David Roberson said: "The problem is that the bar can always be raised higher when one is seeking proof of a system. Maybe I am wrong, but I have a strong suspicion that there is virtually no test that Rossi could perform which would not afford those who seek misconduct an avenue of attack. This is not a problem that Rossi alone faces. For instance, why should we assume that the Higgs was recently discovered when I am confident that it would be easy to come up with a million reasons to doubt it. This is typical of any new advancement."
For starters, CERN isn't selling "franchises" to the Higgs Boson. CERN doesn't rely on "secret" customers and "secret" experts to validate their work. Etc, etc. "I find it difficult to understand what you refer to by suggesting that the Rossi device is hidden inside a furnace and not measurable." There seems to be a lot of that going on among the believers. Rossi's setup makes it impossible to distinguish the heat being generated by the heating elements from the heat (if any) being generated by the E-Cat. There is no particular reason for that to be intrinsic to the process. Rossi could have easily provided a larger furnace, and then put thermocouples directly on the actual E-Cat (the inner cylinder) AND the inside of the furnace, allowing direct measurements of both. If the E-Cat got hotter than the furnace, it would be clear evidence that the E-Cat was generating its own energy. If not, then it was just a passive component. But Rossi chose not to set it up that way, and the testers obligingly went along with him. "One claim he makes is that the COP of his device remains around 6." But that's not true. When he was doing his "steam" demos, he kept getting a COP of about 6, which just happens to be the "error" rate if one isn't really converting the vast majority of water into steam. And now, he's getting a COP of 2.5, which just happens to be exactly the "error" one would see if one were secretly using that extra, "dead" wire to add an extra 400 Watts or so. "Your only question should be whether or not the total heat is what is being measured by the camera system, not how it is generated." Nonsense! If the input was faked, then the output is meaningless. I have suggested a simple trick to add a constant ~400 Watts to the input power level, and that extra amount just happens to exactly explain the entire output power level. That doesn't prove that Rossi used this trick, but it certainly suggest that he could have done so.
