All the excuses made on ECW can be made in court and when it is a science issue it is pretty easy to cast enough doubt to prevent absolutely any criminal prosecution.
And there we have it, a motive for Huw Price's 'Reputation trap'. Our legal system can't destroy the heretics but the 'inquisition' will.
Best regards
Frank
Thomas,
The only thing in your post that make sense to me was the part about "denial". To me that is really the only way... other than the Ecat being for real, to explain Rossi's reply to H=Gs *sham* offer, to sell to H-Gs FAKE company, heat only. Doing so, if the Ecat were simply a space heater -as you skeps are "certain" of, would have put a quick end to this little saga. Rossi would have bankrupted himself and maybe Leonardo, and instead of being famous as he hoped, gone down in consumer product fraud history as a complete dufus.
Chalking this all up to denial does have it's problems though. That (denial) can carry you so far with a product that doesn't work, but this far? Maybe so. He has a decent amount of DDs under his belt and you can only fool yourself so long, but fooling others that long...I don't know?
Not a fan of Rossi, but some the "soft science" metadata lends him some support.
Quote
The only thing in your post that make sense to me was the part about "denial".
To me that is really the only way... other than the Ecat being for real, to explain Rossi's reply to H=Gs *sham* offer, to sell to H-Gs FAKE company, heat only. Doing so, if the Ecat were simply a space heater -as you skeps are "certain" of, would have put a quick end to this little saga.
Rossi would have bankrupted himself and maybe Leonardo, and instead of being famous as he hoped, gone down in consumer product fraud history as a complete dufus.
Here is how it works (without full-blown denial).
(1) Rossi has decided (possibly been told by [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] - but maybe the timescale does not fit) he has to do this long-term test.
(2) Rossi is not doing it to make money, but to convince funders who will then give him a lot of money, and ECW believers who make a great fan club.
(3) He does not lose money on this test - since the electricity he uses will all be paid by the customer.
A few options:
(a) Rossi believes his device will work enough (though he knows it does not always work) - that is "denial light".
(b) he knows it will not work but reckons he can spoof the results enough to satisfy people.
(c) he reckons it will not work but the 12 month delay is welcome - by the end of that he will have all the funding he needs in place and who cares if the test fails? Even if no funding he will have some distraction set up, like ecat-x - to continue the show.
As you can see I don't claim to have divine knowledge of the contents of Rossi's mind, so who can tell which of these options, or indeed perhaps some other variant, is real? My point is that there are many plausible ways through this maze without having to assume Rossi's stuff miraculously works.
QuoteAnd there we have it, a motive for Huw Price's 'Reputation trap'. Our legal system can't destroy the heretics but the 'inquisition' will.
That is a confused argument. You conflate legal issues with scientific ones. It would work if scientists main concern was legal or moral justice. In reality most scientists don't know much about Law nor care. They care about science.
Science is about finding out new things. When somone proposes a weird new idea scientists are all biassed to like it - because it is new. Why do you think the most common requirement for Journal publication is novelty?
If that was all then you can see how the world would go to pot. Axil would be the most prolific author around, and while that would be fun for ECW believers it would create a large amount of nonsensical "noise' in the Journals.
So, there is also a requirement that the novel results presented be substantiated. That is, if experimental they must be clearly described - and if the only claim for novelty is that they are highly unexpected (as in impossible without something extraordinary) then they must be very very well validated. After all, nothing is easier than to do experiments and get apparently impossible results! Note that most new stuff is new but not so extraordinary. It may not have been expected, but it is equally not clearly unexpected.
If the novel results are theoretical then this requirement is that they say something definite (Axil's stuff would fail on that) and that they explain observations, and at least in principle predict new experimentally verifiable results (Axil's stuff would fail on that because it is not quantitative and does not actually make any definite predictions) and that they are coherent at some level deeper than primary process thinking (Axil's stuff would fail on that).
