Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

    @ can,


    Quote from can

    Reading earlydocumentation from Krivit'stimeline of Rossi events for the 2009-2011 period, it's clear that nobodyhas ever had the opportunity to conclusivelytest an E-Cat and especially test one without Rossi around. Some tests havebeen performed in front of government officials (documented examples exist forthe latter, like thisone from Tony Tether, former head of DARPA, referring to tests made with the NRL), but this is far from sayingthat Rossi worked for this or thatdepartment of the US government or worked withthis or that person.


    Krivit's chronology is very useful, but it has a lot of big holes, especially before 2009. It probably has not been updated for a long time. For example, it does not contain all the information revealed by Macy in April 2016 (1).


    By her words we know that:


    Quote

    From: http://www.infinite-energy.com…ng-a-lawsuit-in-lenr.html

    […] The rules of the United States Government, which in 2009 Michael Melich had been an employee of since 1976,

    […]

    Michael Melich and I probably spent more time with Andrea Rossi than most people in the LENR field, certainly in the U.S. He stayed at our home. We traveled with him. We got to know his inner circle, wife, even his mother-in-law (adorable.) We were with him in Rome, Washington, Greece, New York, and many other places. If Andrea Rossi had a working LENR technology, a lot of people were trying to help him get it out there.

    […]


    From the sequence of the above sentences, it seems that these travels would have helped Rossi to have a working technology. In that case they were business travels, at least in part. I wonder who paid for them.


    As for the test witnessed by the former head of DARPA, I find it surreal that he wrote on Rossi's device "that it definitely was working", and at the same time a DOD employee was in the board of a Journal aimed to promote and sell the Rossi patent in all the world. Especially for anyone who was aware that:


    Quote

    From: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/n…9/2009DIA-08-0911-003.pdf

    […]

    If nuclear reactions in LENR experiments are real and controllable, DIA assesses that whoever produces the first commercialized LENR power source could revolutionize energy production and storage for the future. […] And since the U.S. military is the largest user of liquid fuel for transportation, LENR power sources could produce the greatest transformation of the battlefield for U.S. forces since the transition from horsepower to gasoline power.


    Unless the statement "If it is a hoax, it is a damn good one" has to be interpreted literally.


    Finally, as regards the lack of tests without Rossi around, I remind you that JR has said many times that there have been a test carried out in the United States while Rossi was in Europe (1).

    (1) Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

    @ can,


    Quote from can

    After actually investing some time reading old documents, Ascoli65's scenario now appears to me even less likely than it previously was. I urge him once again to put together a well-structured and well-sourced coherent document about his hypothesis, as I suspect it has been built on loose foundations. The process of writing such document might also help him seeing where the holes are.


    So disappointing.


    I'm so sorry, but you will remain disappointed, simply because such a scenario doesn't exist.


    I'll already told you why, but I'll try again with other words.


    It does exist only one "true scenario". Moreover, there are endless "conceivable scenarios", that is, all those you can imagine with your fantasy. From this large set, each of us cuts out his subset of "plausible scenarios" within which we deem that the "true scenario" resides. Each personal subset of "plausible scenarios" are delimited by a personal set of plausibility criteria. I already told you what my criteria are: 1 – there is no working Ecat, 2 – the Ecat initiative is not a Rossi's scam. These two criteria define an area of plausibility that still contains an infinite subset of scenarios, within which I think there is the true one. So you will never find any Ascoli65's scenario, because this single scenario doesn't exist.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Ascoli65

    So, he didn't ruled out having worked with Ahern, he simply didn't remember. But he remembered to have met an homonym 14 years before. Quite strange, considering that he already had presented Ahern as his first competitor:


    "he did not rule out having worked with Ahern"...LOLs. This is your reference:


    "Dear Enzo:

    I do not remember to have worked with my very good colleague Brian Ahern. But I worked in the USA with so many People and in so many places, that it is not impossible. I just do not remember. I worked in 1997 with a person whose name is Brian Ahern, he was a manager of Home Depot and we studied the possibility to make a household apparatus to turn wastes into energy, but I do not know if is the same person.

    Warm Regards,

    A.R."


    How you can deduce from that, what you did is beyond me. He clearly says, the only Ahern he has ever worked with was a manager at Home Depot. Probably lied about that also. Really weakens your case IMO.


