Cambridge University Professor Huw Price on the ‘Reputation Trap’ of Cold Fusion (Update: Response in Popular Mechanics)

Maryyugo and Thomas Clarke

Mary said this, “Rossi's PhD from Kensington college -- the degree he purchased from that diploma mill which was finally closed by the State of California regulators.”

This is a good example of Mary’s and Tom’s character assignation of Dr. Rossi.

Do you think someone reading this not knowing Dr. Rossi’s history would think he bought his doctorate? It is my opinion both Mary and Tom know Rossi’s history, here is what Jed Rothwell (Mary’s work mate) says about Rossi’s educational background: “His understanding of physics, first developed in his metalworking hobbies, became more evident and polished in school, where he excelled in physics as well as chemistry. Rossi graduated in 1973 (from the University of Milan) with a degree in Philosophy. His dissertation was based on his comparison of Husserl’s work in phenomenology and of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. He received an Honor’s Degree for his dissertation, with a perfect score of 110 out of 110.”

Here is the Rothwell site, which I sent to Mary and Tom several days ago:http://coldfusioninformation.com/personalities/andrea-rossi/

Please, state the facts and evidence as you see them honestly without assigning motives which you have no evidence for.

Maryyugo

Right, You left out the first part of Rossi's education, a rather important exclusion, designed to assassinate Rossi's character!

From Wikipedia: “Character assassination is a deliberate and sustained process that aims to destroy the credibility and reputation of a person, institution, social group, or nation.”

It is my opinion you and Clarke certainly fit this definition.

@BBCK. You are of course entitled to your opinion. Can you please let me know where I was impolite about Rossi?

Quote from Mary Yugo

We need to stand up to free energy and tech criminals. They get away with millions of dollars and rarely get caught. That's wasteful and just wrong!

Wouldn't you call the field of free energy a high-risk area for investment? Is anyone who puts a lot of money into ventures in this field under the impression that they are making a low-risk investment in reputable businesses that will be assured a return?

Mary

Quote from Mary Yugo

It's a bad idea to be civil with con men.

You are so wrong, as Tom says:

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Ad homs like this do your case no good...

and you should know -

Quote from frankwtu

I remain of the view that the quality of communication here by some is poor, it devalues and in some cases frustrates the pursuit of discovery, a point made by Huw Price. It appears you have personal experience of quite appalling communications to you, belaying motives which border on conspiracy and I hope you will agree with me that the principle of civilised respectful dialogue applies across the full range of debate and relationships in the pursuit of discovery.

Thomas Clarke

You said, “Can you please let me know where I was impolite about Rossi?”

Impolite is not opening a door for a lady, accusing someone of fraud, lies and dishonesty is attacking his character. To do that you better have a pretty good idea of his motives.

Here are just some of your impolite quotes on Rossi you asked for:

Your statement about the Lugano test “He… (Rossi)… must have known that the isotopic measurements would not be viewed as independent and therefore dismissed. So the tests would appear to be a charade, with apparent positive result only because the testers made a mistake in how they calculated temperatures.” Drawing these conclusions about what you think are Rossi’s dishonest motives are pure speculation on your part.

You said, “BLP - like other "good" LENR companies, has results that get less impressive as time goes on. Like scams, it changes completely its type of experiment every so often to keep punters interested. (Rossi fits this pattern too - except he does not bother changing things, he just states he has COP >> 1 when it is obvious he does not!)” Again you are accusing Rossi of a “scam” and is pure speculation on your part.

You said, about the Lugano test “It also had a major error in testing caused by a change that Rossi introduced – using an alumina unpainted reactor for the first time. Those following the story will note a common theme – whenever a test is redone with old holes blocked, some new change is made to the protocol that introduces an entirely new error mechanism.” Not only are you accusing Rossi of fraud in the Lugano test you are suggesting, outrageously, that he introduced new methods of fraud in all of his tests. This is again pure speculation on your part, if not designed to attack Rossi’s character, the result is the same.

