Rossi v. Darden developments - Part 1

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There is a hypothesis I have seen expressed privately, however, that Rossi actually did have an effect, back then, (before and perhaps into 2011) but lost it amidst all the work he did to "improve" it. This has actually happened to CF researchers, where they saw an effect and later could not replicate it, almost certainly because there was some uncontrolled condition that was unrecognized. It's a hazard of the field, and one reason why extensive experimental series are very important, as distinct from one-off results.

That's some combination of beyond stupid and intensely nuts. Real scientists keep records and reproduce experiments precisely. Are you suggesting that CF scientists merely putter around in the lab like a bunch of Frankensteins?

Quote from Shane D.

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Anyways, Rossi is fighting this thing as if he has something, and the 1MW worked as he describes. No backing down from him. Either he has has something, or he has an incredible ability to believe his own BS.

As Mr. Lomax stated, this looks to be a fishing expedition to me. It seems that AR / his lawyers have asked for every single memo, phone call, picture, travel docket that IH ever possessed. Even the make, model and serial#'s of laptops and cell phones! Crazy!

To me, it appears that the lawyers are probably trying to accomplish two things...
1) Possibly buy time with burdensome requests.
2) More likely, try to determine exactly how much "heavy ammo" IH has on this case. If they see that they are completely out gunned, factual / data wise, they might try to convince Rossi to drop the suit or they might jump ship.

I can see the conversation something like this :

AR Lawyers to Rossi : "Mr. Rossi, we need to determine exactly what evidence IH has so we can build a concrete argument for the case."
AR Lawyers amongst themselves : "We need to obtain data from IH because it is becoming clear what we are getting from Mr. Rossi is not coherent. We cannot win on his testimony. We need to find out for ourselves whether there really is a case here"

So I am unsure if this is a sign that the fight is "as if Rossi really has something" or if it is fishing by the lawyers to see if the case has a remote chance to win. Most of the requests are on issues that would be very damning to Rossi's case. The requests seem to be gathering information on just how much documented evidence will be thrown at them.

I would not be surprised once IH answers much of the requests, as they stated they would within reason, that the lawyers will pressure Rossi to try a settlement or jump ship.

Quote from Mary Yugo

That's some combination of beyond stupid and intensely nuts. Real scientists keep records and reproduce experiments precisely. Are you suggesting that CF scientists merely putter around in the lab like a bunch of Frankensteins?

Ah, I keep peeking....

Mary Yugo has been following cold fusion for a long time, and I see little excuse except maybe senility for the ignorance so confidently expressed here.

Yes, scientists usually keep careful records. However, in CF, there is very high sensitivity to material conditions, and controlling these precisely is somewhere between very difficult and impossible. Let's put it this way: just how sensitive it was to conditions was not initially known by Pons and Fleischmann, because they apparently had been very lucky with the palladium supplied to them by Johnson Matthey. When they ran out -- after having made that huge announcement -- they got more of supposedly the same material. It did not work. They could not, for a time, replicate their own prior work. Very embarrassing!

It turned out that Johnson Matthey had changed their production process. It is still quite difficult to make material that works, but matters have improved.

Very small changes to the experimental conditions, that one might think would have no effect, have resulted in what was working, now failing. Replication failure is not reliable as some sort of proof of error in an original report, because there are so many possible uncontrolled variables. (What is much more reliable would be confirmation of the original finding with, then demonstration through controlled experiment that the original finding was artifact. That is not common with cold fusion, but some reports have been identified as artifact in this way.)

Rossi is not a scientist. When I reported what I did about possible loss of a real effect, that was reporting speculation. The view is not common. Most scientists in the field are now on board "fraud from start to finish." However, the idea cannot be ruled out, unless there is even more proof of fraud than Rossi v. Darden is revealing, because when inventors have something and lose it, can't get it to work, but they are certain they had something, it is not terribly unusual that they begin faking tests, to buy time.

Quotes are from Abd:

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Mary Yugo has been following cold fusion for a long time, and I see little excuse except maybe senility for the ignorance so confidently expressed here.

Really? Ignoramus ad homs? Been taking Donald Trump lessons?

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Rossi is not a scientist.

Well, you're right there. He's a convicted criminal and a con man, and not that good a con man, just a lucky one whose main skill is in choosing gullible marks like Lewan, Levi and you.

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When I reported what I did about possible loss of a real effect, that was reporting speculation. The view is not common. Most scientists in the field are now on board "fraud from start to finish." However, the idea cannot be ruled out, unless there is even more proof of fraud than Rossi v. Darden is revealing, because when inventors have something and lose it, can't get it to work, but they are certain they had something, it is not terribly unusual that they begin faking tests, to buy time.

It is a simply idiotic view. From the start, Rossi was not claiming a small, subtle or inconsistent effect. He, and Levi, claimed kilowatts from a device the size of a tennis ball, each and every time in hundreds of hours of testing. Someone buying time? And entering into a $100 million contract based on production of a megawatt for a year? Oh shoore. That's more a flight of silly fantasy than even my pink, invisible flying unicorns.

Quote from LENR Calender

This post is a couple days old, but I have to point out to Abd that LLCs are not corporations.

They are "companies," more like corporations than unlike. https://www.legalzoom.com/know…limited-liability-company. I see that I referred to an LLC as a "limited liability corporation," which was an error. I do know the difference. I have corrected it.

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
It turned out that Johnson Matthey had changed their production process.

