Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”

  • Obviously you have confused the story immensely. Please explain your position clearly, with examples.


    There is no need to warm this thing up again. TC never answered the findings about the rods in relation to the mfp trial reactor. It's as kirkshanahan said: Nobody likes to admit an error - especially when he worked that long to suport his faith that LENR is fake...


    It's simple: TC made one massive error, but most of his reasoning was correct.


  • *****
    No, I wrote with a desire to unemotionally state the facts. It is your realization of what they mean that causes you to try to find a way to denigrate what I say so you can ignore it. And is typical in Internet forums, having only the written word to go by, it is trivially easy to read in the most awful things imaginable when desired.


    I don't know about your friends, but I've written many times in many places that my original reason for getting involved in this arena was my personal safety, and that of my coworkers. Plus, I was intellectually curious as to why the field was still in an 'unresolved' state in 1995. My agenda was to find out whether there was any concern about unexpected heat application to closed and pressurized vessels. After 2-3 years, I concluded there was no concern and had targeted a primary reason why (the CCS) and since that hadn't been published I did so. Wow, did the fur start to fly then!


    I have no angst and fear about the topic. I do feel that the disinformation campaign by the CFers needs to be countered, and I'm stubborn, which is why I persist in trying to 'get the word out'. And by the way...I not one of your 'folks'. I am probably the last man standing who held the view (in 1989) the F&P probably did find a new effect, but their explanation was really off-base (just like F did in 1973).

  • Wyttenbach wrote: "I thought we live in 2016 now... Do you see any improvement, as some out in the field report COP's well above 100!"


    Nope, no improvement... In 1995, a guy named James Patterson promoted a gizmo (later patented) that was supposed to put out 25000% excess heat (maybe only 2500%...too lazy to dig that detail up). I figured that that should be a slam-dunk for understanding what was going on. It wasn't. A lot like Rossi, lots of demos, no science. I came up with a different explanation of why he got apparent excess heat, but with no science-types involved, it was impossible to prove or disprove, so I gave up on that.


    As others have noted here, the calorimetry is key for COP claims. The CF community routinely only considers 'nuclear' explanations, when they should be considering measurement device or systems error.
    Any reliable experiment will be calibrated, and that calibration is often one source of the problem. As in the Lugano case, where the temperature measurement device was mis-applied. And as in the Defkalion case, where the wrong flowmeter was used, etc. etc. Every time I have looked into 'high COP' experiments I have found problems, most often it is 'insufficient information' to determine if problem xyz is present. So, today I am not really interested in investing a lot of time debugging other people's work. If they don't do the basics, and report them, I figure it's just more of the same, and I move on.

  • @oystla

    Quote

    Now you check your EXFOR database and find nothing of dark energy.


    Of course. Exfor stands for "Experimental Nuclear Reactions Data". Reactions must be experimental, not virtual or Gedankenexperimente. When dark energy will be experimental you'll find the related reactions, if any, in exfor. Databases are useful when day are deeply specialised. Do a cold nuclear reaction and you'll find it in exfor.
    In IAEA Nuclear Data Services there are many sections which you should be interested In.
    http://www-nds.indcentre.org.in/

  • @Peter Ekstrom

    Quote

    heavy-ion reactions producing super-heavy elements at low energy, resulting in few free nucleons in the exit channel.


    You are right.


    Karl Heinrich Lieser (TH Darmstadt)
    Nuclear and Radiochemistry: Fundamentals and Applications
    VCH 1997
    Page 287:
    Fusion of heavy nuclides with closed nucleon shells with ions of medium atomic numbers (e.g. 2 = 24 to 32) under conditions of low excitation (“cold fusion”).
    Another cold fusion is the muonic one.
    Page 93:
    Finally, another interesting aspect should be mentioned: it is expected that in muonic molecular ions reactions between nuclei are favored, because of their smaller
    distance apart, for instance
    [omissis]. This kind of reactions would offer the possibility of fusion at relatively low temperatures (“cold fusion”) of about 10^3 °K in contrast to “hot fusion” at about 10^8 °K.

  • I had never witnessed him react in such an emotional and angry way. What is it about this topic that brings out so much angst and fear from you folks?