Thus, for example, WL theory sort of makes sense although there are very big holes in it. In fact it has been very well shot down, but still merits publication because there is enough substance in a (very) novel idea. It is novel, and clever, and it makes in principle verifiable predictions (heavy electron shielding).
Best wishes, Tom
Shane on you, you are distorting my post:
QuoteTo me that is really the only way... other than the Ecat being for real, to explain Rossi's reply to H=Gs *sham* offer, to sell to H-Gs FAKE company, heat only.
I did not offer Rossi anything, it was he that solicited my company that never was and still is not fake.
Moreover, I did not say that I considered his offering to be a scam. But whether he was in good faith or not I was convinced that his pile of junk would not work. Now, five years later we are no better informed on that matter. All we see is a lot of Rossi desperately pressing a function key.
_____________________________________________________
With friends like Rossi LENR doesn't need skeptics.
Re Widom - Larson
"They said that the rough surface of the palladium on the electrode focuses the energy into small pits, where it can be transferred to a single electron. The high-energy electron can then shoot into the nucleus of a nearby deuterium atom and combine with a proton to release a neutron and a neutrino (European Physical Journal C, DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s2006-02479-8)".
I am not a scientist but I find the above quite compelling, quite different to the character assassination which appears on this blog by certain contributors regardless of the merit of their case. Thomas, I'm pleased we agree on the role of 'ad homs', but I'm not sure that transfers into substance.
"They said that the rough surface of the palladium on the electrode focuses the energy into small pits, where it can be transferred to a single electron. The high-energy electron can then shoot into the nucleus of a nearby deuterium atom and combine with a proton to release a neutron and a neutrino (European Physical Journal C, DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s2006-02479-8)".
That is exactly the point. Whether you or I find this compelling is irrelevant - what matters is whether it has substance as I define above (it does) and whether it has holes (it has mega-holes). Both these two determinations need more than casual reading and compelling-sounding novel ideas.
PS - that is a summary from somone else. Read the original papers
Frankwtu, when somebody says or does something stupid it is inevitable or at least normal that this to a certain degree has a negative influence on our appreciation of this person. This mechanism is not limited to persons, it is equally valid for companies and even bigger entities. I think that we can agree on that, but it can be difficult to determine who is stupid or not. Let us leave this subject please.
You quote a statement about the Widom - Larsens theory, and you like the poetic ring of it and I can understand that. But to a lay person it is very difficult to determine the validity of a statement containing an assortment of words from a subject that he is not familiar with.
So without insult to Widom - Larsen I will try to give you an easily understandable argument why their theory has a large hole in it, a hole that cannot be repaired.
On of the famous miracles of LENR that W-L has to explain is why no ionizing radiation, e. g. gamma rays is observed. So they have come up with the idea that collective motions of electrons can transform each gamma photon to lower energy photons that end up as heat without ever leaving the reaction site and thus never are detected outside it.
This is not how quantum mechanic works. Thermalizing gammas can only be done by a massive layer of matter. For a classic analogy you can think of a speeding bullet (the gamma photon) and a swarm of mosquitoes (the electrons). It wold take an awful lot of mosquitoes to stop the bullet.
Because this link in the W-L theory is broken, so is the whole theory. (Conjecture would be a more fitting name.)
Thomas, a few comments on your suggestions:
"(1) Rossi has decided (possibly been told by [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] - but maybe the timescale does not fit) he has to do this long-term test."
Comment: it's very Normal to perform a long qualification test. This is according to normal technology development.
He is now at TRL7 I would say heading towards TRL8 according to
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level
"(2) Rossi is not doing it to make money, but to convince funders who will then give him a lot of money, and ECW believers who make a great fan club."
Rossi is 66 years old this year, I can think of much better ways to spend the later part of life than inside a container... Normally scams work best by Quick in - Quick out.....
"(3) He does not lose money on this test - since the electricity he uses will all be paid by the customer."
