On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell made one of the most colossal technical mistakes in modern history. He delivered a speech making various claims about WMD intelligence in Iraq. He later called this "the lowest point in my life." A presidential commission that investigated the intelligence found that most of the speech was "dead wrong." See:
http://articles.cnn.com/2005-08-19/world/powell.un_1_colin-powell-lawrence-wilkerson-wmd-intelligence At the time of the speech I thought it sounded plausible. I assumed it was true. I had great respect for Colin Powell. In the weeks leading up to the invasion I wondered why US intelligence did not simply tell the UN inspectors in Iraq where to find the WMDs. By the time the invasion came I suspected the intelligence must be wrong. I did not know what to make of it. Later I learned that many experts realized the intelligence was wrong and tried to alert authorities before the invasion. For example, retired Los Alamos physicists told authorities that the aluminum tubes could not be used for centrifuges, and they could only be for rocket launchers as the Iraqis claimed. I have long been fascinated by event such as this, such as the run-up to the First World War, the British invasion of Gallipoli in 1915, the Three Mile Island accident and the Fukushima accident. In these instances, competent, distinguished well-trained experts made astounding mistakes. They did things which you or I or any amateur would instantly recognize as idiotic mistakes. They made not just one big mistake but dozens of terrible mistakes over many years. This is particularly clear in the case of the Three Mile Island accident as described in the book by D. F. Ford. The plant control system design was wretched. Similar accidents had occurred with other Babcock and Wilcox reactors, and a government inspector was warning the authorities it was likely to reoccur. The accident could have been prevented easily. The plant operators on duty at the time of the accident were so woefully untrained they did not know (for example) what a steam table is or why it is important to keep the water pressurized, or that pressurizing it prevents boiling. (The operators' actions did contribute to the accident, but they were not to blame because they were doing what their procedures manual told him to do, and even after the experts arrived it was not until much later that anyone understood what was happening inside the reactor.) In retrospect there were so many problems the accident was inevitable, and it is only surprising that it did not happen sooner. As far as I can tell from accounts released so far, the accident at Fukushima was not caused by a long chain of stupid mistakes made over many years. The biggest mistakes were building the seawall only 5.7 m tall, and putting the diesel fuel tanks where they were struck by the tsunami. However, 5.7 m is pretty high for a seawall in Japan. Very few tsunamis would have overcome that. So perhaps this does not resemble the other fiascoes listed above. It does show how experts can panic and make mistakes in response to a crisis, such as letting a generator run out of fuel, and not thinking to break holes in the walls to vent hydrogen after the first explosion. They have now made large holes in the walls of the reactor buildings that did not explode. These people were working night and day amidst chaos, heat, smoke, fire, intense deadly radiation and gigantic explosions, so such mistakes are understandable and must be forgiven. Colin Powell was working in peace at his desk, with the best experts at his beck and call, so his mistakes are less forgivable. I have often said that we can trust experts such as Levi, Kullander and Essen. But can we? Is it possible they too are making colossal technical mistakes, like the ones Colin Powell made? Or could they be making the kind of mistake the designers of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge made? The bridge was destroyed by wind induced vibrations, a kind of resonance frequency problem that had never been encountered with a suspension bridge before. A similar problem destroyed two Lockheed 188 Electra airplanes in 1959 and 1960. Engineers cannot think of everything, try as they might. The only way to be certain Levi et al. are not make a mistake is to have many other people repeat the experiments, with many different instrument types. Or to sell many reactors and have customers confirm that they work. That amounts to the same thing. This is why replication is so important in many fields of science. Note that the principle of independent replication is less important in chemistry, and nonexistent in engineering. The ENIAC computer proved that electronic computers can exist. No one doubted it for a moment after that; no one demanded independent replication. In a famous incident in the history of semiconductors, at a conference the engineers who developed the first silicon semiconductors demonstrated them by immersing circuit board into a pot of boiling vegetable oil. The circuit continued to function. The people watching this demonstration bolted from the room to call their offices and report that silicon does work, and it works at higher temperatures than any other semiconductor. No one questioned these results or demanded an independent test. In aviation and space exploration, no one demands a second country send a robot explorer to Mars before they believe the first one is actually working. In my opinion, the Rossi demonstrations are closer to engineering than basic science, so there is little reason to doubt they are real. The only way they could be fraudulent would be if Levi and E&K and the others have agreed to go along with the scam. Or, as I said, if it turns out they are incredibly stupid people. The historic fiascoes I listed above were not perpetrated by incredibly stupid people. On the contrary, Colin Powell and some of the WWI generals were smart, highly capable and experienced. They did many similar previous jobs impeccably well. So, even though Levi and Kullander are (probably -- presumably) experts in energy, how do we know they have not made a terrible mistake in this instance. How do we know they are not doing calorimetry without knowledge of wet versus dry steam, and flow calorimetry with an undetected error of a factor of 1000, or 5, as Beene claims. How can we be sure? The answer is: We cannot be sure, but it is unlikely, and such mistakes are quite different from the ones made by Colin Powell and the WWI generals. Colin Powell was dealing with a difficult problem. A huge, inchoate problem with undefined edges and countless unknowns. He was pressed for time. War was looming; emotions were at fever pitch. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were waiting to invade. Levi is dealing with one of the simplest problems anyone who works with energy can encounter. He is dealing with a system that has been well understood for 200 years -- a system which is designed to be as easy to analyze as any energy system can be. That is why he decided to do the experiment with this technique. This is the opposite of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge built into the unknown: it is as well understood and well defined as any physical system can be. Unlike Powell, Levi had all the time in the world. He spent weeks calibrating and testing before he said anything, and before the Jan. 14 demonstration -- which is what any good experimentalist would do. I have known excellent programmers who spent months or years on projects that turned out to be dreadful mistakes, producing infuriating programs. (I have done that myself, I am sorry to admit.) These people did not make mistakes in detail. They did not make amateur mistakes. They did not forget how to name variables or make variables that should have been local into global ones. They made large errors because they were dealing with large, complicated systems and problems they had never encountered before. Indeed, problems that no one had ever encountered before. If Levi had designed a factory or nuclear power plant as complicated as the Three Mile Island plant, or an experiment as complicated as one of the big CERN colliders, of course he might make gigantic errors. One of the CERN colliders was disabled by melting magnets and faulty electronics, as I recall. On rare instances, experts do make simple, one-off, stupid mistakes such as the design of the lens in the Hubble telescope. It can happen. But in the case of the Rossi device tests they would have to make not one but several mistakes as bad as the Hubble lens, with both flow calorimetry and steam calorimetry. Other people who have tested the system in Italy and in the US would also have to make many huge, simple, inexplicable mistakes. I think this is extremely unlikely. If that could happen, then everyday run-of-the mill engineering would fail drastically everywhere you turn. Streetlights would explode, and buildings would collapse dozens of times a day. Generally speaking, machines in our civilization do work reliably, because the engineers, technicians, and the people who put up those streetlights know what they are doing. You can depend on them. You trust them with your life every hour of every day. - Jed
