Rossi vs. Darden developments [CASE CLOSED]

    As you all can see I am a beginner on this forum. I am not a scientist, or even particularly well educated in that area, but I am 71 years old, and in possession of a capable mind and the wisdom those years afford. I learned long ago that I must take the macro view of things, rather than the micro, if I want to see things as they truly are. I have been hanging around this forum and ECW now for a few years and have monitored on a regular basis all of the ups and downs of LENR experiments. I have been interested in “Cold Fusion” ever since the Pons/Fleischmann debacle circa 1989. But most recently I became more engaged for matters of research as I am a writer of science fiction and wished to visit the subject in one of my books.


    There seems to be much mention on here of the scientific method and its rigors and the necessity of its strict application if LENR is to be proven successful. I see this as a very micro (i.e. narrow) view of the situation, especially in this case. It seems to me that most of the major scientific advances of the 20th century would never have happened if the inventors had waited around for scientific proof, verification and replication.


    By most reports Edison was not a scientist of this caliber. He was an inventor who built things and experimented. If one of his ideas had come to fruition and then he had to prove it to the world and then wait for others of his ilk to replicate, he probably would never have received credit for even one of the.


    If the men who developed atomic energy, and eventually fission, had openly shared their theories with the world and then waited for replication most of us would be living in a Jew free world and pledging fealty to a Swastika, not to mention that New York City would probably be an atomic wasteland. Ironically, that whole thing is still just theory to this day, having become understood only superficially decades after the fact of its deployment.


    The same holds true with the invention of the automobile, and much earlier the steam engine, both already in use long before much was understood scientifically by its inventors. The scientific development was largely only entered into much later, after practical use was already established, and is still being expanded upon even today.


    Even Nicola Tesla was a hands-on inventor. If his scientific method was sound and well executed only he knew for sure, because by all reports his diagrams, formulas and schematics were all done in his head. By one report he claimed to be able to project these in mid-air, in his mind’s eye and then worked out the theory using this visualization method, and I doubt very much if he submitted them to the world at large for replication and approval.


    Let’s be realistic; we live in a material world, where everything substantial, and much even insubstantial, has a value placed on it. The greater this value the more it is coveted by those who would control and profit from it and the greater lengths they will go to acquire it, and often not fairly or legally. This is true everywhere in the world, whether in a capitalist, socialist or communist societies and everything in between. I think Andrea Rossi learned this the hard way early on in his endeavors. Navigating in this environment is much like playing a game of poker and he has learned to hold his cards close to his vest until he deems that the time is right to show them. So far that time has not come.


    Pray tell, why would Rossi feel any responsibility at all to prove to the members of this forum what he has? What advantage would this give him? He owes us nothing. Are any of you moneyed investors ready to lay down tens of millions of dollars? I think not. And for those of you who feel he should do the right thing simply for the good of the planet and society at large, I have only pity. Your faith in this concept is cute, but untenable in most all human society and especially so in a capitalist society. Such naivety does not fare well in the real world. That is why pure communism never works. Someone always believes he is more deserving than the next.


    Having followed most of AR’s exploits, from a macro point of view, I have come to believe he is smart and canny, and I don’t believe he is mentally defective. He is certainly egotistical and eccentric, but crazy, I don’t think so. Taken from this point of view he would have to be stupid, crazy or both to have started this law suit in the first place if he didn’t believe that he could prove his position in the end. But he will not prove it in the data base of this forum or even on his blog. He will always hold out that one final, enticing detail and will only finally release it within the legal confines of the court, and only then if he can keep his proprietary property from public disclosure. I don’t believe he ever gave IH one hundred percent of the IP. I think he trusts no one and held it back as insurance for just such a situation as this. I think he envisioned something like the exchange of prisoners on a bridge where the two prisoners pass midway between their captors to insure that no-one is able to renege on the agreement. I believe that if they had paid the 89 million that he would have, but only then, given them the final piece of the puzzle.


    I will be very surprised if he does not prevail in this situation, but I believe it will be an out of court settlement with an NDA attached and we will know little more than we do now.

    Quote from maryyugo

    It may be a civil trial but I have been told by a reliable source that the local authorities have been asked to investigate the possibility that Rossi

    That'll be Fred 'mad dog' Zoepfl then? Allegedly the angriest man in LENR, and also a man with 'zero standing' as prosecutors like to say....

    Re the 18 hour test reported by Levi that MrSS finds convincing


    I now remember what I thought at the time (given the details).


    The key issue is input temp = 15C, output temp = 20C.


    Although 5C can easily be measured, the issue is that this output temperature makes a misplaced output-side thermocouple very easy. The room temperature is likely 20C or more, so a TC that does not make good thermal contact with the output stream and equilibrates to RT will generate this value even with no heating of the stream. Lots of scope here for inadvertent mismeasurement.


