Joshua Cude <joshua.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, it is if an experiment can be easily designed to make such suspicions > impossible. As would be the case here, if the claims were true. > Seriously, It is nearly impossible to design a demonstration that will eliminate all suspicions, in all people. Some people, such as Robert Park, simply will not believe a claim, no matter how much evidence you present. Even if Park were to attend a first-rate demonstration of the Rossi device, one that addresses all of the issues raised here, he would refuse to believe it. He would make up other objections. I mean it when I say that people can make up unlimited numbers of reasons to dismiss a finding. The scientific method demands that an arbitrary limit be placed on objections. It is a matter of opinion how much proof is needed, and how many objections should be met, but you cannot leave the question undecided indefinitely. Do that, and no question will be settled, nothing will ever be ready for the textbooks, and research will not proceed to the next step. I am not saying that Rossi has met that limit. He is far from it! But you cannot keep moving the goalposts and asking for more and more proof, and is your standard is: "Are the skeptics satisfied? Does anyone still have doubts?" then you will keep moving the goalposts indefinitely. Many people still dispute special relativity. That's fine. They have every right to do that. But we should not expect physicists to keep repeating experiments that demonstrate the effect of gravity on time, for instance, just to satisfy these skeptics. The physicists have other things to do. Cold fusion researchers should not be forced to do boil off experiments again and again just because the latest crop of nitwits in Wikipedia are unaware of the steps taken to ensure that unboiled water did not leave the cells at Toyota and the French AEC. Just to clarify, Stephen Lawrence is correct. I meant you do not have to trust Rossi. You do have to trust Levi, Celani and Dufour and some other people. They might be conspiring together to fool us. If they can keep a secret, it would be easy for them to fool us. I have no actual proof that the demonstration even took place. The video might have been staged, and the data invented out of whole cloth. If you think that Levi, Celani and the others might do such a thing, then you have no reason to believe any of this is true. I doubt they would, because it would be out of character, and there does not seem to be a motive. - Jed
