get depth perception, what you get when you look at a situation from more than one point of view.




To expand on that, it can be conducive to some kinds of community formation, which can be conducive to dispute resolution. But the mechanisms necessary to actually resolve disputes are not present here. Threaded discussion is famous for on and on, endless debate that appears to accomplish nothing. As we see. There can be some benefit to it, because issues can become clear to individual participants and readers. But the resolutions won't take place here.

Accusations of wishful thinking are not "ABF," even if that were a real-world sin. And since you can't tell by my "if he's vindicated" clause, I don't dismiss it out of hand. Unlike you, I don't have firm ideas about the existence of the effect. There's something to this effect, but I'm not going to write hagiography about Fleischmann and Pons.

Fleischmann is not a reliable witness. Their announcement was accompanied by several huge errors. They wanted it badly, and they had good reason too. I don't consider their apparently never-replicated meltdown claim remotely reliable.

At any rate, I'm also a bit of a gambler. Your notion that there's a 50% chance that Fleischmann and Pons will win the Nobel prize in the next decade sounds like one of the most out-of-whack odds estimations I've heard in a while.

You say that you're on Social Security, but I would lay a substantial wager payable in 2020. I'll give you 2-to-1 odds too.

<sigh/>

Witnesses can be--and are--impeached for conflicts of interest.

Witnesses are also notoriously unreliable. Memory is a weird thing, colored by adrenaline, prejudice...and even wishful thinking.


Oh, and hint: this forum is not intended to be a means of dispute resolution.

Did you say "Memory"? DJ Horsey to the musical rescue:

Beyond error and sloppiness (which is remedied by letting other teams of scientists try to reproduce the same experimental outcomes), there is the bugaboo of self-delusion.

The protocols of the scientific method are designed to reduce (if not eliminate) the problem of self-delusion. That's why scientific theories are expected to make specific predictions that are subject to falsification by careful and repeatable experimentation. The first duty of a scientist who is contemplating a novel hypothesis is to try like the dickens to falsify it (and invite his colleagues in the field to do likewise).

Physicists understand fusion in stars like our sun and in thermonuclear devices developed in the middle of the 20th Century.

The anomalous and irreproducible anecdotes of erratic and sloppy experimenters who scratch their heads at unexpected (and hence unpredicted) results and declaim atomic fusion as the explanation are almost surely self-deluded.

Nor are they doing credible science.

Me too, I'd cover part of a bet such as that.

Semantics. By the standard implied here, every research paper reporting anything but boring results of no consequence would involve a "conflict of interest." One is correct, politically, impeachment by asserting conflict of interest is common. It's not common among scientists with their colleagues; when it becomes common, it's a sign of a political problem. Conflict of interest more normally applies to conclusions, not raw testimony.

Consider this: the nuclear physicists rushing to publish results of their electrochemistry experiments were working outside their field (except with regard to radiation measurements). They had, overall, a huge conflict of interest. If cold fusion were accepted as a possibility, massive funding would have been diverted from hot fusion research, which remains a will-o-the-wisp, just around the corner, as it has been since I was in college. Even if they weren't working personally with hot fusion -- and some were -- if the hot fusion programs shut down, there would be a lot of unemployed physicists on the labor market, it would depress opportunities for all.

But I'm not asserting that their actual experimental results, their testimony, should be impeached because of COI. The MIT situation stands out as unique; if the Caltech report was badly done -- later analysis shows low levels of excess heat, apparently (it should be understood that the calorimetry isn't marginal, the reported excess heat is not down in the noise for successful confirmations) -- I have never seen it asserted, nor similarly with the rest of the negative publications, only MIT. And my opinion on MIT is that it's moot. Even if the published chart were accurate, the result was still, overall, negative, which, as I've shown, in the end, makes the experiment part of the overall research in the field, and any successful theory should account for it. This part is actually easy, there is no theoretical problem from those negative replications, they are well understood in terms of how they fit in with the positive replications.

This is behind a lot of disputes: testimony and report of actual experience gets mixed up with conclusions (and what can be intermediate, analysis.)
Again, true. What I've noticed is that I write about the reviewed research on this topic, and some editors who clearly have their minds made up respond without having read it. That's okay, it's a free discussion, but ... reading what I write here is a lot faster than reading the published research. If I write something here and it seems like I'm blowing smoke, ask. That's not happening, at all. If they read what I've written, they don't remember it; it's hard to remember stuff that you have a visceral rejection reaction to, we tend to remember the reaction more strongly than the cause of it. It's quite another diagnostic indicator. Rather, what I've been saying is simply categorically denied. That's what I was facing at the cold fusion article, for five months. I should have done something about it sooner, but because some progress was possible, and because I really dislike hauling editors before process -- try to find examples where I've done it with non-admins, they are rare, and with admins, it was only with two, where the problem was long-standing and was maintaining damage.
Didn't I say that? Again, my point. In this case, AGS. Assumption of Gross Stupidity.

There is a basic error here. Yes, in formulating a new hypothesis, this is exactly what scientists do. But something comes before that. The collection of data. When theoretical considerations result in rejection of data, the cart is pulling the horse. Interpretation of data is another story.