On numerous occasions you have accused Rossi of deliberately switching the ash in Lugano test, similar to this quote by you “The other notable aspect of the Lugano test is the isotopic results. The powder which Rossi handled showed difficult to understand isotopic changes.” You keep making this accusation even though one of the respected scientists involved in the Lugano test, thought the suggestion that Rossi had switched the ash was laughable, in this interview. He made it clear Rossi did not pick the ash to be tested. Again your speculation is unfounded and is an attack on Rossi.

http://freeenergyscams.com/and…ew-on-radio24-in-english/

You said, “Before Mary jumps in here I'd agree that the Lugano isotopic test results - a different issue - are clearer. It is unlikely that this contamination could be other than a deliberate attempt to deceive, though I suppose you could not rule out some innocent explanation in principle. Even then, you could argue that the deception is likely from an inventor desperate that others should believe what he thinks the truth who is prepared to deceive when he thinks it is needed for a greater good. Such behaviour does not necessitate, as you seem to think, wholesale lying about results. In all these situations you can argue very many things, which is why building judgements on top of this stuff is unwise.” You state you do not want to assign motives and then blatantly state Rossi deceived the Lugano scientists by switching the ash. You have absolutely no evidence; you do have a scientist who laughs at this possibility and states he picked the ash to be tested. I do not know what your motives are but in my opinion this is character assassination.

You said, “I'm not saying Rossi is a fraud. I know others do here.” Two posts later you say he switched the ash which would be a fraud.

Sorry Tom, that is all I have time for, I could go on quoting you, telling us about Rossi’s motives, but I need some sleep.

S

Thomas

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Well, the aspects of epistomology that relate to induction are are rather a hobby of mine,

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Epistemologists concern themselves with a number of tasks, which we might sort into two
categories. http://www.iep.utm.edu/epistemo/

Category 1
First, we must determine the nature of knowledge; that is, what does it mean to say that someone knows, or fails to know, something? This is a matter of understanding what knowledge is, and how to distinguish between cases in which someone knows something and cases in which someone does not know something. While there is some general agreement about some aspects of this issue, we shall see that this question is much more difficult than one might imagine.

Category 2
Second, we must determine the extent of human knowledge; that is, how much do we, or can we, know? How can we use our reason, our senses, the testimony of others, and other resources to acquire knowledge? Are there limits to what we can know? For instance, are some things unknowable? Is it possible that we do not know nearly as much as we think we do? Should we
have a legitimate worry about skepticism, the view that we do not or cannot know anything at all?

That indeed seems a noble cause, I await to see the fruits of your quest!!

@frank - well it is rather more specific than that. I've looked a bit of objective bayesian stuff - it is fun and sort of important if you want to understand what belief in a scientific hypothesis really means.
http://www.maa.org/press/maa-r…-of-objective-bayesianism
For example Williamson (above) has a rather strange approach but one that has many merits.

I'm going to examine these statements from BBK in detail below - IMHO there is a significant difference between stating commonly agreed and verifiable facts, and accusing someone of fraud. BBK seems to think the facts I state imply fraud - which is perhaps true in his and (probably) MYs interpretation of them. He then accuses me of character assasination!

Quote

Your statement about the Lugano test “He… (Rossi)… must have known that the isotopic measurements would not be viewed as independent and therefore dismissed. So the tests would appear to be a charade, with apparent positive result only because the testers made a mistake in how they calculated temperatures.” Drawing these conclusions about what you think are Rossi’s dishonest motives are pure speculation on your part.

I guess you could be right, that Rossi is so unworldly as to not realise this - but he has has past experience of how his tests are seen (from the previous test) so I doubt it. Why do you think Rossi's motives are dishonest?

Quote

You said, “BLP - like other "good" LENR companies, has results that get less impressive as time goes on. Like scams, it changes completely its type of experiment every so often to keep punters interested. (Rossi fits this pattern too - except he does not bother changing things, he just states he has COP >> 1 when it is obvious he does not!)” Again you are accusing Rossi of a “scam” and is pure speculation on your part.