    And no to your: "In any case, if someone here on L-F is contact with Celani, he can ask directly if he wants to provide some clarification on this point.". Celani is a respected member here, and he has probably already read your posts, and answered you with his silence.

    [...]


    Quote from Ascoli65

    I'll already told you why, but I'll try again with other words.


    It does exist only one "true scenario". Moreover, there are endless "conceivable scenarios", that is, all those you can imagine with your fantasy. From this large set, each of us cuts out his subset of "plausible scenarios" within which we deem that the "true scenario" resides. Each personal subset of "plausible scenarios" are delimited by a personal set of plausibility criteria. I already told you what my criteria are: 1 – there is no working Ecat, 2 – the Ecat initiative is not a Rossi's scam. These two criteria define an area of plausibility that still contains an infinite subset of scenarios, within which I think there is the true one. So you will never find any Ascoli65's scenario, because this single scenario doesn't exist.


    I will try to put it more clearly too, then.


    Do lay out your so-called puzzle pieces of this story into a well-structured document summarizing and referencing clearly why in your opinion there is no working E-Cat and why at the same time the E-Cat is not a Rossi's scam, filling the gaps left by other skeptics in documenting what happened so far.


    Such a document doesn't need to be immutable, unlike the multitude of comments you've left on blogs and forums alike over the years. It could be a "live document", to be updated and refined whenever needs be.


    What is honestly disappointing is that despite the efforts you've clearly put towards collecting all the information so far, your efforts in linking it together don't appear to be too well thought-out, and they are likely misguided by a series of incorrect personal assumptions.


    Such assumptions define the narrative you're trying to expose: Ascoli65's narrative. That might still end up being an interesting read, but you can't expect people to wade through hundreds of scattered comments to truly understand it.


    That's it.

    Shane D.

    The following exchange would make that even more weird in my opinion:


    https://web.archive.org/web/20120301063119/http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/10/08/e-cat-test-demonstrates-energy-loss/ (Krivit quoted in the comments an email from Brian Ahern)



    http://www.journal-of-nuclear-…516&cpage=1#comment-93362 (JONP comment by Enrico Billi referring the above email)



    http://www.journal-of-nuclear-…516&cpage=1#comment-93449 (Rossi's comment)



    Although to be fair it's interesting that here Rossi appeared to imply that it was Ahern himself who was disseminating this information around.

    @ Shane D.,


    Quote from Shane D.

    How you can deduce from that, what you did is beyond me. He clearly says, the only Ahern he has ever worked with was a manager at Home Depot. Probably lied about that also. Really weakens your case IMO.


    Rossi knew very well who Brian Ahern was. In his Ecat timeline (1), Krivit reports that Ahern acted as the liaison between Rossi and a possible investor, just in April 2011. Rossi had all the possibilities to remember if he had ever worked in the past with that famous LENR researcher. Therefore the wording he used to deny ("I do not remember to have worked with my very good colleague Brian Ahern.") is too weak, because it doesn't rule out that he did it, as confirmed by the subsequent "it is not impossible".


    If he wanted to be more resolute, he would have used the same wording of a few weeks later: "I never met him, I never spoke with him, I never worked with him, directly or indirectly."


    Quote

    And no to your: "In any case, if someone here on L-F is contact with Celani, he can ask directly if he wants to provide some clarification on this point.". Celani is a respected member here, and he has probably already read your posts, and answered you with his silence.


    A confirmation silence, I suppose.

    (1) http://newenergytimes.com/v2/s…iECat/RossiTimeline.shtml

    @ can,


    Quote from can

    Do lay out your so-called puzzle pieces of this story into a well-structured document summarizing and referencing clearly why in your opinion there is no working E-Cat and why at the same time the E-Cat is not a Rossi's scam, filling the gaps left by other skeptics in documenting what happened so far.


    No well-structured document is needed to briefly summarize and justify these 2 opinions:


    1 - I'm convinced that there is no working Ecat because: a – CF/LENR phenomena have been denied by mainstream science since 1989 (see wikipedia), b – the theoretical probability of a Ni-H nuclear reaction was deemed impossible by Focardi, who said that the evidences of large energy production were only experimental (see Rossi-Focardi paper), c – the large energy productions claimed in all the Ecat tests in 2011 can be trivially explained (agree?).


