I was wrong about Rossi, but what I fear most is that I might be partly right

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I disagree that it was so easy to detect. It all depends on your view of human nature. It only necessitates that you believe either one of the following: 1) people can change or 2) people can be falsely accused and persecuted. All along the way, it was evidently clear to me that it was possible that either AR was correct, a scammer, or self-deceiving. There were enough experts saying they thought the E-cat worked to make it seem possible. Also, the results of Brillouin and others with NiH made it seem possible. Indeed, AR himself can really seem genuine, philosophically deep, and apparently introspective. Some people are extremely talented and fooling others. I know it was obvious to you, and ordinarily it would have been to me, but there seemed to be additional complexities.

To be clear, I did not decide that Rossi was lying about ecats only, not even mainly, on his history and I did not consider his personality at all originally. I based my skepticism mainly on the experiments which were wildly deficient, clearly so, and easily remediable. And Rossi was told so by many people in many different places including his own sorry blog. Yet he did nothing to improve the tests. Instead, he did different tests, all with fresh deficiencies and always: the failure to permit calibrations and the deliberate ridicule of people who asked for calibrations and blank runs. Any honest inventor would have modified his method and repeated the same tests except that he would have performed them correctly. Nobody is too stupid to do that!

And the excuse that he wanted to deceive the world to think that he really had nothing so as to stifle competition was beyond ludicrous. First, he was supposedly selling plants. What do you think would happen to the first one he sold? It would be ruthlessly taken apart and reverse engineered and investigated. That's what. And Rossi had no competition anyway. And he supposedly had patent protection though the idiotic nature of the useless patent he got made it look even less likely that the ecats worked.

Then there was the look of the original ecats -- rusty junk put together with crude crummy tools by an octogenarian. Then there was Rossi crowing about non-accomplishments as if they were pure gold-- for example the absolutely meaningless self-certification of safety. Hey a pet rock can be certified safe.

All of the above was public knowledge long before Darden bought into the project. And none of the negativity requires consideration of Rossi's personality. However, consideration of his Petroldragon and thermoelectric projects revealed prior scamming and disasters and no record whatsoever of significant ability, knowledge or accomplishments in any aspects of nuclear engineering and design-- that should have given everyone pause.

But it wasn't his personality, sneaky and deceitful though it seemed.

Quote from Mary Yugo

The reason I keep repeating it is because people like Alain and Abd keep repeating themselves in asserting that Darden acted rationally.

Mary's ontology is not sophisticated enough to distinguish between asserting possibilities and asserting fact. Mary has been a massive voice in the on-line community that looks at LENR. Repeating herseof over and over, belaboring the obvious, and then poisoning rational consideration of what is not obvious by constant heckling. Her motives are obscure. She became a crusader against Sniffex -- a blatant fraud or, let's call it, a misrepresentation of what a product actually was, in a situation where there could be high risk -- and Power Balance bracelets, somewhere between a petty scam and a practical joke.

My first impression of Darden was "He'd better know something I don't know!" I had long criticized the Rossi demonstrations. This was clearly not science. The possibility of fraud was obvious. Yet Rossi was making inroads. His claims, and their apparent acceptance by some scientists, were having a negative impact on other LENR research. Many new investigations were started into attempting to confirm his NiH results. Because there had long been scattered reports of NiH heat or other LENR findings, it seemed plausible that an eccentric amateur had, through hard work and trying many combinations, stumbled onto something.

But Rossi was paranoid, it was obvious. This was real paranoia, or an act to cover up fraud, an excuse. There was no smoking gun, only the avoidance of definitive methods and independent verification.

It would never have occurred to me to actually invest in Rossi technology, given this environment. Mary seems to believe that Darden was unaware of the problems. How Mary knows what Darden was thinking is beyond me. What I realized, studying the documents in Rossi v. Darden, plus the history I know from other sources, was that Darden's approach actually worked. Darden accomplished what could have been accomplished. It was not cheap, and $1.5 million plus $10 million were just the first payments. There were many other expenses. Fabiani was $10,500 per month.

