ArbComm readyto punt on pseudoscience v. pseudoskepticism?

[Abd]

Persistent Bullying of Rupert Sheldrake Editors
Permanent link to current version

Bullying of any editor seen as promoting or defending "Fringe science" or "Pseudoscience" has long been going on. Cold fusion is, of course, the area where I know the most, but the editors involved with the bullying, most of them, were active in many "pseudoscientific" areas. Notice that JzG (T-C-L) shows up to comment on this. He once blocked an IP editor as a sock of Jed Rothwell, who was never banned, the IP didn't match Rothwell's strongly established practice of signing all his Talk edits -- and of avoiding edits to the article -- and the IP wasn't located where Rothwell lives. The obvious reason: the IP editor had knowledge of cold fusion and treated the research as real. This came before ArbComm, which yawned. Who cares about some IP editor with what may be fringe views? That was before I took JzG to RfC and then ArbComm over his use of tools while involved.

ArbComm was more or less forced to take notice of JzG's behavior in that case, so they trout-slapped him, he resigned his tools and went away mad until someone, probably, pointed out to him that he resigned after the case, so he wasn't "under a cloud," and he could get the tools back, and he could then do whatever he pleased, since nobody really cared, except that Abd fellow, and a few stupid sympathizers, and surely he'd be banned quickly. So that's what he did. He later repeated the behavior that got him reprimanded, without consequence.

The problem with the pseudoskeptical position -- Iantresman brings up the pair, pseudoscience vs. pseudoskepticism -- is that it assumes the truth and scientific probity of certain skeptical positions, which is ... pseudoscientific. Long ago, Jimbo suggested that proponents of fringe theories would readily agree that they are fringe, and that's mostly accurate.

With cold fusion there is a problem: the supposed fringe position is the only position still represented in the peer-reviewed literature for the last decade or so, the extreme skeptical position is almost totally dead except among those who don't know the literature, and who depend on opinions from more than twenty years ago, while positive reviews of cold fusion are routine, I've counted sixteen of them in the last decade. However, I never attempted to remove the "fringe" designation from the cold fusion article, because it is still considered that way by many. I was much more concerned, once I realized the situation, with getting in material from solid reliable sources. Some years later, it's still true that what is well-known in the journals, found in peer-reviewed reviews of the field, supposedly golden as RS, is excluded.

Convenience links to legal copies of these reviews have been removed on arguments that were rejected every time they were formally raised, but ... editors who knew enough to put in the links so that people can read the sources for themselves without having an academic account were banned or gave up in disgust.

"Fringe" doesn't mean "pseudoscience."

The issue that the editor is attempting to bring to ArbComm is not the soundness of Sheldrake's theories, nobdy is arguing that Sheldrake should be presented as mainstream, but the bullying of editors who attempt to establish balance in a BLP. I'm confirming that the bullying exists. Blocks are threatened and doled out readily for any editor seen as promoting a pseudoscientific agenda -- even if that is not the actual intention. Blocks are rare for those who are advancing a pseudoskeptical agenda.

"Fringe" editors are readily frustrated when they see opposition that is blatantly contrary to policy, so they, often being naive as editors, may turn to socking. When a pseudoskeptical editor socks, as ScienceApologist did, the response is mild. "Don't do that!" When it's a fringe editor, it's Indef Block! Ban!

Institutional bias, difficult to address piecemeal, it's not even visible if one just considers one case, one block/ban at a time.

ScienceApologist is mentioned, by an editor who seems to think he is no longer editing. No, he's returned to editing, he just managed to conceal his identity with the collaboration of Wikipedia admins. You have to know where to look.
QTxVi4bEMRbrNqOorWBV (T-C-L). He has a subpage with prior identities: link

The history has actively been concealed, but not entirely. As I recall, some of the "previous account" names are mispelled. I notice that there is no page at Joshua P. Schroeder, his real name, hence there is a redlink on a WMC "In Memoriam" page at link. He made a point of converting to his real name, and then he used concern about his real name to allow renaming with no redirect, but a redirect was left with Previously Science Apologist.

His signature is still "jps."

I still call him ScienceApologist, though he's not advocating real science, but "scientism," also known as pseudoskepticism. He's knowledgeable in physics, more than any other WP pseudoskeptic, AFAIK, but abuses it. He is the only member of that faction to suffer significant sanctions -- and those sanctions are now obsolete, gone, discarded. ArbComm was bypassed by the process.

WMC lost his admin bit, but continued as an editor, still active in areas where, if he were treated like others, he'd long ago have been banned, particularly global warming.

SA is no longer considered subject to any bans, and is active opposing pseudoscience and fringe science with POV-pushing behaviors. (He was quite open that he opposed NPOV, instead pushing for SPOV, or "scientific point of view," basically, "I and my friends are right, we have the right to speak for mainstream science, and anyone who disagrees is wrong." If my memory is correct, he wrote once that he'd be in favor of banning Galileo for opposiing the established science of his time.)

ArbComm has long avoided the issue, and it looks like they are going to do it again. The factional editors can easily prevail at Arbitration Enforcement. The issue of how to handle institutional bias is not a simple one, and ArbComm doesn't do "difficult." They have what Malleus called 'limited resources."

[EricBarbour]

Bullying of any editor seen as promoting or defending "Fringe science" or "Pseudoscience" has long been going on. Cold fusion is, of course, the area where I know the most, but the editors involved with the bullying, most of them, were active in many "pseudoscientific" areas. Notice that JzG (T-C-L) shows up to comment on this. He once blocked an IP editor as a sock of Jed Rothwell, who was never banned, the IP didn't match Rothwell's strongly established practice of signing all his Talk edits -- and of avoiding edits to the article -- and the IP wasn't located where Rothwell lives. The obvious reason: the IP editor had knowledge of cold fusion and treated the research as real. This came before ArbComm, which yawned. Who cares about some IP editor with what may be fringe views? That was before I took JzG to RfC and then ArbComm over his use of tools while involved.

