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Rydberg Atoms/Rydberg matter/Wikipedia

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This page is original research. It may be openly edited, but is not required to be neutral. Opinion should be attributed. Comments below are by User:Abd unless otherwise stated.

Holmlid apparently edited en.Wikipedia as w:User:Holmlid. He was warned about conflict of interest editing,[1] and Contributions shows very little editing after that warning. The article on Rydberg matter was nominated by the same user for deletion.Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rydberg matter.

The grounds for nomination, I've seen many times. There were three aspects:

  • Conflict of interest.
The article is apparently written by Prof. Holmlid and is almost exclusively cited to his work. It is also used as an extension of the [2] personal homepage of Prof. Holmlid.
The link to a personal homepage is now dead. This is the version of the article as of that nomination. The claim of "self-promotion" and "conflict of interest" are actually irrelevant to keep/delete. If a user is violating policies, the user may be warned and sanctioned, but the content is not "guilty." By policy, if the topic is notable, if the article can be edited to a version that is properly sourced, it should be kept. If an article is written in a biased way, it can be edited, and I used to stubify difficult articles, it is quick, and then not only is the article a seed for further development, the original content is still available in history, and future editors may review it in detail. If it is deleted, there is a good chance another user will recreate it, creating new problems.
Another option for topics of marginal notability is "Merge." The article is redirected to a section in a more notable article, and a single reliable source may be enough to justify a properly-written section.
The "personal homepage" claim was unexplained. That page was not linked; the nominator may have seen similar material there.
  • Few citations.
This is a problem, a valid one. However, even a very few citations, independently published, in reliable sources, can be enough to support the verifiability of a stub. The nomination is not specific.
  • Search on Web of Science reveals that Prof. Holmlid has published 158 articles (none in major journals) with 2154 citations, 1863 of which are self-citations. With all do respect to the author, this does not go along with basic WP policies, such as WP:COI, WP:NOTABILITY, etc.
Again, this is an appeal to ordinary Wikipedian sensibilities. "Self-citation" sounds to a Wikipedian like self-promotion, and similar arguments were used in the Boubaker case. There is a problem, but it's a tricky one. To start, the nominator wrote "none in major journals." That was preposterous, a major blunder. While Holmlid does publish preprints on arXiv, almost all of his papers are published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. The general theory of reliable source has a requirement that the publisher be independent. Obviously, it is desirable that the authors also be independent, but material is not to be excluded, merely because an author is related in some way to the topic. This was a particular problem with Boubaker, because what he first described was named after him. There is no "Holmlid matter," though that might eventually happen.
1863 out of 2154 sounds like a lot; however, turn this statistic around. It indicates that there are almost 300 citations that are not self-citations. If this is all on a single topic (it probably was not), that's a notable topic!

The AfD snowed Keep, and was therefore speedy-closed, instead of waiting the normal period.

I'm noticing the difference between this and Boubaker. Looking at the AfD, I notice some odd votes.

With roughly that level of "disruption," with Boubaker, there might have been a hue and cry and many Delete votes appearing. Team Boubaker claimed "racism." I don't think that blatant racism was behind the Boubaker affair, but I can understand why it appeared so to Boubaker and partisans.

The Wikipedia article still does not mention ultradense deuterium, five years later, in spite of the Winterberg review. There was a fascinating (to me) discussion at the article talk page: [3]. Holdmlid argues with Wikipedia editors about matters where he may be the world's foremost expert. Where Wikipedia editors are talking about Wikipedia policy, they know more than he. But they do not limit themselves to that, and we see some claims being made that are w:WP:Synthesis and w:WP:Original research on the part of the editors, and they want editorial decisions to be based on that. For example, see the reference to "cold fusion kooks" and to "bad-faith keep votes" and the "fan club" (referring to the AfD).

The expert went away. This is absolutely normal on Wikipedia. And practically nothing is done about it. A sane understanding of COI and Wikipedia policy is that decisions should be made by a consensus of editors experienced in Wikipedia policies, but as advised by experts. It's a matter of concern when an expert says that the Wikipedia text is "wrong." It should not be casually dismissed due to "COI." It is routine for true experts to have some kind of COI. They are usually employed in the field!

However, we can see there that ultradense deuterium was mentioned in w:Deuterium. It was removed with this 2013 edit. This is a Talk page discussion, though from 2009. The response was ignorant, did not understand Rydberg matter and the experimental claims. The claims are not from laser compression. That was a confusion with w:Inertial confinement fusion. I saw the same arguments in a physics web site discussion. They reacted to the same Sciencedaily.com article, without reading the actual research report that was only summarized (and reading it poorly). So the comments are all about theory, nothing about the actual experimental evidence, and they made assumptions.

