> Mary, your requirement for blank test run is unreasonable, but you are > misunderstanding the reason why blank tests are used in science. Blank runs > are used when we are measuring effects that may consist on multiple unknown > variables and with controls we try to eliminate those variables that we are > not interested. >
Please don't be pedantic. By a blank run, I obviously meant a blank run with accompanying complete calibration of the measurement system using a precisely metered electrical heater as a source. This is standard practice in calorimetry and you know that very well. If it matters, I've done extensive calorimetry and helped to design calorimeters including one of the type used by Storms. Usually science is messy thing when we are observing something new and > unexplored. Effects are subtle and they are hard to differentiate from > background noise and correlating effects such as placebo and other biased > errors. Therefore it is required to ensure with (blind) controls, that what > is actually measured is the effect what we are interested on. > Obviously, you misinterpreted the purpose and intent of my proposal. A blank and a calibration can be conveniently run together. That eliminates thermocouple placement, wet steam and virtually every other imaginable source of error that could be proposed except rank fraud... and you want to leave it out? !!! <--[editorial and random exclamatory as well as possibly non-complimentary remark self censored out] In this case, however we are measuring very clear effect that is total > enthalpy that is measured with accuracy of one megajoule. This effect > consist only two variables that are energy input and anomalous excess heat. > Because we know or we can assume that input energy source is from electric > band heater that works with efficiency of 95% or more. Therefore we can > just assume that electric band heater works with 100% efficiency to be on > safe side. And we can then subtract energy input from total enthalpy to > get the anomalous excess heat. > Except that there are constant and innumerable arguments, many of them quite credible, about how the enthalpy is measured! You can't ignore that but you seem to want to! And I am telling you exactly how to eliminate all that argument. Of course running eight hour control test would be informative, because it > would give us valuable information about the efficiency of band heaters. > However, we are not interested of measuring the efficiency of band heaters, > but we can just assume it to be 100%. Therefore control experiment is not > required. > Blech! (sorry, could not help it) > It is 1000 times more useful to run one 16 hour real test than to run one > real 8 hour test and one 8 hour blank run. If you really hard think this > you find this to be even more than 1000 times useful. > Nooooooooooooooooo! > Accurate calorimetry is extremely simple and own instruments that are > required to be brought are thermometer, stopwatch and a water bucket. All > of them were on Rossi's allowed own instruments list. Just sparge steam > into bucket and measure the total enthalpy. This way it is easy to > calibrate the main calorimetry that was used, I.e. steam temperature was > measured. That is because in Rossi's system, where water inflow rate was > constant, steam temperature correlates with the amount of steam produced > (I.e. total enthalpy). > Gee, funny. Rossi never seemed to sparge the steam. I wonder why. I agree that would be another method. I like mine the best. It would squelch most if not all arguments about measurement methods. It's useful even if you sparge steam. > You see, idea with science is not to do excess work but to find the > simplest solution. The more simple measurements are used the more accurate > are results. Main idea with scientific experiment is to eliminate all > possible unknown and uninteresting variables. > At the risk of being impolite, that's nonsense. Again, at the risk of being impolite, are you lazy? Suggesting Rossi is? I can't imagine why sparing work has the slightest importance in the task of proving that the most potentially important discovery in a hundred years is valuable and not the product of mismeasurement or worse. That's also the reason I find making short runs unconscionable when long ones would be far more probative.