Mary doesn't look at actual results, but only at "good" and "bad," and for a fraud to get $11.5 million is "bad,"no matter what other results arise.

It is, quite simply, not unrelated that Woodford invested $50 million into IH Holdings International, Ltd, run by Darden, and the owner of Industrial Heat. Woodford, I'm sure, knows what happened. They knew that IH had been unable to confirm the Rossi claims. They also knew the situation, they did not just abruptly decide to invest in LENR. They saw and understood what Darden had done.

So should Darden care about an internet troll impersonating a female, a long-term "debunker"?

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It was fine for Darden to show an interest and consider investing in Rossi. But in fact, he could have arranged for a proper test of the ecat technology in a vastly shorter time and at a tiny fraction of the cost he already spent and he could have avoided the extra hassle and cost of legal defense.

This would have been completely useless, and Mary knows why and has actually explained it. Rossi would not allow a "proper test." From Mary's point of view, that refusal would simply mean "no deal." And the matter would have continued, status quo.

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He did not act rationally. He acted stupidly, negligently, and incompetently. And he did it for the most part with other people's money.

It is unclear to me how much money was Darden's and how much was "other peoples money." The largest shareholder of ordinary shares in IH Holding International, Ltd., is two LLCs that Darden signed for and probably controls. I don't have direct data on IH investment itself, but IH was essentially acquired by IHHI, probably for shares distributed to the IH shareholders. These are apparently small companies, closely held. IH stock was limited to $20 million, as I recall. It is not clear how much more was put in from the original investment, which was just enough to pay what was required for the Agreement.

Mary Yugo is making a libelous claim with no evidence. The evidence we have actually shows the opposite. Darden won. The acquisition of the License and the provision of a full opportunity to Rossi to, no excuses, show how to make devices using the technology allowed Darden to establish major credibility with real investors, even if anonymous bloggers and others fume and spout.

Rossi said, (in 2011?) that he would sell the secret for $100 million. They called his bluff. To Mary Yugo, dumb. And that is why Mary Yugo accomplishes nothing but endless repetition of narrow and mostly useless commentary and Darden runs a $2.5 billion investment fund.

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And now, he is reaping what he sowed.

He already did by May 2015. Now comes the clean-up. I suspect that some of that $11.5 million will come back, assuming he played the cards carefully in 2015, with Rossi's attempt to define a "Guaranteed Performance Test." Rossi put enough in the Complaint to establish an appearance of estoppel, though he didn't actually claim estoppel except in responding to the Motion to Dismiss. It's still not in the Rossi filings. And it is looking like it's an empty claim, from what we have seen.

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I imagine there will be significant negative consequences to Cherokee and Woodford funds down the line when the whole idiotic IH and Rossi story is finally sorted out. One could hope so anyway but shareholders as a group are not necessarily a bright light.

These are all fairly small LLCs, not major corporations. Darden, it appears, carefully avoided putting Cherokee money into IH. (That's why Rossi's implication in his Complaint that Cherokee wholly owned IH was outrageous and won't survive examination.) As to Woodford, they are investing in LENR, and they know this is long term and high risk.

Assume that the IH claims are true, that Rossi was a fraud. How would Woodford suffer? No Woodford money went into Rossi, as far as we know. I would tell them that the money will run out before there are any results with major commercial implications, but IH has access to information that I don't have. They probably know quite well what is going on with Brillouin.

And, by the way, I have information that Defkalion did not actually shut down, they simply stopped talking. I'm not confident that this is true, but ... we do not actually know what happened. They definitely had a test fail, spectacularly, i,e., in the worst way: apparent success shown to arise from an artifact that easily could be deliberate. Can't get much worse than that! But did they ever have any real results? It is similar to the Rossi situation. Maybe they did, but I wouldn't put in any money unless there were strong reasons to think it would be worth the risk.