The removal seems to have been based on an IP objection:

The article has a section on ultradense deuterium. This raises the same questions that have been discussed extensively on the talk page of Rydberg matter. This is fringe science promoted by a guy named Leif Holmlid, who co-authors papers along with cold fusion kooks such as Hora and Miley. Holmlid's papers all reference his own papers extensively, but there is little evidence that anyone else in condensed matter physics believes his work. Three of the four references in this section are to Holmlid's papers.

I think, out of a vast array of papers by Holmlid, there is one co-authored with a professor and or rearcher (Miley and Hora) who have been cold fusion researchers. This is common among POV-pushers on Wikipedia. They attack persons, and conflate a single incident into a pattern of behavior. When those interested in cold fusion discover and point out "suppression," they are called "conspiracy theorists." In fact, there is suppression, existing in widespread opinion that is not scientifically based. Holmlid makes some cogent objections about experiment taking precedence over theory. To the "anti-fringe" faction, theory proves that experiment is wrong. It's routine.

There was revert warring over the removal, involving multiple users. I see no effort to find consensus on the Talk page. Only versions of "you're wrong." There is speculation that ultradense Rydberg matter is behind cold fusion. That is, to me, unlikely, because the evidence for fusion in UD deuterium is hot fusion evidence, and cold fusion is absent that.

On the physics site discussion, there was speculation that the UD deuerium research was "only presented at conferences of cold fusion fanatics." Actually, among those working with cold fusion, this is not common. Holmlid's work is almost entirely published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. The anti-fringe faction commonly makes false assertions, based on what they expect. That is, they are "believers," what they attack, it is only that the content of their belief is at odds with what they imagine others believe. The term for this is Pseudskeptic.

This happens frequently on Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors commonly don't understand the science behind "frontier" topics like Rydberg matter, or cold fusion. They are highly vulnerable to information cascades, a social phenomenon, believing common opinion, not actually relying on reliable source, or believing what is in media reliable source (which is usable) while ignoring what is in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, such as the Rydberg matter material.

So just mentioning "cold fusion," if not immediately shown to be false, is tantamount to proof of bogosity, even though peer-reviewed journals routinely publish articles on cold fusion without questioning the validity of the phenomenon. Example is the February 25 issue of w:Current Science which contained a special section on cold fusion with 34 articles (including one by me). If normal process were being followed, the existence of that section would be noted in the article, or there would be an external link. In fact, there was an external link. Removed with a totally bogus reason.[4]. (Both removals in that edit were bogus. Lenr-canr.org had been reviewed and studied many times, having been blacklisted for a time at the request of that same editor. Conclusion: not copyvio. Not promotional. Reasonable external link as a place to find legal copies of peer-reviewed papers -- generally author preprints. And then applying this to Current Science simply demonstrates the long-term bias of this editor.) The special section was raised when it was still in preprint status, on Talk:Cold fusion.

L. Holmlid now returns 1380 results on Google Scholar. There is at least one mainstream peer-reviewed journal source without Holmlid as author,[5], a secondary source. The author is w:Friedwardt Winterberg. The Wikipedia notes that he is well-known for his fusion activism. That is not cold fusion. It's w:Inertial confinement fusion, and his article on Holmlid's work is about the possibility of using ultradense deuterium as a target in that approach to fusion.

That article, as a secondary source, has something to say about Holmlid. Referring to the Holmlid report of ultradense deuterium, he writes:

Because this claim is so extraordinary, it must be taken with a great deal of skepticism. But since Leif Holmlid has an established record of publications about Rydberg matter in the refereed scientific literature the claim cannot be easily dismissed.

That's reliable source, on Holmlid himself and the work. It contradicts the pseudoskepticism of the editors who have removed material about ultradense deuterium. Because the original experimental work, as far as I know, has not been confirmed, skepticism is still in order. But Wikipedia can report about doubtful things, with proper framing. However, what I've said about not being confirmed is not reliable source. I know of no reliable source that says it hasn't been confirmed. No, what I'm noting here is that the claim is notable, as demonstrated by the Winterberg paper, published in the Journal of Fusion Energy in 2010.

