Display MoreI'm tempted to get drawn into a long back-and-forth with you about the ins-and-outs of this issue, but I don't feel like it and have other things I need to be doing. My last word on it is this:
If you can't see how not trusting Rossi's measurements doesn't enter into a decision to spend tens of thousands of dollars every month, then I don't see what the point of the discussion would be. The case is clear. Darden is either a businessman with "astonishingly poor judgement who is pathologically bad at due diligence" or he had an ulterior motive (and maybe still does). It's one or the other.
You're saying that he was willing to let the customer be the litmus test for whether the thing worked, since he couldn't trust Rossi's measurements. But he had many reasons to doubt the customer's legitimacy before agreeing to the test. You want to tell me he was willing to ignore all the warning signs, cross his fingers and hope for the best because of a 1% chance that Rossi had something? How would he even know if Rossi had something?
But how much do you want to bet that he never shared these misgivings with Woodford or the Chinese? You think he told Woodford that he felt the instrumentation couldn't be trusted and that the customer's President was Rossi's lawyer who had no manufacturing experience, let alone any clue what they were going to be doing? No chance.
As you say - I don't think a back and forth will help here, but equally it is worth making clear the points of disagreement. Which, from this post are:
(1) I'm not saying anything associated with Rossi is the litmus test. my point about the customer is that if there is a real cutomer (which could reasonably be established) that and the F&P records would be indepndent of Rossi. This is hypothetical, and Darden did not assume this would happen, but it represents a possible good outcome from the test.
(2) Darden would know whether Rossi had something through a long process of testing and retesting all of the IP provided by Rossi. These are reactors that tested some high COP in the Levi/Penon/Swede tests but did something different for IH. You will note that they had some illusory successes here getting COP > 1 on occasion. So at least till the time they signed that contract they had reason enough to hope, with the scientific evidence partly positive. At that point the criticisms of Lugano were not as clear as they are now.
One additional thing (not sure whether we agree over this). The Lugano test was a game changer. Had it been as billed, and not scientifically very wrong, it would have been the best ever indepenent demo of convincing commercial LENR. A big inducement and something that I think allowed IH significant hope, as you can see from Darden's contemporaneous letter.
(3) I'm pretty sure he shared his misgivings with investors. We have information from them saying this (not sure how much of that from the Discovery data dump?) and he would be in big trouble now (more suits) if he induced investment without full disclosure. You can make up a story in which Darden was fraudulent, independent of Rossi, but it seems weird. Why would he do that? He was making quite enough money with Cherokee from genuine high-risk investment. And if you listen to his public speeches it seems likely that he is a genuine altruist hoping to make money from ultra-high risk investment that might save the world.