Steven Krivit vs. Andrea Rossi - Why?

Quote from Walker

Krivit's motivation with regard to Rossi probably stems from Rossi throwing him out of his lab when Rossi Caught him trying to secretly place equipment in Rossi's Lab.

Do you have a more detailed source about this?

@Ecco
Re: motivation,
I thought it was about this:

"The snake arrived to the point to say to Levi” I have to write a bad story on Rossi, if you don’t help me I will make a bad story also about you”. The imbecile said this in presence of a witness, Levi opened against him a prosecution by his attorney, because in Italy what the snake made is a crime."

JoNP - Aug 19, 2011

Edit: Seems that there may be (at least?) two Snakes, so which is which at what time, is hard to say for sure. GW was mentioned explicitly as The Snake later, in 2012.
Edit2: I doubt that GW ever went to a test in person, though.

@Paradigmnoia: I remember reading somewhere that he might have had an operating spectrometer in his bag, but I've never been able to find a proper source for this.

@Ecco
I think it was about a big disagreement over dry and wet steam.

I thought Rossi accused Krivit of trying to steal something from his lab... Although maybe just spectroscopy data?

Krivit said:

Quote

There is also one other piece of data that supports some kind of real nuclear reaction. It is the gamma ray spike that Celani saw at the beginning of the Jan. 21, 2011, experiment. I've listened to Celani explain his measurements. I am convinced that he saw a real anomalous gamma signal.

What about the isotopic anomalies that Rossi claimed? There has been so much chatter and confusing information about this. I also asked Kullander to see the data he had found. He told Ny Teknik about the isotopic analysis he performed on sample materials he got from Rossi. Even though Ny Teknik published Kullander's conclusions, Kullander wouldn't show me his data. I asked him why not.

"I would like to draw my own conclusions from the different measurements we have done before I disperse results to anybody," Kullander wrote. "I still need to confirm some isotope numbers."

Before I left for Bologna, I asked Rossi for information about the isotopic anomalies he reported in his March 2010 paper. I asked Rossi whether he could show me the data when I came to Bologna. He agreed. In my meeting with Rossi, he gave me two graphs and stated something about the results that was not clear. However, he did allow me to keep copies of the data, which are in Appendix 21.

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- from : http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/3705report3.shtml

Link to Appendix 21: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/n…1/37/3726appendixd4.shtml

Edit: Note the spectral lines for 6 and 7 are shown. Li was there, it seems, in 2011. The ratio of Li 6 to Li7 seems high, however.

@Paradigmnoia: a few months ago I digitized spectrum data from Krivit's website and found out quite surprising results.

I've always wondered if Rossi actually handed him correct isotopic analyses. Perhaps he didn't without immediately realizing, or perhaps Krivit uploaded "something else"? It could be related to the theft sometimes referred about on discussion boards.

This is getting way off-topic, I think.

@Ecco
Yes, I feel it is OK to break this thread in half, if that is best.

I think that the Stirling news is depressing.

The Rossi-smearing tactic of Krivit in reporting the original topic of the Stirling news does lead to some off-topicability, perhaps.

@Ecco
Did you see the complete disappearance of mass unit 9? Your conversion spreadsheet (I downloaded it a long time ago) gives a high value for 9 in the after, but in sims2 it is gone altogether in the image.

@Paradigmnoia: I'm not sure why. Mass unit 9 already had very low counts in sims1 (note that the y scale is logarithmic). It could be that data was discarded due to too low counts in sims2.

@Ecco
I wonder what mass 9 was. LiH2 isn't easy made, let alone stay that way very long.
There is a rather short list of possibilities for mass 9.

@Paradigmnoia: I checked again the old spreadsheet and indeed there was an error for mass 9 on the sims2. I recall I used a different, slower and less accurate (pretty much manual) method for digitizing the analyses at that time (EDIT: I recalled incorrectly). I've corrected that, here's the new file:

https://drive.google.com/file/…9g5EndG9PX1dqbjZ0WEE/view

There have not been significant changes for the rest of the data (implying that no shift in values occurred). The analyses still seem to show mostly what to me seems an industrial iron catalyst with significant amount of Na (before) and Ca (after), perhaps as alkali promoters. My thoughts on the matter from the original thread still hold.

Mass 9 in sims1 was probably Be9 (Beryllium), but counts were very low anyway and it might have been a TOF-SIMS artifact.

