At 10:30 AM 8/17/2012, Arnaud Kodeck wrote:
I think AR is smarter than this.
He said Ni+p -> Cu when it knew it was not the case. With this statement, he
was sure that Cu will not be taken as a potential catalyst and only a
by-product.
Note that this could be parallel with Jospeh Papp. Papp apparently
planted red herrings in his patent applications, things that he knew
would not work, to throw people trying to imitate his engine off. Too
bad that this is the opposite of the intention of a patent....
Rossi can say whatever he likes about the theory of his work. It's
legal. Lying is legal, under many conditions.
The problem is that once we know someone is willing to lie "for a
good purpose," i.e., to protect his secrets, we can't trust anything
he says unless we independently verify it. If someone would lie,
shamelessly, they would also "arrange" a fraudulent demonstration.
There isn't much difference.
People become confused when this is pointed out, they think I'm
saying that there *was* a fraudulent demonstration. No, I'm saying
that we can't trust the demonstrations. That and little more.
That NiH reactions might produce power is not and was not a big
surprise, because there had been other reports (more sober, more
scientific in nature). The surprise with Rossi was the level of heat
and the claim of reliability. Many knowledgeable people think Rossi
really did find an approach that generates significant heat, at least
sometimes.
It was the appearance of reliability that was new and surprising. If
Rossi did not actually solve the reliability problem, which is the
trillion-dollar question in all of cold fusion, it would explain the
delays, the confident announcements followed by failures to perform
as promised, followed by more confident announcements. "Any day now,"
he'd think or hope, "I'll solve this, and then nobody will worry
about my fudging this or that."
Comparisons with Papp are a bit shaky, because Papp was not using an
approach analogous to that of anyone else. Rossi's work is an
extension of what was already known as possible, or at least that had
some level of experimental evidence of possibility. (As to theory,
since we don't know what is happening with NiH, we only have
speculations. In general, theory cannot establish the impossibility
of any specific experimental outcome, for a number of reasons.
Well-established theory can give us some guidance, that's about all.
Independently confirmed experiment trumps theory, no matter how
well-established, at least provisionally.)
However, having said that, Papp and Rossi share a paranoia about
others ripping off their invention. With Papp the paranoia was deep
and quite damaging. It's unclear how deep it is with Rossi, some
think it is a pretense with him, a game he plays to confuse competition.
My general point is that we do not know if the Rossi devices really
do produce power, or really are reliable, without independent
confirmation. With the Papp Effect, there is also a lack of
independent confirmation, still -- as far as anything published, I
hear *rumor* of independent confirmation, which is almost useless --
and it is clear that Papp opposed all such. Rossi, as well, has
declined many friendly opportunities for independent confirmation of
his claims.
With Papp, though, there were ample demonstrations, witnessed by many
people, that establish one of two major possibilities: the engine was
real, and powerful, or there was an extremely sophisticated fraud.
Compressed air has been mentioned as one possibility, there could be
others. Any given fraud mode might be ruled out for any given
demonstration, there is nothing that limits an inventor to one mode
of pretense. This is why we want to see *independent* confirmations,
where the inventor is not present to "guide" the experimenters.
We have another reason for wanting independent demonstrations,
entirely independent. It forces the inventor to communicate what is
necessary to others, thus making it unlikely that some "secret" will
be lost. Sometimes, unfortunately, that's not possible. SRI,
replicating the Case Effect, used material supplied by Case. It
worked. This material was a catalyst prepared from coconut charcoal
and plated with palladium, as I recall. When the material was
accidentally discarded, nobody was able to create a new batch of
material that worked. So the SRI replication was not *entirely*
independent. Yet it did show that the particular material worked, it
was independent in that way. But, unless someone figures out how to
make that catalyst again, which I consider unlikely, there isn't any
gold there commercially, and this is a dead end, useful only for
certain facts developed. The Case replication did show heat/helium
correlation, as with other FPHE approaches.
(I've seen people doubt the "accidental discard" report. It's
believable, especially coming from SRI. A resident of a community I
was leading discarded an object of considerable value because it
looked broken to him. It wasn't broken. Yet he was just trying to be
helpful. Stuff happens, people make mistakes.)