    Mind viruses. Egregores...


    At one point it's impossible to distinguish a paid shill posting because he earns 10c a line (hello Abdel Ramen Lameox!) and a sincere scientist who's got, over time, his antennas hard set on "groupthink", unbeknownst to him.


    It's not an intellectual problem anymore, but an emotional one: it would be painful to be separated from the group, even more if said group verbally attacks the dissenter and holds his ideas as hokum woowoo pathological science etc. When you've spent 10+ years working in an intellectual structure which has brought you knowledge and joy, it's very difficult to address its issues and recognize there are things about which its dogmas are completely wrong. Even more difficult is acknowledging deliberate technology suppression by some people in this structure.


    It's the same in all domains, people will not agree to see what's right under their noses because the emotional and social price is too high to pay if they do.

    Edited once, last by Keieueue ().

  • The second is the infamous paper by the 10 authors (discussed extensively previously here) who used a fallacious strawman argument to attempt to discredit my comments.


    You characterize it as infamous, and you can say it is wrong, but you the one who is mistaken. These authors are right. You have never addressed many of the issues they raise. Such as:


    "SRI obtained very similar conclusions using a totally different type of calorimeter over this same time period.


    Since the CCSH has no reason for bias in sign it may equally increase or decrease the measured output and thus excess power. In no case that we are aware of have significant “negative excess” power been observed in calorimetry experiments except in transient departures from the steady state."


    . . . and so on.


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


    Anyone who reads the paper will see that you are wrong. So wrong, I would say you are obsessed or deluded, and unable to understand simple, logical reasons why you are wrong.

  • Jed...dude...wake up and smell the roses...


    We had a long discussion of this over in The Playground I think. Upshot is Hagelstein and McK and Storms and the rest MISREPRESENTED my position in that paper. I agree with you, everyone should read all of these papers. In my 4, I talk about a systematic, non-random process. McK and Co. _SAY_ I talk about a random one. WRONG! They base their rejection of my ideas on this incorrect supposed fact, but, guess what, I AGREE with them, it's NOT random, it's systematic. But you know, when you promote an incorrect basis assertion, it's hard to draw correct conclusions! So, no, they didn't knock me down one bit....


    Given the inverse nature of their paper, the comment you quote makes perfect sense. Several people have seen apparent excess heat in F&P cells, because there IS a real, non-random process showing its ugly face.


    But guess what! IT AIN'T NUCLEAR!

  • Jed, we go round and round about this issue over years. YOU say there exists a 120W power output experiment from LENR at good "COP". Please cite:


    1) the reference(s) (hopefully where we can read them on line)


    2) the replication


    3) the duration of the test


    4) the method of calorimetry


    Then, we can see if it all makes sense. When you refer us to a thousand papers, you just get glazed over eyeballs. Let's see the BEST, *replicated*, best calibrated, highest power, highest COP and longest duration (without fresh fuel) experiment. I've asked you for this several times over the past five years, all without a credible response. To be fair, you did provide a link to one paper that seemed to meet at least some of those criteria but I managed to misplace the email or post. I have looked for it several times without success.


    And if there exists such an experiment, I can not imagine that it has not been commercialized if it was real.

  • Have you been able to find the acronyms LENR and CANR? I don't think so. Anyway, let us know, thank you.


    No, LENR and CANR and other CF acronyms are not in the databases.


    About EXFOR: it is straightforward experimental data which are updated when they appear. This is common to all databases - some data will be quite old. Normally that is not a problem, since also old data are usually reliable. There are not enough physicists to re-measure everything all the time!


    For non-professionals I recommend evaluated data, not straight off experimental: Table of Isotopes (mainly decay), ENSDF (nuclear structure), ENDF (reaction cross sections), NSR (references). For masses and reaction Q-values I recommend the Atomic Mass Data Center (earlier Wapstra's mass evaluation).

  • YOU say there exists a 120W power output experiment from LENR at good "COP". Please cite:


    1) the reference(s) (hopefully where we can read them on line)


    Actually, Ed said that, in his first book. See the figure here:


    http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=1618


    Look where it says, "These 124 tests were performed with electrolysis."