And the world is now primed to require independent testing before making any major investments in commercial cold fusion. That is a very positive result. Have a phalanx of "Independent professors" watch you while you strut your stuff.... who cares? Not independent. When you are ready to allow an independent test, let us know.

Mary believes, apparently, that cold fusion, the entire field, is bogus. Experts who have actually studied it disagree. And the matter is being investigated, as it should be. IH is apparently funding that investigation, and a small part of what has been made available was spent for this purpose.

Quote from Mary Yugo

Then there was the look of the original ecats -- rusty junk put together with crude crummy tools by an octogenarian.

What does the age of a plumber have to do with the quality of the work? And Rossi used primitive plumbing, not the much flashier and nicer-looking technlogy of later, with IH making the devices. Again, what does the flashiness of the appearance have to do with the facts? The problem with those tests was not from "rusty junk," it was quite different, and it fooled some people who should not have been fooled, and the sequence demonstrated something very missing from Rossi's "independent experts." They were naive, clueless, and unresponsive to criticism.

When Pons and Fleischmann, under siege, responded somewhat similarly, that amplified the rejection cascade. (It's the helium, stupid!) (They also responded functionally in some areas, don't mistake my comment for black and white. But there was an early helium analysis apparently done by Johnson Matthey. What were the results? My suspicion: little or no helium was found, because they were looking in the bulk. Their behavior with Morrey, on the helium collaboration, violated the agreement. Why? They never answered this. Pons could. That violated agreement made them look like frauds. I would love to welcome Pons to an ICCF. He would get a standing ovation.)

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

That is a good point. I had not even considered it. Perhaps even when they started, they felt confident that in the worst case they could claw back some of the $11 million in a lawsuit. (A counter-suit, as it turned out.) That makes the risk smaller than $11 million. I am sure they can judge that sort of thing better than I can.

I gather Rossi put the money in Florida real estate. That real estate is not going anywhere. It is within the court's jurisdiction, even if Rossi flees the country.

I assume that they considered that Rossi might abscond with the money. I would think that they would imagine the risk of Rossi suing them as being small, after all "he'd have to be crazy." Something weird happened, but it might be what I've seen happen: a plaintiff tells their attorney not to talk to the other side. It's a bonehead move, every plaintiff I have seen do that lost big. "Just file the papers, here, I am paying you in advance."

His model of IH, as a bunch of greedy investors, I suspect, would have them rushing to settle when he threatened to file, to avoid embarrassment. When they didn't do what he wanted or make some offer he would accept, he was stuck. Bull-Moose does not back down. Ever.

Quote from THHuxley

I think the difficulty here is that MY does not see the scientific difficulty in proving or disproving LENR. So those who try to do this are incompetent or bogus. For me, I easily see why it is so difficult to do this. I tend to have a stronger opinion than MY that LENR does not work (she is less sure than me although I know it does not sound like that) but a less strong opinion that this case easily be proven. And I can see how and why clever people of good will disagree with me.

LENR was faced, in 1989-1990, with a wall of opinion that was based on analysis now known to be defective. The most common error was to assume that the FPHE, if real, would be due to a known nuclear reaction, and since it did not have the known products or characteristics of the most obvious known reaction ("d-d fusion") it must not be real, an obvious logical fallacy.

Then there was the idea that nuclear reactions could not occur in a chemical environment, in condensed matter because of the allegedly necessary high energies to "overcome the Coulomb barrier." That appeared sensiblle except for a few inconvenient facts.

1. Muon-catalyzed fusion obviously violates this assumption. Whenever this was mentioned, the response would be "but this couldn't be MCF," and that's true (though many people have tried to come up with a muon explanation for the FPHE), but ... it shows the deficiency of the argument. What if there is some other kind of catalysis, and that, then would be countered by the fact that MCF also produces the same products as hot fusion, but ... in the end, one cannot make sensible predictions about "unknown reactions."