    2- IMO the Ecat affair is not a Rossi's scam mainly because I find it impossible that the JoNP, the main propaganda tool widely used to perpetrate an alleged personal world scam for 7+ years (to date), could have seen the involvement of a US department for so long (see the issues raised by Krivit in his 2 mails to Vortex immediately after the appearance of the JoNP on the web).


    Quote

    ... the multitude of comments you've left on blogs and forums alike over the years.


    Let me quantify this multitude. I posted less than 280 comments on L-F, one third of yours, less than one tenth of many other contributors. Almost all are replies to comments addressed to me, very few were new interventions. For instance, in these last weeks, I posted almost 70 messages, all but one are answers to various replies or objections to my previous comments. My first and only new intervention was a short comment posted on March 18, just to suggest a couple of links to oldguy, and it was my second comment in 6 months.


    Over the years, I usually posted on one forum at a time. As for the English sites, I was posting on ecatnews, when it closed, and I migrated on animpossibleinvention. But this blog has been also shut off, so I came here on L-F. For a while, I also posted on coldfusioncommunity, when I was banned from L-F.


    Quote

    What is honestly disappointing is that despite the efforts you've clearly put towards collecting all the information so far, your efforts in linking it together don't appear to be too well thought-out, and they are likely misguided by a series of incorrect personal assumptions.


    I have already told you that it is impossible to link together all the valid information collected so far, as it is impossible to form a continuous skeleton across a puzzle with only a fraction of the pieces. It's only possible forming local clusters of apparently coherent pieces, but their position, and often even their orientation, remains undefined.


    Quote

    Such assumptions define the narrative you're trying to expose:


    Apart that a graduate in philosophy can't fool a physics professor on water flow calorimetry, what other assumptions of mine are you referring to?


    Quote

    Ascoli65's narrative.


    Until now, only two narratives of the Ecat story have been exposed: JR1 (professors + Edison + Wrights = genius) and JR2 (Doral + Penon + mezzanine = fraudster). But, as reported by well informed people, I think that the main protagonist acted as a PR-man, but I have no specific narrative on this story.


    Quote

    That might still end up being an interesting read, but you can't expect people to wade through hundreds of scattered comments to truly understand it.


    Sorry, that reading doesn't exist. I understand the difficulty of gathering all the scattered information. The best I can suggest is to look at the coldfusioncommunity page where I had a close confrontation with Abd UlRahman Lomax (1), where almost all the topics I dealt with were discussed. Unfortunately the sequence of the comments is not linear (the first comments of mine were posted by Cimpy, because I was not able to post directly), but in only one page you can find the links to a large part of the original documents (the pieces of the puzzle) that I kept on my table.


    (1) http://coldfusioncommunity.net/low-down-on-lie-bull/

    • Official Post
    Quote from Ascoli65

    Therefore the wording he used to deny ("I do not remember to have worked with my very good colleague Brian Ahern.") is too weak, because it doesn't rule out that he did it, as confirmed by the subsequent "it is not impossible".


    Ascoli,


    Before, you were saying that Rossi told the truth to Passerini and Celani about his working with Ahern. Yet here you claim he was lying when he denied working with him. This is getting very complex, and increasingly implausible. Is he lying, or is he being truthful? No telling. I see it as an impossible task to guess what is the lie, and what is the truth, coming from the mouth of a proven serial liar.


    That leaves us with the facts, you and Can have presented to base our judgement on; we have Ahern on the record saying he never worked with Rossi, and we know we can trust his word. Also, we have Rossi on his JONP saying that the only Ahern he ever worked with, was at the Home Depot on 1997.


    Leaving me to conclude there is nothing to your conspiracy theory.

    The most specious part of Ascoli’s years of pleading his case is the notion that one maverick Navy employee being associated with Rossi implies that “a U.S. Deparment” is involved. I understand that Ascoli is not an American and may have rather strange ideas of how things work in this country. However, the fact is that the tens of thousands of people working at various government labs come in all stripes and predilections and there are plenty of flakes and crackpots pursuing all manner of things. None of it implies any sort of governmental approval or acceptance. It is, as they say, a free country. But accepting that obvious truth is beyond Ascoli’s reach because, as Anne Elk would say, he has a theory which is his and belongs to him.