I've presented evidence that Fleischmann was attempting to falsify (which means confirm in ordinary language, confirmation by failing to falsify) the hypothesis that the differences between the condensed matter environment and the plasma environment, known to exist on theoretical grounds (quantum mechanics is a two-body approximation), were negligible. What he found was a disconfirmation of the theory. That's not the end of the story, of course, because of all the various possibilities.
Yes. This is hot fusion, it's well known and characterized, and the assumptions were that it was impossible at low temperatures. But, of course, that assumption was never literally true, it had to be qualified with a known exception: muon catalysis. There might be an unknown form of catalysis or involvement in a reaction that had never been noticed because nobody had looked for it systematically.

The mechanism of hot fusion, the brute force overcoming of the Coulomb barrier, is impossible at low energies. And it remains impossible, in my opinion. But several mechanisms have now been proposed that don't involve seriously new physics, and one which does (hydrino theory, which replaces one mystery with another that upsets a different long-held assumption).

Note that they didn't make this claim until they knew, from later work, that fusion might be possible. Moulton, you are deluded, I'll state that without qualifying it as merely probable, because it's that clear to me. And I've told you exactly why, your responses ignore mine and simply make more unfounded assumptions and claims. You are engaged in an "I'm right and you're wrong" debate. If you actually provided evidence for what you said, I'd check it out. But you don't. Not once. Instead, you recite facts about fusion that I've known since I was twelve years old, and that's more than fifty years ago.

Says the great Moulton, who knows more than all the experts brought in by the DoE, and the peer reviewers at Naturwissenschaften and all the other publications, and the agencies currently funding this "incredible science." No wonder you were blocked, Moulton. Firm opinions, derisively expressed, with no sources or evidence at all, just mere assertion based on a tiny bit of knowledge, no respect for any possibility that the other editor might know anything at all.

I think I've said enough about Moulton and his claims. Someone else tell me if he says something worth responding to.

Methinks you are projecting, sir.

That would make me 75. Don't think I'll need the money then, but it would be nice to pass something along to my kids. How about something more near-term? If it's money involved, we might have to settle on an escrow, could you guys afford that?

Nah, I'm putting what I can get into the project company. I'm putting my money and effort where my mouth is. How about, if we have some kits available, you buy a few? I could guarantee to cover the price if they don't work or have a prosaic explanation. And if they work, what would you offer? This could be fairly soon, I'll possibly know within a few months. Codeposition is pretty simple.

The up side, if you are right. You'd be helping to prove that cold fusion was bogus. What do you think, if a company that I endorse puts out a home cold fusion demonstration kit. Not a water heater, not a teapot, probably not calorimetry, which is difficult, though there might be rough calorimetry involved; more likely it would be radiation with CR-39 chips, correlated (or not!) with a series of variables, and possibly backed with helium analysis provided by an independent lab.

Nobody has ever tried this, Lar. All the cold fusion commercial efforts have been aimed at scaling up the effect, this one is probably going to scale it down to the minimum, using only a small amount of palladium in a small cell. I've written on the vortex list that if we can't do this, I'd have to completely revise my opinion about cold fusion, that this would show, indeed, that it was all a delusion. Exact replications have been rare; that's one of the problems noted in the 2004 DoE review. Researchers were all trying to be the first to get the most heat; in this sense, the critics (including One) have been right, though off. These were really engineering attempts, and data collection for later theorization.

One might note that nearly all the recent publication isn't about theory; theory is sometimes mentioned as an afterthought, as Mosier-Boss mentions Takahashi's TSC theory. The reports are about "anomalous heat in the palladium deuteride system," or "Triple tracks in CR-39 radiation detectors from codeposition cells." I.e., neutron evidence. There are still complaints that the charged particle radiation could be some other kind of damage, through there has been serious effort to falsify the finding through controls, and none of the alternative explanations seem to match the data. But triple tracks, there is no way that could be a result of chemical damage, dendrites, electrostatic discharge, and the levels are well above background, conclusively shown, so they aren't cosmic rays.

It was published. He autographed the actual magazine for me. ''EIR'' is, of course, a LaRouche publication, and had a friendly relationship to Fleischman on the cold fusion issue (among others,) so there was no censorship.

Is that available on-line? It's of historical value, Fleischmann writing about his work very early on. For that kind of thing, the publisher matters less, it could be self-published and still be useful.


Great, made you sigh. Next comes the moans, the quivering and shaking. Are we having fun yet?

Sorry, no. BTW, I haven't followed this controversy in a long time. Whatever happened to the expression, "solid-state fusion"?

My take on the controversy, which I may actually have posted at the WR before, is that anomalous, inexplicable results are a font of joy for any real scientist. Science progresses in a "negative" fashion; as scientists discover the flaws in what is presumed to be the proven corpus of knowledge, the process of correcting those flaws is the portal to real discovery. There are always, however, legions of constipated hacks who will furiously defend established, though defective, theory, because they have a professional stake in the fact that they can recite it.

