On 11-12-21 05:10 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
"They have many highly qualified professional scientists" --> "They
had at least two people who said they were scientists, and sounded
technically reasonable"
Who told you there are only two?!? Where did you get that information?
Jed, read what I wrote! I said *at _least_//*two, /not/ *at _most_*
two! I'm trying to get the core of truth out of some rather vague
hearsay testimony here, OK?
/You/ said /somebody else/ said "many". That's hearsay, but it surely
contains some truth. From it, we can reasonably conclude with some
certainty that he observed /multiple/ scientists there, but we can't
conclude much beyond that. So, we should replace the subjective and
imprecise statement that there "_*are**many*_ scientists" with the far
more solidly grounded one that there are "_*were at least two*_
scientists" on site.
There could have been fifty, for all I know, but the vague statement
that there were "many" doesn't let me conclude anything like that.
I know more than two people there myself.
AH HA! That's starting to sound like first person testimony! I had no
idea *you* *personally know more than two people* at Defkalion!
Keep making statements like that, rather than citing vague claims by
friends of yours, and I may start believing in DGT.
I know several people who have visited Defkalion and met more than two
tech people. I do not know how many, but it is at least a dozen. I
have not asked how many people they have. I never anticipated this . .
. line of questioning, or the notion that there might be only two.
Sorry, but hearsay evidence that there are "many" of something is really
worth nothing more than a strong assertion that there is a "plural"
number .. i.e., at least two.
"They purchased millions of dollars of equipment" --> We don't have a
precise number, we need to remove the mantissa --> "They had some
dollars worth of equipment"
It is not hard to estimate the cost of equipment.
Perhaps.
But a casual statement that "they purchased millions of dollars of
equipment" doesn't sound like an estimate to me, it just sounds like a
vague statement that they had some stuff in a room. It's like "seven
times seventy" or "40 days" in the Bible. It means "lots", it doesn't
really mean "between 1,000,000 and 9,999,999".
In any case, "they purchased...." is *not* an observation! I simply
don't believe he *watched them purchase* millions of dollars in
equipment. Rather, he observed that the equipment was there, and
assumed (or was told) that they had purchased it.
You get the point.
No, I do not. Do you know any place that rents out SEMs and mass
spectrometers?
Aha! So we know a little more about what kind of equipment they have
than what was posted to start with!
Did he actually */see/* one or more SEMs and one or more mass spectrometers?
That's a lot more convincing than a simple assertion that he said "I
know what a lab looks like and it looked like a lab".
This is far more information than you posted earlier, and it's starting
to sound more solid by the minute.
And by the way, WRT SEM rental...
CBS Imaging Center says:
Hitachi S3500N Scanning Electron Microscope $37.50/Hour
SEMTech Solutions says:
An outright purchase of an SEM can be cost prohibitive for some
companies. In that case, a *Lease-to-own* solution, may be a better
choice if you need a SEM for 2-3 years for a project, and then have
option at the end of the contract to buy the SEM.
So, the answer is *Yes/,/* I know of at least one or two places which
will rent SEMs. I didn't look up mass spec equipment but I suspect you
can rent that, too.
Oh, yes, I particularly liked this one: "He can easily tell they are
qualified." Darn, we could use a guy like that! To tell if
someone's qualified, it takes *us* a couple days of interviews, time
spent poring over their resume . . .
He spend several days interviewing them! They discussed the technical
issues in depth. A person cannot fake that.
- Jed