There is another Winterberg paper, the same.2010. Incautious pseudoskeptics might read that paper as a "cold fusion claim." In fact, it's the opposite. It proposes the energy of collapse from the formation of ultradense deuterum as a possible artifact in cold fusion experiments. Winterberg, from my point of view, knows very little about cold fusion, he is a hot fusion physicist, and the experimental evidence is inconsistent with his explanation. This is common from physicists. But that paper is, reporting on Holmlid, peer-reviewer reliable secondary source, and independent.

The removed section on ultra-dense deuterium from w:Deuterium was, it was claimed in hidden text, linked from redirect w:Ultra-dense deuterium. That redirect does not exist, and there is no deletion record for it.

The user deleting it claimed consensus on the Talk page. It was only this user and two IP editors, and they clearly did not read or understand the source papers. There was revert warring, indicating that removal was notconsensus.

Two sections were removed. The first and longest-standing was created in 28 May 2008. Many users edited this section (including the user who later removed it). This was horribly written, and was based on a single source, Arata et al. It presented a speculative claim, They are effectively solidified as an ultrahigh density deuterium lump (Pycnodeuterium) inside each octahedral space within the unit cell of the Pd host lattice, as if it were a fact. w:Yoshiaki Arata has been called the "grand old man of Japanese physics." His cold fusion experimental reports generally considered, within the field, good work. However, pyncnodeuterium is a theorized material that could explain ordinary fusion palladium deuteride. The problem is that cold fusion is definitely not ordinary fusion. We see the connection, as well, with Miley and Hora, who have also pursued this idea. But it is an idea, not an experimental result.

That section would have been immediately rewritten by anyone who understands the field and Wikipedia policies. It had nothing to do with "antihydrogen." There was expressed support for improving the section, with the kind of pro-cold fusion comment that shows how Wikipedias really should be sending people who write comments like that to Wikiversity's resource on cold fusion. DARPA has long funded cold fusion research. "MIT" is not taking an interest, rather, a professor at MIT, Peter Hagelstein, has been working on cold fusion theory since 1989, and he has organized colloquia there. It is tolerated, that's all.

I've seen this again and again. Those with some knowledge of the field, but generally without knowledge of Wikipedia sourcing requirements, propose improvements without pointing to the actually usable sources. Then pseudoskeptics remove it all, instead of looking for better sources. The pseudoskeptics are far more established, and get away with this. Here, we see that a removal was not consensus, as to what had come before, but was maintained because of what I've called "participation bias." I'm not presenting a detailed study of this here, just pointing to how this activity resulted in the removal from the project of material that is covered in quality reliable source. On Wikiversity, we would not remove even far more outrageous claims. We would balance them, and we have high success at finding consensus doing this. It is much easier here than on an encyclopedia project, which must also be succinct. Balance takes discussion, it can be wordy.

Working on that section, with [6], the user wrote as an edit summary, (→‎Pycnodeuterium: Refs need cleaning up. However, cold fusion can't be sold with one reference, here. Literature is massive.]]

That's remarkable. The section was not "selling" cold fusion. It actually said, "Although this mechanism does result in high concentrations of deuterium in volumes, the reality of actual cold fusion by this mechanism has not been generally accepted within the scientific community." I'm arguing that the presumption of that included sentence, that "this mechanism," i.e., the idea of pnycodeuterium as established ("does result") was not adequately supported by the sources.

This concept of "selling" I have found repeated again and again. That users might simply want the project to report what is notable in sources seems to escape the imagination of the user, if the user is on the other side, arguing for bogosity or bunkum.

The section as removed 30 May 2013‎ was this: [7]. The section had lasted for five years. There is more I can write about how the removal was misleadingly confirmed. If we look at the history of the section, it's clear that there wasn't consensus for removal. However, as I've pointed out, the section was defective. Really, the Arata report (and others that are related) should have become a sentence within the ultra-dense deuterium section (and UDD has far more source).

So, then, the section on ultra-dense deuterium (as removed 30 May 2013), was this:

Ultradense deuterium
The existence of ultradense deuterium is suggested by experiment. This material, at a density of 140 kg/cm3, would be a million times more dense than regular deuterium, denser than at the core of the Sun. This ultradense form of deuterium may facilitate achieving laser-induced fusion.[27] Only minute amounts of ultradense deuterium have been produced thus far.[28][29] At the moment, it is not known how the material is produced or if it remains stable without applied pressure, however, there is conjecture that it is possible to produce a new stable state of matter by compressing ultracold deuterium in a Rydberg state.[30]
[27] Anderrson and Holmlid (2009)
[28] Badiei, Andersson and Holmlid (2009)
[29] Badiei, Andersson and Holmlid (2009) This is the foundational paper on ultra-dense deuterium, the experimental report.
[30} Winterberg!, 2009, but on arXiv. Later published in Journal of Fusion Energy (2010)