    2- IMO the Ecat affair is not a Rossi's scam mainly because I find it impossible that the JoNP, the main propaganda tool widely used to perpetrate an alleged personal world scam for 7+ years (to date), could have seen the involvement of a US department for so long (see the issues raised by Krivit in his 2 mails to Vortex immediately after the appearance of the JoNP on the web).


    (1) Single people controlling R&D budgets can push through funding for whacky ideas in large institutions. The standards for this are variable and can be much lower than needed for scientific budgets to be allocated because the decision-makers are not scientists and can back people, hunches, etc.

    (2) When such funding is allocated it will typically (to get it through large institution controls) be masked as part of a wider program.

    (3) It is in no-one's interest to declare such effort a failure. Where funding is for some high risk high return possibility a judgement will be made, after initial work, on whether results merit further funding. If they do not this is seen just as less work done. often the people involved, if committed and determined, can continue to keep the work alive without much backing - but also without funds for any new work.


    The mistake made by ascoli, and others here, for example when evaluating japanese work, is to think that low levels of industrial or governmental interest in LENR mean success. In fact, any research work that was in conventional terms successful - either to generate scientifically influential new results or to show significant prospects for commercial product - will be followed up.


    So, for example, take the Japanese work. The claims are for an effect that if optimised you would expect to be commercial. Certainly, if optimised, it would lead to lab rat type experiments that will unequivocally prove LENR a real effect. If this happens we will all be excited and happy. If it does not happen, it is an indication that most likely the skeptics were correct and the encouraging results were some combination of measurement errors.


    My skepticism about LENR, in spite of the good-sounding theoretical stories from Hagelstein etc, is that the reported effects don't seem to optimise or become much more easily measured when positive results are followed up. That is a sign of pathological science (if chased) or a non-event. Nothing is certain in science and LENR has excuses, it could be an effect that is transient (NAEs get destroyed) difficult to reproduce (NAEs require complex and badly characterised treatment to form). These excuses justify some continuing efforts, but do not prove the claimed effects are LENR or anything other than a collection of measurement artifacts (excess heat) and misinterpretations (transmutation).

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    My skepticism about LENR, in spite of the good-sounding theoretical stories from Hagelstein etc, is that the reported effects don't seem to optimise or become much more easily measured when positive results are followed up.


    I think you nailed it here.


    In a successful science, discoveries are not just replicated ,,, they are adopted, worked into the fabric of normal lab operations, and become the springboard for a new wave of research. The initial findings are therefore replicated over and over as researchers use them to explore other things. This is exactly what is missing in LENR research. I see people here producing lists of results that have been replicated, but these replications never seem to go anywhere. They are threads of research that always seem to putter out.


    This shallowness of replication doesn't seem to disturb many in the field of LENR. But it certainly lends a different feel to this branch of science than the one I am used to. And I am with you in that I think it might be the feel of pathological science.

    While I'm sympathetic to some of the preceding analyses, they overlook a legitimate exploratory phase that precedes some major discoveries, where there are indications that there is some new phenomenon to be understood, but the problem is still barely tractable. If you include pre-science, this is even easier to see:

    • Alchemy eventually matures into chemistry. (I.e., there really was something interesting there, just not what the alchemists were looking for.)
    • Photographic film is known as early as 1858 to become exposed when placed near pitchblend, as reported by Abel Niepce de St. Victor to the French Academy of Science, decades before Roentgen and Becquerel. (Again, there was something there.)

    If there is a progression from pre-scientific exploration to full-on normal science, in Kuhn's terms, LENR seems to fall somewhere in the middle, with wide variation in the rigor of the exploration.


    When we write history in the manner of a mathematical proof, going back and arranging things so that there is a nice, tidy progression of one concept to another, we lose sight of the messiness, exploration and hiatuses that preceded the discovery and prepared the way. The scientific establishment did not home in on radioactivity until well after relevant findings were reported. There was even a connection from Niepce de St. Victor to Becquerel.


    Photographic film would no doubt reliably become exposed with pitchblend, providing a lab rat for anyone who wanted to look into the matter further, while there are no lab rat experiments in LENR that I am aware of at this time, so that is an important difference. But hopefully people will agree that sometimes there is a kind of messy investigation that precedes the more systematic one, possibly for years or decades.