@Ecco
Thanks
The ratio of Li7 to Li6 remains close to the original version. Li7 still seems to increase relative to Li6. Li 6 still is high relative to Li7 in both, compared to natural ratio.
Too late this evening to go through the other masses...
I might build a spidergram to look at it all at once.

Krivit was strongly predisposed to see Rossi's results as real. They would have been, for him, the Holy Grail proving his ideas correct.

However, Krivit also was aware of the experimental issues, and would naturally have asked for additional checks if he noted a possible loophole in Rossi's experiments.

Had Rossi been interested in making his result more robust, with nothing to hide, there could have been no major reason for disagreement. Krivit would respect (for example) not doing gamma spectrometry to preserve IP, though how this could be done surreptitiously in any meaningful way beats me. Suggesting that Krivit was acting as an industrial spy is ludicrous.

Much more plausible, had Rossi been prickly and prone to see any additional checks on his setup as a threat, he would have has a big argument with Krivit. In explaining that afterwards he could easily say that some extra equipment Krivit has suggested would help was "Krivit's bottom line" and the cause of the argument.

This story is one of those bits of meta-information where we can never know, and can never rule out the "Rossi has a character that makes him prickly and behave as though he has something to hide, when in fact all is good" meme. But common sense would teach us to be very wary of someone demonstrating a claimed extraordinary invention who gets angry when an informed observer suggests extra checks on his demo.

The alternative explanation, that Krivit caused the row, seems totally out of character for both men. Of course from Rossi's POV Krivit did cause the row, by asking for evidence of Rossi's claims about his demo.

This story is meta-info, and therefore weak. But, for me, it is very strong (as far as any meta-evidence goes) evidence that Rossi did not welcome proper checking of his apparatus. That attitude goes with outright deliberate fraud, and also goes with someone convinced (wrongly) of his own correctness and able to maintain that conviction because of an inability to consider criticism.

In my humble opinion:
At the very least anyone must admit that Rossi has been clever and manipulative to a very high degree. Krivit less so.
This is a binary situation: Rossi either has LENR or not.

Consider the entire history of Rossi, and assume that he has it, and that his personal history made him paranoid, that is to say that his "recycling" enterprise was ambushed. It seems possible that Rossi might have been in the position of wanting to demonstrate his new discovery enough to interest potential investors while at the same time not so much that everyone would completely believe it, or accept his "science" as valid. He wants credit and vindication. He wants money too, no doubt. If he produces too much valid evidence, there is a chance that bigger players would roll in and bury him. But he doesn't have the funds to control the R&D, the engineering and productization, so he must at least pique the interest of speculators. Even Defkalion could be made to fit in. They were negotiating, and it fell through. Defkalion thought they had enough of the secret sauce to carry on without Rossi. THey were wrong and he had kept some vital portion of it to himself. They tried, but simply could not make it work, which made them look like frauds. So it goes! I think this provides a consistent model of his behavior over the entire LENR adventure.

Krivit could have in one way or another threatened this balancing act, or tried to muscle in, or extort in some way, leading to his expulsion by Rossi.

The other position, that he is a fraud, is also self consistent except for one thing: the length of time that I.H. has continued to validate, by their silence, that something of value is at hand. Picture "buying" Rossi's intellectual property and becoming his "partner". Even if their "due diligence" was somehow scammed, a year or more working together would either make them part of the fraud, remarkably stupid, or on to something. I simply cannot imagine them realizing they were duped, and carrying on with the farce. Why? To save face? Ultimately they would surely have known that the illusion would not last forever, and the longer they played along, the more damaging their continued involvement.

In the case of a Rossi fraud, Krivit might well have been close to revealing a "smoking gun", and destroying Rossi. So Rossi preempted that possibility by throwing him out in order to continue the scam.

Obviously this is all speculation: he has it or he does not. It's easy to poke holes in the narrative, but I think the basic outline of the "he has it" model is at least plausible.

Quote from Ecco

Mass 9 in sims1 was probably Be9 (Beryllium), but counts were very low anyway and it might have been a TOF-SIMS artifact.

I thought about Be. That is nasty stuff to put into a heater device. A rather dangerous idea.
But it makes me wonder if he wasn't considering the Li-Be idea long ago. I hadn't thought to check if Li6 gaining a neutron is energetic enough to offset Be9 losing one.