Rossi vs. Darden developments [CASE CLOSED]

Quote from axil

IH would be well served to release all the Rossi provided INFO involving the Rossi reaction to the open source community to allow that community to run tests to see if Rossi's technology is a fraud. This verification would support IH in their claims about Rossi.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Dubious that this would in any way be helpful.

First it might well be siezed upon by certain parties as a breaking of professional agreements to release such information. Another thing to attack IH with.

In any case I do not think IH would ever be so unprofessional as to do this.

Second there is always the argument IH wasted a lot of time unable to replicate because Rossi held back some secret ingredient.

So in releasing an incomplete system it would only result in more people wasting time and prove nothing.

Quote from THHuxleynew

"Half full is not a scientific assessment. I'm not sure what Jed means when he says this other than "not empty and not 100% full". For a 15% full pipe you get a speed of (approx) 25cm/s, and so on. With a gradient you will get faster flow at the bottom, up to a speed limited by turbulence, and therefore a less full pipe at the bottom. If you imagine poring 500g/s into your pipe you can see what I mean."

(Edit only this above quoted section is from THH I could not work out how to add my comment on it below with out extending the red line)

So with this 15% full DN80 flow pipe with 25cm/s flow rate. It out woul get about 16288 litre per day. Yet you are arguing that only 1/4 the claimed water quauntity is circulating which is about half this so about 8% full.

It also takes a slope equivalent to1cm drop over 10m for this flow velocity. Which is quite low for a partially empty gravity return pipe like this. If it was steaper say 5cm per 10m the flow would be much faster and the depth even less perhaps 1% or 2% full. I'm curious how you can explain how such an empty pipe could spoof a flow meter to read 36000 litre per day.

To me the meter must have been placed under water in order to get the reading and reading the correct flow.

There 2 ways the return pipe could be full : 1 is it is placed in a lower part of a gravity return pipe compared to the in let and out let. 2 the pipe is between 2 tanks of water and rely more on pressure difference due to differences in water level between the tanks due to additional condensate in the supply tank and condensate removal at the outlet tank.

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Hi, sigmoidal,

Quote from sigmoidal

It is hard for me to understand why you can't see that it's Rossi's deception that is the cause of the initial positive confirmations, ...

That's an important point: the "initial positive confirmations". The public part of the Ecat story developed from the initial impulse gained after the public demo held in Bologna on January 14, 2011. Everybody in the field, and many other common people in the world, knows it because almost every book or newspaper article on the Ecat subject begins with that event.

But, it's not true that this fame is due to a Rossi's deception. At that time, Rossi, by himself, was lacking of any credibility as a CF scientist, and it was well known that he could have been a "crook" (see below).

His initial fame among thousands of his believers have been mainly boosted by a worldwide massive propagandistic campaign, which started immediately after the January 2011 demo, and was totally based on the credibility of the professors involved in the test. You can realize it looking at what JR wrote on Vortex the day after (1): "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. Rossi may be a crook but he could not persuade Levi to destroy his career. The fact that Levi and other established professors took part in the experiment is about 4 orders of magnitude more significant than what Rossi may have done, ..."

In this case, I agree with his words. Rossi couldn't have deceived the professors, because, as JR said, they first "designed and implemented the calorimetry", and thereafter they personally "took part in the experiment". A week later, they also wrote, checked and issued the calorimetric report. So, it was "physically impossible" for Rossi to "fool those people". Consider that JR was one of the most informed people in the world on that demo, because he was directly in touch with the testers. And he kept on saying the same things for many years later (2).

The same applies to all the non public previous tests carried out in the US. It's impossible that Rossi conned also all the several well trained CF/LENR researchers working for the US agencies that in the previous years had the opportunity to know him very well and to see many times the magic tools at work. They are colleagues of you, aren't they? Do you think, they could have been fooled for years by a controversial Italian philosopher? The same person that failed to provide them a working TEG device just a few years before?

Quote

It's hard to overstate how disruptive and damaging it can be to a research field when a research entity intentionally deceives.

Yes, you are right. That's exactly the situation of the LENR field after this revealing Ecat saga.

Did you follow the January 2011 demo? Did you examine the technical details? You are a researcher, and you told me you are familiar with publishing results. Do you think that it is possible to unintentionally declare in a report that the steam dryness was measured by a well specific type of RH probe, while dozens of pictures show you that that probe was inexistent and that at its place was placed a simple thermometric probe? Are you able to answer the questions I recently posed to DW (3) and that remained unanswered?

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

(2) https://www.lenr-forum.com/for…D/?postID=29406#post29406

(3) Rossi vs. Darden developments - Part 2

Quote from Rionrlty

I certainly wouldn't consider them unbiased.

Has anyone claimed that Dewey is unbiased? Being biased is definitely not the same as being a troll.

Quote

So with this 15% full DN80 flow pipe with 25cm/s flow rate. It out woul get about 16288 litre per day. Yet you are arguing that only 1/4 the claimed water quauntity is circulating which is about half this so about 8% full.

It also takes a slope equivalent to1cm drop over 10m for this flow velocity. Which is quite low for a partially empty gravity return pipe like this. If it was steaper say 5cm per 10m the flow would be much faster and the depth even less perhaps 1% or 2% full. I'm curious how you can explain how such an empty pipe could spoof a flow meter to read 36000 litre per day.

I don't see the difficulty. I'm not personally sure that the flowmeter is spoofed. Or, if it is spoofed, I'm not sure that it is placed at the bottom of a slanted pipe - because we just don't know where it was placed.

