On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Gibbs <mgi...@gibbs.com> wrote: > > >> >>> >> Ah, so it's OK to argue that Cude is, in effect, hand-waving away Ohm's >> law and that's indefensible because that law is accepted but it's not OK to >> argue that Carat's dismissal of conventional physics as being wrong about >> LENR is also hand waving? >> > > Yes, this is okay. We are talking about two fundamentally different > things: actions taken by engineers and laws of nature. > > Right, but as long as the actions are not freely testable by others, the possibility that they have been fooled or are incompetent is a valid alternative explanation for the claims. People believed N-rays and polywater based on mistakes too, but in those cases the claims could be tested, and were shown to be the result of confirmation bias (or deception) or experimental error. If the ecat were accessible to anyone, deception could be ruled out. > Let's go over this carefully, because this is an important distinction, > and Cude has often repeated this mistake. > > First of all, Carat is not "dismissing laws of nature." She is only saying > that cold fusion cannot be explained by theory, but a theory is not > required to explain an anomaly before you accept that it is true. > > Right. And an understanding of a trick is not required before you accept that it is a trick. > Cude claims there may be a method by which an engineer can cause a reactor > to consume 900 W yet the instruments only show 300 W. > This is demonstrably true. There are many ways. You can cause a reactor to consume 900W yet the instruments show nothing, as seen in the cheese video. Of course, showing zero would be too suspicious, because then people would question the presence of the instruments, so they show a fraction. > However, he says he cannot specify what that method is. Therefore, his > assertion cannot be tested or falsified, so it is not scientific. > The entire experiment can't be tested, making it unscientific, as I've argued from the start. But if the instrument were made generally available for testing, deception could be quickly falsified, if it's not used. If we could buy them at home depot, and heat our homes with them, that would falsify deception. (And I'm not saying commercial products are needed for credibility -- only that it proves that deception *is* falsifiable.) Anything that an engineer can do is known to science, by definition. > Any magician's illusion is known to science. That doesn't mean a scientist will understand the illusion just from observation. And it doesn't mean he is forced to believe in magic, if he can't duplicate the illusion with a spice model. And this written report is a far inferior window on the claims than direct observation, when it comes to detecting deception. > McKubre does not have to supply a theory before his claim is fully > accepted. > No one disagrees with this. The disagreement is that you have to supply an explanation for alternative explanations before you can accept their possibility. What McKubre needs is robust evidence, which doesn't exist. The alternative explanation of artifacts and errors fits the erratic and unreproducible observations far better, even if they can't be identified in detail. > However long it takes, science is never allowed to dismiss the anomaly. > > What science is allowed to accept is not dictated by you. Anyway, science fully accepts anomalies that have good evidence to support them. It always has. It rejects claimed anomalies for which the evidence is weak or absent. It largely rejects claims of homeopathy, dowsing, perpetual motion, and cold fusion. > Conversely, the only way to prove that McKubre, Fleischmann and the others > are wrong would be to show an error in the laws of thermodynamics. > > Nonsense. The only way to prove them right is with consistent evidence, which after 24 years is still absent. > It is NEVER okay to say: > > An engineer (Rossi) is doing something to make a fake test I do not > understand and cannot describe, but I am sure he is doing it. This is empty > speculation. It cannot be tested or falsified so it is not scientific. > If the claim cannot be freely tested, it is not only ok to be suspicious of deception, but outrageously gullible not to be. This is especially the case if the claimant stands to benefit financially from the confidence in his claims, and even moreso if he has a controversial past involving deceptions related to energy. Any act that a person can do to make a fake test must be described by the > textbooks and by SPICE. If it is not in the textbooks, that makes it a > genuine anomaly. In other words, if Rossi has discovered a way to make a > power meter report 900 W as 300 W, but SPICE cannot simulate that method, > that makes it an important new discovery that the instrument makers and EEs > must investigate. > > > Your kind of thinking is the reason there are so many frauds in the world.