    As often with Rossi's tests we see parameters chosen which are unwise (in this case the stream of water was too fast, previously with phase change it was too slow!). you cannot, from available info, prove that this was the error mechanism, and others are possible, but it is a glaring "easy error leading to given results with a null COP=1 reactor" that must be checked. I do not view on evidence Levi as someone capable of checking this. But, to be fair, the device could be instrumented in such a way as to make this quite difficult for anyone to test without additional work. We know Rossi is on record as saying that such checking is unnecessary, that all that matters is positive results.

    Quote

    Having followed most of AR’s exploits, from a macro point of view, I have come to believe he is smart and canny, and I don’t believe he is mentally defective. He is certainly egotistical and eccentric, but crazy, I don’t think so. Taken from this point of view he would have to be stupid, crazy or both to have started this law suit in the first place if he didn’t believe that he could prove his position in the end.


    I reserve judgement on smart and canny.


    I agree with your second sentence. I'd add that lone inventors (with vaporware) often seem crazy, and that people who are consistently deceitful often are stupid - even though they can prosper for a long time before coming unstuck. Also that deceitful and canny and crazy happens, though not seen as often as deceitful and stupid.

    Quote from Dewey Weaver

    Shane - I'm not sure how many reactors were in Lugano. It is my understanding that Rossi jumped in and unexpectedly cut the power in the temp run-up in the Lugano control test. Maybe there was a logical explanation for that but we ended up with no adequate control data as a result for the Lugano test.


    This is new and significant information. it explains what was always a mystery. It adds one more happy coincidence to the reading of this story in which Rossi is not deliberately faking test results.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Although 5C can easily be measured, the issue is that this output temperature makes a misplaced output-side thermocouple very easy. The room temperature is likely 20C or more, so a TC that does not make good thermal contact with the output stream and equilibrates to RT will generate this value even with no heating of the stream. Lots of scope here for inadvertent mismeasurement.


    I think there's a word for this...


    "guevilling" ;)

    Quote from Rionrlty

    Pray tell, why would Rossi feel any responsibility at all to prove to the members of this forum what he has? What advantage would this give him? He owes us nothing.


    I think there's an implicit social responsibility not to give deliberately misleading information to the public and to observers taking interest in a story. That's why in other contexts fake news is not only something to be careful about, but something that is reprehensible as well. A wily, unscrupulous inventor may choose to give out misleading information for his own reasons. But if he owes us nothing, neither do we owe him anything in pursuing the story with a little more gusto in order to get the facts straight.

    Dewey Weaver wrote: "I can assure you that IH cannot even hear or spell the word settlement right now. Rossi picked the wrong fight on the wrong battlefield."


    Dewey I have no doubt this is true. The how and why is being discussed on Vortex also. It is an interesting read (long) on why Rossi brought the suit first. One speculation was that he thought investment funds were being brought in from China and wanted his cut.


    But you would be prudent to understand, settlement is a strategy. Not a defeat. While IH has the bigger warchest for this fight, is it's not sound financially to ignore the option. Maybe consider get an accountant and a second lawyer who can discuss why this makes sense. I can help explain with a bit of humor.


    TimeIsMoney.jpg

    Thanks for the chuckle Rigel - not my call. Rossi poked the wrong folks in the eye and the overall situation is more complex that you envision.

    Of course Rossi would want a cut of something that doesn't belong to him and,double-of-course, that would be a still his primary consideration

    even after he did not delivery on the first obligations that he signed up for when he kept the $10M. Its part of who he is and how he thinks.


    BTW - no Chinese funds in any of the IH companies.

    Quote from Dewey Weaver

    I do not plan to share details around NRL related conversations that I have been having since ICCF-18


    I understand. Anyway, you have already provided very useful information about the relationship between IH and the Navy people. Thank you.


    There still remain a lot of open issues, but it is possible to figure out a suitable scenario, filling the gaps by means of other already available information. Let me try.


    You said yesterday, you were in touch with Melich since 4 years. That's around the beginning of 2013. One year later, IH announced to have "acquired the rights to Andrea Rossi's Italian low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology, the Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat)."


    I should presume that the same was true for the others IH investors, in particular it's much probable that Darden was in touch with him even earlier than you. Well, during his opening speech at the ICCF19 in Padua, he said:

    Quote

    Thomas Darden, at ICCF19 in Padua, April 13, 2015 (1):

    "One day I received a random call about cold fusion. I didn’t give it much credence because I remembered in detail the disclosure about Fleischmann and Pons years before, and I believed the subject was dead. Then thirty days later I received another related inquiry from a different group, so we began to do some research, and then thirty days later, I received a call from another group. We had invested in 100 startup companies and I had never gotten an inquiry about fusion or about LENR: three in 30 day intervals. We funded two of these groups, and then later, as many of you know, we licensed Andrea Rossi’s technology."


