Cutting Through the Fog Surrounding the Rossi/IH Dispute (Josh G)

    Maybe I am mistaken, but I think that the powders Mr. Ekstrom has are the same as analyzed both by Andersson and Schoberg 2012, and Edstrom et al. 2013 already, as these came from Mr. Kullander. There was about a gram each of fuel and ash by late 2012, when received by Edstrom et al.


    If so, no Li in the fuel is not a surprise, or the copper chunks. Where the Li lives in the ash might be new information. Probably much Li has degraded to some miscellaneous oxides, nitrides and hydrides over the past several years, however. Possibly the lithium may have formed Li3O4P with the phosphorus found on the copper braze pieces, explaining the possible similar spatial distribution.

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    * It would then be a coincidence that there was Cu in the ash when the claimed (Focardi/Rossi "paper") reaction was p+Ni-->Cu?


    Rossi does indeed lead a charmed life. You would expect, with so many errors in his experiments, that at least some of them would be on the negative side. But no. His test reports all have these nice positive results - and even isotopic tests show some (albeit rather weird) correspondence with whatever is his latest theory.


    Personally - I think he overreached himself going for the big $100m prize from IH. He must have been worried about Lugano, hence the extra surity from those isotopic test results which not even the testers believed were credible. Luckily, again, Levi has an incompetent lack of understanding how to to thermography on non-grey bodies, and also did not read the Optris handbook which points out that temperature must be calibrated explicitly to determine emissivity.


    Actually - he did do this for the dummy test - but somehow thought it was not needed for the real one.


    As is evidenced on this thread Levi has a record of delivering highly inaccurate results from these tests. Perhaps this is because his real competence is in designing microcontrollers for pinball machines?

    Shane wrote:


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    From what I hear now, they went into this eye's wide open, businesslike, and well represented with competent scientists...unlike the skep assumption that they were a bunch of naive boobs, taking Rossi solely at his word.


    Anyone with their eyes open and a little rational thought knew the ecat was bogus from the beginning. Those with their eyes open and somewhat less rational thought (like Krivit) took a few months to come to the same conclusion.


    There is no way IH could have had their eyes open when they invested in the ecat. That it took them years to discover it doesn't work even with direct access to the hardware means their eyes were tightly shut, and they were very clearly naive boobs. Skeptics have not said they were taking Rossi solely at his word. They were taking the word of Rossi plus a bunch of scientists commissioned and vetted and probably handsomely compensated by Rossi.


    Anyone with their eyes open would have brought in their own team completely independent of Rossi, to test it completely independent of Rossi, and they would have walked if Rossi had not permitted that. At the very least they would have had those "validations" critiqued by their own objective experts, and found in very short order that they did not validate the claims -- even if taken at face value.


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    They no doubt have been equally tough in vetting the rest of their accumulated team of LENR+ players, which gives me, and I hope my fellow believers, some comfort when Darden/IH say positive things about the science.


    This is true believer mentality. IH was dead wrong about the ecat, and it took them years to discover (or at least disclose) it, and somehow you take that as an endorsement of their ability to vet energy claims.


    Be rational Shane. It is obvious from the ecat episode that IH truly sucks at vetting energy claims. Not just getting sucked in to the tune of $10M to begin with, but to take so long to realize the mistake. They very clearly suffer from wishful thinking and severe confirmation bias mixed with delusions about conspiracies. Darden, in his speech to the ICCF, showed this when he confused scientific infanticide with what was nothing more than scientific menopause. Cold fusion was not born, stillborn, or miscarried. It was never conceived. Fleischmann was no longer fertile.


    So, having failed to vet the ecat properly, they should not be trusted with anything to do with LENR.


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    LENR needed someone like IH to come along to shape the field up, weed out the charlatans, direct efforts towards commercialization, polish it's public image, and hopefully present the scientific establishment with incontrovertible proof there is something there


    Far from weeding out the charlatans, they have built them up. As you said, without them, Rossi may have disappeared a long time ago. They kept him alive. And they're doing the same with Brillouin and others. As you admit, they have not yet got incontrovertible proof of LENR, but they're putting money in it anyway. Even though Brillouin's claims are more modest that Rossi's, if they had merit, they could be proven unequivocally. Anyone who invests without insisting on it is pinching their eyes shut, and hoping to avoid reality.

    Thomas - Despite some of the heat that you're taking you're on the right track. In fact, that is where you should focus when the "ERV" report and data sets that Penon provided are made available for everyone to review.


    I'm enjoying your study on the flowmeter analysis - it also looks like similar problems continued to manifest. The great news there is that everyone gets to decide for themselves in the not too distant future. There is the matter of the courts which will determine pace so please be patient.

    Joshua Cude - you're way off base with your assumptions. IH is run by patient gentlemen with the right risk profile to try and find big solutions that solve pollution problems by deploying capital. They made a mistake on Rossi but did that with eyes wide open and risk factors / disclaimers fully covering their bases. The long-term lack of money in this sector was partially addressed when Tom Darden decided to risk millions of dollars of his own capital to see what would happen when money showed up for this starved sector. The good news is that the strategy appears to be working. You'll need to consider your the information source to figure out the rest of the errors in your post but you can do that on your own.

    @Dewey


    If you are interested in flowmeter issues, you may find interesting GSVIT analysis based on what is known (patent application, photo) about IH validation and patent test, and my subsequent observations (which unfortunately are only reported for now in the italian version of their report, but google translator is your friend :) )


    Quick summary: if the setup was similar to the one in the picture, the pump was the one listed in patent application and was operated correctly, the flowmeter measure was OK.


