> Here is my point. if you "do not know" how he might be cheating, then it > is not logical for you to propose this as a hypothesis to be debated here. > You can say it is your gut feeling he is cheating. That's fine. That's an > informal judgment. We welcome that here. But let us not confuse a gut > feeling with a scientific hypothesis. >
I'm sorry, I still don't see the difference. It's actually not even a gut feeling. It's just a possibility I think needs to be seriously considered. As to whether it rises to a scientific hypothesis, I think so but I don't think whether it is or not is an important issue. > In a formal scientific debate, every assertion or hypothesis has to be > specific enough to be tested: that is, proved or disproved. If you do not > know of any method of cheating, and you cannot specify any details about > how it might work, there is no way for the rest of us to judge whether you > are right or wrong. > That's the part I don't get. If Rossi gets independent proof, I'm wrong, am I not? Then you do have a way to judge whether I'm right or wrong. If Rossi doesn't do it, then right -- you can't judge. But even if I suggested a way to cheat that made sense, that wouldn't prove that Rossi is getting his results that way, would it? So I just don't see why it's important to do that! > This is an issue relating to logic and theory of science. It has nothing > to do with Rossi per se. > As I mentioned, there are other fields in which arguments do not have to > be strictly falsifiable, such as religion and literature. > OK. I did take a class in theory of knowledge and philosophy of science once but it was a while back. Meanwhile, I am still concerned Mr. Rossi is running some sort of scam. I'd love to see definitive proof that he's not and I know that's shared by a lot of the people here. So I hope everyone who can is pressuring him to get independent testing instead of simply congratulating the guy on the wonders he has wrought, as so many wide eyed admirers are doing all over the internet!