    @ Shane D.,


    Quote from Shane D.

    Before, you were saying that Rossi told the truth to Passerini and Celani about his working with Ahern.


    I never said it. Please check my posts.


    Quote

    I see it as an impossible task to guess what is the lie, and what is the truth,


    Really difficult indeed. Sometimes the most significant part is the one omitted.


    In his 2011 comment (1), Passerini said that cooperation with Ahern took place in contexts where nothing can be boasted. In the first part of his comment, Passerini spoke about TEG and DoD. Maybe Rossi got in touch with DoD people working in the LENR field while he was testing his TEG devices for the DoE/DoD. Rossi read the comment on 22passi, but he has not denied having worked in those contexts. So a possible explanation of his answer is that he actually worked in those contexts before coming to Italy in 2007, but he doesn't remember if Ahern was among the many people he met there.


    Quote

    we have Ahern on the record saying he never worked with Rossi, …


    Which record? I lost it.


    Quote

    and we know we can trust his word.


    Why? He has the right to keep his secrets.


    Quote

    Leaving me to conclude there is nothing to your conspiracy theory.


    Of course, since there is no such theory at all.


    (1) https://22passi.blogspot.it/20…ge=6#c2331040848267627155

    @ interested observer,


    Quote from interested observer

    The most specious part of Ascoli’s years of pleading his case is the notion that one maverick Navy employee being associated with Rossi implies that “a U.S. Deparment” is involved.


    As I said many times, I just stick on what Krivit wrote in March 2010 on his first mail to Vortex (1): "And can someone please explain why the good Dr. Melich, allegedly representing the entire "DoD", is involved with this?"


    Krivit's question implies that, after having read that "Prof. Michael Melich (DOD – USA)" is in the "Board of Advisers" of that "bogus Web site that is masquerading as some sort of Journal", anyone gets the impression that he is there for "representing the entire "DoD"". Since then, his question still awaits an answer.


    Quote

    I understand that Ascoli is not an American and may have rather strange ideas of how things work in this country.


    Krivit is an American and knows how things work in both the US and LENR field


    Quote

    However, the fact is that the tens of thousands of people working at various government labs come in all stripes and predilections and there are plenty of flakes and crackpots pursuing all manner of things. None of it implies any sort of governmental approval or acceptance.


    This is reasonable explanation for most of these flaky initiatives, but not for CF/LENR. Over the years this field has attracted the attention of many MSMs, and several hundreds millions of public and private funding. In 2009, it was the subject of a DIA investigation, whose report was the basis in 2016 for a request from the US House of Representatives to the US Secretary of Defense. How many other flaky initiatives got the same attention at these levels?


    Quote

    It is, as they say, a free country.


    Sorry, I don't understand. Are you implying that people working at government labs are free to support global initiatives aimed at fooling people and deceiving investors?


    Quote

    But accepting that obvious truth is beyond Ascoli’s reach because, as Anne Elk would say, he has a theory which is his and belongs to him.


    Which theory are you talking about? Can you post a link to such a theory of mine? Something similar, for example, to what AlainCo wrote in 2014 (2)?


    (1) http://www.mail-archive.com/vo…@eskimo.com/msg38052.html

    (2) http://www.lenrnews.eu/dod-dar…ing-to-save-usa-industry/

    @ THHuxleynew,


    Quote from THHuxleynew

    The mistake made by ascoli, and others here, for example when evaluating japanese work, is to think that low levels of industrial or governmental interest in LENR mean success.


    Let's leave the Japanese aside, please, we are talking about the Ecat affair, and I speak for myself, not for the others here.


    I previously wrote that the Ecat initiative could be considered a success from a propagandistic and financial point of view. The quote of mine, you cited, speculates that this success has been obtained with some support coming from inside the DoD. Your subsequent 3 interesting points seem to confirm the possibility of this support, while providing some justifications for this. Did I get it right?


    If so, who should be considered the most responsible for all public and private money wasted in the CF/LENR research: the public scientists who pushed through funding for their whacky ideas producing "a collection of measurement artifacts (excess heat) and misinterpretations (transmutation)", or the scientifically incompetent decision-makers who allocated the CF/LENR budgets, or an outsider like Rossi?


