The Playground

Eric Walker,

THHuxleynew,

I have posted the below on Abd's http://coldfusioncommunity.net/.

The combined, very homogenous narrative of quite a few pro IH posters here and elsewhere (you amongst them) triggers a very "unheimisch" feeling. Very soon words as "tin hat" and "conspiracy theory" will be used to describe people that are somehow willing to wait for more proof before turning negative on Rossi and that feel a need to react because of this "unheimisch" feeling.

Why does it all look and feel as a big APCO (or similar institution) "afterwork / clean-up"?

Why do you feel the need to keep having the last word in a discussion that has been voluntarily ended by both parties?

The banning of posters that are critical of you Eric Walker does not help either.

Dear Abd,

I am truly grateful for your detailed reporting (thank you!) and sincerely respect your even so detailed opinion on the developments in the Rossi vs Darden case (and other LENR related matters).

However, i more often than not do not share your views. This reply fits here best because one example of a different opinion relates to this sentence;

“As to Rossi, anyone considering investing with him now has a vast trove of information on his business practices and how he treats investors.”

Mr. Dewey Weaver (and others) tried to, as you do here, warn future partners of Rossi. Besides the fact that the man has been metaphorically dragged through several deep pits with questionable content for over a lengthy period and with a frequent interval, it is clear to anyone that the Dottore is already working with a new team / partner.

Or do you have info that this is not the case?

Perhaps the above relates to a second area where i do not agree with you. You namely seem to ignore the implications of a “simple settlement”. If there was one in the first place.

IH went “full throttle” not only to get Rossi of their back, but also to eliminate “Planet Rossi” entirely. Mr. Dewey Weaver did not miss one opportunity to make that clear to the LENR blogosphere.

Why would the let him walk? IH already invested heavily in the pursuit of their goals and they were almost there. Their case was, as you pointed out in great detail, very strong.

The only reasons to let Rossi off the hook in my opinion could have been;

1. Rossi convinced them he could win the case or at least fight longer than IH expected at first (new strong partner that would give Rossi “invincibility”);

2. Rossi gave them something they could not refuse.

Some posters seem worried that Rossi might fleece a new, gullible victim elsewhere, but by saying that handily ignore the fact that this very smart man just fought of an opponent of great strength that tried to strike him with all the might it had, but did not succeed.

To me this proves that “Planet Rossi” (perhaps Rossi should start using the term / reappropriation, because it sounds ever stronger) is a force that has to be taken into account. And it is not just Rossi. He must have a team of people that are executing a plan and it seems they are pretty good at it.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Thanking you again.

JB"

Cheers,

JB

Moved from the Rossi v. Darden retrospective thread. Eric

we_cat_global : there was a decision a few weeks ago to move accusations (or in this case insinuations) of APCO-sponsored participation to the playground thread, which I'll continue now. But to your attack: can you provide anything more than the vaguest of circumstantial evidence for your insinuation, or are you willing to make such accusations on the basis of very weak evidence? I'll now categorically and fully deny that I've ever been paid anything in connection with the Rossi affair, by IH, by APCO, or by anyone else, or that I'm connected to IH or APCO somehow, or that I've been paid to participate in anything connected to LENR. I do so solely out of my own interest in the field. Do these claims on my part alter your reasoning? If not, can you produce any evidence whatsoever that your insinuation is not just the product of your and Sifferkoll's fertile imaginations?

Answer: you cannot, because you do not have such evidence, because it does not exist. You did not address the details of what I said; instead you attacked THH's and my character by insinuating that our motives were impure because we're somehow connected to APCO. Perhaps we'll both agree that spreading misinformation is a bad thing?

Quote from we_cat_global

The only reasons to let Rossi off the hook in my opinion could have been;

1. Rossi convinced them he could win the case or at least fight longer than IH expected at first (new strong partner that would give Rossi “invincibility”);

2. Rossi gave them something they could not refuse.

As I said in my original post to which you responded but whose points you did not see fit to address, one possible reason to settle was that IH is duty bound to protect the interests of its investors. Woodford, for example, might have preferred a settlement over the risk of a large loss. That is one possibility, and there are one or two others in a similar vein.

Quote from slashdevslashnull

Accusing something of being a conspiracy theory is usually a pretty good indication of the source of the accusation knowing it being on the right track. It is standard procedure.