    Here are some high power tests:


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


    As for the rest, I suggest you do your own homework. Start with Ed's book.

  • Upshot is Hagelstein and McK and Storms and the rest MISREPRESENTED my position in that paper.


    So you say, but I disagree. They disagree too. Just repeating yourself like this does not advance the argument. You have to address the issues they raised, such as the fact that your proposed effect would cause negative heat (an apparent endothermic reaction) as often it causes excess heat. That has not been observed, so you are wrong. This is not complicated. Your hypothesis predicts various things, but these things are not observed, so you are wrong. That's how science works.

  • No Jed, I am not reading Ed's book. If you know of a 120W experiment which meets criteria for replication, reliability and proper methods, it's up to YOU to provide the cite. It's your claim and you make it quite liberally. I simply want to see if you can support the claim and if not, you shouldn't keep making it. That's not an unreasonable request and I've been making it the same consistent way for going on five years. Without response except possibly the one time, a partial response, which I managed to lose.


    From your cite:


    Quote

    In 1996, at Toyota’s IMRA research lab in Europe, a series of reactors produced 30 to 100 watts, which was easy to detect. They continued to produce heat for weeks, far longer than any chemical device could.


    The core of the Toyota reactor was about the size of a birthday cake candle. A candle burning at 100 watts uses up all of the fuel in 7 minutes, whereas one of the Toyota devices ran at 100 watts continuously for 30 days. That’s thousands of times longer than the candle. It produced thousands of times more energy than the best chemical fuel.


    OK so where do I read about this specifically, not 124 references. Also, who replicated it "indipendently"? And why in the world, since 1996 (20 f'n years!) was a wonder like this not further developed or commercialized? Think of the space applications for even a 100W heater that runs on fusion fuel and I am sure it could have been enlarged or made in multiples. It could power the Juno probe instead of the unwieldy and very costly solar wings. But it doesn't. Why? Thanks.

  • When you refer us to a thousand papers, you just get glazed over eyeballs.


    Try these:


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


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


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


    If you do not think these papers have any merit, I do not think you would find others persuasive, so I suggest you stop reading papers and ignore the subject.


    Please realize, it is not as if I care whether you believe cold fusion exists or not. I have thousands of readers at LENR-CANR.org. They have downloaded 3.8 million papers. Most of them would not have done that if they thought cold fusion is bunk, or it doesn't exist. I have heard from many readers, and I know that most take the field seriously, although of course no one believes every paper. New science does not work that way.


    Okay, so you come along. You claim it is all wrong. All of the papers by all of the scientists. Thousands of tests over decades done by world-class experts -- all wrong. That makes you a crackpot. You do not believe in the scientific method. You do not think that replicated, high-sigma experiments prove an effect is real. I have no idea what criterion you substitute for this, but I suppose that like any member of the Flat Earth Society, vaccine denier, or Planet Rossi inhabitant, you have your sources. Be happy with them.


    if you are looking for crackpot theories to back up your crackpot ideas, read Shanahan. He proposes a magical effect that always produces excess heat, never an apparent deficit (an endothermic effect). This makes absolutely no sense, but I expect you will agree with it. You will agree with any damn nonsense that seems to support what you have already decided is true, and you will ignore a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

  • I did not state that. Perhaps you have confused me with someone else. If you review my comments over the years you will see that I wrapped them in a layers of academic deniability. "It seems . . ." or "evidence indicates . . ." The passive voice is your friend! My worst misjudgment was quoted by Mats in his book, and even there I said "“I admit I could be wrong about all of this. . . ."


    Oh, I know, you are a master in wrapping your comments with some doubts, especially on the personal credibility of Rossi, just in case, but you didn't at all make any appeal to academic deniability. On the contrary, you supported without any doubt the generation of many kW of excess heat, just appealing to the academic credibility. At the end of this comment, you find a long list of quotes extracted from a very tiny fraction of your posts in supporting to the credibility of the Ecat results. Basing on my English knowledge, I highlighted in bold the most assertive wordings. It doesn't seem to me that you used precautionary wording with respect of the results claimed by professors and other experts from reputable scientific institutions.