Unexpected anomalies can indeed be a source of new discoveries. After all, the plural of anecdote is data. But an anecdotal observation must be repeatable before one has sufficient reliable data upon which to build a theoretical model for a previously unobserved phenomenon.

The anomalies in the anecdotal annals of cold fusion are not a repeatable phenomenon, explainable by physics.

Compare that to muon catalysis, which was predicted from existing atomic theory and subsequently observed in the laboratory. But muon catalysis is more like an atom smasher, in which a beam of high-energy muons is fired into a block of frozen deuterium-tritium. The negatively charged muon beam ionizes the supercold d-t, sending a few of the nuclei ricocheting around like steel balls in a pinball machine. If you're lucky, a few dozen nuclei will smash together and fuse into alpha particles before the game is over. The kinetic energy to overcome the Coulomb repulsion comes from the high-energy muon beam.

Agreed. There isn't anything particularly new about this. What's been seen is that the dedicated skeptics have asked for this or that, and when it's provided, then they ask for more. It's not that there is anything wrong with true skepticism, it's that something else is substituted for it, which is firm belief and lack of skepticism for what is supposedly "established." Often, with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back and see how the "established" view was never actually carefully reviewed and tested. Sometimes it was, and the testing simply overlooked unimagined possibilities. The hypothesis that CF was all artifact and no substance was never subject to rigorous examination, and the experimental evidence was waved away with a belief that it had all been proven bogus, so why even look? This isn't some conspiracy theory, it simply happened, right out in the open, anyone can see it. It's all been documented in reliable source, but who looks?

Well, some do. And that's why the situation has been shifting. Most peer reviewers will give a paper a good look and a fair chance. Not all, but most, and it snowballs. It's still amazing how long it has taken, I think we are at the cusp as far as expert opinion is concerned (and, no, I don't mean "cold fusion researchers," I mean independent experts who have become informed), but there is a long way to go as to "general scientific opinion," as if the opinion of random climate scientists or mathematicians or particle physicists is what matters. Eventually, the particle physicists will get a shot, but until the doors have been opened wider, most particle physicists seem to be incapable of taking a balanced look at this, except, of course, for that set of them who are "cold fusion researchers."


Here we call it "throwing up."

did Moulton just suck me into responding? Let's just say that muon-catalyzed fusion, this is not. It's Moulton's weird idea of MCF, with no resemblance to the actual phenomenon. I won't bother to explain, just read Muon-catalyzed fusion (T-H-L-K-D).

Unbelievably clueless. Ottava thinks I am on the side of the people wanting to ban minority POV.

I am worried about Ottava. He's yelling at people on the Persian Empire (T-H-L-K-D) talk page, yelling at people on the banning policy talk page, and yelling at people on the Samlesbury witches (T-H-L-K-D) talk page. Fighting a war on multiple fronts is never a good idea, no matter how right you are. I enjoy watching his crusades, but I hate to be in his crosshairs! I'm surprised that Civil Protection hasn't blocked him yet.

I wonder if the Labor Day (T-H-L-K-D) weekend will keep this case going until Sept. 8th?

Hanging around Wikipedians has a tendency to drive people crazy.

There is a discussion in Talk:Cold fusion about possible use of a Physics Letters A confirmation of Arata's work, and, looking at the sources, I noticed that my memory had played tricks on me, there is a serious error above. 3000 minutes, not 3000 hours. While 3000 minutes is still significant, and heat is still constant at 3000 minutes, I hate that I misrepresented what the sources show, and I've written this in a few places. (I would never have put this in an article without verifying the exact reference.)

In the other direction, I also find it of interest that, in spite of multiple mentions, nobody caught this error but me. It means to me that when I make a striking claim, it's being dismissed without attempts to confirm. That, also, is diagnostic.

If I had made many other striking but unverifiable claims, it would be another matter. If I've done it in other places, however, I'd appreciate being informed, I'm not aware of such.

Meanwhile, back at the case.

TotientDragooned (T-C-L-K-R-D) remains banned from contributing. Hersfold notified TD on 31 July that it was out of his hands and that "the case is starting to wrap up now". Surprising how long a CheckUser takes when it's a matter of proving innocence rather than guilt: perhaps TD should have launched an SPI case against himself. Equally surprising how long that wrap up is taking.

Here we are into September, and almost nothing has happened on the Proposed Decision for days. But the extreme delay in closing has given time for WMC to rake up a post by Abd on an off-wiki site and post it on the Evidence page long after the decision process started (with supporting chorus from the team on the talk page). Funnily enough Hersfold doesn't see anything wrong with any of that -- is his mismanagement of the case incompetence, malice, malicious incompetence or incompetent malice?

You are surprised? Why? I can see the headlines:

SNAIL FAILS TO ARRIVE PROMPTLY.

WIKIPEDIA BIASED.

CAB EDITOR VIOLATES CAB WP:MEAT POLICY

Wait a minute! What was that last one? Yeah. I've seen signs that the cabal has been broken, it isn't as monolithic as it was, a prominent Cab editor has been acting contrary to previous Cab unanimity. I suspect he's realized the Cab is losing, he's jumping ship. He was, in fact, one of the leading Cab thinkers, big frog in a small pond, so this is significant.
Hersfold is incompetent as a clerk, in an absolute sense, but by Wikipedia standards he is the soul of sweet neutrality and efficient response. The brightness of a bulb depends on the ambient lighting.... I don't see any sign of malice.

