On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Moab Moab <[email protected]> wrote:
Regarding the setup of the demontration: "The demonstration was not a > scientific validation, thus nothing was validated."; "Defkalion was fully > in control of the setup."; "The wires were probably rigged."; "They could > not inspect the inside of the reactor." Yadda yadda yadda. > To be honest, I think this type of criticism is both predictable, and, to a certain extent, avoidable. We've seen that it is hard or impossible to convince some critics; they've already made up their mind and are happy to argue themselves into absurd what-if scenarios. But many of their complaints are ones that can be learned from (such as the ammeter issue in the recent Elforsk test) and, in future experiments, addressed. If a commercial entity plans to run a third-party verification, they should try to learn from past mistakes. If they do not, they have only themselves to blame when the predictable criticisms come in. The bottom line is that in any of the vendor demonstrations we usually have one of the following: - a sales promotion that is without any kind of rigor and is just put on to attract attention and bring in new customer references (intended audience: the general public). - a third-party black-box verification that suffers from serious flaws (intended audience: academics and informed decision makers). - a third-party black-box verification that is both independent and difficult to criticize (intended audience: academics and informed decision makers). It is the choice of vendors which approach to take. They should not make the mistake of assuming that observers will confuse the different cases and try to pass a demonstration of one kind off as another kind. They should choose their audience and, on this basis, adopt a strategy that will be effective. It is also within their control to arrange for a demonstration that does not suffer from serious flaws by consulting the right people beforehand. If they cannot do any of these things, they should consider not demoing at all; this is one of the reasons many startups stay in stealth mode for a while, so that they can come up with something that is fully cooked before showing it to the world. These are general comments and do not necessarily apply to the Defkalion/CICAP test. They may apply to the Defkalion ICCF-18 demo, but I have not followed the details closely. Eric