ArbComm was more or less forced to take notice of JzG's behavior in that case, so they trout-slapped him, he resigned his tools and went away mad until someone, probably, pointed out ot him that he resigned after the case, so he wasn't "under a cloud," and he could get the tools back, and he could then do whatever he pleased, since nobody really cared, except that Abd fellow, and a few stupid sympathizers, and surely he'd be banned quickly. So that's what he did. He later repeated the behavior that got him reprimanded, without consequence.

Which incident was this? Guy has been desysopped and resysopped quite a few times.

[SB_Johnny]

WP is, if anything, more tolerant of the fringies than it should be. The less comfortable the quacks feel, the more the admins are doing their jobs.

Unfortunately the medical articles show that the admins aren't doing their jobs.

[Abd]

Bullying of any editor seen as promoting or defending "Fringe science" or "Pseudoscience" has long been going on. Cold fusion is, of course, the area where I know the most, but the editors involved with the bullying, most of them, were active in many "pseudoscientific" areas. Notice that JzG (T-C-L) shows up to comment on this. He once blocked an IP editor as a sock of Jed Rothwell, who was never banned, the IP didn't match Rothwell's strongly established practice of signing all his Talk edits -- and of avoiding edits to the article -- and the IP wasn't located where Rothwell lives. The obvious reason: the IP editor had knowledge of cold fusion and treated the research as real. This came before ArbComm, which yawned. Who cares about some IP editor with what may be fringe views? That was before I took JzG to RfC and then ArbComm over his use of tools while involved.

ArbComm was more or less forced to take notice of JzG's behavior in that case, so they trout-slapped him, he resigned his tools and went away mad until someone, probably, pointed out ot him that he resigned after the case, so he wasn't "under a cloud," and he could get the tools back, and he could then do whatever he pleased, since nobody really cared, except that Abd fellow, and a few stupid sympathizers, and surely he'd be banned quickly. So that's what he did. He later repeated the behavior that got him reprimanded, without consequence.

Which incident was this? Guy has been desysopped and resysopped quite a few times.

In this case, I thought, Guy requested his rights be taken and then requested them back. Here is the Wikipedia rights log. And here is the meta rights log, for Steward actions. Putting those together:

07:47, 28 March 2010 Timotheus Canens (talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JzG from autopatrolled and administrator to administrator (No need for autoreviewer now.)
07:34, 28 March 2010 Nihonjoe (talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JzG from autopatrolled to autopatrolled and administrator (per request on WP:BN)
14:03, 4 February 2010 DragonflySixtyseven (talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JzG from (none) to autopatrolled (to make things easier)
21:47, 5 November 2009 Nick1915 (talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JzG@enwiki from administrator to (none) (per http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?t ... id=1706849 and centralauth)
14:48, 21 October 2007 Bastique (talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JzG@enwiki from (none) to administrator (Restored temporary access removal. Non-controversial)
13:37, 23 September 2007 Bastique (talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JzG@enwiki from administrator to (none) (Person request. Non-controversial access removal.)
02:06, 17 January 2006 Ilyanep (talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JzG (+sysop)

So JzG *never* was "desysopped." According to these logs, he voluntarily resigned twice, once in September 2007, and once again in November 2009.

That doesn't match my memory, which would be of less delay in resignation after Requests for Arbitration/Abd and JzG which closed 18 May 2009.

My memory was faulty. JzG did not resign the tools, rather he stopped editing. Contributions shows no edits from May 8 to August 31, 2009, and the gap really began April 24, after his response to the ArbComm case. This edit shows how much confusion he was in.

Remarkable case, that. ArbComm's criticism of me was essentially that I did not escalate rapidly enough, but attempted to resolve the dispute at each level before moving up to the next level. I.e, I followed WP:DR precisely. They hate people who do that! Supposedly I was supposed to know that these lesser efforts would fail. I didn't know that. I actually thought that one of JzG's friends would tap him on the shoulder and suggest he reconsider his position.

The result was considered astonishing at the time. JzG had been trout-slapped! Abd wasn't banned. Yet. That took them a bit longer.

JzG's view of my motives is characteristic:

Abd is generally sympathetic to cold fusion, as an alternative energy source

No, I have a background in science, having sat with Richard P. Feynman (T-H-L) for two years, my first two years at the California Institute of Technology, I could understand the issues, but I was quite unfamiliar with the later research in the field and assumed with almost everyone else that the original experiments could not be reproduced. Quite simply, I saw what was obviously an improper blacklisting, and later improper administrative actions by JzG, and tapped him on the shoulder, and was essentially told to go fly a kite. It had nothing to do with "energy source." That's an argument trotted out by pseudoskeptics who think that every scientist who has confirmed the original work -- or done newer work in this field -- is blinded by belief in fabulous free energy, and that this would also be true of any editor who opposes the faction's agenda to make it very clear how bogus cold fusion is.

JzG believed that I had raised the issues before and had been rejected. No, my positions were either confirmed or consensus was blocked by JzG and his friends, hence the escalation to RfC and to ArbComm. JzG knew that the blacklisting of lenr-canr.org might not stand at Wikipedia, where it would be debated, as actually started (he had blacklisted out of process, bypassing discussion), so he went to meta and obtained the global blacklisting on trumped-up claims, and the local discussion was dumped because now moot. But I think that JzG actually believed what he wrote, watching him over the years, my conclusion is fairly simple: not the brightest bulb in the pack.

When I went back to meta, eventually, to request delisting, having obtained a whole series of whitelistings, JzG attempted to block that. He failed. Basically, whenever it was possible to present actual evidence, he failed. His friends tried to derail the ArbComm case, claiming that the evidence I'd collected was cherry-picked. That failed when an arbitrator independently compiled the same evidence. It was just a list of *all* his edits to cold fusion and cold fusion-related articles, with his edit summaries, showing involvement.

