Rossi vs. Darden developments [CASE CLOSED]

Quote from Dewey Weaver

You should also know that additional excess heat / COP testimony and the qualifications, background and training of these experts will carry the day.

I have no doubt that you would be able to find hundreds of physicists with impeccable physics credentials willing to lambast LENR in any form, and especially NiH reactors. So, it doesn't matter. What you are saying will happen is 100% expected. And it doesn't really mean anything.

Quote from Dewey Weaver

I'll say it again - there was no quantifiable excess heat from anything associated with Rossi at IH.

And yet, IH's lead engineer contradicts what you say. And he was under oath.

I'll say this again: I have no horse in this race. I see subterfuge on both sides. I want to know what actually has happened. That's it.

These documents are entirely predictable, but interesting just as seeing a real dead rat cut up in Biology is when compared with text books.

Neither IH (for reasons of reputation, and because they have a winning hand, and think Rossi still has some money) nor Rossi (his character, or because till he has other people hooked he must play for time) would be inclined to settle.

That the "customer" was fake was blindingly obvious a long time ago.

The evidence that has emerged throughout has been very strongly in IH's favour except on one point: Rossi and the people involved (no doubt following Rossi) would treat the test as GPT. I'm confident that IH highups never treated it as such (or there would be a paper trail).

In order to get any comfort from this Rossi has to show all of the following:
(1) That the test was fair (we are not talking legal nitpicking, which IH wins due to the lack of evidence this was legally the GPT, but fairness. Therefore whatever the AWOL ERV report, the real evidence will matter. There is a vanishingly small chance he can do this given that the claimed COP is clearly very wrong, and Rossi has been shown to be highly deceptive over the test.

(2) That the ERV report is consistent with physical evidence, and is validated by somone other than Rossi. That seems unlikely unless Penon comes back. In any case physical evidence would appear to be 100% against it (I say appear because we have not had much of this in the open yet - but there is every reason to think that it exists).

(3) That Rossi's version of "was it the GPT" is more plausible that IHs. Given what we now have no-one will believe anything Rossi says. Also, it is pretty clear that the others involved will all say that their views come from Rossi. Not likely IH would be keeping the "it was not a GPT" argument if they had told any of their underlings it was the GPT. My reading is that IH were always clear that from their POV this was not the GPT, that to keep Rossi on board they needed to let him run it, that Rossi would claim it was the GPT.

Why do they do this? The IH motive involves the existence of known unknowns and has been consistently misunderstood here by the Rossi fans. At the start they still hoped Rossi's stuff would work. Lugano carried some weight, and while even then suspicious they are in the business to find this stuff if they can. It is high reward, so even 10% chance of it being real must be followed to the end. Rossi being dishonest in many ways does not mean they can be sure he has nothing. Their in-house testing would have been frustrating - repeating the (bad thermography) Lugano results, Levi arguing the bad thermography was good, none of their engineers clearly able to outvote Levi. Continued inconsistencies around this would get them more and more suspicious, and bringing in some more professional talent to look at the tests would settle the matter.

Given the nature of these tests, a grunt engineer would indeed say "well, sometimes COP 1.3". A more professional person would immediately answer by talking about error bars and whether the error analysis was solid, or whether there were still untested assumptions on which it rests. Doubtless they have this now, and equally likely they did not have this when they started the Rossi testing.

This picture has some uncertainty over the exact progression of IH scientific and engineering understanding. But it is highly believable. I think it has little traction on planet Rossi because it is complex. Instead of an IH test giving a known COP, which must be either positive or negative, we have all these shades of different analysis, not understood errors discovered later, etc. Anyone with any practical experience should realise this is how things are. It speaks for the inexperience of those advancing anti-IH arguments that they do not see this.

IH can perhaps in retrospect be blamed for not having more rigorous testing at the start. But think about it: if the lugano results were real they did not need rigorous testing. Stable and repeatable excess heat of double the input heat can be measurd in many ways and is commercially viable as a heat pump replacement. It would not have needed high powered testing expertise. They would have been very surprised and worried by the fact that 6 Lugano testers made a large calculation mistake, and that Levi continued to assert this was not a mistake. It was bad luck for them. Good luck for Rossi. Though Rossi seems to make his own luck, and in ways that may be magnificent but are not to my taste.