I hope that arbitrators actually read what WMC pointed to. You know the old saying about publicity. There is no such thing as bad publicity. I now have a conflict of interest, with all that implies.... but the COI arose when I looked around at what I'd do if banned, and, hey, I'd actually rather pursue this commercial idea. In terms of service to human knowledge, you can talk about it, or you can do it. I have a choice, now, and I'm making it.

I'd rather talk, right? That's what they've been saying. In fact, not surprising. WMC used my mailing list post to somehow prove that I was only interested in chatting. The reverse. I chat to establish communication with people who will listen and respond, I've done it for years, and it works. And I keep telling those who don't like it to, please, not read it, they will only get irritated. But they insist on getting irritated!

I have to enjoy, to some degree, the justice of this.

I intend to write another message here about the status of the case. I'd say, especially if we take my departure from Wikipedia as a given, and thus any restrictions on my personal editing are moot, I was quite successful with the case, more successful than I thought at first. If people are so foolish as to try to stick around Wikipedia and improve it, it might now be a little easier. Of course, arbs could still change their votes.

I asked ArbComm, on Proposed decision talk, if it was going to find that, There Is No Cabal, and that I'd made charges of misconduct without providing evidence, given my very careful definition of "cabal," such that an editor being a member of a cabal wasn't an allegation of misconduct, but merely indicated the editor was "involved," please, ban me.

That finding stands, so, my only complaint now might be that they seem poised to only ban me for three months. Why only three months? I'm 65, getting older and unlikely to change my spots, if what I see is delusion and illusion, I should be trying to prepare to get worse, not better. I've got kids to support, little ones, and they depend on me, Wikipedia does not.

And if what I see and claimed is not illusion and delusion, and ArbComm doesn't see it, then I don't want to stick around a project where the best procedures available come up with such an ignorant, head-in-the-sand position, in spite of ample opportunity to do it differently. It will simply waste everyone's time, most especially my own.

The project is still important, but the present process and structure are obstacles, so I'm going to Plan B as far as Wikipedia is concerned. I'll be building structures that work, and that can't be crushed as was Hope Esperanza.

Status of the case:

No request to close yet. Passing, my summary:

The usual boilerplate principles, two are notable:

4.1) A Wikipedia ban is a formal revocation of editing privileges on all or part of Wikipedia. A ban may be temporary and of fixed duration, or indefinite and potentially permanent. When enacting an editing restriction that includes a ban on an editor, administrators should take reasonable steps to ensure that the editor is notified of the particulars of the ban and its duration. Editors that are page or topic banned from a section of Wikipedia are expected to cease contributing to that area. User account blocks may be used to enforce violation of page or topic bans. Any user can bring an administrator action up for review in the relevant noticeboard. The community can, among other things, lift the block/ban, endorse it or extend it in time and/or scope.

There was a controversy in this case over the propriety of an administrator being the originator and continued enforcer, unilaterally, of a ban. Lost in the discussion was the distinction between a general ban and a strict ban. Can an administrator, having warned, block an editor for a nondisruptive edit, independently, without a community discussion? If an administrator may strictly ban, yes. But if a "ban" is merely a strong warning that an editor's general behavior with a page is problematic, and may result in a block without further warning, then we can distinguish between an administrative ban and a community ban. The latter is generally enforced, by admins who may not know the details of disruptive activity, and, for this, it is essential that it may be strictly enforced, but it is normally enforced by uninvolved administrators. It is dangerous to allow a single administrator to create a strict ban to be enforced by others without question, it corrupts our system of administrative responsibility, and it practically guarantees charges of involvement because it sets up a possible personal conflict.

In spite of the extensive discussion of this, ArbComm managed to squarely ignore it, affirming nothing that was not already obvious, leaving in place what had been quite a controversy, with initial expressed arbitrator opinion that administrators may not unilaterally ban.

(added later: actually they did not completely ignore it, they punted, suggesting a community discussion, but without clarifying the problem -- i.e., the particular reason why there is a problem with sole-administrator strict bans -- it all gets confused with other kinds of bans and other problems. This is like a committee bouncing a contentious issue back to the main floor, it's the opposite of what works. ArbComm could hold "hearings," but unless it guides them, it can expect nothing but disruption. Deeper solutions are possible, but unlikely until the community itself organizes for efficient development of consensus.)

6) All editors, and especially administrators, should strive to avoid conduct that might appear at first sight to violate policy. Examples include an administrator repeatedly making administrator actions that might reasonably be construed as reinforcing the administrator's position in a content dispute, even where the administrator actually has no such intention; or an editor repeatedly editing in apparent coordination with other editors in circumstances which might give rise to reasonable but inaccurate suspicions of sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry.