That argument in this case shows peculiar lack of observation. Sifferkoll's middle name could be conspiracy theory - check out his web site - and pointing it out does not alter the likelihood that what he says is true.

Eric Walker,

Haha..do as you please. I can imagine that creating a set of watertight "mod rules" is hard. It is appreciated that you explain why you have moved my post. Should i remove the APCO part (or spell it differently?) so you can move my post back?

You guys keep asking for the impossible. Proof that you might have a hidden agenda is hard to find if you have a hidden agenda. That is what "hidden agenda keepers" make sure of from the start. That is why companies like APCO are so bloody annoying and why it surprised many that IH openly brought Brian Mclaughlin in the mix.

What about this?

Can you swear on the blue eyes of your children, the bible and the soft hands of your mother (or anything else that you love dearly) that;

You, in your role as a moderator on this forum, do not serve the goal(s) of any organisation and or any other person than your own.

Yes or no?

And if the answer is a "Yes", can you please elaborate what your motives are? And where do you (or THHuxleynew) find the time to be so active and detailed?

You might not be interested, but for the sake of completeness, in my case it is a "Yes" and i am in between jobs (and travelling) for a while.

Indeed, the spreading of misinformation is a bad thing to do, but very hard not do as an active poster on a forum as this. Most posters do not have inside information and merely give there opinion. However, it is the copying of opinions, the combination of posts and the "setting up" of posts in order for others to strengthen the opinion that is doing exactly what you believe is a bad thing to do. And that is exactly why i am writing this post. Without proof, but just by looking at the (for me clear) outcome of most threads;

The usual pro-IH posters and you as a moderator virtually "high fiving" and "greasing" each other's posts.

These tactics on Planet Rossi are, despite the obvious sock-puppets and fake posters, much less mature than in the (J) IH (ad) camp. An ele or @IHFB (where is he btw?) cannot be farther apart. The variance between opinions of Planet Rossi citizens is much greater than that of the followers of the (J) IH (ad). And that is exactly what Torkel and others find disturbing. Little proof, but just looking at outcomes.

Cheers,

JB

Quote from maryyugo

OK, I get it Zeus. LENR works because maryyugo.

What a strange comment, and possibly a fascinating insight into the importance which you ascribe to yourself.

But the reality is: maryyugo doesn't have a clue, because maryyugo.

we_cat_global ,

I think you have just acknowledged that you don't have more than vague, circumstantial evidence for the APCO claim. Perhaps we can let people decide for themselves whether they find such a circumstantial case persuasive.

People can spend a lot of time opining and making it clear that they're opining, and not add to the misinformation going around as a consequence. More opinions, or the same opinion repeated over and over, do not necessarily add to misinformation. Sometimes they do, though.

Many of the "pro-IH" commenters you probably have in mind have been watching this topic since 2011 or 2012, and watching LENR in some cases for years before that. They are not some brigade seeking to advance IH's interests. Many of them are people who long before coming to LENR Forum were following developments on Vortex: Jed, Abd, Mary Yugo, Jack Cole, AlainCo, Bob Higgins, and, more sympathetic to Rossi, Alan Fletcher, Adrian Ashfield and Axil, and perhaps somewhere in the middle, magicsound and wishfulThinking. These are people I've seen in action for years, some of them before anyone had heard of Industrial Heat. Many of them have strong opinions and like to debate. Those who after watching Rossi for years feel strongly that he has behaved objectionably have reasons for feeling that way other than because they are being paid to post here or elsewhere or are being coordinated in doing so. There are others in addition who were never on Vortex. Jed, Abd, THH and Mary are embarrassingly OCD, which might or might not be a condition that can be treated. But this is all the explanation that is needed for the long and/or frequent posts from them and others.

So I think your noticing the relatively less sophisticated tactics of some of the people in the Rossi camp surely points to something else. My own conclusion is that they go back to a lack of understanding on the part of some of them about how to participate in and advance a debate. There seems to be an impression that one can win a debate through brute force tactics, perhaps scaring away one's opponents, or getting them to give up through a war of attrition, or attempting to cast doubt on obvious stuff merely by raising a question. But anyone who has been in the middle of a skilled debate for a while will recognize that these tactics are only persuasive to other people who don't understand how a debate works. If a mass murderer or the devil himself sets out an argument about something relating to LENR, with detailed points, and the rebuttal is that they're a bad person with ulterior motives, the rebuttal has failed from the start and will not persuade anyone who is paying attention to the details. What is needed in such cases is to calmly address each mistaken point one by one, without personalizing things.