2. Electron capture is a known nuclear effect that occurs in condensed matter.

3. Pons and Fleischmann were testing the assumptions that were used in predicting extremely low fusion rates in condensed matter. They suspected that the approximations used were not precise enough to cover all possibilities. So they were looking where nobody had looked before. Yes, PdD was well-explored, but not at very high loading, which took high expertise and patience, with the methods known, to create.

They did not understand what they found. They made a number of mistakes about it. However, if we reject exploratory work, testing common assumptions, we lose the possible development of science by rejecting them because they contradict the assumptions.

The one thing I remember directly from Feynman is his telling us that the conditions of condensed matter were far to complex to calculate. Approximating assumptions were necessary, and might be far off under some conditions.

Originally, no ash was known. Pons and Fleischmann suspected helium very early on, immediately after the announcement, from a mass spectrograph done the December before, that Pons looked back at.

Very quickly, though, they abandoned that claim or approach, leaving cold fusion with no ash, which was, to say the least, not satisfactory!

However, Miles found helium, it about the right amounts, in 1991. At that point, with normal science, there would have been a rush to confirm this and increase precision. That did not happen. There were confirmations, that accumulated over maybe 14 years. There were confirmations with increased precision. They were independent. All the good stuff that science would normally look for. Yet I found, coming into the field in 2009, that hardly anyone was talking about helium. Most of the evidence alleged for cold fusion would be so many reports of heat, but that is circumstantial at best, and with the unreliability and probably chaotic nature of the effect -- until and unless ways are found to control it -- it didn't seem convincing. Then there would be all the reports of tritium, but that was a million times down from helium, and obviously had nothing to do with the main reaction. Essentially, mysteries were accumulating. And there were transmutations. Again, a million times down, but transmutations are "nuclear," so many were impressed, and skeptics were not.

The only direct evidence that the FPHE is real and nuclear in nature is the heat/helium correlation and ratio, as found and confirmed by many groups, some with reasonably high precision.

All of this should have, rightfully, been more deeply investigated years ago. It's expensive and takes high expertise to capture and measure helium, avoiding artifacts. Most cold fusion researchers, quite simply, could not afford it.

Above, THH mentions transmuation as convincing. De novo helium is transmutation. So is the reported helium do novo? I have not seen the examination of this completed. I suggested that each issue be addressed carefully and individually. On the other hand, I do expect that the matter will be resolved by a publication in a major journal, under peer review. I don't have a time for that yet, but the work is under way, that I know. The workers are competent, highly so, a mixture of new and old; the experienced workers have extensive experience creating the FPHE. I predict success: they will set up the reaction, and they will measure helium, and they will determine, from that, from many experiments done by more than one group, the correlation and the ratio.

First, for Abd, about Power Balance. It was not in any way a trivial scam. It was a larger scam than Rossi, Steorn, Defkalion and Sniffex COMBINED. And despite the settlement below, it and look alikes still continue to bamboozle the hapless out of millions of dollars each year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…ts-lawsuit_n_1105559.html

As to the looks of the ecat, my response was in reaction to someone who said the internals were complex. That's impossible. Rossi did not have the means or ability to fabricate anything complex in a small volume and there was nothing whatever about the original ecats to suggest that they were anything but junk. Of course an elderly plumber could make good stuff but probably not a fusion reactor from rusty tubing and crude large tools. As to Rossi's "factory," it was mostly a cavernous empty space. This all proves nothing but it suggests a lot. In particular, it suggests caution to any prudent person. Not so, apparently, to Mats Lewan and the Swedes.

Abd:

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Darden accomplished what could have been accomplished. It was not cheap, and $1.5 million plus $10 million were just the first payments. There were many other expenses. Fabiani was $10,500 per month.

ROTFWL. Dick Smith, another billionaire who was more conscientious and astute than Darden, accomplished as much with respect to Defkalion for essentially nothing. And without NDA's or lawsuits. Several people I know of and I gave him advice but far as I know, it was free. And I was happy to do it. He was an intelligent man and he acted wisely. Darden? Not so much, IMO.

