Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”

Quote from Ascoli65

The BTD is one of the thousands of documents included in your LENR-CANR library, it refers to the widest documented experiment of the whole CF/LENR history, and you were the coordinator of all the information it contains. Well, if we are not able to understand from where these data come from, how is it possible to give any credit to the contents of the other documents in your library?

This little piece of business shows that Ascoli65 is a troll, not someone with knowledge of cold fusion and the real controversies.

He is looking for mud to toss. Some reactions:

1. Yes, one of many thousands of documents. All documents have authors. We can be quite sure that attributed documents come from the author, so their "credit" depends on the creditability of the author. Not Jed. At all. Jed includes papers where he disagrees with the conclusions of the author(s). His only standard is that the documents be relevant to cold fusion and that he have author permission. No permission, no publically-available paper. Lenr-canr.org is a *library,* and the best that is readily available. It is incomplete, but it also has a bibliography that is much more complete, and if one needs a paper, Jed and others may be willing to provide it. Asked nicely, of course.

2. Jed is a volunteer. He has not been paid for this work. He is self-funded.

3. He occasionally authors papers, such as the one mentioned here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJbrieftechn.pdf

In this case he functioned mostly as an editor, apparently, and two of his three sources are anonymous. A "Prominent Physical Chemist" and a "Prominent Catalyst Chemist."

This report was unfortunate, but we have five more years of experience, now. I know the glaring defect in that experiment, and what the experts said was only elementary physics. They simply assumed what they were told and shown and did calculations from that. In no way were these actually validations, and Jed calls this "an experimental demonstration," when it was not an "experiment" at all. It was a demonstration. By the end of the year, Jed would have been much more careful, I think.

This could also be called a "test," but we prefer to use the term "experiment" to cover work designed to show a theory is wrong, and, then, it is taken to show it's useful when a dedicated attempt fails. So the most elementary of experiments here would run the device and all conditions the same except for perhaps using some dummy fuel. Rossi rejected the very idea in 2011, showing by his comment that he is not, at all, a scientist, not only not trained as one. And that would have been impossible there, Rossi would not have allowed them to see what they would have needed to see, very likely, and independent verification was impossible. This was a commercial demonstration, with the observers fed what may have been carefully selected evidence, not the whole story.

Here was an obvious error, which could also be a red herring:

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There is another probe without its electronics that measures the dryness of the exiting steam. The instrument used was a Delta Ohm HD37AB1347 Indoor Air Quality Monitor that was operated by a specialist on the faculty of the University of Bologna.

This was all a brilliant demonstration of just how dumb "experts" can be, when they are operating out of their field, the field of their experience. Scientists are not trained to recognize fraud, and the customs of science avoid even thinking of fraud as a possibility. The customs are to assume that testimony is truthful and not deliberately deceptive.

An Air Quality meter cannot measure steam quality, it has no means of doing so. It measures humidity, and then there is a display that will calculate, from that, grams of water per cubic meter. Wet steam would have more water per cubic meter than dry steam. However, the meter simply calculates that figure from humidity. It does not and can not measure liquid water in the small-droplet form characteristic of wet steam. Devices to measure steam quality are complex and expensive. So the temperature was used to infer dry steam, but ... what was the pressure and where exactly where these measurements taken?

Why was this a red herring? Because this error would be limited and it could not account for the apparent heat generated. And then there was much argument back and forth, mostly pointing out, "So what if they made that error? Look at all that heat!!!"

The real problem: overflow water. There is no limit to the amount of overflow water that could simply run off with the setup shown. That water could have steam above it, easily. It would be at boiling temperature. Nobody checked for it, and these same problems afflicted the Kullander and Essen report (they also made the humidity meter error and did not check for overflow water.) There is another possible problem: flow meters can be manipulated, there are a number of different approaches, as Jed has pointed out more recently.

Jed gave a report at the time that really was notable for the photos and the basic claim. This was not an important document -- I don't recall reading it at the time --, and the identity of those two anonymous experts is of no particular interest. What they wrote could have been written by anyone with a knowledge of physics, but calling them experts increased the appearance of validation, and Rossi used this over and over. "Independent professors" -- who basically watch paint dry as set up by Rossi -- and the King of them, a "nuclear engineer." Not just any old engineer, a "nuclear one." As if nuclear engineers would have the necessary expertise. In fact, any HVAC expert would have as much or more expertise. What would be more difficult to find is someone expert at discovering fraud and subtle (but sometimes disastrous) artifacts. It is not easy to "validate" a demonstration, because there is no limit to the number of possible frauds. Humans can be amazingly inventive at this. Later, if a magician's trick is revealed, it's obvious. Why didn't we think of that, why didn't we notice it?

It's because of how the brain works.... we automatically filter out what we think is not relevant. so, of course, Rossi wanted the ERV to disregard the input water temperature. A genuine validator would disregard nothing. And would very much want to see the "Customer area." Everything. With cross-checks, running the flow into a bucket, etc. If you want to know if there are rabbits in hats, don't trust the magician to pull them out!

By the end of 2011, Jed will confirm, I had concluded that Rossi was deliberately avoiding genuine independent confirmation. He had two excuses: first of all, he trusted nobody. What if independent experts steal his secret? However, that could have been addressed, if Rossi wanted to. The other problem was more intractable. Rossi apparently wanted to look like a fraud, to confuse competition. So what I wrote was that it was impossible to distinguish between a fraud looking like an eccentric and paranoid inventor, and a fraud pretending to look like that inventor. Therefore, I wrote, workers in LENR should be very careful not to associate Rossi with the field. This was all unconfirmed and unverifiable.