Quote from oldguy

yes it was against the licensing agreement that JMP was owned by an entity formed in the UK and none of Rossi or their had any ownership.

I don't think it was a part of the license agreement. It was submitted in a court filing (the complaint) along with the license agreement, but many noted that it appeared to be a separate paper.

Quote from oldguy

Notice that having a customer was NOT required for a GPT.

Correct. Which brings up the interesting question of whether the JMP ruse has any real legal effect on the agreement. It certainly looks bad--no getting around that.

Quote from oldguy

It sure seems that Rossi only fabricated the customer to give cover for the testing so as not to tip off IH that he was going to later claim it to be GPT.

I think maybe the purpose behind the JMP ruse was for spectacle. Rossi thinks big and goes big on his ideas, and clearly doesn't think through the consequences. And while it makes Rossi look like a chump, technically it has no bearing on whether the Rossi effect is real or not.

I'm trying to reverse engineer the Unemployment tax numbers from exhibit A.

In January 2016, JMP had to pay:

Florida unemployment : 72.05
Federal unemployment: 42

FUTA has to be paid quarterly ( http://fitsmallbusiness.com/futa-and-form-940/); howver for a small business this would be annually (if FUTA doesn't exceed $500).

=> JMP probably paid that amount annually

Also FUTA rate is 6% and you can deduct state unemployment payments

Moreover:

Quote

The FUTA tax rate is 6% on the first $7000 paid to each employee. If an employee’s wages exceed $7,000, you have no further tax liability.

More details:

Quote

If you pay your state unemployment taxes (called SUTA) on time and before your FUTA taxes are due, then the amount you must pay for FUTA is generally reduced to 0.6% on the first $7,000 paid to each employee.

This is because for most states, the Federal government allows a credit of 5.4% to offset what you pay in state unemployment taxes. This means the maximum FUTA liability for many businesses is $42 per employee ($7,000 * 0.6 % = $42). It doesn’t matter what your state tax rate is–the federal tax credit is the same.

And

Quote

As an employer you can take a credit of up to 5.4 percent of their taxable wages against their FUTA contribution provided your SUTA is paid in a timely manner. In the event your SUTA tax is less than 5.4%, you still get the maximum full credit against the FUTA tax. Employers who make the maximum permissible SUTA contributions are left with an effective FUTA tax rate of 0.6 percent, or $42 per year

Looks like we hit that magic number $42. So it appears that JMP had exacty 1 employee. We can't know how much that employee was paid but it was more than $7000 for the year.

Who was that employee? Maybe Bass?

We also have December EFTPS= $331.36. I wonder if that corresponds to taxes withheld by JMP for their employee.

Edit to add: assuming 15% for ss and medicare, 10% for income tax; we end up with a wage of ~ $1300 per month. Does that sound right?

Quote from LENR Calender

Who was that employee? Maybe Bass?

I dont think so, Bass would probably have been paid as a consultant, self-employed, so they wouldn't need to pay unemployment.

For me, the obvious candidate is Colette, Johnson's secretary.

I could imagine he felt pretty clever getting this sweet deal partnering with Rossi that paid for a full time secretary who probably only spent a small amount of time actually tending to JMP's administrative affairs, and could support his other endeavors.

Nice work on the back-calculation and state and federal tax rates, BTW.

Quote from THHuxley

That the ERV report is consistent with physical evidence, and is validated by somone other than Rossi. That seems unlikely unless Penon comes back.

I don't think that Penon will appear, but even if he does it doesn't help much since it seems he was just feed data from Rossi that was taken by Rossi.
The terabytes of hard data will be more likely to tell the tell. Although there would still be the question as to was the equipment use suitable for the task (range, operating temperatures,etc) and if they were positioned correctly.