Abd:

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Darden won. The acquisition of the License and the provision of a full opportunity to Rossi to, no excuses, show how to make devices using the technology allowed Darden to establish major credibility with real investors, even if anonymous bloggers and others fume and spout.

OK Abd. So in your twisted universe, investing $11.5 million and a full year in order to get non-working garbage, lies, and an extremely costly and burdensome lawsuit (you don't think the lawyers do the non-legal parts, do you?)... and doing it when a few simple tests would have made Rossi's fraud obvious... to you, that's something brilliant that shareholders will appreciate? Again: ROTFWL! You're not worth engaging with any further in more absurd arguments like this one. Darden will be a laughingstock and well deservedly so.

Abd:

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Rossi would not allow a "proper test." From Mary's point of view, that refusal Abd:would simply mean "no deal." And the matter would have continued, status quo.

No deal would have been a tremendous bargain. As Dick Smith learned with Defkalion. You don't make hundred million dollar deals with whackjobs, excons, and liars. Not if you value your reputation and your investors, you don't.

Abd:

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Mary believes, apparently, that cold fusion, the entire field, is bogus.

Where did I EVER say or imply such a thing? Of course I don't believe that. I think a lot of LENR researchers are hard working and honest and some do good work, though their results are largely negative. What do I actually think as opposed to what Abd surmises without evidence that I think? I think that high power LENR, the claims I have examined, is either rank fraud (Rossi,Defkalion), self delusion (probably Miley and perhaps Swartz) or there is not enough evidence to decide but it doesn't look good (Brillouin). I make no pronouncement at all about low power work (in my terms of reference) most of which is Pd-D and involves electrolysis. I know little about that. All I said was that some of the papers are hard to read for reasons that don't seem necessary. And I did spend time trying to read some of the ones Jed recommended and linked.

Abd:

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And, by the way, I have information that Defkalion did not actually shut down, they simply stopped talking.

Oh, good. Stopping talking was the only way they stopped lying and gaming their instruments. Or maybe you believe that seven of the world's largest companies tested and liked their "products" (Hyperions) in April 2014-- because that is what Hadjichristos wrote on his highly censored and duplicitous blog. Or perhaps you believed that liar when he claimed he would let me run my own tests unfettered on Hyperions in his lab. I sent two associates who were headed that way anyway (to Canada) including Henning Dekant and a senior professor of physics from a major university who did not want his name revealed. And none could even arrange a phone call much less a meeting with the liar.

And for trying, I got roundly abused and lambasted by idiot believers on moron blogs. Believe me, I regret even the modest effort I made.

@THHuxley

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I think you underestimate the difficultly in testing the e-cat given Rossi's behaviour, and you don't allow the fact that for Darden even though Rossi behaves like an unreliable and avowedly dishonest probable fraud, the e-cat might still work.

But I do allow for that. Even if the ecat had worked, and the evidence for that was extremely poor and uniformly defective, the probability that Darden would get anything out of Rossi would have been very small. Certainly nothing to risk more than a hundred million dollar of investor money on. The man behaved like a fool. If he couldn't get Rossi to commit to a brief and adequate test under IH's control and with their consultant, Darden should have passed because after Rossi refused such tests, the overwhelming probability at that point would have been fraud. Unfortunately, many otherwise intelligent people do not know that con men and fraud are surprisingly common and that they operate even where they have a virtual certainty of eventually being caught. It's part of their narcissism.

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I think the difficulty here is that MY does not see the scientific difficulty in proving or disproving LENR. So those who try to do this are incompetent or bogus.

No, I do not generalize in that way. If you know where I did, I must have been very sleepy or drunk. Point me to it and I will correct it.