Comment: actually it may be Rossi pays for the electricity and sells the hot water to the customer. and what about the customer? the whole idea here is for the customer to save money. A real customer would Expect to save some money buying the hot water from Rossi. Using electricity to heat water is both stupid and expensive, when there are much cheaper alternatives for the Industry.
Which means Rossi must sell the heating medium to the customer to much lower price than the alternative Cheap heating options.
"A few options:
(a) Rossi believes his device will work enough (though he knows it does not always work) - that is "denial light".
"
Comment : Yes an option.
"(b) he knows it will not work but reckons he can spoof the results enough to satisfy people."
Comment: But again, a scam normally works best by "fast in - fast out". Don't see how he now can get out of this as a rich man If it's a scam and avoid jail....
"(c) he reckons it will not work but the 12 month delay is welcome - by the end of that he will have all the funding he needs in place and who cares if the test fails? Even if no funding he will have some distraction set up, like ecat-x - to continue the show."
Comment: only if the funders let him continue. Professionals like [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] have bullet proof contracts that will hold Rossi responsible of misconduct.....
He can only "continue the show" If he have someone interested in further funding.
Myself I'm totally confident that Rossi believes LENR is real and achievable at Industrial scale.
So If it is not real he is living an illusion. But I would think both the Customer and [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] would have enough insight to check, measure and calculate the COP during the last year in operation. If the average is COP=1 or less and it's all a failure, I'm sure we will hear about it soon enough, since the testperiod is over in Feb/Mar.
You quote a statement about the Widom - Larsens theory, and you like the poetic ring of it
Yes I do like the poetic ring, I have to admit one of the reasons is that the dialogue appeals to me without trying to 'alienate', 'character assassinate', 'dismiss' or otherwise cast me as a potential 'dumbo' if I cant quite understand what they are saying. So the discourses, particularly of MY, and to some extent of TC (although some of what he says seems half sensible) and others, do appear to me at least, to 'alienate', 'character assassinate', 'dismiss' or otherwise cast ideas and those who have them as potentially 'idiotic'. I have to think, 'why do they do that'? I conclude it is not to further the cause of discovery but to frustrate discovery instead.
This is why I identify with Huw Price's paper and the questions he raises that discuss the 'reputation trap' and the psychological warfare associated with it.
QuoteRossi seems pretty successful...
Only if the definition of success is bamboozling people out of money. Petroldragon was a spectacular and costly failure. Rossi's second opus magnus was the thermoelectric DOD project, also a spectacular failure and wasted millions in tax payer dollars. And the current ecat nonsense has never sold a single product to any customer which can be identified. And in more than four years, has never had a single adequate test. It's a success for Rossi only because two large investment companies are execrable at doing due diligence and relied on insufficient, badly done, and incompetent testing. Hey, they're spending OPM! (OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY) What do they really care? They will say at the end that it was a worthwhile risk considering the high potential payoffs. And most of their sheeplike investors will agree.
Only if the definition of success is bamboozling people out of money. Petroldragon was a spectacular and costly failure. Rossi's second opus magnus was the thermoelectric DOD project, also a spectacular failure and wasted millions in tax payer dollars. And the current ecat nonsense has never sold a single product to any customer which can be identified. And in more than four years, has never had a single adequate test. It's a success for Rossi only because two large investment companies are execrable at doing due diligence and relied on insufficient, badly done, and incompetent testing. Hey, they're spending OPM! (OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY) What do they really care? They will say at the end that it was a worthwhile risk considering the high potential payoffs. And most of their sheeplike investors will agree.
Is the sale of vaporware a fraud, or is it a case of buyer beware? What does your legal research say about this issue?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
Why wasn't Bill Gates convicted of fraud?
