Validation of Randell Mills GUTCP - a call for action

Flaky is the right word. I assess Mills purely on the basis of 20+? years without anything to show for it = something wrong.

I was going to add the 30?m dollars he's earnt received, but compared to other possibly-optimistic startups*, I guess that isn't all that much.

* https://www.ceek.io/

edit: Also, publishing your 600+ page thesis on why the last 50+ years of physics is wrong - without a fancy experimental proof - is a pretty ballsy move, to say the least.

We are yet to see Musk's textbook on Rocket Science, for example.

Quote from snoopy

stefan

They have been saying that (and many more optimistic predictions for power stations and other practical applications) for more than TWENTY YEARS NOW. "This year" (or next) is always the year they will prove it to the world. And they have never explained why their prior predictions of amazing success expected "soon" did not happen!

Apparently their investors buy this and continue to give BLP and Mills money. The human mind works in strange ways!

Mills have expressed a satisfaction from being fringe and under the radar cuz it kept competition away. And now there is on the agenda to prove it to the public, I find that an interesting game changer. Do you realize that if he fails to do that this year

his funding will most probably stop.

Quote from stefan

Table 1, from bomb calormetry seam to be from a control, with gain less then one and with the silver shot and then a gain with about 2x. Seam to indicate excess energy, it's not huge due to the need to blow the capsule and the real systems should have higher gain. The control tests seam to show up to 20% errors.

Thank you Stefan.

So you suggest that the low energy gain here is deliberate: they could adjust it for higher but don't do this for fear of breaking the capsule.

That does not really answer the question. They know that secure measurement of significant excess energy is the litmus test which would make the whole world look more closely at their claims. In this case they also know that with such transient power production there are uncertainties over their attempts to measure this optically (which does not properly integrate over time, and EMP issues on the input side. (I'm very happy they recognise this, I have been saying it would be an issue since their earliest arc welder induced explosion claims).

Both of these could with better methodology be cured, although the input side measurement is difficult. They have, for whatever reason - I would claim because it makes mistaken positive results highly probable - found an experiment here with input energy that is very difficult properly to measure, and output energy that is currently not properly measured. Instead of a bomb calorimeter and half a page of analysis they have 100 pages of tendentious data and analysis.

One additional problem, which I did not notice before, comes from page 115 on their report. That shows that they obtain 20J input energy by integrating over what they consider to be the 300us of the "blast event". The total input energy before this, within 2ms of the event, is another 70J at least (get this from their stated total input of 110J - an extra 90J - and eyeballing the shape of the power vs time curve).

Before the blast that energy will be absorbed by the system and it is another tendentious set of assumptions to ensure that this absorped energy is not significant.

There is a pattern here:

over 20 years:

Calorimetry methods have got progressively worse (their first offering has secure calorimetry, but unclear possibilities for purely chemical excess heat).

Claims of energy out / energy in have got less convincing*

The last offering, an electrolytic cell, had claimed high energy out / in. But that was with much higher total energy input than the output. They were continually charging and discharging a cell and looking at the charge/discharge energy difference. Small measurement errors can make a big difference to the headline fogure.

I'm not saying here that the people doing this work are in any way dishonest. I am saying that the demos they have offered have striking flaws which make the claimed headline figures completely unreliable. And it gets worse over time. Instead of drilling down a previous method, optimising it and getting clearer data, they witch to a completely new method with completely new - even more difficult to quantify - errors.

Are the errors here large enough to deliver the claimed results? We will obviously never know. What we can know is that without much more work the results are within what is plausibly obtained from a mundane system and the measurement uncertainties I've outlined. Because there are a number of quite different uncertainties, all difficult to quantify, it is inherently difficult to resolve.

Given this fact, and the BLP history of never being able to provide results which pass objective and careful technical analysis, I give them an extremely low probability of having anything real. After all, their imperative from these demos is to produce the best possible external validation - that will affect how much investment they can get.

The fact that they still get investment is not surprising and due to many people intrigued by Mills' theoretical ideas, in spite of the fact that they have been thoroughly refuted by experts. We live in a world where experts are treated with skepticism and that is of course correct: experts can have biasses, and can be systematically wrong.

Without experts the BLP set of demos does not pass the smell test: they are so obviously full of experimental uncertainty.

PS

I realise my contributions here don't get many ticks. The thing is, I'm fascinated by the outside chance that some non-standard effects might exist: metal lattices are different from other systems and significant fusion or other nuclear event within a metal lattice is not in principle theoretically impossible. Nor is skewing the branching ratio from such a process, because the low energy tails of nuclear reactions are not so well investigated. So theoretically I'm all in favour of something novel. It is just that I like to be realistic when judging experimental evidence. When you have something that looks, feels, and sounds like a spade, claiming that it is a diamond in disguise does not attract me.