    Your wording has been absolutely assertive for at least 3 years, since the January 14, 2011, demo. Of course, you only reported impressions by others, because you didn't test the Ecat by yourself, but you expressed the maximum confidence in the positive assessment of these people, and you also let us know that you were in close contact with them.

    ----ooOoo----


    Jan15, 2011 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg41322.html"
    "I am confident that you cannot fake boiling water, and there is no way a power supply can draw 10 kW, so Rossi's credibility is irrelevant."


    Jan15, 2011 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg41324.html"
    "This tells us that various professors at the university have been involved for some time, and they designed and implemented the calorimetry. I do not think there is any way Rossi could "fool" these people. I think that would be physically impossible. Rossi may be a crook but he could not persuade Levi to destroy his career. The fact that Levi and other established professors took part in the experiment is about 4 orders of magnitude more significant than what Rossi may have done, ..."


    Jan15, 2011 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg41364.html"
    "I think the likelihood of fraud is vanishingly small. There is no way you could fool the professors involved in this, and I am sure they are not all engaged in a conspiracy to fool the rest of us."


    Apr27, 2011 - "https://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg45587.html"
    "In my opinion, the Rossi demonstrations are closer to engineering than basic science, so there is little reason to doubt they are real. The only way they could be fraudulent would be if Levi and E&K and the others have agreed to go along with the scam. Or, as I said, if it turns out they are incredibly stupid people."


    Jun7, 2012 – "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg66507.html"
    "His experiments plus independent tests of his device prove that he has found the holy grail."


    Jun7, 2012 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg66517.html"
    "Not a chance. As I have pointed out many times, it burned a person hours after the power was turned off. If the COP had been 1.1 it would have been room temperature. There is no doubt it self sustained for hours, producing kilowatts with no chemical fuel and not electric power input. To question that is puerile and technically illiterate. Plus independent tests with proper instruments have confirmed the claims."


    Jan2, 2013 – "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg75081.html"
    "A fake system would be reliable! It is not difficult to make a fake system. It is impossible to make one that E&K, Focardi or Levi would not instantly see is fake."


    Feb7, 2013 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg76434.html"
    "Rossi and the people who have tested his device independently use conventional, off-the-shelve HVAC tools, such as a shielded thermocouple and the kind of mechanical flow meter in millions of houses worldwide. Because Rossi gets so much heat, with such small input power, these instruments and techniques are perfect."


    (The next one has been cited many times, also in the Lewan's book.)
    Mar25, 2013 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg78278.html"
    " It really is a third party evaluation. Rossi often exaggerates about his business and other personal things, but as I have often said, when it comes to technical claims, he tells the truth."


    Apr8, 2013 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg78711.html"
    "Furthermore, despite all the blather on the Internet, I have not seen any sign of fraud or error in any test by Rossi. His tests are unforgettably sloppy, but not in error as far as I know, or as far as anyone else knows. In my opinion, no plausible method of fraud has been proposed."


    May4, 2013 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg79516.html"
    "The experts from U. Bologna would be as hard to fool as the people from NASA. He worked with them for months with what appear to be real systems. Besides, people of this caliber would see through a fake in no time."


    Jul8, 2013 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg84089.html"
    "On WHAT basis?!? That's irrational. You do not have a scintilla of technical evidence that the claims are wrong. The skeptics have not come up with a single reason to doubt these results.
    [...]
    Many scientists have spent weeks or months working side by side with him in the lab, such as the late Focardi. Not one of these people has reported any reason to doubt the claims. Do you think they are all in cahoots with him? Or do you think they are all so stupid they do not recognize what has to be a blatant, easily discovered fraud?"


    Oct7, 2013 – "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg86575.html"
    "You are mistaken. Rossi ran his device in public for ~4 hours without input, far beyond the limits of chemistry. He has run in that mode many times in private tests, according to people I know who witnessed these tests."


    Apr14, 2014 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg92823.html"
    "This is why I do not trust Rossi's evaluations of his own work. I only trust independent verification. Fortunately, there have been some good independent verification test, by Ampenergo, Elforsk, and others."