QuoteAnnouncing a product which does not exist to gain a competitive advantage is illegal via Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, but few hardware or software developers have been found guilty of it. The section requires proof that the announcement is both provably false, and has actual or likely market impact.[30] False or misleading announcements designed to influence stock prices are illegal under United States securities fraud laws.[31] The complex and changing nature of the computer industry, marketing techniques, and lack of precedence for these laws applied to the industry can mean developers are not aware their actions are illegal. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement in 1984 with the goal of reminding companies that securities fraud also applies to "statements that can reasonably be expected to reach investors and the trading markets".[32]
Several companies have been accused in court of using knowingly false announcements to gain market advantage. In 1969, The United States Justice Department accused IBM of doing this in the caseUnited States v. IBM. After IBM's competitor Control Data Corporation (CDC) released a computer IBM announced the System/360 Model 91. The announcement resulted in a significant reduction in sales of CDC's product. The Justice Department accused IBM of doing this intentionally because the System/360 Model 91 was not released until three years later.[33][34] IBM avoided preannouncing products during the antitrust case, but after the case ended it resumed the practice. The company likely announced its PCjr in November 1983—four months before general availability in March 1984—to hurt sales of rival home computers during the important Christmas sales season.[35][36]The practice was not called "vaporware" at the time, but publications have since used the word to refer specifically to it. Similar cases have been filed against Kodak film company, AT&T, and Xerox.[37]
US District Judge Stanley Sporkin was a vocal opponent of the practice during his review of the settlement resulting from United States v. Microsoft Corp. in 1994. "Vaporware is a practice that is deceitful on its face and everybody in the business community knows it," said Sporkin.[38] One of the accusations made during the trial was that Microsoft has illegally used early announcements. The review began when three anonymous companies protested the settlement, claiming the government did not thoroughly investigate Microsoft's use of the practice. Specifically, they claimed Microsoft announced its Quick Basic 3 program to slow sales of its competitor Borland's recently released Turbo Basic program.[37] The review was dismissed for lack of explicit proof.[37]
Mary stop fapping your lip and get on the phone to the government. But Rossi has a patent now. Does that compromise Mary's legal case?
QuoteRossi is 66 years old this year, I can think of much better ways to spend the later part of life than inside a container... Normally scams work best by Quick in - Quick out.....
You are not Rossi. He is unusual, and spends time answering blog questions inside a shipping container. Free energy scams last a long time, look at BLP, but anyway the word "scam" is surely making assumptions here. There is no evidence Rossi has been fraudulent.
QuoteComment: actually it may be Rossi pays for the electricity and sells the hot water to the customer. and what about the customer? the whole idea here is for the customer to save money. A real customer would Expect to save some money buying the hot water from Rossi. Using electricity to heat water is both stupid and expensive, when there are much cheaper alternatives for the Industry.
You are making assumptions here. The whole idea could be for Rossi to continue his circus another 12 months, or for Rossi to get funding. Both sure more important for him than whether or not anyone makes (small amounts) of money. The customer has agreed to let Rossi do this test. He can't lose. He hopes to save money, for the cost of a Rossi-inhabited shipping container.
QuoteComment: only if the funders let him continue. Professionals like [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] have bullet proof contracts that will hold Rossi responsible of misconduct.....He can only "continue the show" If he have someone interested in further funding. Myself I'm totally confident that Rossi believes LENR is real and achievable at Industrial scale.
Three assumptions you will have trouble substantiating.
How could a VC contract hold Rossi responsible for misconduct? What misconduct? There is none provable for any of my options.
You assume the large VC money gained (possibly without strings, equity is normally such) so far is insufficient. I expect it would last Rossi a long time unless he spends it all on more condos in Floida.
Your confidence about industrial scale LENR is unfounded, but in any case what does this have to do with Rossi?
QuoteSo If it is not real he is living an illusion. But I would think both the Customer and [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] would have enough insight to check, measure and calculate the COP during the last year in operation. If the average is COP=1 or less and it's all a failure, I'm sure we will hear about it soon enough, since the testperiod is over in Feb/Mar.
