With conspiracy theories* the plausibility goes down as the number of participants goes up. Since Levi alone is responsible for the instrumentation -- at least from my recollection of some of the statements -- and Levi has long been associated with Rossi, a Levi-Rossi conspiracy is where the skeptical theorizing should concentrate. Jed Rothwell makes a good case that Rossi's financial behavior doesn't seem very consistent with the kind of con game being theorized. Moreover, the continual harping on Rossi's "conviction" (which was overturned in any case) by an Italian court (the Italian government not known for being free of corruption) is a poor foundation for conspiracy theorizing unless one is going to try to impute to Rossi and Levi the "corrupt Italian" ethnic profile. This must be compared with the fact that the Italian government did _not_ go after cold fusion researchers in the pathological manner of other Western countries -- indicating that, if anything, those other countries were more corrupt than Italy -- at least when it comes to the politics of science.
*What many call "conspiracy theorizing" is, in fact, merely theorizing about institutional incompetence and/or shared interests held by large numbers of people with the resulting incentives creating correlated action. Typically those using "conspiracy theorizing" in this manner are those who are invested in the incompetent institutions and/or those with the interests driving their pathological incentives. On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Alan Fletcher <[email protected]> wrote: > > From: "Joshua Cude" <[email protected]> > > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 7:47:48 AM > > > I think Pekka is right. If the camera samples above the peak > > wavelength, and it is a grey body, then an emissivity of 1 seems to > > be always conservative. > ... > > > So, the only way the camera could give an overestimate of the power > > is if the emissivity has some kind of strong wavelength dependence, > > and I rather doubt a material exists that would give a factor of 3 > > or more error. > > > > > > So, the upshot is that I can't explain the power gain with an error > > in emissivity in either experiment. I conceded as much for the March > > experiment from the beginning, where they measured the emissivity, > > and that is presumably the more significant run anyway. > > So, we are left with > > a) Fraud by Rossi and/or those in cahoots with him > > b) DC > > http://www.e-catworld.com/2013/05/discovery-article-pours-doubt-on-rossis-cold-fusion/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=discovery-article-pours-doubt-on-rossis-cold-fusion > > May 28, 2013 at 2:26 AM > < > http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2013/05/ethics-of-e-cat.html?showComment=1369733204626#c7691737630487135094 > > > > > Earlier statement : > > Prof. Essén wrote this paragraph as a comment to this piece of interview > that appeared on http://www.pureenergyblog.com/?p=1232 : > > -------------------------------- > Interviewer: Have you tried to test the output of the power supply to > exclude that also a DC current is supplied to the device, which clamp > amperometers could not detect? > > Prof. Essén: No, we did not think of that. The power came from a normal > wall socket and there did not seem to be any reason to suspect that it was > manipulated in some special way. Now that the point is raised we can check > this in future tests. > -------------------------------------------- > > Later statement (from Cassandra) > > The only response for which Prof. Essén authorises publication is the > following: > > "In the intervju I answered that there was no direct measurement of dc > (since the clamps could not detec such). This was a bit hasty. In future I > will not answer such technical questions without conferring with all > coautors. After analysing what we checked and measured (which were many > more variables that those from the clamps) we can definitely exclude > dc-current. (This is what comes from being nice to journalists.)" > > [ cleaned up on another blog : ] > > “In the interview I answered that there was no direct measurement of dc > (since the clamps could not detect such). This was a bit hasty. In future I > will not answer such technical questions without conferring with all > coauthors. After analysing what we checked and measured (which were many > more variables that those from the clamps) we can definitely exclude > dc-current. (This is what comes from being nice to journalists.)” > > I suspect that there may be a revised version of the paper with an > analysis of this. > > So we are left with : > > a) The input AND output measurements are valid > b) It's all a fraud by Rossi, Levi .... > > The latter, of course, is outside of science, and in the field of > conspiracy theorists. > >