It does no-one any favours to have the experimental results from parties with a vested interest (like these fringe companies) taken more seriously than they should be, because it distracts from any other results that might be more significant.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I'm not saying here that the people doing this work are in any way dishonest.

I think what irks me about BLP is that it is hard for me to agree with this position, even if I squint my eyes. There are several things they have been doing (the predictably underwhelming measurements, the transparently dubious validation reports, and the apparent misdirection of the equation-filled GUT-CP volumes) about which at minimum they should have known better, but the likely scenario is that they knew what they were doing and have sought to put up an impressive show for investors and possibly scare away people with the qualifications to call them out.

Quote from Eric Walker

I think what irks me about BLP is that it is hard for me to agree with this position, even if I squint my eyes. There are several things they have been doing (the predictably underwhelming measurements, the transparently dubious validation reports, and the apparent misdirection of the equation-filled GUT-CP volumes) about which at minimum they should have known better, but the likely scenario is that they knew what they were doing and have sought to put up an impressive show for investors and possibly scare away people with the qualifications to call them out.

Eric: others, MY here for example, have been quite clear that they believe they are dishonest. It may be so. I have no evidence they are not dishonest and would not want to defend them. But, in such a situation I'll not be the first to cast stones, and am not interested enough to investigate all the claimed dirty laundry.

From my POV there is not much difference: they ask for money on flaky evidence which looked at historically would convince no-one of any sense. Probably Mills is convincing, and it seems they can still find investors. A bit like Rossi, but less transparently and clearly problematic.

I don't actually disagree with you about what is likely but I'm uncertain and unless my nose is rubbed in it I'll not say that.

That's surely the prudent approach.

In my case, I observe people here who become enthralled with the whole analytical classical quantum mechanics thing and fail to read through the validation and other supporting documents with any attention to detail, or who note apparent problems but are willing to overlook them. They end up praising BLP so much that a casual reader of this site might think that BLP are in the same category as bona fide researchers who have been looking at LENR for years. That creates a breeding ground for extended consideration of wobbly and funky claims (think Rossi) and obscures what the real researchers have been doing (or failing to do, in some cases). (We can note here that Mills says that hydrinos are not LENR, but that does not change the point.)

Quote from Eric Walker

That's surely the prudent approach.

In my case, I observe people here who become enthralled with the whole analytical classical quantum mechanics thing and fail to read through the validation and other supporting documents with any attention to detail, or who note apparent problems but are willing to overlook them. They end up praising BLP so much that a casual reader of this site might think that BLP are in the same category as bona fide researchers who have been looking at LENR for years. That creates a breeding ground for extended consideration of wobbly and funky claims (think Rossi) and obscures what the real researchers have been doing (or failing to do, in many instances).

I Certainly think that Mills is a researcher just like every one else. He is actually much more sharp a scientist than most scientist I know, some of them introduced Mills to me. Look at his technical evolution where he actually solve real technical problems, just as any other good researcher. I think you all are unfair and completely wrong.

Quote from snoopy

Rowan U. and others never produced clear results and all were paid by Mills. When a company uses confusing methods, avoids expert validation, and their results get more nebulous and harder to verify with time, you really must include dishonesty as a possible cause. It is also strange that the company promises amazing results but these are always promised for the next year or two, never happen, and no explanation or correction is ever given. It's as if they forgot what they said 20, 18, 16 .... and 2 years ago. Their MO seems similar to Rossi's in principle though they do seem to be better at it . Self-delusion is also possible but how far and how long can that sort of thing continue when there is plenty of talent and money with which to conduct meaningful tests?

Where are all the academic work that explains, verify or does not find the spectaral evidences that Mills finds? It would be much easier to dismiss MIlls if real academics did there job. Think about all the 100 Million dollars that could be saved for real scientific use!!

Quote from stefan

I think you all are unfair and completely wrong.

Fair enough. Each person is entitled to an opinion. Above I have made three main claims, more or less: (1) That the BLP measurements have been predictably underwhelming. (2) That the validation reports are transparently dubious. And (3) that the equation-filled GUT-CP volumes are an apparent misdirection. You and I have had extended discussions on (3), and I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. Would you be willing to rebut my claims (1) or (2)?

Quote from Eric Walker

Fair enough. Each person is entitled to an opinion. Above I have made three main claims, more or less: (1) That the BLP measurements have been predictably flaky over the years. (2) That the validation reports are transparently dubious. And (3) that the equation-filled GUT-CP volumes are an apparent misdirection. You and I have had extended discussions on (3), and I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. Would you be willing to rebut my claims (1) or (2)?

