At 12:47 PM 1/17/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Gosh, something happened and the calorimetry company had to
withdraw. Sorry, folks.
This has not actually happened. Please identify statements such as
this as hypothetical or cynical, to avoid confusion. (Seriously.)
I believe that anyone who would take that statement as other than
hypothetical (and cynical!) wouldn't have been paying attention. Sean
has done this kind of thing so many times that it's not purely
cynical to expect it. It's a realistic possibility.
I think we should be a little more careful around here with the use
of words like "scam" and "fake."
Sure. But I haven't called Steorn a "scam" or the demonstration
"fake." I've stated that there is a possibility of fakery, but, so
far, no evidence of it. I suspect that there are layers of traps
laid, objections that they are setting up precisely to attract
criticism that they can then refute.
Here is what it looks like they are selling: an anomaly of unknown
explanation. They found this, apparently, and couldn't find an
obvious way to scale it up and generate energy, and it could take a
boatload of money to do that. They don't have the boatload and they
couldn't get it. So how can they profit from their discovery?
Note that they have not disclosed the anomaly. That's what they are
selling. But it also appears that they haven't disclosed it yet even
to those who have paid. It's coming, supposedly by February 1. They
have provided hints only, it's part of the marketing strategy.
Is there a real anomaly here, when the smoke clears? I rather doubt
it, but I certainly can't say it's impossible. Steorn principals
don't want to go to jail, I doubt that they are engaged in actual
fraud. Lying is not illegal, folks. Not unless there is detrimental
reliance by someone with a contractual or other legal right.
But I did claim that Sean was, effectively, lying. That's about the
claim of 2:1 energy. Note that, if true, this would provide an
immediate commercial application (or close). Heating. I'd love to
have a heater that produced three times as much heat as its energy input.
However, the claim is that the excess energy is stored as the kinetic
energy of the rotor. Sorry, folks, contrary to what someone wrote
here, you can't just use F=ma, the kinetic energy of a rotor depends
on the mass distribution of the rotor, but a low-friction supported
bearing could readily be calibrated so that one would know the stored
energy from the rotational velocity. Sean could easily have gathered
all this data, and it would make all the claims about no-back-EMF
moot. If the figure of 2:1 is a demonstrated fact, if Sean has a
basis for it, measurement precision would be a dead issue. They are
dumping a lot of battery power as heat!
Sean is obfuscating, and why he is obfuscating I consider obvious:
he's postponing the resolution of all this, because when it's
resolved, there goes interest in Orbo. Until then, until the matter
is closed clearly, assuming that there is no real effect here, he's
making money. We don't know how many people are buying the
disclosure, they've made sure we won't know that. He's behaving as a
skilled marketer of his products.
One way to look at it is that he is selling entertainment. A puzzle
to solve. He's having fun watching all the contortions, great fun,
I'm sure. Sorry about the broken rib, Sean, that hurts. Get well soon.
After this is all done, Sean, you can then write a book about it and
make even more money. Perfectly legitimately.
Anyone associated with cold fusion has heard these terms far too
often, applied inappropriately against people who have done nothing wrong.
Sure. And against some who have.
It is one thing to say that Steorn seems like a scam, or it gives
you that impression. It is quite another to assert that it actually
is. When you say this, you should have proof. And proof of a scam
has to be narrowly defined: you have to show there is an aggrieved
party. That is, a person or funding organization who feels that
their money was taken on false pretenses, by a researcher who knew
for a fact that his claim was false.
Yup. Well, generally. The term "scam" can be more broadly applied. I
think that you are referring to fraud. There are legal scams, Orbo
could be one.
Researchers who are wrong, or inept, furtive, lazy, intellectually
dishonest or highly disagreeable people are not scams. Researchers
who threaten to sue people who criticize their work or quote from
their papers violate academic norms, but that is not the same as
being a scam either.
Note that Steorn hasn't disclosed their "research." They simply claim
they have some. But when we look closely, we find that critical
testing hasn't been done. Calorimetry hasn't been done, it appears.
Has the energy balance been studied by actual measurement of energy
extracted from the battery and actual energy accumulated in the
rotor? If so, we haven't even been told how it was done, much less
the results, other than a 2:1 claim (which is either a lie or they
have discovered something more than a small anomaly.