    Jun3, 2014 – "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg94033.html"
    "Swedish Professors Chomping at the Bit
    [...]
    "I do not think they would hesitate to announce a negative result when it comes time to publish. I doubt they would hesitate to hint at one now, just as they have hinted the results are positive. I do not get the impression these people are close friends of Rossi, or that they would go out on a limb for him. I have had enough contact with them to say that with confidence."


    Oct11, 2014 – "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98362.html"
    "First, Levi knows what is in the cell. Second, this can be considered a black box test. It makes no difference what is in the cell. The calorimetry proves that whatever it is, it produces orders of magnitude more energy than any chemical fuel, and it works at a high temperature, and high power. So, if the effect can be controlled, it will not only be a practical source of energy, it will be far better than any other sources. That is what matters."


    Oct12, 2014 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98468.html"
    "In that case he should address these issues. Until he does, I consider the matter closed. It is unfounded blather like the concerns about about wet steam were. Levi eliminated them by turning up the flow rate. (At least, that is what he told Lewan and me. Perhaps he is part of the conspiracy, in which case none of this is true.)"


    Oct12, 2014 – "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98465.html"
    "The same is true of all the blather about steam and hot water from 2011. As Jack Cole pointed out, Levi said he increased the flow rate and measured the heat with liquid water only. That's what Levi told Lewan, and me. I have a photo of the flowmeter he used. It is a commercial unit easily capable of measuring the fast flow rate. I assume he was telling the truth. There has been a lot of blather about how friendly Levi and Rossi are, which supposedly makes Levi "compromised." They do not seem friendly to me."


    Oct12, 2014 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98463.html"
    "People do indeed dislike novelty. [...] The hysterical opposition and half-baked critiques being posted here in opposition to the latest Levi test are good examples of this dynamic at work."


    Oct13, 2014 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98642.html"
    "I meant that libel here is bad form. A million people on the Internet attack Rossi and Levi with unfounded BS. But we are not supposed to do that here. Especially not when you have zero evidence he has done anything wrong, and no reason to think he would do anything wrong -- other than your own private scientific theory that his results are impossible."


    Dec8, 2014 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg100074.html"
    "If there were mistakes, I think Levi et al. made them. I do not think we can blame Rossi, and I do not see how he might have masterminded the experiment."

  • No Jed, I am not reading Ed's book.


    Okay, so you will remain willfully ignorant. Are you bragging about that, or ashamed? You spout off about scientific research without knowing the first thing about it, and then you say "no, I won't read about it." If I were you, I would be ashamed to admit that.


    If you don't wish to do your homework, I suggest you shut up. It is bad form to argue with people who know a subject when you know little or nothing. It makes you look silly. You would probably agree if this were some other subject. For example, if I were to talk about some some obscure aspect of Japanese grammar, such as the literary perfect-resultative form: -eri/-eru, you wouldn't say "that's wrong!" I hope you wouldn't. (that is a thing! Martin p. 575) So why do you challenge Ed Storms, Mel Miles or Martin Fleischmann? Seriously, who do you think you are?


    Why do you think anyone should pay attention to you if you will not bother learn about the subject? Heck, you won't even read McKubre's paper, or if you do, you will not give any reason to doubt it.

  • Jan15, 2011 - "http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg41364.html"
    "I think the likelihood of fraud is vanishingly small. There is no way you could fool the professors involved in this, and I am sure they are not all engaged in a conspiracy to fool the rest of us."


    Okay, how about quoting some other parts of that message, such as:


    "My guess is that these people know what they are doing . . .


    I cannot understand Italian but I got the impression that press conference was a serious exposition with detailed questions and answers.


    Again, assuming there is no mistake, and that the thing can be replicated, I agree wholeheartedly with Cousin Peter that this is what we have been waiting for all these years.


    Although it is best to reserve judgement, and you cannot be sure of a claim until it is independently replicated . . . this reaction is so large that I think a mistake is highly unlikely."


    Does that sound unequivocal? I think I expressed the requisite number of doubts and reservations appropriate to academia. "Assuming there was no mistake" and assuming "the thing can be replicated." Those are assumptions, not assertions. When I say "my guess is that . . ." that really is a guess, not an assertion.

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