    It is your judgement that all that money has been wasted. Even though I don't think there is evidence for LENR, it is less clear to me that LENR money is wasted, except in retrospect. However, giving money to an operator like Rossi is clearly non-optimal (that is putting it mildly!) and so I'll answer for that money. AFAIK, this time round, none of it was public money? I know Rossi has obtained money from DoD previously for no useful deliverable (the TEG affair) but not I believe for e-cats.


    Should the honest and optimistic initial supporters of Rossi be held to blame because they were wrong? I think that is tough. Rossi, from Macy's blog post http://www.infinite-energy.com…ng-a-lawsuit-in-lenr.html, was personally charismatic and very convincing to anyone except somone who like Feynman could think on their feet scientifically. There are few such people. The tests were staged and some convincing (e.g. Jed who for a long time could not see - and told Mats this - how the Samovar HAD results could have been obtained). Such convincing tests, when you see the trick, are easily explainable, but it is always so with good performers. those who supported Rossi were in a position where they honestly believed commercial LENR was a distinct and highly desirable possibility. Rossi, even if himself a crook, had inherited possibly valuable expertise from Focardi. They would naturally be enthusiastic even though also unsure.


    Mostly, the private money that was given to Rossi was because private people did insufficient DD.


    Personally I view the behaviour of the Lugano testers as most unhelpful. In many ways we now know that the report they wrote was unprofessional and misleading, as well as being scientifically plain wrong. I forgive the scientific mistake - though not the fact that it has never been acknowledged. There remains the various ways in which the report was misleading: specifically the appearance given that these tests were independent of Rossi when in fact Rossi or his employee were present running the test the whole time, and the Profs made flying visits. That is my understanding from the info to emerge from the Court case: and it surprised even me.


    Otherwise the initial support of Levi and (some others?) at UoB was obviously unhelpful but I'm more inclined to blame this on cock-up or (lack of) competence rather than conspiracy. Of course, I do not know, and from the public information no-one can be sure that, for example, Levi has not conspired with Rossi to distort test results in addition to being clearly incompetent and biased in his interpretation of them. For the latter strong statement I refer you to what we know of the thermography science, and Mats's reporting of Levi's continued justification of the report conclusions a year after it was out.


    Sould Rossi be blamed? Absolutely. His behaviour has been clearly untransparent (different from all other LENR researchers) in a manner that, combined with his charisma, could take advantage of people's hopes. The analogy with a fake medium taking advantage of a person's grief because of a loved one who has died is exact in more than one way!

    @ THHuxleynew,


    Quote from THHuxleynew

    It is your judgement that all that money has been wasted. Even though I don't think there is evidence for LENR, it is less clear to me that LENR money is wasted, except in retrospect.


    IMO all the money spent after the negative verdict on CF published by Nature in March 1990, ie over 90% of the total, were not scientifically justified. And now, in a very late retrospect, what is your opinion?


    Quote

    However, giving money to an operator like Rossi is clearly non-optimal (that is putting it mildly!) and so I'll answer for that money. AFAIK, this time round, none of it was public money? I know Rossi has obtained money from DoD previously for no useful deliverable (the TEG affair) but not I believe for e-cats.


    Rossi only got a small portion of the private money raised thanks to the Ecat initiative. Considering all the costs, the net amount he withheld could be considered a fair reward for a PR activity lasting more than 10 years.


    The Ecat initiative also drained public money. The many professors who have been involved in the US, Italy and Sweden in this activity have spent part of their time, along with part of the prestige of their institutions. Their prestigious support has provoked many pro-LENR parliamentary initiatives in Italy and in the United States, which in turn has provided a justification for continuing other public research on LENR in Italy and in other countries. All at a public cost.


    Quote

    Should the honest and optimistic initial supporters of Rossi be held to blame because they were wrong? I think that is tough. Rossi, from Macy's blog post http://www.infinite-energy.com…ng-a-lawsuit-in-lenr.html, was personally charismatic and very convincing to anyone except somone who like Feynman could think on their feet scientifically. There are few such people. The tests were staged and some convincing (e.g. Jed who for a long time could not see - and told Mats this - how the Samovar HAD results could have been obtained). Such convincing tests, when you see the trick, are easily explainable, but it is always so with good performers.