What I say and still maintain is those examples of high power LENR claims which I have seen have been frauds or delusions. Except Brillouin which is simply insufficiently demonstrated and documented. And the people who monitored or performed the various Rossi-sanctioned experiments were indeed incompetent. For one thing, they should have never agreed to any of the so called "hot-cat" experiments when they could have performed clean, low temperature tests of the original ecats, using something like Levi's method but of course, performed and calibrated properly instead of incompetently. If they *had* to work with hot cats for some strange reason, then they should have insisted on foolproof methods and instruments, not the thermal camera. For example, they could have used a high temperature, mass flow calorimeter like this superb example: https://gsvit.wordpress.com/20…te-calorimetria-a-flusso/ (use Google Translate)

I think that low power/PdD experiments are extremely demanding and difficult which is why I generally avoid commenting on them. I know nothing about electrochemistry and don't pretend to but I do know about calorimetry and what I know tells me that what Lewan, Levi and the Swedes did from start to finish was ludicrous. I do not think Lewan and the Swedes were involved in any fraud. As I said, Levi can explain his role if he ever wants to but it's extremely suspicious to my view. I won't say more because Alan Smith would intemperately delete it!

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For me, I easily see why it is so difficult to do this. I tend to have a stronger opinion than MY that LENR does not work (she is less sure than me although I know it does not sound like that) but a less strong opinion that this case easily be proven. And I can see how and why clever people of good will disagree with me.

Let's parse that out into high level Ni-H fusion and PdD claims. I am quite positive, based on my own information and reading, that Ni-H fusion has not EVER been shown to work and that Rossi and Defkalion are outright and obvious liars and frauds. And high power claims for Ni-H fusion requiring a heater are extremely easy for experienced experts to test, absent deliberate impediments and obfuscations from a lying inventor.

Based on conversations I've had with one PhD nuclear physicist who worked on H-bomb and reactor projects and talks I had with a cousin who is an astrophysicist specializing in nuclear reactions within stars, I am very skeptical about all LENR claims. But personally, I do not know enough to judge much about PdD except, as I've said, that many of the the papers do not seem well written and well put together.

I hope that clarifies my stance... but I doubt it will. Sorry, no time to proofread this or the above.

Quote from Mary Yugo

First, for Abd, about Power Balance. It was not in any way a trivial scam. It was a larger scam than Rossi, Steorn, Defkalion and Sniffex COMBINED. And despite the settlement below, it and look alikes still continue to bamboozle the hapless out of millions of dollars each year.

huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/…ts-lawsuit_n_1105559.html

Here is one:

The scam consists of several parts: pseudoscientific claims blatantly obvious as BS to just about anyone. However, look at the thing! It's way cool! And lots of people thought so, and I don't think anyone's "performance" was damaged as a result of wearing one of these. And if you conceal it for a blind test, of course, it doesn't look cool and doesn't work ... at all. The other part is that producing these probably cost well under a dollar in China, and they were sold for $30, and often using, basically, a magic trick, a manipulated "test."

So while a lot of people were affected in some way, how many were actually damaged? I still claim that this is a minor scam. There are far, far larger ones, common, and causing enormous damage. "Bamboozle the hapless" is common pseudoskeptic cant. My guess is that the bands did improve performance, simply not through the pseuodscientific BS used for advertising them. So it was false advertising, because of those misrepresentations.

This is more than the placebo effect, a bit, but it's similar.

How is this relevant here? Mary Yugo lives in a world-view, as we all do. However, Mary apparently believes that her world view is reality, and what does not fit the view is false or wrong or bad. Her view looks at the pseudoscience (bad!) and blind testing (proof!) and predicts that a Power Balance bracelet will be useless. My view is, first of all, provisional, deliberately not fixed, though I still fall into fixations the same as everyone else. The model I have of things like the Power Balance predicts that generally, performance will improve by wearing one, but .... if it is wrapped with tape so you can't see the hologram, and it doesn't look "cool" at all, it won't improve performance -- and might even damage it under some circumstances.

I have been pointing out how, by all reasonably objective measures -- how about how much money was raised? -- Darden won. This is meaningless to Yugo, because Mary doesn't think that there is any value in LENR research in the first place.

Mary justifies her gross ageist comment with:

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As to the looks of the ecat, my response was in reaction to someone who said the internals were complex. That's impossible. Rossi did not have the means or ability to fabricate anything complex in a small volume and there was nothing whatever about the original ecats to suggest that they were anything but junk.