Quote from we_cat_global

What about this?

Can you swear on the blue eyes of your children, the bible and the soft hands of your mother (or anything else that you love dearly) that;

You, in your role as a moderator on this forum, do not serve the goal(s) of any organisation and or any other person than your own.

Yes or no?

And if the answer is a "Yes", can you please elaborate what your motives are? And where do you (or THHuxleynew) find the time to be so active and detailed?

I don't feel a particular need to defend myself or my participation here. But you seem sincere on some level at this time, despite what come across as intentionally tendentious posts that you post here from time to time. So I'll humor your request. I swear on the bible and the soft hands of my mother that in my role as a moderator on this forum, I do not serve the goal(s) of any organization or any other person than my own; with the qualification that I am seeking to further the goals of LENR Forum itself, which, as I understand them, are to provide a clearinghouse for information about LENR and to promote an informed debate on related topics. (I don't have children.)

Eric Walker,

Thank you for replying..

Cheers,

JB

The LENR community is a curious bunch. It is certainly not homogenous but a certain highly visible segment of it tends to define it for "the rest of us". I am talking about the LENR zealots who, generally speaking, have little or no scientific knowledge or expertise, completely accept every LENR claim no matter how outlandish as valid, and are always angry and belligerent towards those who don't share their views. I don't know what fraction of the community these people are but they are what gives it the appearance of a crackpot cult. They certainly constitute the majority of people who still believe in Rossi's "technology".

Scientific articles are written by experts for experts. They are not designed for popular consumption. That is true of all professional literature, for that matter. As someone who has done peer review for major scientific journals, I can say that the number of people qualified to judge any particular article is very small. People are asked to read papers based on their expertise. I know that on a number of occasions I returned papers I was asked to evaluate because I did not feel qualified; and this was always in topics not that far from my own area. So the notion that people whose scientific knowledge has been gained by reading LENR websites are in a position to evaluate the content of scientific papers strikes me as ludicrous. But it fits the profile of the LENR zealot who is fundamentally anti-science and believes that scientific knowledge and experience is a handicap, not a requirement. Anybody can do nuclear physics if they feel like it.

There are clearly members of the community who are more qualified to make scientific judgements and whose confidence in things LENR are backed up by rational analysis. Most of these folks have abandoned the Rossi ship long ago and are probably embarrassed by their early support of him.

I do wonder what the aspirations of sensible LENR fans are. If the goal is to promote the technology, then they should be encouraging LENR researchers to be transparent and disciplined in their reports to the world. LENR research has far too many press releases and broken promises. And no physical phenomenon is going to become real by proclamation or popular vote. I don't really understand the value in arguing with people about the existing data and I see no benefit in personal attacks on people who don't accept that data. Such attacks are not going to make the data look any better. It is all just noise.

Personally, I am relatively agnostic about LENR. There are enough accumulated observations to make it plausible that something interesting might be going on. On the other hand, there is a very discouraging lack of progress in the field which cannot be shrugged off by claims of insufficient funding or suppression. Researchers studying real physical phenomena tend to make progress in their work over time. They make at least incremental improvements. I just don't see that happening with any LENR researchers. If anything, as they refine their experiments, their results get worse over time. I don't care whether there are 30 papers or 300 papers. Where is the progress?

In any case, given the prominence of the angry, ignorant LENR zealots and the publicity-seeking researchers, I think that the sincere and intellectually honest members of the community will continue to be in the background and, to the extent that the rest of the world knows anything about the LENR community at all, it will be considered to be a bunch of crackpots along the lines of UFO, Bigfoot and similar cults. I don't know what you guys can do about that - if you even care.

Quote from interested observer

In any case, given the prominence of the angry, ignorant LENR zealots and the publicity-seeking researchers, I think that the sincere and intellectually honest members of the community will continue to be in the background and, to the extent that the rest of the world knows anything about the LENR community at all, it will be considered to be a bunch of crackpots along the lines of UFO, Bigfoot and similar cults. I don't know what you guys can do about that - if you even care.