Even if the Rossi Effect was real, this was a commercial venture, and these fail for any of many reasons, and if we supported Rossi, we had egg on our face, and we already are dealing with the rejection cascade, a bundle of misinformation that has been widely believed. We need to focus on the science and scientific methods, as recommended by both U.S. Department of Energy reviews.

Jed and some of the other old-timers think the DoE is simply hopeless, a dedicated enemy of LENR. Maybe. My plan became to call their bluff, to do that work and publish it in the journal system, as they suggested. If they ignore it, others won't.

Hence I am always interested in genuine skepticism, because it is essential to the scientific process. However, when a so-called "skeptic" shows a peculiar interest in personalities, as Ascoli65 with Jed, it's a clue that this is going nowhere. Cam, as well, shows utter ignorance of the literature and the scientific issues, while promoting complete fluff, as the absence of LENR from nuclear reaction databases. Of course they are absence. We do not know what reactions are involved. Those databases are not compilations of mysteries. What reaction would be there? Cold fusion is probably not d+d -> 4He, as such. Cam has not addressed on single scientific issue, it's only about reputation, and drastically exaggerated, such as a claim that there were no Members of the American Physical Society who were LENR researchers, and when I showed there were at least three who are Fellows, not merely Members, he then poked: "Only three?"

Trolls. Worthless pieces of garbage, worse than Sifferkoll. At least Sifferkoll is a real person, willing to put his own reputation on the line. Mary Yugo makes some real arguments on occasion, and we do actually know who "she" is. I have no idea why Mary deprecates her own arguments by pretense. Mary is or was associated with a company that makes equipment for calorimetry, including for cold fusion, so I can understand an initial preference for anonymity, but the cat is out of that bag, long ago.

Quote from Wyttenbach

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revealing Witty comment.... but something is repeated here, not just by Witty.

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To your disappointment: We are interested in NiHxy LENR.

Why "disappointment"? NiH reactions have long been reported. Don't mistake a focus on PdD, due to the existence of much more knowledge about it, for a deprecation of NiH. The university project that I suggested, that is happening, with PdD and the heat/helium ratio, is also studying an exploding wires technique for rapidly vetting LENR materials, and that includes NiH.

Planet Rossi has no idea what real science involves. It is not about Peter Gluck's fantasy of the "LENR" and "LENR+" factions. Nor about Krivit's fantasy of the "fusion faction."

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We know that the AR LENR reaction works.

The "knowing" is based on what independent, confirmed, verifiable tests?

What we have in front of us is a company, IH, that invested over $12 million attempting to confirm exactly that, and it appears at this point that they failed, even though they had the contractually obligated full cooperation of Rossi. So someone who "knows" that the AR process works, at this point, unless they have serious, private information, is not interested in science, but is a classic believer. Or is paid by or working for Rossi, something that is not often mentioned but that must be considered as some kind of possibility. -- though my own opinion is that Rossi is smarter than that, and these are simply people who are Not So Smart.

Someone who thinks that Rossi Effect reality is "possible," is ordinary. I think it's possible, but merely that the evidence for reality has all turned out to be suspect. That does not prove unreality.

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But we don't know to what extent.

As mentioned, there are persistent reports of NiH reactions. So far, this cannot be considered confirmed, there isn't a single, repeatable protocol that has been independently verified. What there are is a common problem with cold fusion: many people trying out their own ideas of how to make it work, and then experiments cannot be compared and artifacts identified and ruled out and understanding of a particular reaction environment cannot grow. Until some group like MFMP smells the coffee and starts to do systematic work, instead of sitting around causing explosions that get everyone excited -- and I think that MFMP is moving in this direction, God bless them.

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To get rid of persons like you, we will motivate as many people as possible to start their own NiHxy research, just by telling them, that everything they invent is no longer covered by any patent, as all patents are incomplete.

Cool. Go ahead. AFAIK, nobody has, so far, thoroughly tested the Rossi patent, so that could be a good place to start. The issue is how the nickel is conditioned, with "steam explosions." What does that mean? How exactly is this done? If it is not described in adequate detail, the patent is invalid.

What is remarkable in recent JONP discussions is that Rossi appears to still be relying on trade secrets, on hitting the market with product instead of protecting IP with patents, and making the product cheap enough that reverse engineering isn't worth doing. It's a bit of a nutty idea, but ... this implies that some trade secret is necessary to make devices that work, which implies that he did not disclose it to IH -- thus violating the Agreement -- and that it's not in the patents, thus they are invalid.

So, yes, Witty. Right on.

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Thus abd, enjoy IH's and uncle SAM money, write some more thousands lines of FUD and call the others Trolls - as a Troll's master thats your right!

Where's my check? Here I write all this stuff and IH and Uncle Sam haven't sent me payment.

Wait! I do get a bank transfer from the government, every month, as does my daughter. Social Security, a clever way to describe my Super-Sekrit Work for the Central Agency for FUD, protecting the Oil Monopolies and Donald Trump. My daughter would be horrified if she knew where her money comes from. Wait! She knows about the Social Security, because I hand it to her. (She was 12. It blew her mind, she had never seen that much money in one place before. We have fun.)

But, heh! she doesn't know about the Super Sekrit work, she's got enough trouble with her idol, Bernie, coming out for Clinton. At 14, she is so far ahead of what I was at that age, politically, it's not funny.

Okay, it's hilarious. I love the future. My children are the future, and I get to live with the wild one. The one who immediately knew what had happened when I explained the rejection of cold fusion to her about five years ago. "Dad, they didn't try hard enough!"

As to IH, no, not a penny. So far. They haven't suggested what I do, I haven't met them yet, but ... I probably will, I am starting to travel for LENR research. I did get some money, last year, but not from them and it was not even for writing about LENR. There are people who like what I write, and especially the research and experience behind it. There is no mystery there.