The Playground

Quote from Eric Walker

I replied at the bottom of this post.

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

As was my comment!

Quote from THHuxleynew

Personally, I find the evidence for LENR unconvincing, but there is unfinished business that keeps me here

For the "skeptics", it's been unconvincing for 25+ years, surely you must understand it by now. Wouldn't a rational mind, upon decades of witnessing only quacky bunk, pursue other more fruitful intellectual ventures?
Isn't it a wee bit weird that you've been posting 1000+ times (under that moniker) that LENR is unconvincing and that Rossi is a fraud?

But maybe you're trying to convince yourself. In which case, shouldn't you sort out your own ken and beliefs before exchanging with people?

Quote from Roger

For the "skeptics", it's been unconvincing for 25+ years, surely you must understand it by now. Wouldn't a rational mind, upon decades of witnessing only quacky bunk, pursue other more fruitful intellectual ventures?
Isn't it a wee bit weird that you've been posting 1000+ times (under that moniker) that LENR is unconvincing and that Rossi is a fraud?

But maybe you're trying to convince yourself. In which case, shouldn't you sort out your own ken and beliefs before exchanging with people?

I've got no idea what this means. What people like to do is seldom totally rational or totally not rational, you are holding everyone up to an impossible standard.

Have you read what i said? Where did I mention quacky bunk (except perhaps in the context of Rossi - who maybe is not a fraud but certainly is preeminently good at convincing others that electric heaters are LENR devices?) I said there was a real anomaly (at least Shanahan believes that, and he is more familiar than me with the totality of the data) and that there were two hypotheses neither very obviously likely that explained it. So it is a mystery. I like mysteries.

Perhaps you don't?

As for sorting out your own beliefs perhaps that is the problem here. For you, it is important to have fixed beliefs from which you can engage in dialog with others. Personally I get more pleasure from discussing things exactly because I'm not sure.

Mostly rational: being unconvinced of something, therefore not spending most of you waking hours debunking it, as you don't think it's real and you don't need to convince yourself nor others that's it's a waste of time
Mostly irrational: being unconvinced of something, and spending most of you waking hours debunking it.
Being an online liar: pretending an unconvincing mystery (???) is worth spending most of your waking hours debunking it.

What are the hypothesis explaining 25+ years of worldwide research into LENR?
Many verified scientists are kookoos, quacks, frauds, and form a LENR sect as they exchange upon this subject, gather in conferences, much like Flat Earth Societies, Rossi is a hypnotist, swedish scientists are gullible etc etc
Or, LENR is real

"I'm unconvinced but it's a mystery even though I don't believe there's enough relevant materiel to prove there's a mystery, but that won't prevent me from writing thousands of posts under different aliases to tell everyone how unconvinced I am: this is the scientific method according to me and a great way to make technological progress"

Quote from THHuxleynew

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

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THHuxleynew,

Thank you for your reply. Eric Walker responded as well. I could nag about the somewhat partial answers (Where do you find the time? What about other organizations than IH? Etc. ), but i'll do that only partially (sorry @sifferkoll). And i will refrain from any serious insinuations from now on (tongue in cheek remarks are acceptable, right?) .

On a different note, what to me is funny is that you keep certain cards to your chest because you are afraid that Rossi might change his strategy based on the information provided here. Is that not exactly the other way around? Wasn't Dewey Weaver not overly interested in details found on this forum (first)?

Cheers,

JB

Quote from maryyugo

Those who carp on the weird theory that Rossi's problem is that he can't control ecats or keep them stable should have asked how he was able to do it in a factory at high power for a year but not in his lab.

You can heat rooms with an unstable object or that does not guarantee continuous operation .... the heating of a (own) environment does not require special requirements. It is very different when you have to sell to a customer a product that must, by contract, maintain some performance. You do not sell a prototype. When entering a new product on the market you have to be sure of all its features and for this you have to have tested it for a long time and under different conditions. It's a trivial concept of economy, but you refuse to understand it.

Quote from interested observer

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.

I have no control over "most of the world," or what people imagine to be the truth. I have uploaded thousands of original source documents from cold fusion researchers. You can read them and learn what they really did -- not the Wikipedia version. You can see for yourself that what I said is true. That is all I can do. If you will not look, read and learn, you will not know the truth.

Quote from interested observer

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.

You sound like Mary Yugo who is forever demanding I give her links to papers. I give her the same links again and again, but she never reads them. Or she says she read one but she didn't understand it. If you don't understand a scientific paper, you have no business commenting on it!

I pointed you to some specific papers. Read them or shut up. Start here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf

Quote from maryyugo

This is a more compact version of what I have been asking Jed for the past six years that I was following Rossi and Defkalion in particular and a little bit of LENR in general. Surely there is one (or two or three) BEST experiment and report out there proving LENR without possibility of error and surely, it has been precisely and independently REPLICATED, hopefully multiple times.

Yes there are. The experiments from Toyota, SRI and the ENEA, summarized here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf

I gave you links to the papers time after time. You said you would not read them because the power is too low (where "low" is defined by you as whatever power level they report). Then you said you do not understand them. If you do not understand them you should not comment on them or hold any opinion.

When you refuse to look at evidence, or when you yourself are not competent to understand that evidence, that tells us something about you, but nothing about cold fusion.

Quote from we_cat_global

THHuxleynew,

Thank you for your reply. Eric Walker responded as well. I could nag about the somewhat partial answers (Where do you find the time? What about other organizations than IH? Etc. ), but i'll do that only partially (sorry @sifferkoll). And i will refrain from any serious insinuations from now on (tongue in cheek remarks are acceptable, right?) .

