I wrote:
As far as I know, Swartz has never actually attempted to turn a flow calorimeter cell sideways to see if the performance changes. Cravens and I have actually tested this hypothesis by experiment. We tried turning cells sideways. It makes no measurable difference.
I forgot to mention the most obvious reason this hypothesis is wrong. Many people -- thousands of people, actually -- run flow calorimeters in the vertical configuration. They do this in cold fusion and many other fields. McKubre and Storms, for example. When they calibrate with a joule heater or run a non-working cathode, their input equals output to within 10 ~ 100 mW. Their input power and flow rates are comparable to the Patterson and Letts experiment I observed. Therefore, if this configuration produces a 1 kW artifact, as Swartz claimed, McKubre, Storms and thousands of other people would see that artifact. Some of them would turn their cells sideways (or rearrange the inlet and outlet flow) and they would see the artifact go away. This does not happen.
I suppose there might be a very small artifact, at the milliwatt scale, caused by the effect Swartz specifies. I wouldn't know. I have never heard of anything like that. But I am certain there are no heretofore unknown artifacts 100,000 times above McKubre's error bars.
- Jed