There are indications that the internals were more complex than what appeared on the outside. On the outside was an *appearance*, and that was part of what Rossi was creating. Assumptions were made, by Mary (and by others) about the complexity. What was really under all that foil wrapping, I certainly don't know. What I could tell was that Rossi was not allowing independent testing, and the observers were not being careful.

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Of course an elderly plumber could make good stuff but probably not a fusion reactor from rusty tubing and crude large tools.

There is no way that Mary could know that. It's a fantasy, made up. Basically, nobody knows how to make a LENR reactor on that scale. It is not impossible, though, that someone will find a way to process a fuel and catalyst so that it reacts when raised to a certain temperature. (Temperature dependence is a known LENR characteristic). The "rusty tubing" was rusty from having been heated. And it might simply be -- in fact must be -- a cover for the internals, possibly pipes within pipes. A first-pass design of a working reactor might actually be quite simple, more or less like a Rossi design. That could be why some were willing to think it could be real.

This is enough. Mary doesn't show any ability to understand the basic issues, and just repeats what she has been saying for years. She quotes me out of context:

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{quote]And, by the way, I have information that Defkalion did not actually shut down, they simply stopped talking.

Oh, good. Stopping talking was the only way they stopped lying and gaming their instruments. Or maybe you believe that seven of the world's largest companies tested and liked their "products" (Hyperions) in April 2014-- because that is what Hadjichristos wrote on his highly censored and duplicitous blog. Or perhaps you believed that liar when he claimed he would let me run my own tests unfettered on Hyperions in his lab. I sent two associates who were headed that way anyway (to Canada) including Henning Dekant and a senior professor of physics from a major university who did not want his name revealed. And none could even arrange a phone call much less a meeting with the liar.[/quote]

I had gone on to say, Mary chopped this out of my paragraph:

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I'm not confident that this is true, but ... we do not actually know what happened. They definitely had a test fail, spectacularly, i,e., in the worst way: apparent success shown to arise from an artifact that easily could be deliberate. Can't get much worse than that! But did they ever have any real results? It is similar to the Rossi situation. Maybe they did, but I wouldn't put in any money unless there were strong reasons to think it would be worth the risk.

Someone with very substantial and long-term inside knowledge of the field told me that about Defkalion, recently. I'm highly skeptical. (But I did also hear this from someone else, quite some time ago.) And I can't say anything more, beyond what I noted. It looked really bad. I would not have invested in Defkalion, as it was (before that fiasco). I was offered information under an NDA, but the embargo was way too long, so I declined. I strongly disliked the ICCF-18 video demo. What a stupid thing to inflict on so many people, taking up precious conference time to watch paint dry. There is nothing more boring than a supposed CF reactor that doesn't blow up. At least Randall Mills has learned to do much more interesting videos. (OMG! TURN IT OFF! -- as the full screen goes white.)

Abd:

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So while a lot of people were affected in some way, how many were actually damaged? I still claim that this is a minor scam.

(with reference to Power Balance wrist bands)

Abd is a cosmetician. His specialty is putting lipstick on pigs. That's what he did with Woodford's idiotic investment which had mainly to do with claims for Rossi and which was roundly lambasted by several of its shareholders in its own forum. They quickly had to shut down the debate. Typical.

As for Power Band, the Australian government (via the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission), to its credit, prevented them from making miraculous claims and forced them to retract the previous one. Basically, they admitted they were a scam.

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In 2011, researchers from RMIT's School of Health Sciences reported the results of an independent, randomized and controlled trial with double blind design. They found no difference in balance between people using a real holographic wristband and those wearing a placebo...

You can spin that any way you like. If you have a need to explore Abd's specious reasoning, first find out the truth about this unpleasant scam here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Balance

Power Balance paid out $57M in settlements because of their scam, driving them to insignificance and Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I bet now they wish they'd hired Abd as an expert consultant.