I think you are not reading what I wrote here. I'm not accusing Rossi of a scam. I'm saying that for a range of companies, whether they are scam or simply free energy vapourware you get the same pattern. In fact I'm defending Rossi from views like those of MY here that his behaviour is only consistent with a scam.
My statements about COP >> 1 when obvious not are strictly true - taking for example the Lugano test and Rossi's reaction to the calculation error.

Quote

You said, about the Lugano test “It also had a major error in testing caused by a change that Rossi introduced – using an alumina unpainted reactor for the first time. Those following the story will note a common theme – whenever a test is redone with old holes blocked, some new change is made to the protocol that introduces an entirely new error mechanism.”

Again - i think you are not reading what I have said. I'm not accusing Rossi of fraud. MY would probably draw that conclusion from these fcats, but I don't. And neither should you - shame on you! The fact I highlight here is strictly true.

Quote

Not only are you accusing Rossi of fraud in the Lugano test you are suggesting, outrageously, that he introduced new methods of fraud in all of his tests. This is again pure speculation on your part, if not designed to attack Rossi’s character, the result is the same.

Again - you are interpolating your own views into my statements. Rossi no doubt likes to have demos that work, and also must to some extent note what other people say about possible errors. I'm noting that when one error is blocked another one appears. Given that his stuff does not work that is a logical necessity. If you look at the details of the tests you will find that every one has a pretty clear known error except for the ones where we have insufficient information (we can still guess at the likely error - but do not know).

Quote

On numerous occasions you have accused Rossi of deliberately switching the ash in Lugano test, similar to this quote by you “The other notable aspect of the Lugano test is the isotopic results. The powder which Rossi handled showed difficult to understand isotopic changes.”

Are you saying that is untrue? I'm not accusing him of deliberately switching the ash. He seems to be good at providing contaminated ash samples, and I don't need or wish to speculate about how that comes about. The point is that the sample cannot be viewed as reliable evidence of anything, given the last sample provided by Rossi was (he admitted himself a long time afterwards) contaminated. In this situation, even without that history, no-one could take a sample which which the inventor handled as proof of an extraordinary results worth billions. In this case we know Rossi has provided samples presented as good at the time which are later viewed by Rossi himself to be contaminated! The matter of deliberation is one that seems to worry you, but that is meta-evidence, and frankly looking into other people's minds is something I prefer not to do.

Quote

You keep making this accusation even though one of the respected scientists involved in the Lugano test, thought the suggestion that Rossi had switched the ash was laughable, in this interview. He made it clear Rossi did not pick the ash to be tested. Again your speculation is unfounded and is an attack on Rossi.

I've dealt with the "attack on Rossi" bit above.
You are right I don't judge the Lugano scientists competent to assess this matter. They themselves said that they were not checking it - so how could they? In any case scientists are not the best people to be assessing such matters, they tend to assume that other people behave like scientists. You are maybe arguing that the only mechanism for contamination is that Rossi "picks" the ash selected - but that is obviously not true.

The Lugano scientists approached the test with the strong prior belief (evident from their previous statements) that Rossi's stuff works. That meant they could easily make the appalling calorimetry calculation error they did, and interpret COP = 1 as COP = 3. Are you surprised I don't think the view of just one of them over this matter is reliable?

More generally, I realise if you take your news from ECW you get a very biassed viewpoint, since the contrary arguments on any of these issues are censored. You can at least hear them here.

Quote

You said, “Before Mary jumps in here I'd agree that the Lugano isotopic test results - a different issue - are clearer. It is unlikely that this contamination could be other than a deliberate attempt to deceive, though I suppose you could not rule out some innocent explanation in principle. Even then, you could argue that the deception is likely from an inventor desperate that others should believe what he thinks the truth who is prepared to deceive when he thinks it is needed for a greater good. Such behaviour does not necessitate, as you seem to think, wholesale lying about results. In all these situations you can argue very many things, which is why building judgements on top of this stuff is unwise.” You state you do not want to assign motives and then blatantly state Rossi deceived the Lugano scientists by switching the ash. You have absolutely no evidence; you do have a scientist who laughs at this possibility and states he picked the ash to be tested. I do not know what your motives are but in my opinion this is character assassination.

