Jones Beene wrote:
Then you are essentially blind to his past misdeeds, and essentially pandering, as I have said repeatedly.
You have said it, but you have not demonstrated how he might fool a thermocouple or make a flow of water seem to be many times faster than it is. Machines do not respond to lies. A flow calorimeter is not something you can fake.
I have no idea whether these stories about his past are true or false, but I am sure they have no bearing on calorimetry.
Any number of important scientists, inventors and professional people have been obnoxious, unreliable, or even dreadful people as individuals. That has no bearing on their work. Their claims were independently verified and then replicated. Rossi has been verified, and his work is itself a replication. Many other researchers have seen heat from Ni-H. Many famous scientists have exploited their co-workers or plagiarized ideas. There are many nasty lying sons of bitches who would cheat at poker or embezzle your fortune, but whose technical achievements are unimpeachable. An extreme example of a top-notch scientist who was personally repugnant was Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz." He was a homicidal maniac, but his book on caring for birds is excellent, reliable, and still in print.
For that matter, many upstanding, kind, loyal, and honest-to-a-fault people have made ridiculous mistakes and published worthless results.
You simply cannot judge the validity of a claim by personality. That metric does not work. The only valid method is to have someone else verify the claim and then independently replicate it.
Furthermore, there is no need to for you to drag your opinion of Rossi into these discussions so often. We get it. You don't trust Rossi. You don't take anything he says on face value, even when there is no reason for him to lie, and a lie will soon be exposed at his expense. You say he is using a copper cell even though he says it is stainless steel. We will find out soon enough, so there is no point to arguing about this. In the meanwhile, I suggest you treat this more like a scientific discussion and less like a legal proceedings, what with "the best available evidence" and this kind of thing:
Wrong. Read the patent. It is all that counts legally. Rossi cannot be trusted in his verbal comments.
What counts "legally" has no bearing on this discussion. I will decide what I think is the best available evidence. I don't need your assistance. I am aware of these allegations about Rossi's past. I assume for now that Rossi changed his mind and decided to use stainless steel. I think that assumption is more productive -- more likely to lead to the truth. You are scrounging around trying to think up reasons why he might lie about this matter. You say he may be lying to to put people off his trail. Since this will only work for a short time, why would he bother?!? Besides, anyone wanting to replicate would be well advised to try stainless steel even if Rossi does use copper.
You are also wasting your time running around everywhere looking everywhere for evidence that he is cheating, for example with weird claims that he used a 50 ml cell in every test. Levi and others saw that the first machine has a 1 L cell. There is no doubt about it. Why did you waste your time disputing this?
To reiterate:
I cannot say it more emphatically, the man has a history as a SCAMMER.
On the contrary, you have already said too emphatically. Thanks for informing us of this again. I choose to ignore this information for the reasons given above -- because in science, only the experiment counts, not the person, not the person's past, not whether he is a scammer or homicidal maniac in Alcatraz or someone writing definitions for the Oxford English Dictionary at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum (see "The Professor and the Madman"). The whole point of science is that a claim can be evaluated on its own merit by purely objective standards, and no one can fake results. At least, not this kind of result. All the talk here about how Rossi might have pulled off a sleight of hand stunt is nonsense. No one -- not you or anyone else -- has suggested a plausible method by which the 4 parameters in a flow calorimeter can be faked to this extent. Or wrong to this extent. You and others keep insisting it can be done, but you give no credible example of how it might be done, so I conclude you have no idea. Waving your hands and saying there might be way is not a falsifiable assertion. No sleight of hand trick has succeeded in the history of modern science, except for the case in which a performer actually did use his hands and the scientists used visual observations instead of instruments, which is a stupid mistake. Obviously, that does not count!
I and others have said, time after time, yes there is still a slight chance this is a scam. Yes, it needs more independent replication. No one disputes that. But there is no _scientific evidence_ it is a scam. Rossi's personality and alleged bad acts _do not_ constitute such evidence by conventional academic standards. I prefer academic standards; you go with legalistic or private-detective standards. That's fine. That's your choice. But please do not expect the rest of us to agree to your standards. Let us agree to disagree on this matter.
- Jed