    So, a person and two groups phone called him in 30 days.


    Who could have been that person? Considering what has been revealed by Krivit about the Melich engagement for finding some financing for the Ecat affair, we can think of him has the first caller.


    What about the two groups? Probably at least one of them is one of the two groups that have been first funded by Darden/IH. So they could have been groups involved in the LENR research.


    But why they both called Darden in a so short period? The best explanation is that they have been recommended to do that by the first caller, and considering the affiliation of this last, it's much probable that these groups were among those operating inside the DoD perimeter.


    But the next question is, why these public groups were looking for a private financing? One possible answer is that at the end of 2011 "the authorities have finally closed down cold fusion research at SAPWAR [sic]" as announced on Vortex on December 17 (2).


    A few days later, the same very well informed person, added:

    Quote

    From Vortex, December 22, 2011 (3):

    "The people at SPAWAR are negotiating with management about this. They are hoping to arrange to have the equipment and know-how transferred to the private sector. (Rather than have the equipment chucked into the dumpster, I suppose, which is where a good many cold fusion experiments have ended up.)

    They say they will let me know as this process shapes up. people interested in supporting this work may have a chance to invest in the company. At some point, it might be a good idea to make polite, positive suggestions to the Navy management. But not now.

    It might be possible to restart the work in the lab there. I kind of doubt it, but let's see how things work out."


    Did these negotiations eventually result in the IH initiative?


    Quote from Dewey Weaver

    I was initially concerned about CF suppression by DoD scientist but was able to eventually resolve that they are good hard science folks who mainly want/wanted to get to the bottom of things.


    No doubt, DoD scientists are good hard science folks. No doubt that Melich, which is also a DoD scientist and who follows the CF since the very first days, is as well a very smart expert in the field.

    But at this point I have a lot of doubts about what you told me yesterday:

    Quote from Dewey Weaver

    The NRL researcher that you reference in your above quote was not Michael Melich although I have had numerous conversations with both Michael and Marianne over the past 4 years. Very good people who really do care about this sector.

    We all got fooled for at least a season.


    How it was possible?


    Macy told us that his husband met Rossi in 2007, and that they both spent a lot of time with him traveling throughout the world (4). At the same time, from what you said, I deduce that for "at least a season", therefore well after the 2013, Melich was confident that the Ecat was a working device.


    Assuming that with "working" he meant that the Ecat was capable of producing many kW of excess heat, how can I believe that an expert PhD in Physics, a professor at the Postgraduate Naval School, where the high level officers of the US Navy are educated to cope with the more sophisticated warfare tricks, has been fooled for so many years by an Italian philosopher, well known for all the judiciary troubles, that you have yourself easily found on the web, and that are there since the '90ies?


    Quote from Dewey Weaver

    Rossi saw the CF sector as ripe for his skills and soiree'd right on into the mix with his patented methodology and business model. He is truly one of the best at what he does and may this cycle be his last regarding his ability to take advantage of well-meaning people.

    Yes, "he is truly one of the best at what he does", but it was well known since long, even at DoD.


    Could it be, perhaps, the reason why he was chosen and has been educated for this last mission?


    (1) http://www.e-catworld.com/2015…speech-on-lenr-at-iccf19/

    (2) http://www.mail-archive.com/vo…@eskimo.com/msg59243.html

    (3) http://www.mail-archive.com/vo…@eskimo.com/msg59712.html (4) https://www.lenr-forum.com/for…D/?postID=30002#post30002

    Ascoli65 - I appreciate your efforts to put a story together and want to be respectful. You're way off and from my perspective - you're deep in the weeds.


    My response to you was sincere and within the bounds of what I can share. I will not be able to help you back out of the weeds and hope that you understand. For the record Michael Melich was not involved in any of TD's initial CF conversations and they met / spoke for the first time in Padua. I consider Mike, along with the rest of the Navy scientist that I've met over the past 4 years, to be honorable, smart, honest and hard working folks. Besides Mike has Marianne to keep him in line - she's a sweetheart but you don't want to cross her.

    Quote from IH Fanboy

    I find this conjecture to be pretty bizarre and highly unlikely.


    It was only a question, just for proposing a debate by using a little bit of lateral thinking.


    Anyway, do you see anything in the Ecat story which is not "pretty bizarre and highly unlikely"?


    How many oddities and incongruities could instantaneously be solved by an affirmative answer to that question?

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