I happened to go over to ECW, where they are talking about the latest items regarding Bass and JM Products. The consensus over there now seems to be, ok the customer looks indeed to be a fake, but who cares? How does this really affect the ultimate performance of the e-cat and the agreement to pay the $89MM?

I'm starting to think that some people are losing their minds. Are they serious? This whole thing was a sham, top to bottom. People are hanging on to the myth of AR way too long. There was no customer, and the e-cat did not produce excess heat in Doral. Maybe the truth is tough to handle sometimes, but people need to stop falling for this stuff. I hope there are some decisive rulings by the judge soon to put an end to this charade. If I were a senior executive at Johnson Matthey I would be asking my legal department what actions they think could be taken against AR and the others for dragging their name into this. They probably have no idea who AR even is, but I imagine they see their name popping up in the legal discovery.

There are different groups of observers with different concerns and priorities on this and other niche forums. (1) One group cares first and foremost about whether Rossi has something, and circumstantial, indirect evidence that contraindicates this possibility, e.g., by showing him to be untrustworthy and an unreliable source of information, takes a backseat. This group are likely to see all actors as having dirty hands to one or another extent, suggesting a moral equivalence, and will feel that what really matters is whether there is a revolutionary technology buried under all of this. (2) Another group cares primarily about what evidence is available to assess Rossi's claims, direct or circumstantial, and from this information seeks to form a holistic view of the situation in order to come at the question of whether Rossi has a revolutionary technology. This group are likely to take a very critical view of any intentional deception, to the extent that offenses will be allowed to discredit most or even all claims of the offending party, and this group are unsympathetic to attempts at drawing a moral equivalence. The Internet is a big place, so one sees the extremes well-represented among the hangers-on who continue to follow this story.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Anyway: I wouldn't trust e-mails because I can send an e-mail in behalf of any person I would like to do so!

I don't think that IH forged the emails. They seem (doc 118) to have been supplied with the 842 pages of materials to the court by Bass and Johnson. I see no reason that Bass or Johnson would enter phony or doctored emails that would show them in such a bad light.

@Deleo,

IH et al stated :"JMP, however, has never been a subsidiary of Johnson Matthey,
was not operating or planning to operate any manufacturing process in Florida, and was in fact
owned by persons whom Johnson represented in writing did not have any ownership interest in
JMP."
(IH Amended Answer, page 45. Underlining added for emphasis)

This very strongly suggests that IH has been in contact with Johnson Matthey, and so Johnson Matthey is aware of the goings on in Florida.
(How else could IH know that Johnson Matthey was not planning to operate a plant in Florida?).

Quote from Eric Walker

This group are likely to take a very critical view of any intentional deception,

I am in the second group. This is due to the fact that Rossi set it up so we must just take his word for things. For example, it appears that Penon did not take the data (as required by the agreement "to make this measurement the ERV shall measure") but instead only visited 5 times and was given the data by Rossi. So for me the claims of large long running COP's rests solely on Rossi's word. If I cannot trust his word then what is left.

Even if you say you do not trust IH's motives, they have produced alternate support for their statements.

If there was a mistake by IH then it was from first trusting Rossi. I worry that many are in the same mind set of IH when they first believed Rossi. IH finally "woke up" and I hope others do as well.

Quote from oldguy

I am in the second group.

Just to clarify, I would put myself squarely in the second group as well. But I do think it's important to separate out the different technical claims made at various points over the years and consider them on their merits; for example, a fraudulent Doral "test" would have only indirect bearing on earlier Rossi demonstrations. We know that Rossi was connected to Focardi who was connected to Piantelli, so it would be a mistake in my opinion to draw blanket conclusions about the whole affair, even if the last year has been pretty depressing. I'm ok with the earlier tests having been simply inconclusive and do not feel the need to pass a judgement of deliberate deception on them as well. People's motivations and intentions can change over time.

But that kind of generosity towards the past has its own risks, possibly allowing a matter to fester longer than it should.

Yes prior events are interesting, but recall this thread is "Rossi vs. Darden" so I will limit my view here to those systems.

I will say that I do not doubt LENR/ cold fusion in general and I have only a few doubts about Ni events,
just not on the magnitude of Rossi's claims.