Support for this was unanimous. Cab opposition was, at least initially, monolithic. In general, the Cab has opposed any restrictions on administrative action, or at least their administrator's actions, and where they have disagreed with other admins, they have simply reversed them, an example was provided in this case (WMC v. Jennavecia). Cab administrators have routinely used tools while blatantly involved, and this case may be bringing the first example I know of one getting dinged for it. For that to happen took my being blocked during the case by WMC, proving that WMC would actually do what he'd been threatening to do, block me for a harmless edit, to prove that I was banned. What he proved, in fact, was that I wasn't banned. But for facilitating this proof, I will be also be banned. Cool, eh? Calling attention to the obvious is prohibited.

7) Inappropriate behavior driven by good intentions is still inappropriate. Users acting in good faith may still be sanctioned when their actions are disruptive.

I supported this, though there is a semantic problem. "Sanction" implies response to reprehensible behavior, the word is almost equivalent to "punishment." Rather, actions may be taken to protect the project against good-faith but harmful behavior. Rather, this should have been "Remedies may be applied to users acting in good faith...."

Findings are a bit of a mess.

9) Abd and Mathsci have engaged in personal attacks upon each other during public discussion of this case in an off-wiki venue.

This was roundly rejected, 6 to 1. However, I put it here because there are remedies based on it, with inconsistent conclusions. Goose and gander have different sauces. I don't examine those findings and remedies, though, they are not ultimately important.

11) Abd (talk · contribs) has tendentiously edited the cold fusion article. 1; 2; 3; 4; 5

This is a doozy. Link to finding. I responded in detail to this proposed decision here. All the links are to sections of evidence provided by, a party to the arbitration Enric Naval, with some evidence and conclusion that he'd been disruptive in taking my ban to AN/I. There are no findings regarding Enric Naval, however, though his behavior during the case was aligned with WMC's, and similarly outrageous; when WMC blocked me, WMC reverted the subject edit. The unblocking admin reverted it back. Enric edit warred to keep it out as being the edit of a banned editor, thus making the same kind of in-case disruptive action as WMC's, just without using admin tools. (The community has since rejected the idea that edits of allegedly banned editors must be removed -- and I wasn't banned at the time, as proven by the response to the block, by Rlevse's "suggestion" that I refrain from editing -- which I accepted -- and his subsequent strengthening of this to a ban pending decision.) The most diagnostic of the evidences is link 4.

Read it! With it, the committee accepted and ratified as evidence against me what was nothing more than Enric's evidence presented in RfAr/Fringe science, which was itself so badly distorted as to amount to a lie. The lie was a justification for ignoring peer-reviewed papers on an alleged fringe topic, and the way Enric presented the evidence made it appear that only maybe one-third of peer-reviewed papers were positive on cold fusion. In fact, most PR papers on the topic are, as classified by the database ultimately referenced, positive or "undecided," with "negative" being the lowest number, by far. It's a good example of How to Lie with Statistics, one of my favorite books when I was a kid. Enric Naval was arguing against what ArbComm decided in that case, and he continued to act in violation of the ruling. One of the errors I've identified in my own behavior is that I didn't go to arbitration enforcement over this.

Enric's evidence on that point wasn't about me, he was pointing to rejected claims he'd made before I was ever involved. Yet there it is, with ArbComm's stamp of approval. Diagnostic. It's not like it hasn't been pointed out, it has, in several places where at least a few arbitrators likely read it.

That's why I'm leaving. ArbComm is responsible, but isn't taking responsibility and fulfilling it. There are only two ways to remedy this. The same is true for another finding as well.

12) There is no evidence of collusion or other improper collaboration among the various users Abd has alleged to be part of a cabal, nor did Abd attempt to provide any such evidence.

This has the support of all but one voting admin. I agree with the first part, partly. Tag team edit warring is "improper collaboration," and the Cab is famous for it, especially at Global warming, and plenty of evidence covers that (RfC/GoRight was incorporated by reference in my evidence). However, I didn't allege "collusion or improper collaboration," even though I presented evidence that showed it for some. Rather, I alleged that the Cab was a group of editors who were "involved by association," and that this should be considered in matters like community bans (WP:BAN specifically considers "uninvolved editors") or how we approach evidence; evidence from a neutral party is naturally given more credence than that from an involved one.

In theory, we should only look at the evidence itself, but involved parties can cherry-pick evidence and frame it in highly biased ways, and unless an arbitrator does independent investigation, and most clearly don't bother, the issue of involvement becomes very big. I strongly suspect that with finding 11, the arbs didn't actually read down to the sources, I suspect, in fact, that they read Enric as alleging that I had dismissed reliable sources, that's how it might look in context. The reverse is true.

This finding, were it true in its implications, made it necessary to ban me, because if the editors who piled in to the Arbitration, to present masses of evidence and arguments, were actually neutral and uninvolved, this would be prima facie proof of disruptive behavior on my part, whether intended or not. Hence, following this finding, I'm a danger to the project and must be, for the protection of the project, banned. Unless, of course, I somehow realize my error and mended my ways, and we see below how ArbComm responded to evidence that I wasn't doing that.

When I presented the cabal evidence, I wrote, "the emperor has no clothes." I have demonstrated what happens when an adult says that. Children can get away with it, until they start to get older. ADHD is a developmental disorder. We never grow up in certain ways.

