I've seen it claimed by a rather emotionally committed skeptic -- with some background in conducting CF runs with calorimetry -- that an adequate 19th century technology water-bath style calorimetry of the E-Cat HT would cost "a couple hundred bucks maybe...". Obviously if this is true then the $20,000 budget for the E-Cat HT test available to Levi et al (2013) would have been more than adequate. Clearly, if this estimate is accurate then it is easy to understand why a skeptic might get emotionally committed to discounting the report:
Why bother issuing such a report unless you were trying to mind-f*ck everyone? Of course, I can come up with any of a variety of *plausible* explanations for why this "couple hundred bucks" estimate may be way off but then I haven't actually conducted calorimetry on CF runs. So the question is "Did this skeptic get emotional because his estimate is correct or did he come up with his estimate because he was an emotional pseudo-skeptic?"
