On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Alan Fletcher <a...@well.com> wrote:
So either the temperature measurement is wrong, or we have another miracle, > that seems to take place within the entire interior of the hotcat. > I think part of our difficulty is that one hesitates to take the report at face value for several reasons. If we do not take the report at face value, the large number of degrees of freedom open the way for untethered speculation, possibly for years, given the proclivities of the people watching this field. That would be inconvenient for anyone trying to figure out what's going on, and convenient for anyone trying to keep it a secret. Among the reasons one doesn't want to take the report at face value are that there might be error in the heat calibration and power calculations. The isotopic analyses are a little amazing, and, as far as I can tell, do not give indications of a gradient effect in the 6Li and 62Ni species. And details pertaining to the Inconel cables and, as you now bring up, possibly the type K thermocouple, seem to be inconsistent with the reported temperature. I agree with what you said a few days ago, that the findings of the report are inconclusive. In one outcome, the authors could be spot-on, and this would imply some amazing things. In another outcome, there could be some critical inaccuracies as to the materials that were used that go back to a lack of fact-checking. In another outcome, there could be intentional misdirection on Rossi's and IH's part to conceal what is really going on, but LENR is still happening. And in another outcome, there might not be anything going on at all, as Pomp, Yugo and others would have it. Many of the details and objections that have been surfaced during the past few days were easy to spot and could have been resolved weeks prior to the first day of the testing if the authors had consulted a wide enough group. This leads me to one of two conclusions: - The authors did not do their homework and put together a test that would necessarily lead to inconclusive results and that could be questioned along a number of lines. - The authors did their homework but were hobbled by constraints placed by Rossi and IH that prevented them from conducting a more rigorous test. If the first is true, there might not be all that much that we can expect from this set of authors. If the second is true, I kind of wonder whether the report should have been released. I worry that the lack of clarity on many of the details could sidetrack discussion for a while as we pursue dead ends. Eric