The "cabal allegation" was central. Some of my friends have argued that I shouldn't have said it. In fact, this may be the most important thing I wrote in the whole case, and the door has now been opened a crack, others will notice it if the Cab continues to function as it did in the past. The problem of cabals, and especially ones which push a "majority POV," suppressing minority opinion, creates continual disruption, and not with a tiny fraction of editors; most editors, in fact, hold some "minority view" on something or other. Jimbo's concept of how we'd approach the problem was sound, and cabals have corrupted it, as could have been expected.

In another event that was diagnostic: my proposed principle that consensus was essential to gauging neutrality was rejected by the Cab (which makes it look like it was rejected by the community), and ignored by ArbComm in the proposed principles (even though it had some support from Newyorkbrad in the Workshop). This principle is fundamental to the work I was doing, which was always to increase consensus in the end. Sometimes to increase consensus, it is necessary to initially disagree with the majority, and common-law democratic process recognizes this, and rules of procedure in deliberative bodies are designed to protect that kind of minority, giving it fair opportunity to expand consensus without being disruptive. A minority motion will typically be sent to a committee, a small group, for study instead of being debated on the floor. We have yet to learn from this.

That ArbComm allowed this principle to be rejected means that ArbComm allowed the rejection of the only practical way of approaching true neutrality, thus guaranteeing that Wikipedia will continue to violate NPOV. The current opinion is apparently based on wishful thinking: that there will somehow arise a class of editors who thoroughly understand NPOV and who are perfect in recognizing their own bias, such that the protests of minority POV editors are unnecessary. (When you have a POV, you become, naturally, a detector of opposing POV, you are sensitive to it.) While there are some editors who are good at doing this, they are in the minority and probably always will be.

There are only two ways to move beyond this situation, of wrong-headed ArbComm decision, that I can see.

The remedies.

1) The cold fusion article, and parts of any other articles that are substantially about cold fusion, are subject to discretionary sanctions.

Applause. Had this been in place before, there would have been little to no problem. What had happened at RfAr/Cold fusion is that the Cab had successfully convinced ArbComm that Pcarbonn was the problem, and that if Pcarbonn was topic banned, all would be well. The problem is much bigger than Pcarbonn, and, in fact, Pcarbonn was not the problem, Pcarbonn was part of the solution. Had Pcarbonn not been topic banned, creating a vacuum, I would probably never have become involved with Cold fusion, and now, with my topic ban, others will eventually take my place. With discretionary sanctions, neutral administrators will -- hopefully -- resolve disputes rapidly, by ensuring that the disputes are run through the dispute resolution wringer and hung out to dry, instead of being swept, wet, under the carpet. How's that for a metaphor, eh?

3.2) Abd is prohibited from participating in discussion of any dispute in which he is not one of the originating parties, unless approved by his mentor(s). This includes, but is not limited to, article talk and user talk pages, the administrator noticeboards, and any formal or informal dispute resolution. He would be allowed to vote or comment at polls.

This one is fascinating. There were few charges in the case of disruptive involvement in "other disputes," unless such involvement is understood very broadly. I've been successful, in fact, in mediating disputes. Essentially, what this says is that I can discuss (or what I did in RfC/GoRight, present evidence) if I'm involved, but not if I am neutral. Hello?

But I understand it. Underneath this is something that I've long encountered. Two years ago, when I began to get seriously involved with Wikipedia, and I brought with me over twenty years of experience in projects that were in various ways analogous to Wikipedia, plus I had done serious (recognized outside) work on theoretical solutions to the problems that organizations face, I read the guidelines and policies and considered them to be, for the most part, brilliant. But then I encountered actual practice, which often corrupted the obvious intent of those policies and guidelines. And when I started to point this out, I was rejected and threatened as an outsider. This xenophobia is endemic among the core, it's one of the big problems. Like many problems, it has some legitimate basis, but is overall damaging. Wikipedia should welcome outside opinions; among them will be solutions that the existing core will not immediately recognize.

3.3) Abd is banned from the cold fusion article, any content related to cold fusion, and any talk page discussion related to cold fusion for one year.

This is far stronger than what the community approved earlier, and what WMC imposed. It's stronger than what was imposed on ScienceApologist, who had blatantly violated many policies and guidelines. It's the same as was imposed on Pcarbonn, an SPA, "civil POV pusher." Alternative remedies were proposed that would have addressed all the possibly legitimate problems.

What I conclude is that ArbComm is, in fact, taking a content position, based on what is an easy general view that Cold fusion is pathological science, a reputation that was created in 1989-1990 by a very successful PR campaign on the part of the nuclear physicists, who had much at stake. I have seen, here, many of the false allegations that became embedded in the minds of many, accepted as fact contrary to evidence, such as lack of replication; as measurement accuracy increases, the effect disappears; no ash has been shown; fraud; and on and on.