The title was edited to remove the hyphen, which was blamed on "mistaken journal writers," apparently not realizing that the issue would really be journal editors, not writers. My Current Science paper was heavily edited for style by the journal copy editor (after being accepted by peer review). In fact, usage varies. In this case, the journals have adopted the hyphen. Nobody noticed. The Grammar Monster would prefer no hyphen, but allow either, but I'd think that for Wikipedia, actual usage would trump grammatical theory.

The section was created 23 August 2009, as a redirect from w:Ultra-dense deuterium. The redirect was altered in 2012 to point to the section that was then removed in 2013. The redirect is still in place. (If you follow the link give to the redirect, you will see the Deuterium article. The section link fails, but the redirect still works. Because the section removed explicitly noted, in hidden text, that this was a redirect, removal without fixing the redirect was slopped. It would then have been in order to nominate that article for deletion, but ... if any editors show up who actually research the topic, deletion would fail, or, more likely, the discussion would have decided Merge, thus reversing that removal.

This is common on Wikipedia. Editors who might care often have become inactive. So editors who care, and whose caring may have a factional motivation, prevail.

There is one more clue. There is a section on talk on another form of ultradense dueterium, proposed by Akito Takahashi based on quantum field theory. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Deuterium&oldid=642479604#Some_notes_on_tetrahedral_deuterium_fusion_.22theory.22_.28warning:_original_research.2C_but_more_or_less_WP:CALC.29 Some notes on tetrahedral deuterium fusion Some notes on tetrahedral deuterium fusion "theory" (warning: original research, but more or less w:WP:CALCWP:CALC)

Grumble, grumble. When people interested in "fringe science" discuss the topic, as this user is doing here, in 2012, they are slapped down. I don't see that an edit was proposed.
The analysis is radically defective, neglecting the presence of the positively charged nuclei. Just as the electrons shield the charge of the nuclei, the nuclei shield the charge of the electrons. If this analysis were correct, w:Bose-Einstein condensates would be impossible. He has missed that Takahashi is claiming condensates. As I recall, this user has also made similar errors in analyzing Rydberg matter. This is the kind of analysis that one might expect from a smart grad student who overlooks something. He's not a grad student.
I'm a 56 year-old U.S. physician (trained and boarded in internal medicine and geriatrics) interested in nutrition, gerontology/aging, dietary restriction, life-extension, resuscitation, liquid ventilation, induced therapeutic hypothermia (especially hypothermic liquid ventilation), and also pharmacology topics in microemulsions and lipophilic drug and nutrient delivery. I'm also interested in respiratory physiology, physics, chemistry and scuba. I currently spend full time in hypothermia physiology and drug-development research.

Fringe-science or protoscience topic interests of mine related to medicine include cryonics, the far future of medicine, and science fiction treatments of medical ideas. I've also been interested in debunking of HIV-skepticism and many other kinds of medical "quackery" (e.g., homeopathy).

