QuoteHow is spin more reliable than conjecture?
Most people present facts in a light favourable to their POV, often leaving out facts.
Example: the IH statement is spun by JoshG when he quotes it as "IH cannot substantiate Rossi's claims"
Full statement is stronger: " Industrial Heat has worked for over three years to substantiate the results claimed by Mr. Rossi from the E-Cat technology – all without success."
Conjecture - unless purely logical in which case a stronger word would be used - depends on a whole load of background assumptions not explicitly stated. Here these are typically contentious.
Here is an example:
QuoteI don't see how 5 backs up 1. So what you're saying is that Darden took Woodford and the Chinese on tours of the 1 MW and said "well, we think this Rossi guy is just blowing smoke up our asses -- we've been trying to get him to show us the goods but he refuses. But you should invest in us anyway because we've got some other risky investments in LENR?" No, sorry, I don't see how 5 backs up 1. If Woodford invested 50 million dollars in IH on that basis, it's an embarrassment.
this is "conjecture" - but it depends on a whole load of assumptions:
(1) IH would think Rossi was deceiving them just because they had not (yet) got his stuff to work for themselves. That is surely unclear? Darden knows well that LENR is fickle and small changes can break experiments.
(2) Woodford would not have invested given that IH had not got Rossi's stuff to work. They had just seen yet another independent test, with 6 scientist saying absolutely that a reactor made by IH works! On top of 5 previous independent tests! How much clearer can you get than that! The failure from IH and Woodford was not to get proper scientific advice. Given Levi, or non-specialists - they would get some people saying it was OK, and others saying there were issues. No-one giving a complete deconstruction (that is quite subtle). No-one able to prove Ferrara had electrical measurement issues.
Woodford is not an expert at getting science advice on LENR! Those who believe LENR are mostly biassed pro-Rossi (how many detected the Lugano report error?). Those who do not believe LENR are claimed to be biassed by those who believe LENR. If you are of a mind to invest in LENR who do you believe?
(3) Woodford's investment could not be an embarrassment. LENR is a pretty whacky thing for Woodford to invest in. Don't you think it is quite possible for this to go wrong? Assuming that a tech investment going wrong is an embarrasment for Woodford is silly. It happens all the time, and the higher the potential return the higher the risk that can be borne. The potential return looks very high here?
Now JoshG and others here may be unmoved by my comments. But they are not unreasonable - and the difference in our conclusions comes from different implicit assumptions about the world. That is why conjecture is unreliable.