Were we following RS and NPOV guidelines, our article would be adequate to change this impression, not necessarily showing that cold fusion is "real," but that there is a real and open scientific controversy, with no broad scientific consensus, (any more, certainly not since 2004) that we should neutrally cover. Instead, we are violating those guidelines and RfAr/Fringe, and ArbComm has now, once again, ratified that, and those who disagree, and who know or have come to know the field and Wikipedia process and have attempted to properly use it, are not to be allowed to discuss it, anywhere on the project, no talk page discussion, no WikiProject Cold fusion (there should be one, to foster consensus), and probably no participation in the mediation.

Those who agree with the "pathological science" conclusion, if they don't go too far, or even if they do but they get away with it, may continue. This kind of decision, repeated, warps our content in ways very difficult to fix. Or should I say, "your content"?

After a series of lesser remedies failed to find a majority, with only a little objection that they were too strong, a stronger sanction against me found rapid majority.

3.5) Abd is banned from Wikipedia for four weeks. During the ban, the mentors (if remedy 2 passed) will be selected and editing guidelines will be developed by the mentors and Abd. The Arbitration Committee reserves the option to shorten or lengthen the time of the ban depending on completion of the mentoring agreement.

Didn't find a majority. At this point, until a few days ago, it looked like I would not be banned at all, and that I might even not be topic banned. Until, suddenly,

3.6) Abd is banned from Wikipedia for 3 months. Should remedies requiring him to identify a mentor (or develop a mentorship plan) pass, the mentorship will become effective at the end of the ban.

This got immediate support from what became a majority within a few hours. It was a reaction to my response to Carcharoth as to what I'd learned, and what I'd learned would doubtless make me more effective. I think that struck terror into the heart of Risker, even though I'd been very careful to qualify all of it by an intention to strictly respect a mentor's advice. In other words, I'd have been effective without being disruptive. Carcharoth, the arbitrator I've been saying all along I most respect, opposed, the only one so far.

There are problems with some other "admonishments," but they are minor and not worth discussing now. This takes us to two remedies which currently have a majority, the conflict between them yet to be resolved, my emphasis:

6) William M. Connolley's (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · moves · rights) administrative privileges are revoked. William M. Connolley may apply to have them reinstated at any time, either through the usual means (i.e., via request for adminship) or by appeal to the Committee.

6.1) William M. Connolley's (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · moves · rights) is admonished for his edit warring and misuse of administrative tools. William M. Connolley is desysopped for three months as a consequence of poor user conduct and misuse of administrative tools. After three months, his administrator access will be automatically restored. Additionally, William M. Connolley is warned to not use his administrative tools when he is involved.

Upon regaining his administrator access, William M. Connolley will not be allowed to use administrative tools in topical areas relating to Cold fusion or in relation to Abd. Should William M. Connolley violate this restriction, the Arbitration Committee may remove his administrator access (either temporarily or permanently), or alter the restriction.

I did not request desysopping. What I've suggested numerous times, in more than one case, is that the Committee routinely (and rapidly and easily and without a finding of fault) suspend administrative privileges when there is reason to believe that they may be abused, or that there is even an appearance of such, until it is satisfied that the risk is tolerable; if an admin has violated recusal policy, a basic requirement would be that the administrator show an understanding of the violation, such that it is not likely to repeat. ArbComm has sometimes desysopped when the admin was adamant that they had done nothing wrong, but has generally overlooked the problem if the admin stonewalled, not admitting error but not strongly asserting correctness. This is a fundamental mistake. WMC has yet to acknowledge that there was any problem at all with blocking me during the case, not to mention at any other time!

If there is a case over admin recusal failure accepted, that is prima facie evidence that there is risk. Suspension should be routine, unless there is an immediate finding or motion that there is no risk.

Given the massive harm that has been done by WMC's actions while involved -- in spite of ArbComm's persistent head-in-the-sand over this, it includes, quite possibly, the whole Scibaby affair, which began with an obviously involved block by WMC, -- this outcome justifies, makes worthwhile, the loss of me as an editor.

Whatever work remains for me of importance can be done off-wiki if needed. I had preferred to be more open and more accessible, but, in fact, it may be better this way.

Now, the two remaining options; one has been hinted at: appeal to the community, off-wiki. I know how to do it with no violation of policies, Wikipedia Review may be a piece of it, I don't know how it will play out. FA/DP organizational technology was designed to be usable under very difficult conditions, such as in China, Wikipedia is, comparatively, a piece of cake. (But it's difficult still, don't mistake me, the problem, however, isn't what opposition can do, the problem is apathy and cynicism.)

The other is appeal to Jimbo or the Foundation Board. I'm certainly not going to do this quickly or without due consideration and preparation and, indeed, support. I understand very well why Jimbo is mostly hands-off. But his vision is being corrupted by forces that could have been expected to be a problem, they always are, and it is not necessary that this happen, there are possible solutions.

It's still possible that there could be some shift in the votes, on any of these. Some arbitrator might read this and decide, "He thinks he won! We'll show him!" and if I wanted to make sure there were no changes, I'd not be posting this. But that's not how I operate. People are responsible for what they decide, personally. My responsibility, besides my sovereignty over my own actions, is to speak what I see, so that it cannot be said, in the end, "Nobody told me!"