    Feynman? Come on, we're talking about water flow calorimetry, not rocket science!


    All physicists could have immediately understood what happened in the first demo held in Bologna on January 14, 2011. The next day, Ahern wrote on the Krivit's blog (1): "Converting water to wet steam versus dry steam can account for a factor of ten in the input:output ratios." With reference to this criticism, JR replied (2): "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." Shortly thereafter, he was more specific (3): "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."


    Well, they were both right!


    Quote

    those who supported Rossi were in a position where they honestly believed commercial LENR was a distinct and highly desirable possibility.


    Everyone believes that a clean, cheap, safe and abundant source of energy is highly desirable, but academics are well paid to apply their high expertise to correctly discern the real possibilities from impossible dreams.


    Quote

    Rossi, even if himself a crook, had inherited possibly valuable expertise from Focardi. They would naturally be enthusiastic even though also unsure.


    This is a fairy tale. Rossi met Focardi in summer 2007 (I do not know the exact date). On October 16, 2007, they claimed to have successfully performed a test on a device capable of heating a factory for the following winter. Guess what precious experience could have been inherited in a couple of months!


    Quote

    Personally I view the behaviour of the Lugano testers as most unhelpful. In many ways we now know that the report they wrote was unprofessional and misleading, as well as being scientifically plain wrong. I forgive the scientific mistake - though not the fact that it has never been acknowledged. There remains the various ways in which the report was misleading: specifically the appearance given that these tests were independent of Rossi when in fact Rossi or his employee were present running the test the whole time, and the Profs made flying visits. That is my understanding from the info to emerge from the Court case: and it surprised even me.


    If you had better studied the January 2011 demo, you would have ignored the Lugano report after reading the name of the lead author, without waiting for the Court's case.


    Quote

    Otherwise the initial support of Levi and (some others?) at UoB was obviously unhelpful but I'm more inclined to blame this on cock-up or (lack of) competence rather than conspiracy. Of course, I do not know, and from the public information no-one can be sure that, for example, Levi has not conspired with Rossi to distort test results in addition to being clearly incompetent and biased in his interpretation of them.


    It seems to me that you don't want to know. Forget the conspiracy, and focus on the facts. The January 2011 demo is the best documented Ecat test and alone reveals the role of many protagonists of the Ecat saga. I already invited you to better look at it (4-7), I can only renew my invitation.


    Quote

    For the latter strong statement I refer you to what we know of the thermography science, and Mats's reporting of Levi's continued justification of the report conclusions a year after it was out.


    If you talk about thermography, you're keeping to look at the wrong tests.


    Quote

    Sould Rossi be blamed? Absolutely. His behaviour has been clearly untransparent (different from all other LENR researchers) in a manner that, combined with his charisma, could take advantage of people's hopes. The analogy with a fake medium taking advantage of a person's grief because of a loved one who has died is exact in more than one way!


    The trend of people's hopes on LENR is well represented by the curve provided by Google Trends (8). It grew in 2011, from the January demo to the recession of UniBo from the contract with Rossi. It shows that people believed in the competence of professors, not in Rossi's charisma. He acted only as a skilled PR-man able to publicize some incredible experimental results measured, calculated, and verified by the professors.


    (1) http://aenforum.org/index.php?showtopic=1982

    (2) http://www.mail-archive.com/vo…0eskimo.com/msg41322.html

    (3) http://www.mail-archive.com/vo…0eskimo.com/msg41324.html

    (4) https://www.lenr-forum.com/for…D/?postID=32603#post32603

    (5) Prominent Gamma/L 0232 Flow Rate Test

    (6) Prominent Gamma/L 0232 Flow Rate Test

    (7) How many times has the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heating Event been replicated in peer reviewed journals?
    (8) https://trends.google.it/trend…ore?date=all&q=%22lenr%22

    • Official Post

    Abd mentioned in his: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax on the Cold Fusion Now! podcast that funding was drying up for LENR research due to Rossi. No one wanted to fund something that might only produce watts, when he was producing kWs. That IH was interested in LENR as a whole, but figured first thing on their agenda was to determine if Rossi were real.


    They found out the expensive way, he was not.

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