For a start, as I've been trying to indicate, the "illusion" would be that like many lone inventors (and Rossi does not accept technical advice, we know) he is convinced his stuff works. We know in detail of at least one setup Rossi has used that misreads output power by a factor of 3.
It is unlikely that [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] has anyone technical looking over Rossi's shoulder. He is CTO. Darden has said he provides funding at arms length. VCs invest in people and do not normally do technological research themselves!
The customer will probably know whether he spends more on electricity - and while there are ways to spoof this I suspect this is the cause of Rossi's current "yes or no" and his ecat-x enthusiasm. But you assume again if you imagine a "no" test result will mean its all over. And it is not an accurate assumption - Rossi himself has said it will not mean its all over!
QuoteDon't see how he now can get out of this as a rich man If it's a scam and avoid jail....
Most technical scams of this type are externally indistinguishable from vapourware flops. So we don't even know how common the two categories are! How can you prove Rossi knew it would never work? You think he is going to guarantee his funders it will work? You think he will be held responsible for mistakes in testing - everyone makes mistakes...? LENR researchers have been living 25 years on hope with no substantive results...
Again, your view of this matter is distorted by the assumptions you make - or, possibly, you make these assumptions because you have a distorted view?
Franktwu, I think there is a reason for the frustration which is not only yours but which you share with many people on this forum and elsewhere. What do we do here? We communicate by exchanging written messages. Even with Google Translate at our finger tips it is helpful if we all use the same language doing so.
Okay, we use English, so what could go wrong? A lot, it turns out. One of the reasons that machine translation is so difficult is that the same English word can have many meanings that evoke different mental images for different persons. Not only that, many words have lots of synonyms or near synonyms each of which could mean yet other things to different recipients.
Most of the times this ambiguity is of little or no consequence to the interpretation of a message. But there are instances when such vagueness can be devastating, and this is when a person that is expert on a subject is communicating with a person that is not. A very good example of such subject is physics, not only because that is the basis of the things that we are discussing here but also because many of the words that are used in this science to the physicist have a very precise meaning whereas to the lay person the words could mean several things, possibly none of them the same as the physical concept.
It is entirely possible that the communicating parties are unaware of this problem; the physicist is talking Physics but the listener is just hearing plain English.The basic problem with this is that in plain English you have great freedom to compose valid sentences. As long as you stick to the grammar they can be interpreted. But when you speak Physics there is a hidden structure and a hidden language behind the spoken words.
The physical concepts obey a grammar of their own. The grammar book contains the laws of physics and the laws are written in the language of mathematics.The laws of physics are quite different from the laws of society. Keep in mind what I just said: beware of the meaning of words. The speed limit on Main Street may be changed any day, but not the speed of light.
The laws of physics are not written in stone, they are written in a much harder material more enduring than diamonds: necessity or at least very close to it.
Not only that, the laws of physics mesh together like the cog wheels in a clockwork. If you mess too much with just one wheel the clockwork of physics stops working.This is not to say that we will not one day see this clockwork replaced with an entirely new design.
This may happen if and when we succeed in marrying gravity to quantum mechanics. But please keep in mind that the new clock must show the same time as the old one, meaning that apples will still fall downwards and the Coulomb barrier will still be awfully high.
On of the famous miracles of LENR that W-L has to explain is why no ionizing radiation, e. g. gamma rays is observed. So they have come up with the idea that collective motions of electrons can transform each gamma photon to lower energy photons that end up as heat without ever leaving the reaction site and thus never are detected outside it.
W-L is problematic for this reason, for sure. One is reminded of the old Atari game "pong," and we are asked to believe that the electrons are a paddle, and that they are able to effectively sweep through and intercept the gammas before they exit the system. Even with 99.9999 percent efficiencies, there would be a significant increase in penetrating gammas, which would be recorded and which would make any graduate students sick, to say the least.