ArbComm almost completely ignores the behavior of so-called "uninvolved editors" in ArbComm cases. Administrators have directly denied recusal policy, for example, on ArbComm pages. Hey, freedom of speech! Why should we be concerned about an administrator who denies the obligation of recusal when involved? Surely they would not actually act according to what they believe! I had originally a fairly high opinion of ArbComm, having seen some well-considered decisions. That was misleading.

They will ignore massive misbehavior by administrators with substantial factional support, and severely punish minor transgressions by others. It's disgusting, to tell you how I actually feel about it.

As to cold fusion, I'm now, relatively speaking, an expert in the field, the result of about four years of extensive discussions with scientists of all kinds -- including skeptics -- and my position is that cold fusion is a mystery. Something is happening and we do not know what it is, but the evidence is clear that there is some unknown nuclear reaction; direct evidence was not available until 1991, and it's been multiply confirmed, according to the latest major peer-reviewed review of the field, and none of this would you know from the Wikipedia article, which is massively stuck in very old sources.

When I was site-banned on Wikipedia as the result of ArbComm shooting the messenger in the WMC case (i.e., I was right, WMC was abusively using his tools, but we will ban you anyway because we don't like you, a brief summary -- I argued against allowing ArbComm cases to be about the filer unless the case is frivolous, ArbComm cases should be like RfC's where filer misbehavior is properly irrelevant) but that fell on deaf ears, I *then* became seriously involved with cold fusion. It's a fascinating field, it is essentially cutting-edge because of the mystery.

As to my interest in cold fusion, I don't care about the Wikipedia article. It's irrelevant. We don't need it. What we need is serious research funding, to do what was recommended by the U.S. Department of Energy panels, twice, and so that's where I'm working. Today I'm playing hookey.

Basically, Wikipedia blocked and banned editors who simply wanted the article to reflect the best scientific sources. There are other editors who are "wide-eyed believers," but they mostly are clueless about Wikipedia, so they aren't taken seriously by the faction, the editors banned are people like Pcarbonn (who later got a job in the field) and myself, who maintained civility and followed policy. We were the real threat to their agenda. They called us "civil POV pushers," as if that was a terrible charge, and ignoring their own uncivil POV pushing.

[Mancunium]

Perhaps you may be aware of the thread on Mr Sheldrake's BLP elsewhere in this site: link

It was kicked off by this article:

Pseudoscientist Rupert Sheldrake Is Not Being Persecuted, And Is Not Like Galileo
The New Republic, 8 November 2013 link

[iii]

Hi, Abd.

You might consider buying yourself some piece of mind and burying some hatchets with respect to me. Additionally, you might want to work on improving your doxing skills before going off on the rails on vortex-l. I'm not Joshua Cude.

I've made nice with James Salsman; I surely can make nice with Abd ul-Rahman Lomax.

Surely?

[SB_Johnny]

I've made nice with James Salsman; I surely can make nice with Abd ul-Rahman Lomax.

Surely?

Only if you're willing to dedicate hours and hours reading his lengthy mindspills for months on end. Even Moulton failed to get him to be logical, and he had nearly unlimited time to dedicate to the effort.

[The Devil's Advocate]

WP is, if anything, more tolerant of the fringies than it should be.

That is a rather simplistic assessment. It varies from case to case and there are more than a few instances where the zeal shown by those going after fringe views is very much the problem.

[Cla68]

Since WP has no rules against article length, there shouldn't be any problem with fringe views being expounded at length if supported by reliable sources. Try going to an article in which editors are defending mainstream science and say on the talk page that you think all sides should be represented in the article because you feel that the reader is intelligent enough to decide on their own what the truth is. The bullies on that particular article will go ape at the suggestion.

[iii]

WP is, if anything, more tolerant of the fringies than it should be.

That is a rather simplistic assessment. It varies from case to case and there are more than a few instances where the zeal shown by those going after fringe views is very much the problem.

Since WP has no rules against article length, there shouldn't be any problem with fringe views being expounded at length if supported by reliable sources. Try going to an article in which editors are defending mainstream science and say on the talk page that you think all sides should be represented in the article because you feel that the reader is intelligent enough to decide on their own what the truth is. The bullies on that particular article will go ape at the suggestion.

Examples or it didn't happen.

[Hersch]

WP is, if anything, more tolerant of the fringies than it should be. The less comfortable the quacks feel, the more the admins are doing their jobs.

Unfortunately the medical articles show that the admins aren't doing their jobs.

But as Abd correctly points out, in his usual tldr fashion, the cold fusion issue is not comparable to say, laetrile. And the science orthodoxy nowadays is certainly nothing to write home about.

[iii]

But as Abd correctly points out, in his usual tldr fashion, the cold fusion issue is not comparable to say, laetrile.

I think one could compare and contrast them. For example: "While both cold fusion and laetrile are ideas based on dubious claims, Steve McQueen did not die because of cold fusion."

And the science orthodoxy nowadays is certainly nothing to write home about.

As compared to the golden age when you wrote home about science orthodoxy early and often?

[Hersch]

The bullies on that particular article will go ape at the suggestion.

Examples or it didn't happen.

............................

[iii]

The bullies on that particular article will go ape at the suggestion.

Examples or it didn't happen.

............................

Check your zoology, Hersch. That's a sloth.

[Abd]

Hi, Abd.

You might consider buying yourself some piece of mind and burying some hatchets with respect to me. Additionally, you might want to work on improving your doxing skills before going off on the rails on vortex-l. I'm not Joshua Cude.

I've made nice with James Salsman; I surely can make nice with Abd ul-Rahman Lomax.

Surely?

