I wrote:
> You are assuming that all hits are false positives. This makes no sense. > > There are 17,000 positives (false and real). If, as you say, only 1/3 of > the tests work, that means there are 34,000 negative tests. > This is partly a matter of semantics. We are defining "false positive" differently. Cude is saying there might be 51,000 tests all actually negative, but 1/3rd are false positives, meaning 17,000 are wrong. I say the 34,000 negative tests cannot be included in the "false positive" count because they are negative. I define a 30% false positive rate as being 30% of the ones the researchers thought were positive. What Cude describes is what I would call a 100% false positive rate. Not 30% I assume Cude means that everything the researchers thought was positive was actually negative. Everything they thought was negative was also negative. They were right 2/3rds of the time. I assume Cude would never admit there might be false negatives! He agrees the researchers always measured the negative results correctly. They only magically make mistakes in a positive direction. Also for inexplicable reasons, their calibrations always balance to zero, and they never accidentally measure a significant false endothermic reaction. In real life, this is all nonsense. First, there are examples of false negatives, such as CalTech. Second, the failure rate is nowhere near 2/3rds for all techniques. I am pretty sure the Chinese estimate included F&P in France and the glow discharge experiments, which both work close to 100% of the time. Third, there is absolutely no way hundreds of experts could make mistakes year after year, thousands of times. And only in one direction, and never with calibrations. Some experts do make mistakes, naturally. But not every single one of them, day in day out, for years, when measuring heat at the watt level with instruments perfected between 1840 and 1910. That would never happen in the life of the universe. If that could happen, experimental science would not work. - Jed