Another clear problem with W-L is that it involves free neutrons. Free neutrons create radioactivity indiscriminately. In LENR, there is generally at most a temporary increase in activity which quickly dies down after a few hours; i.e., not the stuff of neutron activation by free neutrons. A related problem is that a significant portion of free neutrons could be expected to thermalize and ricochet out of the apparatus, since the neutron capture cross section is not infinite.
This is not how quantum mechanic works. Thermalizing gammas can only be done by a massive layer of matter. For a classic analogy you can think of a speeding bullet (the gamma photon) and a swarm of mosquitoes (the electrons). It wold take an awful lot of mosquitoes to stop the bullet.
There are other ways of not having gammas. One is for the energy that would normally leave the system in the form of a gamma to be dumped electrostatically to other carriers of charge in the environment. If such charge carriers were integral to triggering LENR, then this channel might overwhelm gamma emission, analogous to internal conversion or Auger emission. This is just one reasonable possibility. There are surely others.
Yes I do like the poetic ring, I have to admit one of the reasons is that the dialogue appeals to me without trying to 'alienate', 'character assassinate', 'dismiss' or otherwise cast me as a potential 'dumbo' if I cant quite understand what they are saying.
You are correct to ignore entirely any meanness, unfair character pot-shots or snarkiness that one sees in this forum. Such cheap shots only call into question the objectivity of the people advancing them. Concrete details backing up specific, well-qualified allegations should not be ignored, of course.
QuoteEric, you think:
There are other ways of not having gammas. One is for the energy that would normally leave the system in the form of a gamma to be dumped electrostatically to other carriers of charge in the environment. If such charge carriers were integral to triggering LENR, then this channel might overwhelm gamma emission, analogous to internal conversion or Auger emission. This is just one reasonable possibility. There are surely others.
Objection, speculation! as Perry Mason would have called out once upon a time long gone.
If you really believe this to be true you should amend this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray, section "Shielding".
"Shielding from gamma rays requires large amounts of mass, ...
Thomas, Wrt your:
"Your confidence about industrial scale LENR is unfounded, but in any case what does this have to do with Rossi?"
I did not say I am confident about industrial scale LENR, i said I am "totally confident that Rossi believes LENR is real and achievable at Industrial scale. "
Based on his behaviour he is a believer, Meaning he has either real LENR or living an illusion.
"It is unlikely that [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] has anyone technical looking over Rossi's shoulder. He is CTO. Darden has said he provides funding at arms length. VCs invest in people and do not normally do technological research themselves!"
It's really easy. The customer knows how much electricity Rossi is using. And the customer knows the flowrate and temperature of the recieved water/ heating medium.
From that most (chemical) engineers can calculate COP. Therefore the customer and [lexicon]IH[/lexicon] knows as much about achieved COP as Rossi does.
VC have technical experts that will / can follow up and evaluate the investments done.
Objection, speculation! as Perry Mason would have called out once upon a time long gone.
I'm allowed to speculate! It was clearly speculation. Speculation that serves to show that there are other possibilities one might not have considered is perhaps the best kind.
If you really believe this to be true you should amend this article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray, section "Shielding".
"Shielding from gamma rays requires large amounts of mass, ...
Perhaps I didn't make it clear that I'm not proposing "shielding". I'm proposing something analogous to internal conversion and Auger emission. In neither of these processes is a photon ever emitted; instead it's short-circuited entirely.
If you had to wager money, what odds would you bet that there are some things that we don't know about internal conversion or Auger emission, or whether there might be another, similar phenomenon we haven't seen yet?
Rossi isn't getting competitive advantage because there are no competing products. There are, in fact, absolutely NO products which anyone can buy and which are claiming to provide LENR.
Well then you can not say that Rossi is committing fraud. He is just practicing standard vaporware corporate behavior. No one looks down on Bill Gates for doing this, then why should Rossi?
