> > Any scam must obey the laws of physics. > Oh yes. But you don't necessarily know which laws are used to deceive you.
> All propositions and assertions in a scientific debate must be subject to > testing and must be falsifiable, at least in principle. Asserting that > somewhere, someone might somehow know how to do this by stage magic . . . > means nothing. That is like saying there is an invisible unicorn or a lump > of concrete in the reactor but no one can see, detect, or weigh, and it > does not displace any water. If there is no way you or any of us can know > anything at all about this method that you imagine might exist somewhere in > the universe, how can you expect us to evaluate it? > The way I said many times. You can falsify the premise that Rossi is scamming easily enough to a huge improbability simply by getting *one* independent test from a credible and reliable source unrelated to Rossi in any way. I've already suggested Earthtech. Cal Tech, ORNL, Sandia -- and I guess NASA (before this story I didn't know they'd test ideas like this) -- all and many more could do it and would be happy to. All Rossi has to do is get one good test and my proposition that he may be a scammer has been falsified. What we argue here is about opinion. You're very confident that your use of available measurements and results along with your knowledge of physics and chemistry is sufficient to rule out a scam. Others including me are not. Perhaps in the past, we were fooled, bamboozled and flummoxed by more artful people than you have :-) > > They may be different and multiple each and every time. >> > > Stop multiplying entities. You violate Ockham's razor. Especially, stop > multiplying invisible entities that cannot be detected by any means, even > in principle. This is -- literally -- like debating how many angels can > dance on the head of pin. Until you specify a method of stage magic you > have proposed NOTHING. > Not true. Ockham has nothing to do with deception. And it's not inviolable. And I didn't say it *was* stage magic. I said that like stage magic, it may be an illusion and you may simply not have deduced how the illusion is performed. I also said that like stage magic, the illusion may be different each time Rossi demos and may involve a combination of tricks and in some cases luck. That I can't guess how it was done may reflect only on my incomplete education and Rossi's better knowledge and skills in specific areas of endeavor. It also involves the politeness of the audience and their concern that they may not be invited again. That rules out harsh questions and requests such as: "Please disassemble this device down to (but not past) the place where the secret core is located so we can see nothing was hidden inside." and "Please don't stop the run until we have gone much more than long enough to rule out any source of energy other than a nuclear process." and "Please show that the measuring instruments for the output power work properly by running a blank and powering the device only from the (carefully metered) electrical heater" I wish someone had been less polite. When Rossi was asked these things early on on his blog, he shined them on as unnecessary. In his usual style, it was a one or two word reply with no explanation. Later, he simply didn't publish the question. > Similarly I don't know how famous magicians do their illusions. >> > > I do know. You can look it up in Wikipedia. When you look inside the > stage apparatus, the methods are immediately obvious. Not one is > sophisticated or mysterious. Some of them have been use for hundreds of > years; some go back thousands of years. If this the only proof you can come > up with -- that you personally do not know how stage magicians do their > illusions -- you have disproved your own point. Anyone who makes a casual > study of stage magic will know that the methods are dead simple and cannot > be used to hide a wire in Rossi's reactor, once you open it up. > Lots of luck deducing or finding the newest illusions. Apparently you have not seen some recent really good stage magic. It's quite puzzling. You know it has to be an illusion but it is hard even to imagine how it might be done. And often, if you do find out, it turns out to be a much more complicated and difficult to perform method than you would have thought of and one that requires much planning and practice. I think it may be the same with Rossi. Let me ask you this: if nothing is hidden in Rossi's larger E-cats, why does he forbid photos when they're open and why does he not take them apart completely to show what's inside? Yes, I know it takes time. Poor Rossi -- he never has enough time. But if the secret is only in the contents of the core, as Rossi claims, why has he never even shown a core? But all these issues become a side show once one independent test is done. To sum up, the problem with Rossi's story is that there are too many things that don't hang together. The short runs, the lack of independent verification, the poor measurement methodology and record keeping, and most of all the mysterious last experiment/test/demo where none of the visitors was allowed to see anything at all to verify that the device operated as claimed. That's pretty amazing. Why were they there again?