This focus aligns him with the antifringe establishment on Wikipedia. Contrary to what one might think from many examples, Wikipedia policy does not exclude fringe science (which shades into emerging science). Rather the Arbitration Committee suggested that coverage should be balanced according to coverage in reliable sources. However, when an editor has strong opinions that something is "wrong," they then act out of their own opinion, quite often.
The removals from the Deuterium article did not consider what was reliably sourced. The removal edit summary was (Delete two fringe science sections nobody will miss, per TALK.) This was the Talk page discussion, again. That discussion was raised by an anonymous editor, based on discussion on Talk:Rydberg matter, discussion that did not accept Wikipedia consensus on the topic. The claims are not based in reliable source, and there is contrary reliable source. Holmlid did edit the article on ultra-dense deuterium, though not disruptively, and it was not Holmlid who placed that material in the Deuterium article.
Holdmlid's edit was not wrong, but reports his own groups' conclusions as fact. What they actually observed was evidence for ultradense deuterium. I find that evidence reasonable, without being certain that it is not some kind of artifact. Because the claims have been noted in reliable secondary source (Winterberg!), this is notable, and belongs in Wikipedia. Because there was no real discussion about removal, the situation with the sources did not come out.
The editor commented: Nobody suggests that Rydberg matter can be ultradense or be used for cold fusion, or is anything like the infamous collapsed hydrogen that cold fusion people have postulated. If anything, Rydberg matter is greatly puffed-up, not condensed or collapsed. He is simply denying what is extensively published under peer review. The density of ultradense deuterium is inferred from "Coulomb explosions." The technique is believed accurate. It is a minor part of the UD deuterium literature, but there is, in fact, claim of similarity with pyncodeuterium, i.e., very small clusters of UD deuterium in octahedral sites in palladium deuteride, specifically from Arata and Zhang, and from Miley and Hora. In that application, this is a theoretical inference, the existence of the material has not been demonstrated.
With UD deuterium, there is inference in the other direction. First of all, Holmlid et al published measurements of the most dense normal Rydberg matter, the state called H(1) or D(1). This was not controversial. Then he published similar measurements, using the same technique, w:Coulomb explosions for what he called D(-1). This would be a quasi-metallic state, and what he had found were "high energy" particles emitted by the state upon the stripping of electrons by a pulsed laser, i.e., standard Coulomb explosion. The electrons stripped away, very quickly, the nuclei remaining repel each other, and the material expands. From the energy of the ejected nuclei, one may infer the separation before stripping. That material is far, far denser than D(1).
I have seen cold fusion researchers misunderstand this research. "High energy" was taken as meaning the kind of multi-MeV particles one may get from hot fusion. No, these were 630 eV particles, which is very high energy compared with what might have been expected.
Now, if UD deuterium exists, we might expect that it would be on the edge of fusion, it might be possible, then, to stimulate fusion. And that is what Holmlid then looked for, and found evidence for. This is, then, supportive evidence for the existence of UD deuterium.
There is no negative response that I have found in the peer-reviewed literature, in spite of very ample publication in significant mainstream journals. The position being taken by the physician-editor is not that of the editors of mainstream peer-reviewed journals, but it does match a similar position I found on a physics blog.

And that blog, years after the original, quoted the claim about self-citations vs citations by others, of Holmlid papers, as if it were a current fact. (That would have been quickly obsolete.)

An editor did revert the removal:[8]. Again, I've seen this again and again. Reverting that was proper, particularly given that the section had stood so long without challenge, but the user did not discuss this on Talk, and was reverted in turn with [9]. edit summary: there seems agreement on talk-page (as removal noted) and no expl why restored, so the consensus-remove stands.
This was a common Wikipedian phenomenon. The actual situation, if one did research, with the article, showed that many users had supported the sections, for years. The removing user knew that, he has many, many edits to the deuterium article, he had edited the sections when they were new. He responded to a request from an IP editor, with his own theory about Rydberg matter. Removal (and deletion of the Rydberg matter article) was suggested by the anonymous editors. It aligned with his own misunderstanding of the physics. And the one who reverted him did not discuss the matter. The undoing of the revert was by a Wikipedia administrator with an interest in science, but showed no knowledge or interest in sources, this was purely procedural, but quick. The admin warned that user. It was the user's first edit to Wikipedia. See [10]. The user would not necessarily know it, but the style was that of a warning (i.e., month and year in section header). The admin properly suggested discussion if it was desired to dispute the matter. The user never edited Wikipedia again.
The admin would not research the history, it takes far too long. In a dispute between a naive user and an experienced Wikipedian, it's quite predictable who wins, unless an other party intervenes who actually researches the matter. I have no idea if this new user knew anything about the topic, though it's somewhat likely that this was the case. If the user was expert, though, most experts will go away when encountering this kind of thing. They don't have time for it. Holmlid went away when warned, only clearing up a blatant misprepresentation of his publication history. Wikipedia is famous for driving away experts (or banning them, forcing them away).
One more thing I noticed. The "consensus" on the Talk page was between one long-term editor with strong opinions that were not rooted in reliable source, but in his own original research, and two anoymous editors. Both IPs geolocate to the same small area. They are quite likely edits made from a school and from the users home internet access. So really, this was just two editors, only one of whom would be considered "responsible." The administrator's decision to intervene was shallow, but, again, Wikipedia structure makes this happen all the time. If one looks at the activity of serious administrators, they have no time to do deeper research. The system is based on the assumption that there will be enough editors paying attention, who know how to go through dispute resolution process, that discussion will become adequate informed and express consensus will be closer to what would come out of broader examination. It's an assumption that works sometimes, in some areas, but commonly fails with fringe topics, probably because the "fringe" side is not well-represented, for obvious reasons.
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