Far out. III is the acronym in use for Infusion Institute Inc, which I'm about to incorporate in a few days. The goal is to facilitate funding for the basic research that was never adequately done with cold fusion. It was done, all right, but most of it wasn't published in the journal system but as conference papers and commissioned repots by SRI International -- on a level at or above the requirements for peer-reviewed papers, but ... not what physicists expect, and Cude and I discussed this at length on moletrap. If you aren't Cude, you have a clone out there, who knows your arguments inside out. However, that doesn't matter. You *and* Cude will be invited to submit proposals to III or to comment on proposed protocols, in the public comment phase. This is basic science, not an effort to prove anything. but to confirm or disconfirm existing work. I have the support of scientists within and outside the field, including a very notable skeptic.

I don't post to Vortex-l, and Cude would likely know that, so unless you are either very clever or careless, this would indicate you aren't him. By far the bulk of my writing lately is on a private mailing list for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science researchers, or in correspondence with scientists and corporate officers.

Thanks for commenting, Joshua. Cude or Schroeder, does it matter?

[Abd]

I've made nice with James Salsman; I surely can make nice with Abd ul-Rahman Lomax.

Surely?

Only if you're willing to dedicate hours and hours reading his lengthy mindspills for months on end. Even Moulton failed to get him to be logical, and he had nearly unlimited time to dedicate to the effort.

The real history.

Mouton and I cooperated on examining certain issues around cold fusion on the Wikiversity resource pages, discussing them at length and in detail.

The result of that was that published scientists were asked some questions about matters not covered in the published literature, and answers appeared.

A skeptical electrochemist, Dieter Britz, did the math for a claim of Moulton's, that bubble noise was causing miscalculation of input power. It wasn't a strong claim in the first place (i.e, amateur armchair scientist, i.e., Moulton, challenges experts, how likely is it that he is correct?), but Britz worked with actual data and showed that bubble noise was not of a character that could cause the error described.

Moulton was unable to continue that work on the Wikiversity resource because he was blocked again, the result of his own mindless agenda to continue attacking Wikipedia editors without necessity or any local purpose.

SBJ has never understood that building academic resources collaboratively requires a great deal of discussion. He's not an academic, and has no understanding of either academia or logic. His position has nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with that constant headache that makes it painful for him to think.

[Abd]

But as Abd correctly points out, in his usual tldr fashion, the cold fusion issue is not comparable to say, laetrile.

I think one could compare and contrast them. For example: "While both cold fusion and laetrile are ideas based on dubious claims, Steve McQueen did not die because of cold fusion."

Is "cold fusion" based on "dubious claims"?

It's actually a difficult issue, that pseudoskeptics like Joshua P. Schroeder (iii here, formerly ScienceApologist) vastly oversimplify. In objective articles, what is popularly called "cold fusion" is called "anomalous heat effects in metal deuterides," plus there are a host of other reported effects. Are there "anomalous heat effects"? Yes, there is no longer any significant doubt about that. (The 2004 U.S. DoE review was evenly divided on the question, and that simply shows inertia. The negative position boils down to "there must be some mistake because this is impossible."

The question is what is causing the effects. Is it "fusion"?

Okay, second problem. What is "fusion"? In the early days of this field, it was assumed that if there was any nuclear reaction taking place, it would be ordinary deuterium fusion, which was considered impossible. Joshua and I would doubtless agree on the reasons for the impossibility. I.e., it makes sense to consider it impossible. That's not *quite* the same as an impossibility proof.

But Pons and Fleischmann, reporting on the heat effect they found, did not actually claim fusion. They claimed an "unknown nuclear reaction." Is there any reason to suspect that there is some unknown nuclear reaction?

Actually, there is strong circumstantial evidence for more than one such reaction. Tritium production from highly loaded metal deuterides, for example, is so widely reported that it's quite unlikely to be artifact. Something is going on that we don't understand. There is also decent reason to suspect very low levels of neutron production. The neutrons and tritium have not been correlated with the heat, and are quite likely a different reaction. Gee, there might be more than one thing in heaven and earth that is not understood in our philosophy.

But there is more. Helium has been found and correlated with the heat production, at roughly the expected ratio for conversion of deuterium to helium (by any mechanism that doesn't leave undetected energy). That's been confirmed by about a dozen research groups. While Joshua can certainly provide excuses for discounting this, for continuing to consider the matter "dubious," that position is dead in the journals, it can't get published any more, while "cold fusion" work continues to be published, including a major peer-reviewed review of the field, published in 2010. Such reviews are supposedly golden for Wikipedia RS, but .... facts from it were excluded by ... Joshua and friends. Still are.

Joshua and his friends have done a lot of damage on Wikipedia by excluding reliably-sourced material on the thinnest of excuses, while encouraging administrators to block and ban anyone who frustrated their ignorant agenda.

Cold fusion is now widely accepted in the jpeer-reviewed ournals, just not the major physics journals that announced, twenty years ago, that they would not publish anything more on cold fusion. This is far, far from the situation with laetrile. Schroeder is a typical pseudoskeptic, who treats all science that he doesn't understand as "bunk" or "dubious," without actually examining the evidence, and without noticing the utter absence of evidence for his position. He is the real pseudoscientist, covering his unsupported opinion with the mantle of science.

There are deeper philosophical issues that the "anti-pseudoscience" crowd obscure. I'm not addressing those here. Let me put it this way: Brian Josephson (T-H-L) is not entirely dim. I'm a skeptic, just Marcello Truzzi (T-H-L) style. I was a fan of Martin Gardner (T-H-L) since I was a teenager, and had the honor of being mentioned by him in an article. To someone like Schroeder, Arthur C. Clarke (T-H-L) was a deluded old man, because he wrote positively of cold fusion. Everything is understood from the bastion of Schroeder's own certainty and lack of self-doubt, i.e,. his cargo cult science.