I think that they did validations with minimalistic presentation, probably all the validators left notes to BrLp which finished the report, made sure they did not reveal any secrets and then publish them hence the similar format. The validators probably signed the documents confirming that it was correct information. I don't see any problems with this it has a purpose and especially if I as an investor got time to talk with the validators I would be fine with that. I don't think that we have exact the same information as the more involved persons in this

and mills and his team seam to be able to do advanced technical development so I don't find it likely that they do bad science, that speaks against they actually have done They might be a bit to optimistic in what they can achieve and a simple heater with a KISS principle should be high on the agenda, just as it is today but was not initially. What you call dubious I call was done by design. Also note that Mills knows about overfitting, he complains that the QM folks fall in that trap, so it should be ironic if he has done the same. Today they should be able to run the system at moderate effect for hours, the control should be good and they can close it. This means that Mills today should have good old calorimetric results in his desk that prove over unity. AS I understand it such third party validations is undergoing that is no sparks but heat for hours in stead. So I tend to agree that one need to be cautious to draw conclusion of what we have, a bit dissapointed that akademia hasn't debunked or confirmed Mills spectroscopic findings and awaits with some hope the meaning of "proving it to the public"

Quote from stefan

I think that they did validations with minimalistic presentation, probably all the validators left notes to BrLp which finished the report, made sure they did not reveal any secrets and then publish them hence the similar format. The validators probably signed the documents confirming that it was correct information. I don't see any problems with this it has a purpose and especially if I as an investor got time to talk with the validators I would be fine with that. I don't think that we have exact the same information as the more involved persons in this

Ok. Let me fill in some details to this account, which might be accurate but missing some things. When one hears the word "validation," and especially "independent validation," one does not expect a ghostwritten document that was merely signed off by the party. I agree that parts of some of the recent validation reports look like they were ghostwritten, as there are large segments of text that are nearly (but not quite) identical between the different reports. It is actually worse than that: in one validation report, there are entire papers cribbed from Mills that are slipped in as sections, unattributed.

In an academic context, this would provide a basis for an accusation of plagiary, of an omitted author or of a critical lack of independence. We are clearly far from a situation in which academic norms would apply. That takes us out of the realm of serious academic research, and hence out of the realm of bona fide LENR researchers.

But we should continue. Not only is it plausible that the validation reports by the nominally independent validators were ghostwritten in part and based on a template, at least one of the validators has had a paid consulting arrangement with BLP for around two decades and collaborated with them during his (master's?) thesis. I think at this point that we can no longer use the word "independent," lest it lose all meaning.

If we can no longer apply the word "independent" to the validation reports, can we call them "validations"? It seems to me that we cannot. We learn from reading closely that the validators did not take the measurements themselves and simply relied on data given to them by BLP. I think the phrase "transparently dubious" is apt, because I got all of this information from the reports themselves (hopefully I haven't messed up the details too much). I suspect you will disagree.

It seems to me from your second paragraph that you agree with me, however, that the measurements have been underwhelming; perhaps you even agree that they have been predictably underwhelming.

There was at least one earlier report from a researcher who was obviously qualified which was short, diplomatic and not in this mold. It made for interesting reading and pointed out that the measurement technique was a new one.

Quote from Eric Walker

Ok. Let me fill in some details to this account, which might be accurate but missing some things. When hears the word "validation," and especially "independent validation," one does not expect a ghostwritten document that was merely signed off by the party. I agree that parts of some of the recent validation reports look like they were ghostwritten, as there are large segments of text that are nearly (but not quite) identical between the different reports.

In an academic context, this would provide a basis for an accusation of plagiary, of an omitted author or of a critical lack of independence. We are clearly far from a situation in which academic norms would apply. That takes us out of the realm of serious research, and hence out of the realm of bona fide LENR researchers.

We should continue with the validation reports, however, and not lose our train of thought. Not only is it plausible that the validation reports by the nominally independent validators were ghostwritten, based on a template, at least one of the validators has had a paid consulting arrangement with BLP for around two decades and prior to that collaborated with them during his (master's?) thesis. I think at this point that we can no longer use the word "independent," lest it lose all meaning.

If we can no longer apply the word "independent" to the validation reports, can we use the word "validation"? It seems to me that we cannot. We learn from reading closely that the validators did not take the measurements themselves and simply relied on data given to them by BLP. I think the phrase "transparently dubious" is apt. I suspect you will disagree.

