Daniel Rocha <[email protected]> wrote: Pretty much the total destruction of all confidence I have in LENR. If so > many competent people in the field were cheated that easily by Rossi, I can > expect much worse from everyone, even in the sense of self deception.
Some questions: How many competent people in the field are convinced by Rossi? How many stand to be cheated in any sense? As far as I know, you can count them on one hand. A lot of people are paying close attention. Many, including me, think that the weight of evidence is in favor of the claims, based on previous Ni-H claims and so on. Some people from outside the field say they are convinced, such as Levi, and E&K. They have actually performed tests themselves so they can judge the issue better than most people, and they have more reason to be convinced. If I had observed the 18-hour test in person, I would probably be 100% convinced. (I would also have reported it in much more detail than Levi has done, but that's another story.) If Levi, E&K and a few others who have not previously had anything to do with cold fusion have been fooled by Rossi, why would this reflect badly on people such as McKubre, Miles or Fleischmann? As far as I know, they have not said they believe this. They have not said they don't believe it either. I have been in contact with them. They are keenly interested, of course. Who wouldn't be? I myself am waiting for better test results before reaching any final conclusion. I lean strongly toward it being real, as I said. But as I have also said repeatedly, Defkalion has published nothing so I cannot judge their claims. The 18-hour flow test was good enough for its purpose, which was for Levi to decide whether to go ahead with more testing or not. It was pretty convincing and I have not seen any reason to doubt it, but no one familiar with experimental science would bet the farm on one test of this nature. If Rossi turns out to be a fraud, or hugely mistaken for some reason, the skeptics here will deserve no credit for predicting this. They have not discovered a single valid reason to doubt his work that was not obvious to everyone, including me. None of their criticism were any more informed or hard hitting than Celani's, Storms', mine, or others who lean toward believing this. As far as I know, skeptics have not suggested any improvements to the test techniques that Storms, I and others have not already suggested. The memo quoted here recently about the steam sparge test, for example, is something I wrote to Rossi himself months ago. I suggested he let me do that test during a visit to his lab. I planned to spend all day, repeating it 5 or 10 times, and I also wanted to do to a flowing water test. Rossi turned me down, as I reported here. I circulated that memo to various other people and I may have published it here. It was not a bit confidential. It is not a bit original, either. I did not come up with the idea. As the original memo text says, I learned this technique at Hydrodynamics. If Rossi is wrong, the skeptics will NOT have demonstrated any special insight or ability to predict an outcome. Most experiments fail. Most results are wrong. Most product R&D is scrapped before the product reaches the market. If you always bet that a new experimental result will be wrong, you will be on the winning side most of the time. This is Robert Park's technique. He "predicts" an outcome that everyone knows is likely, and then he takes credit when things turn out as everyone knew they probably would. This is like predicting that Las Vegas slot machines will win more money than they lose. - Jed