Yes, you should try to avoid funding such people. Yes, you are
wasting your money. But unless you have solid proof that they knew
they were wrong, and that their sole purpose was to enrich
themselves at your expense, they are not scams. I have actually
funded such people, so I know what I am talking about here.
Steorn is in business. They are selling two classes of products, and
they are brilliantly related. They are selling equipment for use in
investigating a certain field. And they are selling disclosure of the
field, the anomaly, we will call it. Whether or not one is wasting
money buying either of these products is an individual issue. If
someone buys the disclosure, for the yuks, have they wasted their
money? Surely that would be an individual issue. But if you believe
that Steorn has found a *serious* anomaly, something reasonably
likely to be 2:1 energy return from a serious energy input (there is
that input, they are drawing substantial average current), then, I'd
say, you know something I don't know (always a possibility!) or Sean
is lying and has deceived you.
Other possibilities exist, surely, but are at this point to be
assigned very low probabilities. Absolutely, I don't recommend buying
the anomaly product if you expect to make money on it directly. If
you want to learn how to do some brilliant -- if a bit shady --
marketing, how to make money from almost nothing, then, fine, you
might even be getting a bargain. I hope, though, that if the
investment is at all a difficulty for you, if you would mind losing
it if you find out that they have engaged in a bit of puffery, you be
very careful and review what is known, carefully, before you toss it in.
Most researchers work hard. That includes the inept ones, the ones
whose results are unclear and unimpressive, and the ones whose work
has been nothing but a string of failures. They are not scams
because they are not wealthy, and not enjoying life at the expense
of their supporters, and most of all because they sincerely hoped to
succeed. They are doing the best they can, which unfortunately is
not good enough. Perhaps they do not deserve funding, but that is
far different from saying they got funded by defrauding people or by
some other unethical means.
What I've written about Steorn has nothing to do with those people.
Steorn attracted some serious capital, quite enough to characterize
the anomaly, it does not appear that it is something not reproducible
(if it is difficult to reproduce, they would have, again, been
deceptive, that has not at all been disclosed).
(Note: there is some possibility, small, that there is no anomaly at
all, that Steorn fully understands what's going on and that what they
discovered, *if anything* was something that looked like an anomaly.
Say, for example, they have figured out how to extract some extra
power from a battery, this is something that pulse motors can
actually do, apparently. So from the normal discharge curves of a
battery, it would appear that they have some excess energy. And
measuring energy in those fast transient currents is tricky and
noisy. And they know this (if they don't know it, they haven't been
paying attention). So what they are selling is an appearance. And
they know it. And it's legal, at least in most places. If they knew
it early on, they might have violated some laws. Maybe. Not my
business, but rather the business of the government where they are.)
Let us be careful to make this distinction. I do not know of any
scams among cold fusion researchers.
Not among actual researchers. There have been various entrepreneurs
who may have set up, shall we say, some shaky ventures, claiming to
have demonstration machines with this or that power, etc. And then
they disappear. What happened? There may have been some scamming
there. But note that puffery, mere exaggeration of what you have,
perhaps by optimistic interpretation of data, even over-optimistic,
isn't fraud.
Energetics Technologies isn't a scam. Nor, in fact, is LifeWave.
Dardik isn't a scammer, he's for real. Is he right (in the health
area or in his general superwave concept)? The question may not even
be well-enough defined. I consider superwave to be an intuitive
principle which can suggest various approaches that might work. It
might be like Crick's double-helix dream. It only becomes science
later, if at all.
Or plasma fusion researchers either, for that matter, although in a
sense the plasma fusion program has been a 60-year ripoff. A sort of
scam, but not in the literal sense. I am sure that the plasma fusion
researchers sincerely believe that someday Tokamak reactors might
produce electricity. They might even be right, but I doubt it.
Yes. However, probably, Tokamaks, if they can be made to work, might
be best applied to generate heat. Cold fusion devices, indeed, might
find their first applications there, if they can be made cheaply
enough. Heat generation is almost 100% efficient, so even a small
amount of net energy generation could be useful.