No, I'm saying that in this case contamination of the Lugano ash looks unlikely to be other than a deliberate attempt to deceive (I know MY will make that point here). I think few would disagree. I'm saying also that it could be innocent. I'm also saying that logically such switching does not imply fraud - for example Rossi could be switching the ash out of concern that competitors if given the right ash will discover his secrets. An explanation that might appeal to BKK.

I'm further saying that speculating why things are done is unwise, difficult to do, and makes it more difficult to think in a clear, unbiassed, way about this issue. As I believe you are discovering.

More generally - what I'm doing here is applying the open-minded unjudgemental attitude that many of those who support Rossi say they want, but without the assumption that his stuff works and paying attention to the hard evidence that whenever independently tested it does not. Drawing conclusions from evidence in this case is not judgemental unless I go on to assume why those things happened.

I realise these posts would be banned on ECW - but that is because Frank Acland feels that articulation of any alternate reality from the one he himself promotes would be detrimental to his site. As you will realise I feel that is bad behaviour - even though Frank has every right to do it.

Quote from Huw Price's paper https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-…ossibility-of-cold-fusion

‘anyone who expects a source of power from transformation of… atoms is talking moonshine’

quoting Lord Rutherford, in 1933.

Thomas

My understanding is that Bayesian probabilities rather than being 'specific' can be either or both objective and subjective. For objectivists, probability objectively measures the plausibility of propositions, i.e. the probability of a proposition corresponds to a reasonable belief everyone (even a "robot") sharing the same knowledge should share in accordance with the rules of Bayesian statistics, which can be justified by requirements of rationality and consistency. Huw Price suggested 'everyone' might be artificially manipulated by particular styles of critique causing some to fear the discourse for personal credibility reasons falsely distorting the facts and scientific progress. For subjectivists, probability corresponds to a 'personal belief' which I think you have alluded to many times. Never the less, the best example in my mind at least, of a review of 'objective' probabilities in respect of the future of LENR in general, is the 'Defense Analysis Report DIA-08-0911-003'. www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BarnhartBtechnology.pdf

.

Fifty years ago, Thomas Kuhn taught us that this is the usual way for science to deal with paradigm-threatening anomalies. The borders of dominant paradigms are often protected by reputation traps, which deter all but the most reckless or brilliant critics.

Huw Price puts forward the view that the very style of critique associated with the LENR discipline which includes in my view the type of observations you make, is instrumental in forging a 'reputation trap'.

Mary

Quote from Mary Yugo

Tangential arguments like yours simply strengthen crooks like Rossi

Wow, would that be based on Bayesian probabilities and if so would that be objective or subjective or both?

You know what they say, there's no such thing as 'bad publicity' and in that regard I can think of no other prolific publicist than you Mary, oh perhaps with the exception of Thomas.

Quote from frankwtu

Fifty years ago, Thomas Kuhn taught us that this is the usual way for science to deal with paradigm-threatening anomalies. The borders of dominant paradigms are often protected by reputation traps, which deter all but the most reckless or brilliant critics.

Indeed. My sense is that this reputation trap has been extremely effective in deterring coordinated scientific scrutiny of LENR in mainstream science. In the void, scientists at military labs and other labs not affiliated with universities, who appear to be more at liberty to tackle long-shot projects without risking their livelihoods, as well as engineers, businessmen and hobbyists with an appetite for risk and without reputations on the line, have stepped in. This is not to say that the reputation trap has not applied to them as well, simply that they're in a better position to navigate around it to some extent.

The reputation trap appears to apply to Anglo/American academic institutions in particular. I get the impression that it is easier for scientists with academic appointments in other countries to spend their time looking at LENR. It is beautifully ironic that a group of people whose identity is tightly bound up with the notion that they are particularly independent in their thinking have fallen prey to such a strong habit of conformity in actual practice.