There's not a whole lot one can do about the angry zealots, and it's understandable that people will come away with a bad impression of the field from them. I cannot speak to the matter of publicity-seeking researchers. I do wish that what good experiments there have been could be tightened up in response to criticisms and made more rigorous if possible. There is wide variance in the quality of output of different LENR workers, and only a subset stand out as being solid in my mind. I think they are mostly getting older or are retired. I had placed hopes in the hobbyists who started coming onto the scene in recent years, but they have all focused on the NiH system, and as they have upped their game, they've become good at identifying null experiments as such. Few of them are interested in looking at the PdD system, and all of the old guard that have worked with the NiH system such as Piantelli have either not undertaken to help them or have tried and failed (namely Celani).

Perhaps the best thing that could possibly come to this field would be an inexpensive "lab rat" experiment that skeptical scientists could reproduce in their own labs and control for various variables. With such an experiment, I suppose the underlying mechanism involved in that specific case would be quickly identified, whether it's something interesting or a measurement artifact. I have no idea whether such an experiment is on the horizon. I had hopes for the CR-39 experiments of Mosier-Boss et al. filling such a role, but I don't know of another group that has successfully replicated them.

interested observer : I moved your post out of the bargain bin, which is where low-quality posts are put to be forgotten.

Quote from interested observer

LENR research has far too many press releases and broken promises.

Where are these press releases? Who made the promises? I have a database of 4,387 cold fusion papers, written by more than 5,000 different authors. I have worked with hundreds of these authors as copy editor and translator, and met with hundreds of them at conferences and in visits to labs. As far as I recall, only 5 or 10 of these people ever issued a press release or made any public promises. That leaves ~4,990 others who did not. Unless you have read the literature, you will not have heard of most of these people. Most of them will not issue any press releases or make any promises in the future because they are dead.

Most of the people who do issue press releases or make promises are like Rossi or the people at Defkalion. That is to say, they are not scientists. They say they are not scientists. And most real academic scientists do not believe them and pay no attention to them.

Granted, there are few researchers who issued press releases, such as Arata. That's what he does. He is also one of Japan's leading scientists, with an international prize named after him, hundreds of patents, and a building named in his honor at a National University, so he is deservedly famous and the sort of person you would expect will issue a press release.

I think you are making things up, or you are judging the field by the words of actions of people who have nothing to do with it.

Moved from the bargain bin. Eric

@Jed, most of the world (again, those who have any opinion at all) judge the field by the most visible people that include Rossi (the most visible), Blacklight, Brillouin, Swartz as well as various people claiming to have replicated Rossi despite the fact that nobody even knows what Rossi does. It doesn't matter whether they are doing LENR or some other mystical activity or whether these are scientists, scam artists, budding geniuses, or anything else. They are the public face of LENR, not your 5,000 papers. Unfortunately, people are more likely to listen to a random Swedish journalist than read scientific papers. But as I said before, reading papers is pretty pointless for non-experts.

Don't forget that you and most other LENR voices of reason vigorously defended Rossi for quite a while. Wanting "your team" to win is a motivation for lots of poor judgement. Just look at politics in the US these days for another example.

So you will have to forgive those of us who are judging the field by the wrong stuff. It really isn't very obvious what the right stuff is. But if you tell me that it is all 5,000 papers, then you have provided no insight whatsoever.

Looks like Rossi has gotten over the trial rather quickly.

1. JPR July 8, 2017 at 7:00 AM

   Update?

2. Andrea Rossi July 8, 2017 at 2:55 PM

   JPR:

   
   After the tests of today with my QuarkX I was probably the happiest man in the world.

   
   Warm Regards,

   
   A.R.

What about this?

Can you swear on the blue eyes of your children, the bible and the soft hands of your mother (or anything else that you love dearly) that;

You, in your role as a moderator on this forum, do not serve the goal(s) of any organisation and or any other person than your own.

Yes or no?

And if the answer is a "Yes", can you please elaborate what your motives are? And where do you (or THHuxleynew ) find the time to be so active and detailed?

You might not be interested, but for the sake of completeness, in my case it is a "Yes" and i am in between jobs (and travelling) for a while.

