you would still not be able to measure the strength or assurance of a given message, and the extent to which it enhanced or reduced Rossi's credibility. You would not know who read the messages or what effect it had.
Of course I too have no way of knowing the effect of my writing was. But here is something I do know, that Mary Yugo and no one else can know. At various times over the years people have contacted me and asked me my opinion of Rossi and other researchers. My responses are in my own email, and on disk. So I can tell you --
In every case I always said that all cold fusion research is risky, and likely to prove wrong. I never fail to say that! No one knows that better than I do. No one other than Ed Storms has as many records of failed cold fusion experiments as I do, both published and unpublished. Unlike Yugo, I actually read papers before judging them, so I know about real, documented failures, not imaginary ones such as "isoperibolic calorimeters don't work."
I always said that Rossi is widely considered an unreliable person with a checkered past. He is someone an ordinary businessman would run from. I am sure I always said that he refused to allow me to make any measurements, so I cannot vouch for him, and furthermore that is a suspicious thing to do.
So if ever I exerted influence over a decision (which I consider unlikely), it was in the direction of caution, wrapped in many layers of academese cotton wool to avoid breakage. Or, to put it unflattering terms, my opinions are wrapped in "plausible deniability" as Nixon used to call it. There is no chance I would ever have given Rossi -- of all people! -- an unqualified endorsement.
I would also tell anyone who asked, as I reported here, that everyone I know who worked with Rossi came to hate his guts. An otherwise mild-mannered scientist says that if they ever meet again he will punch Rossi in the nose. I spent three days with the people from NASA at a conference in Virginia, chatting from time to time over beer. Rossi did, really, physically, put them in danger with his plugged up reactor, which he refused to check until steam began coming out from under the lid. Then he threw them out of the lab yelling, screeching and carrying on like a madman. Yes, that did happen! They have no love for him. They did not hesitate to tell me this, and I have never hesitated to relate it here or anywhere else.
This would be hilarious stuff if Rossi had not (apparently) destroyed I.H., caused them to fire their staff, and ended most funding for cold fusion.