[Mancunium]

1-megawatt cold fusion power plant now available – yours for just $1.5 million
ExtremeTech, 26 November 2013 link

Believe it or not, the first cold fusion power plant is now available to pre-order. The E-Cat 1MW Plant, which comes in a standard shipping container, can produce one megawatt of thermal energy, using low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) — a process, often known as cold fusion, that fuses nickel and hydrogen into copper, producing energy 100,000 times more efficiently than combustion. It sounds like E-Cat is now taking orders for delivery in early 2014, priced fairly reasonably at $1.5 million. Has cold fusion — the answer to all our energy needs — finally made its way to market? [...]

Sceptic-bait E-Cat COLD FUSION generator goes on sale for $US1.5m
The Register, 28 November 2013 link

Leonardo Corp says it's now accepting pre-orders for its “energy catalyzer” product, with delivery expected within four months. The “Ecat” is a controversial product: although it's been claimed to deliver more output power than input power in “black box” experiments, the mechanism by which the “low energy nuclear fusion” reaction happens is treated with scepticism by physicists. The Ecat purportedly attaches hydrogen atoms to nickel, according to its inventor Andrea Rossi, with energy and copper as the outputs. [...]

ECAT.com Energy Catalyzer link

[Abd]

The Register, 28 November 2013 ecat cold fusion to go on sale
Good example of the garbage that is brought up on cold fusion.

This is about Rossi, an entrepreneur/inventor, not a scientist, who may have found a way to generate anomalous heat with nickel and hydrogen. It may or may not have anything to do with cold fusion. There is no evidence that is not heavily dependent on Rossi himself or that has been generated independently. Rossi has gone out of his way to look like a con artist, which may well be a deliberate pose to throw off imitators. He's definitely "leaked" misleading information.

Of greater interest scientifically is the work of Defkalion Green Technologies, because they have released more real data. They are going public, supposedly, before the end of the year, though on a Toronto stock exchange. Why is DGT of greater interest? Well, they are encouraging the involvement of real scientists, like Yeong Kim, and they have disclosed information to them under non-disclosure agreements. That doesn't much help the rest of us, but it's far ahead of what Rossi has done.

None of this is yet ready for inclusion in Wikipedia other than as "news." It's not science yet.

The story about Rossi and his alleged megawatt reactor may have been a mistake. A relevant web site was updated or something and came up in searches as recent, but Rossi was supposed to offer a megawatt reactor back in 2011 or early 2012.

What I've been urging the commercial developers to do is to release individual "investigational devices" for independent testing. They could actually sell them, these things are not complicated. As investigational devices, they would not have to meet safety standards, etc. But the state of affairs with U.S. patent law on anything that looks like cold fusion is drastically poor, a frustration of the purpose of patent protection. So inventors are strongly incentivized to keep what they are working on secret.

(The megawatt reactor is just a pile of much smaller units. COP is allegedly about six. For how long? No data has been released, as to actual operation. Just projected operation.)

My general opinion is that Rossi and DGT and others have something, but it is not necessarily reliable enough for a commercial device, and reliability has always been the real problem with cold fusion, not reality. Rossi recently had a supposed "third party test." It was not truly third party, and it certainly was not independent, but what I notice is that three devices were tested. The first melted down, and the second and third performed very differently. DGT had a public demonstration in July, I watched some of it from a video projection at the International Conference on Cold Fusion at Missouri University. The results were very strong, but it looks like they set up the protocol expecting much poorer results. Reliablity is the big banana, not "spectacular heat." I am in good communication with the DGT CTO, and he's totally silent on the reliability issue. It's not surprising.

[greybeard]

Joshua and his friends have done a lot of damage on Wikipedia by excluding reliably-sourced material on the thinnest of excuses, while encouraging administrators to block and ban anyone who frustrated their ignorant agenda.

I think the central problem here lies in what Wikipedia is, what it wishes to be, what it should be, and what people who promote material into it assume or wish it to be. Sorry for that impossible-to-read sentence, but here goes ...

Never before has the definition of "encyclopedia" included current events, lengthy biographies of recent celebrities, up-to-date statistics about current sporting events, exhaustive descriptions of mass-culture phenomenon, or lengthy expositions on unsettled and/or controversial matters of science, economics, and so on. We have traditionally had other publications -- newspapers, almanacs, fan books, sports compendia, scholarly and not-so-scholarly journals, People magazine, etc -- for those purposes.

Indeed, the Internet has massively democratized access to information generally, so that I can find the lyrics to virtually any pop song, a review of any movie and play, quality medical information about every disease and treatment, and a myriad of other information online from a variety of reputable (and not reputable) sources. Laymen and amateurs of every stripe can gain access online to information that was formerly the purview of only experts with access to research libraries and the skill to locate such material.

But the converse situation has not (entirely) arisen. The professional diplomat or statesmen does not leap up and say "Israel's settlement expansion in the East Jerusalem town of Gilo is clearly illegal under section 49 of the UN ruling ... I know because Wikipedia says so!" No physicist will say "The presence of helium in cold-fusion reactions showing anomalous heat signatures seems to indicate some kind of reaction ... I read that on Wikipedia, so it must be true!" Not at all. Statesmen, scientists, and others continue to (quite properly) use specialist sources and primary materials to form their professional opinions.

So who is it that various zealots (whether on Pokemon, the Middle East conflict, or Cold Fusion) are trying to reach by pushing this stuff into Wikipedia? Answer: the lazy and not-very-smart. They want to reach the 6th-grade term paper writers of the world and their sundry adult counterparts, in hopes that, through repetition and association with dubious authority, the "conventional wisdom" becomes sympathetic to their position, even when it differs from fact and established science, jurisprudence, history, or whatever.