Not everyone will read what I write, that's part of the situation. But some do, and if you read this, and understand it, you are responsible for passing the understanding on when you have the opportunity. That's how it works, and how it has worked from time immemorial. How much personal risk you take when speaking truth to power is a decision you will have to make for yourself. Good luck, decide well, and live well.

I see that I never responded to this. The Cab I asserted was not a "cold fusion" cabal, it was originally defined around Global warming, but it has generally been involved with "antifringe" activity, and one of the defining characteristics was how editors commented in RfAr/Fringe science.

The evidence used by ArbComm to show "tendentious editing" on my part (refer to the Proposed Decision) was five sections of Enric's Evidence in the case. One of them ultimately pointed to his evidence in RfAr/Fringe science, where he referred to an allegedly preposterous post by another editor. Enric's coverage of this amounted to a lie. I think he believes the lie, but if not, then he has been deliberately repressing fact in reliable sources, and, yes, purposefully portraying cold fusion in a bad light, by allowing weak sources that criticize cold fusion, and disallowing strong ones, including peer-reviewed secondary source that favor it. He was joined in this, most notably and recently, by Hipocrite and Verbal, who are Cab editors based on other expressions of opinion and actions.

If it were true that There Is No Cabal, then FloNight would be correct: I was tendentious and disruptive, for the existence of so many editors, if they were neutral, upset with me, would be proof. If, however, a faction becomes upset, it can mean something very different. Given how obvious the cabal, or "mutually and broadly involved faction," is, ArbComm cannot effectively dismiss it, it is simply exposing its own incapacity. The rest of the decision, largely, follows from that dismissal, except for WMC's desysopping.

Enric, you helped bring that about, and if ArbComm had been paying attention, you would, yourself, be banned or at least topic banned, with the most obvious cause being the edit warring over removal/replacement of my harmless comment at Talk:Cold fusion.

You harmed WMC by taking the ban to AN/I in the first place, and by staunchly supporting WMC when he was clearly violating recusal policy and threatening to do more. Had you not gone to AN/I over my defiance of the ban, I would have eventually edited Talk:Cold fusion, WMC would have blocked me, and the most likely outcome would have been an unblock by a neutral administrator, and it would have been over. By going to AN/I, you pulled in the Cab, making it ultimately necessary to confront the whole issue.

Are you proud of yourself?

In the end, with discretionary sanctions, it's unlikely you will be able to exert such control over the article. Or you will be blocked and maybe banned.

I've written before that I don't engage in a dispute unless I think I will prevail. That was true here, and, overall, I was right. It may look a little different right now. But you might note how bitter WMC is in his posts today on Proposed Decision. He has, in fact, had this coming for a long, long time. He earned it, over and over. Maybe you should apologize to him. I'm not bitter, I'm grateful, though I still point out the problems.

Overall, progress was made; as an individual editor, my contributions are not that important, my work is with structure and process, and I don't even need to have editorial rights to work on that. As I wrote about admin rights in my RfA 2, they might be a hindrance.

WMC seems to have decided to moon the jury. His recent edits to the case pages include

• (oh get on with it)
• (Is the 1000 word limit real?: no, it isn't real, its a joke)
• I'm blaming arbcomm for their sloth and lack of attention

He may well succeed in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Well, I suppose it's possible he will get a plain desysop instead of a three-month suspension. He's pretty bitter, I'd say, it's not like he was "winning" and has now ruined it. He lost when he blocked me during the case, if he cares, and I think he does. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Ikip is claiming, now, that I've ruined the desysopping by continuing to be foolish and irritating powerful people. But I wasn't ever arguing for desysopping, my goal has been clarity, a goal impeded by the Cab, and ascribing that to my prolixity is not completely off, but, in the end, rooted in a misunderstanding that must be confronted before Wikipedia can remove itself from the trap.

My latest evidence, presented yesterday, was long. I looked at it, and considered how long it took to write it (long!) and whether or not I should boil it down even more (it would take twice the time, it was already reduced about 50%), decided I didn't have the time, so, fuck it, I left it. Nobody is forced to read it, not even arbitrators, and if all the arbitrators were to scan it, the net time they'd take is much less than what it would take me to edit it down further.

I noticed today another evidence presentation against me, the latest one, raising what had been said so many times. Cardamon noticed that I'd been an editor, professionally, therefore I could shorten my writing, "if he wanted to." Yeah. More accurately, if someone paid me to do it, or I'm attached to the outcome. And if I actually have the time. It's well known among writers: to be brief usually takes far longer. Don't have much to say, sure, easy to be brief. Decide that you can always write the rest tomorrow, yes, also easier. But I'm at an age where approaching death becomes quite real, and I have a diagnosis, plus, I have years of experience knowing that very often tomorrow never comes, it's said today or not at all.

Ikip is apparently blaming you for talking too much. There might be some truth to that.

I honestly don't understand how the case has turned out like it has; with arbitrators trying to figure out what remedies might be passing. Bizarre.

Say it ain't so! Next you'll be saying Moulton has some odd theory of mind about the ineffectiveness of song parodies as social commentary, or something.