Just some comments on this. Eric has not replied to this point, but perhaps will. Taken literally it is impossible to answer. How can I know whether my posts serve the goals of any organisation? Presumably, if IH's goals were either to win the propaganda war here (unlikely) or to rile Rossi into making incautious remarks that could be used against him (more likely) presumably every single anti-Rossi post serves those interests?

Perhaps I can answer more directly: I have never received, nor do I expect to receive, any payment or incentive from IH for anything. I have never entered into any agreement which in return for some inducement binds or directs my posting here in any way, and I have to my best ability never distorted the truth as I see it. You will note I've made a number of anti-IH posts since although Rossi deserves to be hung, drawn, and quartered for his scientific deceptions, and his business deceptions, IH have not handled the matter well. Specifically they should have been much more cautious here.

On another point: I have no personal grudge against LENR or LENR researchers. Personally, I find the evidence for LENR unconvincing, but there is unfinished business that keeps me here. Shanahan notes that the slew of post F&P accurate calorimetry positive excess heat results are significant, but gives (CCS/ATER) a speculative non-LENR hypothesis for their existence. That is uncannily similar to the LENR hypothesis, except less vague. Discriminating between the two should be possible but no-one wants to do it. Shanahan points out that it is not his job, and if LENR researchers won't themselves answer questions to do this he cannot go further. LENR researchers dismiss Shanahan's ideas as not worth the bother of checking because too unlikely. I hope some at least here see the irony in that.

As somone who does not easily find certainty from experimental results - I know too well how easy it is to be deceived - and incidentally that makes me both naturally skeptical of Rossi, and willing to believe that people around him are so deceived rather than collusive - I dislike the LENR dismissal of Shanahan just as much as I dislike the mainstream scientists who (undoubtedly, for well understood historical and evidential reasons) have dismissed LENR. That has nothing to do with who is right.

As for my OCD posting here I admit to it. I don't think it quite amounts to a psychopathology and my excuse is that unlike many here I love digging into these mysteries to obtain whatever nuggets of truth exist, and have done this with success a number of times. That, for me is very enjoyable recreation. I derive enormous satisfaction from finding out in detail about new things, and am well aware it is an unusual interest, but also I believe a respectable one. For example, the heat exchanger saga forced me to delve properly into the maths of fluid/rod heat exchange and how two dimensionless numbers, Reynolds and Nusselt together, determine the characteristics of the flow and therefore the transfer coefficient. I'd previously avoided it because the solution of the turbulent flow equations is so complex and impossible analytically, but actually at a more abstract level it is very beautiful. I now can say truthfully that I understand a whole load of heat transfer and heat exchanger design problems (I have the spreadsheets to prove it). and it cost me nothing except my time. (At Uni I did 1st year UG Fluid Mechanics, non-viscous, non-turbulent flow, which is beautiful and has problems you can actually solve analytically, otherwise I tended to avoid the messy Applied Maths subjects).

The one thing I've held back from posting here is more details of the heat exchanger calculations. I reckoned Rossi takes up anything posted on a blog and argues it, and I did not want him and Wong to see the arguments that could technically be used against them laid out properly. They are complex, and not easily understood by a Jury, whereas if unprepared for them Wong could quite likely be ambushed. The sorrow of a jury Trial is that technical stuff cannot properly be weighed, it comes down to the Jury's impression of the truthfulness of the experts arguing opposite things. However now the matter is moot I'll happily post on a heat exchanger - the story thread. The main reason for not doing this is that most thinking rationally will admit said heat exchanger could not have been working 24/7 as needed to keep the factory temperatures low with 24/7 1MW dissipated, from non-technical evidence, if it even existed at all. And those thinking non-rationally will not be interested in the detailed technical analysis. E48 is the only one on the Rossi side who might be so interested, and he will not read stuff here nor engage in dialog as would be needed to focus him on the logical defects in his position.

Regards, THH

Quote from THHuxleynew

Eric has not replied to this point, but perhaps will.

I replied at the bottom of this post.

Quote from THHuxleynew

As for my OCD posting here I admit to it. I don't think it quite amounts to a psychopathology

My suggesting that it was a pathology above was done in jest, if that wasn't clear.