This is why the Encyclopedia Britannica should not and does not contain a lengthy exegesis on the (unproven) theory of cold fusion, even though it does contain a reference to the science history of Pons and Fleischmann. But this is not enough for Wikipedia. It thrives on the idiotic cycle of controversy. It doesn't want its pages to become mostly-static (and therefore trustworthy) repositories of settled fact, it wants them to be WP:BATTLEGROUNDS, because that is what makes it fun for the game players, and that is what encourages the duped and incorrect conventional wisdom believers to keep signing up (or making socks) and "correcting" things that are already correct.

Wikipedia wants to be "the repository of all human knowledge (and myth, fiction, misinformation, trivia, hoax, public relations, propaganda, faux news, gossip, etc)" because being a reference work is boooooorrrrrriiiiiinnnggg.

In short, Cold Fusion, like the Middle East, Intelligent Design, Cyprus, the faked Moon Landing, Armenia, and a hundred other things are perfect fodder for Wikipedia, because they by definition are unsettled, cause controversy, which creates editors, who fight with each other, giving admins something to do. They are the Non-Player-Characters in the big MMPORG, causing just enough mayhem to keep the players interested. What an f'ing waste of time.

[EricBarbour]

So who is it that various zealots (whether on Pokemon, the Middle East conflict, or Cold Fusion) are trying to reach by pushing this stuff into Wikipedia? Answer: the lazy and not-very-smart. They want to reach the 6th-grade term paper writers of the world and their sundry adult counterparts, in hopes that, through repetition and association with dubious authority, the "conventional wisdom" becomes sympathetic to their position, even when it differs from fact and established science, jurisprudence, history, or whatever.

Thank you. Wikipedia is the "TMZ of hard information". Run by trolls, and hosting lies and truth next to each other.

[lilburne]

+1 greybeard

Ultimately it matters not how much of wikipedia is a heavy dose of pseudoscience, woo medicine, anti-evolutionism. atrocious history, garbled science, impossible to read maths, and idiotic descriptions of current events. Those of passing intelligence will get their information elsewhere. Discerning parents will still subscribe to Britannica.

The real worth of WP is as a division point between those that use it and those that eschew it.

[iii]

They want to reach the 6th-grade term paper writers of the world and their sundry adult counterparts, in hopes that, through repetition and association with dubious authority, the "conventional wisdom" becomes sympathetic to their position, even when it differs from fact and established science, jurisprudence, history, or whatever.

Wikipedia is the "TMZ of hard information"

The real worth of WP is as a division point between those that use it and those that eschew it.

This is all very true and certainly worthy of emphasizing. Sadly, since I actually take a professional interest in (remedial) education the level at which Wikipedia cuts to the core, I find that ignoring the cesspool is not an option. It's why I'm still around these parts, anyway.

[SB_Johnny]

He's not an academic, and has no understanding of either academia or logic. His position has nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with that constant headache that makes it painful for him to think.

You're not an academic either, Abd. I used to be one (logic being one of my areas of specialty), and I know you used to be too. Remind me again what your degree is in?

So who is it that various zealots (whether on Pokemon, the Middle East conflict, or Cold Fusion) are trying to reach by pushing this stuff into Wikipedia? Answer: the lazy and not-very-smart.

Well, an encyclopedia should also (one would hope) reach intelligent people who have a passing interest in a topic, but simply aren't motivated to spend endless hours researching a passing interest. So, for example, the cold fusion article should make it very clear that it's a physical impossibility, and tell the story of the quacks that made it an issue that might spur an intelligent person with a passing interest to bother looking it up in an encyclopedia.

[enwikibadscience]

Well, an encyclopedia should also (one would hope) reach intelligent people who have a passing interest in a topic, but simply aren't motivated to spend endless hours researching a passing interest. So, for example, the cold fusion article should make it very clear that it's a physical impossibility, and tell the story of the quacks that made it an issue that might spur an intelligent person with a passing interest to bother looking it up in an encyclopedia.

And the pseudosience articles ate being written on both sides by editors with agendas. These are valid topics, I agree with you, but an impossibility on en.Wikipedia.

[thekohser]

...buying yourself some piece of mind...

The correct phrase is "peace of mind", but I do agree that many Wikipediots could benefit from buying a piece of mind.

[iii]

...buying yourself some piece of mind...

The correct phrase is "peace of mind", but I do agree that many Wikipediots could benefit from buying a piece of mind.

Good catch of a somewhat fortunate eggcorn. Thanks.

[Hersch]

I think the central problem here lies in what Wikipedia is, what it wishes to be, what it should be, and what people who promote material into it assume or wish it to be. Sorry for that impossible-to-read sentence, but here goes ...

Never before has the definition of "encyclopedia" included current events, lengthy biographies of recent celebrities, up-to-date statistics about current sporting events, exhaustive descriptions of mass-culture phenomenon, or lengthy expositions on unsettled and/or controversial matters of science, economics, and so on. We have traditionally had other publications -- newspapers, almanacs, fan books, sports compendia, scholarly and not-so-scholarly journals, People magazine, etc -- for those purposes.

Indeed, the Internet has massively democratized access to information generally, so that I can find the lyrics to virtually any pop song, a review of any movie and play, quality medical information about every disease and treatment, and a myriad of other information online from a variety of reputable (and not reputable) sources. Laymen and amateurs of every stripe can gain access online to information that was formerly the purview of only experts with access to research libraries and the skill to locate such material.

But the converse situation has not (entirely) arisen. The professional diplomat or statesmen does not leap up and say "Israel's settlement expansion in the East Jerusalem town of Gilo is clearly illegal under section 49 of the UN ruling ... I know because Wikipedia says so!" No physicist will say "The presence of helium in cold-fusion reactions showing anomalous heat signatures seems to indicate some kind of reaction ... I read that on Wikipedia, so it must be true!" Not at all. Statesmen, scientists, and others continue to (quite properly) use specialist sources and primary materials to form their professional opinions.