    Indeed relying on what is publicy known, there are some missing details that do not allow to rule out possible sources of errors, but maybe you can ask IH engineer Tom Barker Dameron to fill the missing gaps, as he is listed as inventor in patent application and he probably oversaw the tests.


    Besides, as I said, every italian speaking reader can confirm you that there is no way Rossi could have signed such a patent application.


    https://gsvit.wordpress.com/20…mento-nel-modo-sbagliato/

    Dewey Weaver wrote:

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    IH is run by patient gentlemen with the right risk profile to try and find big solutions that solve pollution problems by deploying capital. They made a mistake on Rossi but did that with eyes wide open


    That the ecat is bogus has been obvious to rational observers for 5 years. The claimed validations simply did not validate, and that has been widely documented. You and IH now seem to agree with that, and that can only mean IH did not do proper due diligence when they decided to invest, or even after it seems. They were taken in by a 2-bit con man, plain and simple.

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    The long-term lack of money in this sector was partially addressed when Tom Darden decided to risk millions of dollars of his own capital to see what would happen when money showed up for this starved sector.


    Well, you can certainly say that Darden put money into the field, and that that was a risk, and that he wanted to see what would happen. None of that has intrinsic merit. He could do the same for perpetual motion research, and that would demonstrate folly, not wisdom.


    For him to be pouring money into a field that organizations like the DOE (which actually has access to relevant expertise, and which stands to benefit enormously from cold fusion if it were real) have rejected twice after careful examination of the best evidence, and that has a representation in the refereed literature that continues its inexorable asymptotic approach to oblivion, demonstrates both folly and arrogance.


    Moreover, the field is not as starved as people like to claim. Storms has estimated $500M has been invested in LENR over the years. Toyota put tens of millions into it in the early 90s to "see what would happen when money showed up". Nothing happened. EPRI, governments of Japan, Italy, and India have invested in it, as have Mitsubishi, Sidney Kimmel (via Energetics and now SKINR), and other angels for the likes of Lattice Energy. And that leaves out the ~$80M invested in the closely related BLP. Indeed, I can't think of any other field in which it would be easier for people like Robert Godes or Rossi or Dardik or Mills to attract millions in funding, without relevant experience and gobbledygook for sales pitches.


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    The good news is that the strategy appears to be working.


    If losing $10M and facing a $300M law suit is what you consider working, then yes.


    It doesn't appear to be working in any sense to me. But true believers, especially the newbies, always think things are happening, and that the big breakthrough is just around the corner. But it never is, and I doubt that it is now. In a year or two, the field will be in the same position it is now, which it the same as it was in last year and 5 years ago, which is far below where it was in the 90s.

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    And your competence is in what? having fun!!Ad homs do your case no good!!


    My comment was not an ad hom. Levi has demonstrated an inability to deliver correct experimental results from Rossi tests at least twice (known and documented on mats thread, summarised above). It would be very foolish not to take that record of mistake into account when considering his ability to perform other tests.


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    I thought we discussed the negative-positive imbalance before, in general.If one gets negative COP, one goes back and fixes the problem(s).If one gets positive COP, one quickly writes a report and celebrates.


    :)

    Joshua - I don't think that engaging any further with you is going to be productive for any of us. You apparently have no concept of how cause oriented investing works. Your logic around decades old money in relation to the need for progress while some of these giants are still around tells me all I need to know about you.


    With all due respect,
    Dewey

    Joshua,


    I agree with most of what you say about E-Cat. I think, however, that you are too pessimistic. Yes, there is a lot of bad science and fraud out there in the LENR world. But there may be a gem among the pebbles.


    Also with the proliferation of LENR activities there is lots of space for fraudsters to hide. Maybe IH could help cleaning up the dirty pond. :)


    I think, however, that the chances for a working LENR energy system are slim, but just a small effect would be interesting from a scientific point of view. In order to make progress the emphasis should be less on COP and more on radiation and isotope shifts. The latter is really the fundamental parameter: without changes in the nuclide composition there are no nuclear reactions and no excess energy. Of course with a complete knowledge of nuclide changes the released energy can be calculated. I think I remember that MFMP had ideas in that direction. It is not only important to determine the excess energy, but knowledge of the process is important for safety and for optimization of the process.

    • Official Post

    From a business point of view, not being in LENR, even if it is very improbable, is a high risk not to take.
    10Mn$ is worth not being put aside.
    By the way this insurance against marginalization is part of LENR-Cities model.
    It is also part of the ideas defended by NTVA/Tekna in norway, and also part of Shell gamechanger model.


    moreover Darden have build a small ecosystem of scientists, who seems much more happy and thankful than Rossi, and also more modest and proven than he is. Maybe it have costed less, but will pay more... this is business. the cheapest sometime have the most value.


    Future will say, if E-cat is real or not, if IP have been transferred or not (the only important point : an IP that works for IH)

    Dewey Weaver wrote:


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    Your logic around decades old money in relation to the need for progress while some of these giants are still around tells me all I need to know about you.


    It wasn't all decades-old money I referred to. The Sidney Kimmel money is current, and has led to nothing in several years. The money in support of Lattice (from an anonymous angel) is relatively recent (and may be current). And the ENEA continues to provide support. The funding for BLP is current, and I gather Karl Page is supporting Brillouin. There are others too. The point is, it is not a starved field. Because of the huge upside, it is actually easier to get funding in cold fusion than in legitimate areas of research. It is thinking like Darden's that makes it so.


    And the decades-old example of Toyota funding the discoverers of the alleged phenomenon was to illustrate that Darden's idea is not original, and it didn't work (with the biggest giants) in the past.

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