Just to be clear, I'm not saying I disagree with the objections to Rossi having handled the charge.
In general one has the impression scientists are pretty collegial with one another. They place a lot of trust in one another. One scientist will say to another, I'd like to take a second look at what you've done. Can you help me out, here? But I want the study to be independent of yours, so I'm going to do all of the analysis myself. I just need you to help me out with this, this and this. The two would collaborate in that way, and then the study would be called "independent." It would also be considered as such by publications such as *Nature* and *Science*. There would be no eyebrows that would be raised about this claim, because there is a professional ethic that the scientists are assumed to follow, and their reputations are on the line. Sometimes the protocol is cranked up a notch, and you get single- and double-blind studies. The context is not a concern about fraud but a concern about the researchers involved being unduly influenced by what they already know. Occasionally, perhaps, there is a shadow of a concern about fraud, as might have been on some people's minds when the double-blind study was done that Melvin Miles participated in in the early nineties, where they looked at the question of how much helium was evolving from electrolytic PdD systems. In the case of Rossi, the context is different. Rossi is not a member of the research establishment, so different rules are been applied, and concerns of fraud have been voiced on a number of occasions by skeptical scientists. I do not necessarily disagree with this application of a different standard. I only point it out. I do wonder whether Rossi would have been treated the same way if his background had been in research science and he did not have the colorful personality that he has. The standard of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" is a phrase that goes back to Marcello Truzzi. It has been debated here on several different occasions. It has been used by skeptics to justify whatever they want. To that extent, it does not seem like a very useful heuristic. Eric On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 1:21 AM, Blaze Spinnaker <blazespinna...@gmail.com> wrote: Eric, the standard amongst academic colleagues is extraordinary claims > require extraordinary proof. The standard is that replication should be > done by uninvolved parties. Neither Rossi nor Levi, et all was > uninvolved. Levi and friends had their reputation on the line from the > claims from the first report they did. >