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As an academic I can't reference the validation reports. But I can let it guide my research for example set up a validation experiment myself for some of the many spectroscopic findings that Mills report. As a VD or as a Investor the procedure is pragmatically okey with the validations. I have really no problem with setup from a corporate perspective actually I would enforce it to some degree. I view corporate research as academic research on the same footings, the timings are differnt, in akademia you perish if you don't publish and in corporate you can perish if you publish too early and you need to patent patent patent and keep secret for some time until the product is settled and all important patents have been taken. BrLP is weird in that they let loose of so much information and can somehow get away with it because it is all viewed as fringe. Mills really enjoy this feature. But maybe it's all a hoax, we will see, some more entertainment remains.

Quote from THHuxleynew

The fact that they still get investment is not surprising and due to many people intrigued by Mills' theoretical ideas, in spite of the fact that they have been thoroughly refuted by experts.

This statement is an expression of desparation. If you can't tell what has been refuted, then hang on an watch the Olympics ...

Quote from Eric Walker

They end up praising BLP so much that a casual reader of this site might think that BLP are in the same category as bona fide researchers who have been looking at LENR for years. That creates a breeding ground for extended consideration of wobbly and funky claims (think Rossi) and obscures what the real researchers have been doing (or failing to do, in some cases). (We can note here that Mills says that hydrinos are not LENR, but that does not change the point.)

We must clearly distinguish between Mills scientific work and his company. Mills contributions to science are outstanding and by far the most important of the last 50 years. Who blames Einstein for all the rubbish he invented in between the final findings?

Do not use such a harsh language. Science is always a trial and error and sometimes rubbish, like the cosmological constant, shines up again. Theory most likely has no end.

But what Mills is doing with BRLP is more or less a kind of standard marketing terror, because he is completely over estimating his knowledge/ability as an engineer. He makes the same error as Lipinski(s) and calculates the total energy produced as integral over the full space angle, what is blatantly wrong.

All LENR processes and the Mills one is of the same kind, have a spin structured energy production. If he would measure in direction of the self sustain spiral axes, then he would see a completely different picture. This does not imply that a high energy gain is excluded, but it shows, that he does not understand the process.

Unluckily he stopped GUT-CP at the point where things start to completely change and he was satisfied to believe that Hydrinos have the structure he found...

PS: For the Mills haters: Nobody refuted his treatment of the chemical bond. Nobody refuted his calculations of the Lepton masses, the anomalous electron g-factors and many other things...

Quote from Wyttenbach

Nobody refuted his calculations ofthe Lepton masses

As I've pointed out before, Mills's calculation of the neutron-electron mass ratio diverges from the 2012 CODATA experimental value and error bounds. I suppose that is a refutation of sorts.

Quote from Eric Walker

As I've pointed out before, Mills's calculation of the neutron-electron mass ratio diverges from the 2012 CODATA experimental value and error bounds. I suppose that is a refutation of sorts.

You miss the point: This is a small gadget of Mills theory. I told you once before that Mills failed to understand the 4D effects and thus his work about higher dimensional particles - the neutron is a 4D particle - is not complete. There are many other points where Mills theory is not as accurate as it could be. But standard theory has no comparable alternative that calculates physical quantities just from the basic constants.

I can give you a formula where you can match electron and proton/neutron!! by more than 6 digits, but still less than codata. Does this mean that the formula is wrong? No, its incomplete, but still way better than antything else on the market. Bdw.: The gravity constant limits all to less than 7 digits - so we even can't say it's incomplete...

Ok, Wyttenbach. Let's assume the neutron-electron mass ratio is a small detail (an incorrect conclusion in my view, but let's go with it), and that it doesn't matter that there have probably been semiempirical, analytically derived equations to calculate the quantities you mention for a long time prior to Mills. We can ask a more important question. You mention that Mills's theory accounts for chemical bonds, the lepton masses (apart from the problem with the neutron-electron mass ratio), the g-factors and many other things. Does it account for the all of the main problems that quantum mechanics seeks to model? These include the anomalous results of the two-slit experiment and processes at the nuclear level.

Epimetheus has mentioned that there is a claim in GUT-CP that Mills's model accounts for the results of the Aspect experiments, which, along with other experiments around the same time, demonstrated a violation of Bell's inequality, and hence ruled out local realism. I asked Epimetheus to follow up on those claims in GUT-CP and see if they were correct and the method of calculation a necessary consequence of Mills's theoretical apparatus, but I have not heard back from him yet.

You have suggested that QM's treatment of phenomena at the nuclear level is only valid out to the Bohr radius. But that might as well be light years away from the nucleus on the scale that nuclear phenomena are concerned with, and so not an objection of consequence.

It seems to me that until Mills's theoretical apparatus tackles these and other domains that are central to quantum mechanics, it is premature to become enamored of it, especially when the orbitsphere would seem to be unphysical.