So who is it that various zealots (whether on Pokemon, the Middle East conflict, or Cold Fusion) are trying to reach by pushing this stuff into Wikipedia? Answer: the lazy and not-very-smart. They want to reach the 6th-grade term paper writers of the world and their sundry adult counterparts, in hopes that, through repetition and association with dubious authority, the "conventional wisdom" becomes sympathetic to their position, even when it differs from fact and established science, jurisprudence, history, or whatever.

This is why the Encyclopedia Britannica should not and does not contain a lengthy exegesis on the (unproven) theory of cold fusion, even though it does contain a reference to the science history of Pons and Fleischmann. But this is not enough for Wikipedia. It thrives on the idiotic cycle of controversy. It doesn't want its pages to become mostly-static (and therefore trustworthy) repositories of settled fact, it wants them to be WP:BATTLEGROUNDS, because that is what makes it fun for the game players, and that is what encourages the duped and incorrect conventional wisdom believers to keep signing up (or making socks) and "correcting" things that are already correct.

Wikipedia wants to be "the repository of all human knowledge (and myth, fiction, misinformation, trivia, hoax, public relations, propaganda, faux news, gossip, etc)" because being a reference work is boooooorrrrrriiiiiinnnggg.

In short, Cold Fusion, like the Middle East, Intelligent Design, Cyprus, the faked Moon Landing, Armenia, and a hundred other things are perfect fodder for Wikipedia, because they by definition are unsettled, cause controversy, which creates editors, who fight with each other, giving admins something to do. They are the Non-Player-Characters in the big MMPORG, causing just enough mayhem to keep the players interested. What an f'ing waste of time.

Thank you. Wikipedia is the "TMZ of hard information". Run by trolls, and hosting lies and truth next to each other.

GB, that was very eloquent, and I would like, with your permission, to run it more or less verbatim as a blog post. I like Greg's reply as well. May I?

[Hersch]

So, for example, the cold fusion article should make it very clear that it's a physical impossibility, and tell the story of the quacks that made it an issue that might spur an intelligent person with a passing interest to bother looking it up in an encyclopedia.

This reinforces Greybeard's point. Had Wikipedia existed in the 1940s, the resident inquisitors would have insisted that it were impossible to fly faster than the speed of sound, due to what was assumed to be the "sound barrier." The history of science is littered with overturned assumptions.

[iii]

Had Wikipedia existed in the 1940s, the resident inquisitors would have insisted that it were impossible to fly faster than the speed of sound, due to what was assumed to be the "sound barrier."

You've included both bad history and bad science in one sentence.(cite) But anyway....

The history of science is littered with overturned assumptions.

It's littered more with wild goose chases and blind alleys, but it's more fun to pretend that those stupid eggheads are wrong, isn't it?

[greybeard]

GB, that was very eloquent, and I would like, with your permission, to run it more or less verbatim as a blog post. I like Greg's reply as well. May I?

Well, it's not up to my personal standards as a blog post, as it is essentially "typewriter jazz", with little or no editing, but feel free, if you like, as I don't the time or will to improve it right now. And that sentence had, like, way, too, many, commas.

[Hersch]

GB, that was very eloquent, and I would like, with your permission, to run it more or less verbatim as a blog post. I like Greg's reply as well. May I?

Well, it's not up to my personal standards as a blog post, as it is essentially "typewriter jazz", with little or no editing, but feel free, if you like, as I don't the time or will to improve it right now. And that sentence had, like, way, too, many, commas.

I will doubtless edit it just a tad. But it was an inspired observation.

[lilburne]

They want to reach the 6th-grade term paper writers of the world and their sundry adult counterparts, in hopes that, through repetition and association with dubious authority, the "conventional wisdom" becomes sympathetic to their position, even when it differs from fact and established science, jurisprudence, history, or whatever.

Wikipedia is the "TMZ of hard information"

The real worth of WP is as a division point between those that use it and those that eschew it.

This is all very true and certainly worthy of emphasizing. Sadly, since I actually take a professional interest in (remedial) education the level at which Wikipedia cuts to the core, I find that ignoring the cesspool is not an option. It's why I'm still around these parts, anyway.

Isn't that an Augean Stables thing?

I think it would be better to let the crap accumulate so that the stench is tangible to all.

[iii]

They want to reach the 6th-grade term paper writers of the world and their sundry adult counterparts, in hopes that, through repetition and association with dubious authority, the "conventional wisdom" becomes sympathetic to their position, even when it differs from fact and established science, jurisprudence, history, or whatever.

Wikipedia is the "TMZ of hard information"

The real worth of WP is as a division point between those that use it and those that eschew it.

This is all very true and certainly worthy of emphasizing. Sadly, since I actually take a professional interest in (remedial) education the level at which Wikipedia cuts to the core, I find that ignoring the cesspool is not an option. It's why I'm still around these parts, anyway.

Isn't that an Augean Stables thing?

I think it would be better to let the crap accumulate so that the stench is tangible to all.

The approach of letting crap accumulate only works if the visitors have noses. Some of the students I encounter either never grew one, have plugged it up with straw, or completely chopped it off.

Also, I'm not trying to clean the whole thing here. I'm just trying to keep a few square inches in the corner free from being completely packed with shit while from time-to-time asking that another few inches that are quite literally made out of shit be dismantled completely.

[thekohser]

I like Greg's reply as well. May I?

Huh?

[lilburne]

If they are over the age of 16 and haven't been taught critical thinking, then they are already lost to TV fundamentalism, pop-sci bollocks, general web idiocy, and New Age woo.

You can teach them how to answer tests in a way that will please you, but they won't necessarily accept a word of it.

[Hersch]

I like Greg's reply as well. May I?

Huh?

Sorry, I meant "Eric's reply."

[Abd]

He's not an academic, and has no understanding of either academia or logic. His position has nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with that constant headache that makes it painful for him to think.

You're not an academic either, Abd. I used to be one (logic being one of my areas of specialty), and I know you used to be too. Remind me again what your degree is in?