ETA: there are hundreds of reviews on Amazon and some of the spoof reviews are hilarious-- here are just two:

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Why this is actually a great product.....
By Yair Marx on November 4, 2013
You know when you meet someone and talk to them for a few minutes and realize, "Oh my god, this person is a moron, why I am talking to them? I wish I could get the last 5 minutes of my life back." Well since these bracelets were invented, that never happens to me anymore, you see someone wearing one and boom; you are able to ascertain in a millisecond that this person is severely mentally deficient. Thank you to the inventor of this product for sorting out the gene pool for us

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Top Customer Reviews5.0 out of 5 stars...and then I was asked to join the Avengers
By David Beck on February 20, 2012
Size: MediumColor: White/White Verified PurchaseOk, so I saw this online for only a dollar. I figured I'd give it a try, I mean, professional baseball players and NFL athletes were endorsing it, so clearly it wasn't just a silicone band with a hologram sticker, right? Well, upon arrival and trying it out, I was sadly disappointed. I tried lifting my car, but it wouldn't budge. I tried jumping over my garage, instead I just looked like an idiot (in front of my cute neighbor) by slamming into the garage door. I was sadly disappointed, but figured it looked cool anyway, so I left it on when I went to sleep. This is when things got serious.That night I was restless and woke up with the sweats. Upon glancing down, the Power Balance band was glowing and emitting this entrancing sound. Upon gazing into the hologram I saw a very odd looking creature holding a Power Balance band identical to the one I was wearing. Upon looking closer, I realized I was actually being sucked into the hologram! At first I resisted, but a soothing voice told me that everything would be okay, and that I had passed the initial test and that I was one of the chosen. I was trained in the hologram for what felt like years and given special abilities to take back home. After being commissioned into the Power Balance band League of the Chosen, I was sent back to my bed. The crazy thing was, no time had passed between when I was sucked into the band and when I was released. I though it all a dream and went back to sleep.Upon awaking the next day, I found that I wasn't hungry. So I decided to go for a jog. That's when my entire world was flipped upside down. As I drove to the metropark's jogging trail, I saw a police car speed by me. Being the curious natured individual I am, I decided to follow him. He ended up pulling up to a bank surrounded by about 15 police officers and a S.W.A.T. truck. Apparently four heavily armed individuals had taken hostages at the local Chase bank and were going to execute one every hour if the police didn't give in to their demands. Suddenly, my Power Balance Band started humming. A bright light engulfed my body and I found myself wearing a Superman like outfit, except instead of red and blue, it was white on white, just like my Power Balance band! Everyone was astounded as I walked up to the door and flung it open. I hardly knew what I was doing, but my instincts had set it! Immediately, I saw one of the gunmen holding my cute neighbor hostage with a gun to the back of her head. She looked into my eyes and I saw a mixture of bewilderment and raging sexual passion. I then heard her whisper "David...is that you?" Before I could do anything, the bank robber pulled the trigger. In the time it took for the bullet to leave the chamber, under a thousandth of a second, I had made my way across the room and spun the gun around, facing the gunman. The police chalked it up as a suicide.After flying away and stopping a terrorist attack on the Eiffel Tower, I returned home to figure out how to revert back to my usual self. Upon landing in my back yard, the White on White Power Balance suit disappeared. So there I was, locked outside my house, and the kicker, I was naked. Then I heard a voice. It was my neighbor. She was on her porch staring at me in awe. Apparently, the Power Balance band also...what's the proper word?..."adds" to pre-existing bodily extensions. Needless to say, we got it on. Hard. After hours and hours of lovemaking, we decided to start dating. I bought her a Power Balance band the next day, and now we avert world disasters and terrorist acts together. And the sex...PHENOMENAL.

https://www.amazon.com/Power-B…k-Lettering/dp/B002X4PZUQ

The companies newest claims are... well... no claim at all. Can't get sued that way! Rossi should take a lesson from them: http://www.powerbalance.com/technology