On a different note, what to me is funny is that you keep certain cards to your chest because you are afraid that Rossi might change his strategy based on the information provided here. Is that not exactly the other way around? Wasn't Dewey Weaver not overly interested in details found on this forum (first)?

Cheers,

JB

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Dewey was interested in dirt on Rossi. Rossi, several times, parrotted technical get-outs suggested by bloggers. The endothermic reaction (always a rubbish idea) was one such. the vanishing heat exchanger came very late in the day only when Rossi had to invent it or admit his device was not working as claimed.

Quote from Shane D.

Yet, according to E48, Rossi told him directly that the Ecat is no longer for sale, as it is now obsolete due the more advanced QX!

A data point (however marginal) suggesting that IH retain their license. (Although in a normal world, IH continuing to hold the license would not be an impediment to Rossi also selling the E-Cat.)

One thing I am hopeful of is that the loose talk of a certain individual will breach the confidentiality of the settlement, and then IH will be free to divulge what details there are.

WCG, what you say is certainly possible.

Quote from Jed Rothwell

I pointed you to some specific papers. Read them or shut up. Start here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf

Yes, I have read this paper. A good summary of the state of the art 8 years ago. So you are guy who tracks the field in tremendous detail. What has happened since then? A dozen or two researchers are cited in the McKubre's paper. What have they done since? Have any of them made progress? Are there improved results from any of their efforts? I know people are getting old and dying, money is tight, suppression blah blah blah. But let's get serious. Does anybody in this field tweak their experiments and get better and better results over time? I've frankly never heard of any field of science where this is not the way things go.

So where are the better results? Or if there aren't any, why not? Do you think the phenomenon is so erratic that nobody has sorted out how to get a handle on it?

In a nutshell, what are your hopes for LENR? It is all well and good to evangelize it and try to sway the hearts and minds of the unwashed masses, but what do you think is the path to something meaningful in this field? Skeptics can make lots of noise but they can't prevent physical phenomena from happening.

Quote from interested observer

Yes, I have read this paper. A good summary of the state of the art 8 years ago. So you are guy who tracks the field in tremendous detail. What has happened since then?

Nothing happened. Most of the researchers died. McKubre retired. There was no funding, and tremendous opposition the whole time because of academic politics.

Quote from interested observer

In a nutshell, what are your hopes for LENR?

I hope it can be saved, but I expect it will be destroyed and forgotten because of academic politics -- as I said -- and because of modern society's widespread opposition to science and progress.

You believe that academic politics is a more powerful force in society than corporate greed? That is an interesting position to hold. It seems to me that if LENR has any chance of succeeding at all, there would be plenty of powerful entities looking for the big score and a bunch of academics would not have a prayer of stopping that freight train. So far, we have had a few half-hearted investments by random companies and the moronic gamble by Industrial Heat, a largely fictional enterprise in the first place. Modern society is most assuredly busy inserting its collective head up its collective rectum with respect to science and progress, but if there are big bucks in the offing, there are still plenty of takers out there.

Quote from interested observer

You believe that academic politics is a more powerful force in society than corporate greed? That is an interesting position to hold. It seems to me that if LENR has any chance of succeeding at all, there would be plenty of powerful entities looking for the big score and a bunch of academics would not have a prayer of stopping that freight train.

You are wrong about that. I have spoken with many corporate leaders. Most of them know nothing about cold fusion. Most of them cannot understand that level of science. They tend to be lawyers who have never heard of the conservation of energy or thermodynamics, and they don't know the difference between power and energy. Scientific illiterates, in short. They assume that the Scientific American and the Washington Post are right when they accuse cold fusion researchers of being "frauds, lunatics and criminals." The mass media has a lot of influence. When it accuses a small group of elderly scientists of bad behavior, most people assume the media is right. The reporters themselves are sure of it. Top scientists at the APS, MIT, the DoE and elsewhere assured them. The reporters themselves have no way to judge the situation, because they also do not understand the difference between power and energy, as you often see in newspaper articles about energy.

Here is what leading scientists told the reporters, and what the reporters told the public:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEclassicnas.pdf

This is the only version of the story that made it into the mass media, and the only version that most corporate leaders are aware of. If you believed these statements, you would not invest a dime in cold fusion.

I met with the top leaders at Toyota who do understand cold fusion. They deep-sixed their program out of greed and stupidity. They wanted 100% of the market and would not give Johnson Matthey any share. Without J-M they could do nothing. I have met with top Japanese government officials as well. They know a lot more physics than their American counterparts, and some of them know a fair amount about cold fusion. They said they will do nothing to harm the oil industry. I wondered whether they represent Japan or Saudi Arabia, but I didn't ask.

(Note that I speak Japanese, so I find it easier to learn what is going on there than most Americans would. Also, I went to school in Japan, so I know that the average waitress or garbage collector in Japan knows more about science than your average U.S. corporate CEO and wa-a-a-a-y more than most Members of Congress or the President.)

You are completely wrong about the freight train analogy. Corporations often miss the boat and drive themselves out of business by ignoring new technology. History is full of examples. Most of the leading corporations of 1900, such as the Pennsylvania Railroad, are gone because they let others develop new technology. Sears is the last of them, and it will soon be gone because it let Amazon.com steal its business. The internet was a whole lot more apparent and easier to understand in 1994 than cold fusion is today, yet Sears let Amazon destroy it, and nearly every newspaper stood by and let the internet destroy them. The minicomputer makers such as DEC and Data General were at the top of their game in 1980. By 1990 they were gone. They let the PC and Apple take their business away. AT&T is long gone. IBM nearly went out of business in the late 1980s because they did not understand the computer business and they let others take the lead.