I don't have a degree. SBJ surely knows that. I studied physics with Feynman (1961-63) and Chemistry with Pauling (1961-62), but dropped out to pursue other interests.

So I'm not formally an academic, however, I think like an academic and communicate constantly with academics and am recognized by academics. Just not by highly opinionated Wikipedia editors and administrators like SBJ.

Let's see what his "logic" is.

So who is it that various zealots (whether on Pokemon, the Middle East conflict, or Cold Fusion) are trying to reach by pushing this stuff into Wikipedia? Answer: the lazy and not-very-smart.

Well, an encyclopedia should also (one would hope) reach intelligent people who have a passing interest in a topic, but simply aren't motivated to spend endless hours researching a passing interest. So, for example, the cold fusion article should make it very clear that it's a physical impossibility,

Summary of hidden content below: "Impossible" is not logical without knowing what cold fusion is, and it is actually undefined, except we know that helium is measured as correlated with heat, in palladium deuteride experiments, amply confirmed and covered in strong RS and there is no contrary research. (No heat, no helium. Enough heat, measureable helium.) Personal decision: Bye, and why.

Great. You can even find ancient RS that says that. Obsolete, long ago superseded, cherry-picked RS, the kind that the Wikipedia article relies on.

This is the problem: what is "cold fusion"? In order to know from existing physics that a thing is impossible, one must know what it is, so that reaction rates can be calculated. Surely, if you know logic and anything about cold fusion, you'd know that d-d fusion (what most had in mind in 1989) isn't "impossible," it is merely very very low rate. However, to calculate a reaction rate requires knowing the reaction. Different reaction or sometimes different conditions, different reaction rate.

"Cold fusion" is a popular term used to refer to the discovery of Pons and Fleischmann in 1984 of anomalous heat from highly loaded palladium deuteride. first reported publically in 1989. They called it an "unknown nuclear reaction," but because they believed that they had detected neutrons, they did speculate on deuterium fusion, However, the neutrons were not only at levels far too low to explain the heat from deuterium fusion, they were also apparently artifact.

Pons and Fleischmann were not experts in nuclear physics and neutron detection, a point often made as if not-expert-in-nuclear-physics was equivalent to "idiot.* However, they were expert in measuring heat, and their results have been very amply confirmed, by now -- it was simply a very difficult experiment, hence there were many early failures to replicate.

So what is it, SBJ, that is "impossible"? Is it "impossible" that there is some "unknown nuclear reaction." I.e., do we know everything?

Basically that a nuclear reaction is involved with "cold fusion" was only based on circumstantial evidence -- reported energy density, difficult to confirm, though confirmed -- until 1991, when the heat/helium correlation was reported by Miles, based on an extensive series of experiments. That work was later published under peer review and was criticized by Jones in the same journal, rather unsuccessfully.(Jones' position might be summarized as "this is impossible, therefore there must be some mistake." Miles work was experimental, and theory was actually irrelevant.) This was reviewed by Storms in his 2010 review of the field in Naturwissenschaften, "Status of cold fusion (2010)."

Miles was confirmed, with increased accuracy. Heat and helium are correlated. That is the conclusion in the journals, covered in many reviews, not just Storms. Now, what does "logic" conclude?

I wrote this yesterday.

Today I'm concluding that there is no point to continuing discussions here. I'd come to the same conclusion years ago, with Wikipedia Review. The communities and problems with the communities are similar. WPO doesn't readily ban people, but so what? This is a place where people can come and complain about Wikipedia, but very little has ever been accomplished by these complaints.

I have described Wikipedia and Wikipedia process, and what might be done to shift it. It's never been welcome, neither here nor on Wikipedia.

The biggest "crime" of Wikipedia is that of wasting enormous amounts of human labor. Shame on the Wikipedia community for setting this up, and, then, shame on those of us who continue in spite of realizing this. This site is very largely another opportunity to continue the waste.

So, what I wrote in another post, bye. Someone wrote that the initial post here could make a blog post. I'd likely consent to that, but I don't consider it necessarily useful.

One possibly useful thing happened here: Joshua P. Schroeder, aka ScienceApologist, aka BOL (bunch of letters), aka etc., made some gesture of civility. As far as I'm concerned, he's welcome to show up on Wikiversity, where his knowledge of physics could be very useful. He'll have to decide if it is worth the effort.

[SB_Johnny]

Remind me again what your degree is in?

I don't have a degree. SBJ surely knows that.

Nope, though I probably was informed of that at one point or another... just never put that in my mental rolladex.

[HRIP7]

So who is it that various zealots (whether on Pokemon, the Middle East conflict, or Cold Fusion) are trying to reach by pushing this stuff into Wikipedia? Answer: the lazy and not-very-smart. They want to reach the 6th-grade term paper writers of the world and their sundry adult counterparts, in hopes that, through repetition and association with dubious authority, the "conventional wisdom" becomes sympathetic to their position, even when it differs from fact and established science, jurisprudence, history, or whatever.

This is why the Encyclopedia Britannica should not and does not contain a lengthy exegesis on the (unproven) theory of cold fusion, even though it does contain a reference to the science history of Pons and Fleischmann. But this is not enough for Wikipedia. It thrives on the idiotic cycle of controversy. It doesn't want its pages to become mostly-static (and therefore trustworthy) repositories of settled fact, it wants them to be WP:BATTLEGROUNDS, because that is what makes it fun for the game players, and that is what encourages the duped and incorrect conventional wisdom believers to keep signing up (or making socks) and "correcting" things that are already correct.

Wikipedia wants to be "the repository of all human knowledge (and myth, fiction, misinformation, trivia, hoax, public relations, propaganda, faux news, gossip, etc)" because being a reference work is boooooorrrrrriiiiiinnnggg.

This. And that is why they are counting edits, editors and page views as their metrics of success, rather than measuring the quality of the information provided in their "encyclopedia".