I believe that happened long after 1989. That was for the filter material, that Martin called "Type A palladium." I think that as far as anyone knows, the newer filter palladium also works well. There are indeed large differences between material from the same batch. This must be caused by unknown, untested-for differences in material.

My recollection is that this happened in 1989. I found this source, but I think I've read more a bit about this. Beaudette, Excess Heat, p. 55.

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Fleischmann and Pons obtained 100 per cent reproducibility ... during the winter of 1989. Their work had used palladium all taken from the same production lot. On the morning of the announcement, Marvin Hawkins set up four new cells. In doing so, he used up the remainder of the batch of palladium that had always worked. None was saved for later analysis, as it was not yet clear that batch variation would be a substantial hurdle. For a conference in October of that year, Fleischmann presented a set of 31 active cells of which 23 were reported as generating more than 20 mw of excess heat....

My thinking has been that the failure of Pons and Fleischmann to provide a high-output cathode for helium analysis in the Morrey collaboration was due to these difficulties. But I don't have direct evidence of that, it is speculation. It does explain what would otherwise be quite mysterious: why would they give such a punk cathode for what was intended as a definitive test? The helium implantation in some cathodes was intended to match what was expected from the power output they had been reporting. If it was the best they had right then, and they didn't want to admit that something was awry -- which also makes sense, as embattled as they were by then -- it, again, makes some sense, though it would, in hindsight, have been far better to admit the situation and postpone that testing until they had better results in hand.

Quote from Jack Cole

Wow. Truly ridiculous questioning from AR. It seems designed to me to 1) be overwhelming and bog IH down in providing all kinds of irrelevant information and 2) another preemptive strike to prevent IH from getting similar information (e.g., information about online aliases and accounts used by AR). I would be surprised if the judge allows these questions to stand.

IH made a more or less generic, repeated objection. Some of the questions were indeed overbroad, my opinion. Some are more pointed, but Rossi may need to establish relevance to get the judge to approve them. IH can and will ask intrusive questions and we may not know about it unless some similar move for resolution is made by them. On-line aliases might indeed be relevant, interesting idea. They have alleged on-line activity by Rossi, under his real name, and knowing aliases would provide more information about that. He was obligated not to disclose certain information and apparently did so, so asking about more of the same would make sense. If he disclosed the information using an alias, indeed, it would be on point and a violation of the agreement. But I am not aware of any examples of him doing that with an alias. Mostly he sets up commentary that his attorneys have suggested he refrain from, but his attorneys are not going to sue him for it!

So maybe.

Interrogatories can be used to harass. I wrote a set one time. I was assisting in the defense of a woman -- I was actually in a declared marriage with her -- who was being sued along with her ex-husband for damage from a fire that had escaped from a fireplace while briefly unattended. The landlord had immediately fixed the damage, then made an insurance claim, and under the subrogation clause, sued the tenants. I did legal research which I won't go into, but the insurance company had retained a firm that took the case on contingency, which is very, very unusual. So the law firm was being quite hard-nosed, since ... that was how they were going to make money, by getting a larger settlement for what they thought would not be a lot of work. So I wrote interrogatories asking a pile of questions. When they saw this, they settled for far less. This was not going to be as easy as they thought, and interrogatories can be used that way. Carrots are great, but sometimes sticks are needed too.

Here, I think the questions are merely sloppy. Rossi is fishing and some of the questions relate to parts of the case that have already been dismissed. I need to look at the response deadline for the countersuit, that is where Rossi may provide evidence countering the IH claims about fraud, etc.

IH has provided documents to Rossi, already, I suspect. The second set of requests may be related to what IH already provided.

The giant hole in the Rossi case, which makes most of the other stuff irrelevant: the lack of any clear consent to a Guaranteed Performance Test. How Annesser would proceed with a filing, so quickly, without providing evidence of that, when it is so basic, so obviously necessary, is a mystery. I suspect that Rossi simply insisted that he file immediately, and didn't want to discuss it further. Haste makes waste.

I suspect that Annesser had no clue there would even be a question about "ERV" and "Guaranteed Performance Test," which would be why he failed to allege estoppel. I also suspect that eventually Silver took a look at this and exploded, thus the move of Annesser to a new firm. She would never say so, for sure.

In fact, Rossi must have known no later than December that the "ERV" and "GPT" were not accepted by IH, from that early December email that Rossi now quotes from, demanding to know the basis for their claim.

Like, duh, "we never agreed to it!" If they did, very simple: a sane Rossi businessman would have the evidence, but, of course, a sane businessman would have gotten it in writing. Relying on estoppel is foolish, only to be done when necessary because of an earlier failure under different conditions, like complete trust leading to informality ... and naivete.

Hey, remind me! If $89 million is involved, consult a friggin' attorney!

Quote from JedRothwell

I do not know about the Morrey collaboration. What I know is that Martin handed out J-M Type A cathodes to many researchers, and those cathodes worked better than any other. Mel Miles got about 10 times more heat out of them than any other type. I described this on p. 6 and 7 here:

That was later, after they had recovered at least partially. I don't know that they ever again reached 100%. Maybe. 100% is a rare claim. And even when there is high "success," the heat varies greatly. It's pretty clear, this is still not under solid control.

We have never received any decent explanation of what happened with the Morrey collaboration. Essentially, they stonewalled. It's a shame. I'd love to give Pons a standing ovation at ICCF-21. Even if he screwed up in some ways, what they found makes that pale in significance. Truth is powerful. Admitting error is very powerful, we often have it backwards, we think it will be humiliating.

Only if we say so.