Alain Sepeda <[email protected]> wrote:
> It seems the community is quite skeptic, negative , about Defkalion . . . > I do not think so. I did not get a sense of this at ICCF18. People were no more skeptical -- or accepting -- of Defkalion's claims than any other. That was a group of 220 people who are sure that cold fusion exists. They had no reason to doubt these claims. Some, including me, have reservations because this is not a rigorous test in the conventional sense, and because we never give a free pass to anyone. I do mean no one. Martin Fleischmann told me in person that he saw the cathode that melted and went into the floor at U. Utah. I still have my doubts, because he took no photos and preserved no evidence. (He admitted it was stupid not to do that.) > , and that maybe their purpose. > Being sincere they have to avoid claiming false things that could be > opposed later to hurt them. > Unlike some industriels or science domain, they know that any error or > manipulation won't be forgiven. Red Herring or errors are very dangerous > (Rossi shows that). > You should not try to judge this based on people's sincerity or their motives. Those are not valid criteria for judging a scientific claim. In some cases we are forced to resort to speculation about people's motives because there is no better evidence available. We had to do this with Rossi for a long time in some ways. That is regrettable. At best it produces an approximate answer to questions which should be answered by rigorous physical proof and textbook laws. It is even more absurd to try to judge the validity of a scientific claim by placing bets or by a public opinion poll that includes people who have no knowledge of the claim. If you tried the opposite technique, people would agree you are crazy. Suppose an election is coming up and you ask me who I predict will win. I say: "To answer that we must first need to check the calibration curves for the thermocouples and then we need to ask whether their mass spectrometer is the correct type for this analysis . . ." You would conclude that I am stark staring crazy. Those are the wrong tools for predicting elections. Betting and money are equally absurd tools for trying to predict whether an experiment will work, or did work. Some people are under the impression that I have judged Rossi in the past strictly by subjective evidence regarding his motivation, the fact that he works 12 hours a day, the fact that person trying to sell or fraud would not have to work at all, and so on. I have pondered such evidence, and published it here. We should not dismiss that sort of thing even though it is speculative. It is valid but far weaker than experimental data. Let me point out again however, that I did not rely only on this. Rossi allowed independent testing of his devices in 2009. I have the data and photos right here. I have had this data for a long time. For some reason the people doing these tests and Rossi himself wish to keep these results confidential. I cannot imagine why, but I feel I should honor their desires. I better! As the librarian at LENR-CANR.org I will get into trouble if I start uploading stuff like this without permission. People will stop sending me information. However the tests have been widely reported so I see no harm in mentioning them. I also have photos and descriptions of the EON factory Rossi device, described by Focardi in Italian TV, and in the patent. Again, I can't imagine why Rossi wants to keep this secret, but he does. Naturally I cannot expect other people to believe this since the data has not been made public. If you have trouble believing me I won't take that personally. If I am free to doubt Martin Fleischmann I can't fault anyone for doubting me. Defkalion has said they have definitive information in reports compiled by experts under NDA's. They recently told me they do not wish to publish any of this, for the time being, because they feel it is not in their interests. I disagree. In any scenario I can think of, for any business, it is best to enhance your credibility. That makes it easier to borrow money and sell products. Perhaps there is something about Defkalion's situation that overrules this, and makes secrecy more valuable than enhanced credibility. Who knows? There is no point to speculating. (Strictly speaking, I cannot be sure Defkalion has such reports, but I suppose they do. It seems reasonable that they would.) - Jed
