On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>wrote:
These questions we have raised are not triggered by distrust of Defkalion. > Not on my part, anyway. > If a company wants observers to take their statements at face value, establishing trust and credibility is important. It is straightforward to earn trust -- behave in a trustworthy manner. It is fine if someone at a company is excited about something they think has been discovered (a Debye temperature threshold, a fantastically large magnetic field, unreactive 61Ni, the evolution of an enormous amount of dry steam, an effect relating to Rydberg hydrogen, a basic process driven by nanoplasmonics or "HENI," etc.). But statements about these things should either be carefully made in the context of a sufficient of supporting evidence, or there should be a clear caveat that "this is all conjecture at this point, but we think that maybe ...", or the matter should not be disclosed. The "caveat" approach is still risky, but it is better than just making an offhand claim or dropping it willy nilly into a paper. This is basic PR skill that any young company has to pick up at some point, I suppose. In its absence, a company can give impression that they're trying to pull a fast one on observers (presumably to protect IP). This may or may not be a bad thing -- Rossi made many unguarded statements early on and appears to have gotten away with it. But neither should Defkalion be surprised if unguarded statements made to the public have the consequence of harming their brand a little. If a company wants to, it can learn to manage the challenges of sharing exciting news with the public while maintaining trust. Many companies do this very well. Eric