Quote from oldguy

they [IH] have produced alternate support for their statements.

Except for IH's lead engineer, who recently contradicted (under oath) the core of IH's public posturing. IH has not been square with you. And neither has Rossi. And they each have very real reasons for bending the truth, and have each lost their moral compass to some degree.

Quote from oldguy

IHFB I know we don't always see things the same way, but if I heard an engineer say 1.3 might be the answer

If you are an engineer who makes ambiguous statements, you are not doing your job properly... People rely on your (our) 'statements': you are liable to be sued if you get it wrong. (Unless you can argue a 'best practice' defence.

Yes there's room for manoeuvre on a truly innovative scheme, but as J Rothwell often comments/implies; the measurement of heat was settled at least 150 years ago.

Quote from IH Fanboy

who recently contradicted (under oath) the core of IH's public posturing

I do not see it that way. He said it MIGHT by 1.3. That is like when you ask someone what you can get on E Bay for a collectable and
they say: you might get $100 for it. It is more like an upper bound on their estimate.

I think if you check the records, Dameron's work was later followed up by Murrey who did not see that the data showed
signs of excess to any significant levels. That is likely why they brought him in.

It seems like you want things both ways, that IH saying they were unable to see significant excess is false and yet IH saying through Dameron's that he might have seen a COP of 1.3 is true.

It should also be noted that seeing possibly seeing a COP of 1.3 does not mean that there was excess heat. You would need to know additional things like the size of the sample (for possible chemical events), the thermal mass reservoir of any stored heat (was it during heating up or cooling down or steady state), the length of the run (what were the time averages of the COP), the size of the error bars (how many sigma does the extra 30% represent) and so on.

Quote from oldguy

He said it MIGHT by 1.3

A fair point.

Quote from IH Fanboy

Except for IH's lead engineer, who recently contradicted (under oath) the core of IH's public posturing.

IHFB, you keep repeating this meme, but can you realize the exaggeration you are making? The 'core of IH's public posturing'? IH is enthusiastic about LENR - but stated in the court documents that the E-Cat had little to no heat production and failed to meet the agreed upon COP of 6. How is 1.3 inconsistent with the "core of IH's public posturing"? When asked what the highest COP the engineer essentially answered maybe 1.3. Is it conceivable to you that the person giving this testimony (under oath) is giving himself some margin because he can't be sure if he did all his calculations correctly? (I have an electrical engineering degree. I'd certainly want to minimize my legal jeopardy by maximizing my 95% confidence intervals if testifying under oath. The COP was supposed to exceed 6. I get that you have trouble thinking about this like an engineer, though.

And I hear that your main point is that both sides are corrupt, and that this kind of evens things out.

We obviously disagree, but if the main piece of evidence you have for making this point is this 1.3 COP statement, I think your moral equivalence scale is broken.

EDIT: I see that others were more quick on the draw, and have made similar points. Probably I should have just not answered. But anyway, there you go.

IH has consistently and repeatedly suggested that they were unable to replicate *any* e-Cat testing results “or otherwise generate measureable excess energy.” They affirmatively represented that in their court filings. Dewey consistently reaffirms it in public forums.

Then, when IH’s engineer is placed under oath, he states: “I can’t say that we never had a result that was -- let’s see if I can say this right – we probably had results greater than one, 1.3 might be an answer.”

So what we see here is a direct contradiction between what IH has led you to believe, and what actually happened. In my book, that isn’t shooting straight. And who is to say that 1.3 is the actual highest COP that IH measured? Do you think in all of the discovery that is ongoing, that there won’t be revelations of independent measurements by IH exceeding the 1.3 number? The engineer equivocates in his answer—and seems to be evasive even. Some might say that such equivocation is due to his uncertainty about the 1.3 COP measurement (i.e., that it could have been less). There is another possibility: that the equivocation is due to his hiding the true number (i.e., that it could have been more). It is speculative, yes, but the alternate possibility is as possible as the first, and without further evidence, it is impossible to draw a solid conclusion.