But, if it is placed at the bottom of a pipe, what happens is this. As the water falls down the pipe it gets acceleated by gravity and decellerated by turbulent and frictional losses. In a 75mm ID pipe there is a lot of room, so for a fast overall water speed we'd expect most of the pipe cross-section to be air. But the water will have turbulent flow and it is expected that it will push an impellor round at a speed that causes large over-reading. Exactly how this works depends on the design of the flowmeter, but for most designs it is plausible that water collects at the bottom of the FM enough to ensure it engages with the impellor blades. The over-reading will then depend on how much of the FM is filled with water. With a fraction alpha filled, we expect an overreading of approximately 1/alpha. This is very rough because the turbulent flow will have a large effect as well. That is not easy to calculate, since you'd expect water to collect at the impellor (which will impede the rapid flow of water, and also the exact geometry will matter).

I fully agree that we cannot easily know what will be the impellor reading in this case. I equally fully disagree with your contention that in this situation you would not expect the flowmeter to be spoofed - certainly you would expect a reading larger than the real water rate.

Quote from Ascoli65

His initial fame among thousands of his believers have been mainly boosted by a worldwide massive propagandistic campaign, which started immediately after the January 2011 demo, and was totally based on the credibility of the professors involved in the test. You can realize it looking at what JR wrote on Vortex the day after (1): "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. Rossi may be a crook but he could not persuade Levi to destroy his career. The fact that Levi and other established professors took part in the experiment is about 4 orders of magnitude more significant than what Rossi may have done, ..."

First: I agree that Rossi getting support from UoB academics was a great PR coup. He has repeated this, with other academics, a number of times. It is a real strength of "the Rossi effect".

Second: I don't agree that it would have been physically impossible for them to get these tests wrong.

This a common idea, where people over-trust an expert view. It does not work here for the reasons below:

1. Selection. In this case for the academics involved we now know that Rossi chooses his marks very carefully: those who do not accept what Rossi says are labelled snakes or clowns and no longer have access. So these people who validate Rossi's stuff are selected to be those initially wanting to believe Rossi, and relatively uncritical of him. Others (e.g. Jed) are less strongly elected but can suffer confirmation bias, as seems to have happened here.
2. Limited competence. People assume that when a UoB prof takes part in a demo and checks the calorimetry they are therefore expert in the matter that they check. that is not usually true. A calorimetrist might be expert (but would not likely be expert in phase change calorimetry since this is seldom used). Do we know that these academics included anyone with calorimetry expertise?
3. Zero competence at fraud detection. Academics, as has been pointed out, are very bad at detecting deliberate lies. They will be very very reluctant to think that a pleasant and interesting academic who talks to them could be deliberately deceiving them.
4. Single point breakage. All it needs is for one academic to vouch for a given matter that others are not expert in, and the group will believe, or at least be unwilling to gainsay a colleague where they are not themselves expert. Thus one person in the group who is incompetent or deliberately falsifying results can sway the whole group. We see an example of that (almost certainly) in Lugano where a group accepted IR thermography temperature calculations that were just wrong.

Academics are really the worse qualified people to analyse the limited information available from demo setups which they do not 100% control. Especially in this case where "nuclear scientists" fascinated by the possibility of LENR may have none of the relevant lab skills to debug arbitrary calorimetry - but will all understand and validate basic physics calculations based on (flawed) assumptions and ideal equations.

Alan,

Whoever says "it works for me", would have to know they will be subpoenaed and cross examined.

And as a grand total of no one has ever replicated any of Rossi's excess heat claims anywhere, I would be very cautious of saying anything, knowing that it cannot be proved

RiRi - lets clear something up. Planet Rossi unleashed a slander, defamation and misinformation tidal wave last Spring that just happened to coincide with the launch of his litigation. I was outraged at this and started posting to counter their lies. IH asked me to stop as they wanted to let the smear campaign from Planet Rossi cycle out on its own. I tried standing down for a little while but couldn't stand-by while Planet Rossi twisted stories and fabrications against some of the finest men I know. The onslaught of garbage that came out of several bloggers was so outrageous that I couldn't sit back any longer and decided to make a stand. First on Mats blog until the truth got too hot (with the accompanying Planet Rossi call for moderation) and comments were turned off, then over to E-Catworld until Planet Rossi called for moderation to stop the heat rounds. I was effectively banished there both as nckhawk and Dewey Weaver. The last remaining forum for exchange was L-F where there initially was a lot of bias towards me (and IH). That has calmed down dramatically as more folks have realized that Rossi might be wrong and operating from a 4 decade old pattern. This has actually been a great distraction from my work but I think that it has been a useful exercise. I do look forward to being able to focus on progress / the hunt and will rejoice when that day fully returns.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I fully agree that we cannot easily know what will be the impellor reading in this case. I equally fully disagree with your contention that in this situation you would not expect the flowmeter to be spoofed - certainly you would expect a reading larger than the real water rate.

To give one an idea about the working principle of a Woltman flow meter and how inaccurate such a volumetric flow meter might be when not completely filled with water, watch this short video.

StephenC: If we insinuate intended deception, then there are plenty of ways how this deception could be done.
From the little we know about the plant configuration and the "ERV" measurements so far (which looks like a very bad joke), you certainly can't rule out fraud. So, why are you even trying?

I think even Frank Acland understood this when he wrote that a testimony from the "customer" that he consumed 1MW steam during the test periode would be the key in this whole affair:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2016…-vs-industrial-heat-case/
Now that we know a bit more about the "customer", do you still expect any convincing evidence from "the customer"?

Quote from JedRothwell

I forget some minor detail about Rossi, who is one researcher out of thousands.

Sorry, but also in this case I think you are kidding. Assuming that you are talking about the CF/LENR researchers and that this role applies to Rossi, it's very hard to believe that you consider him "one researcher out of thousands". Thousands are the comments you wrote to support the Ecat claims, or the number of replies reached by this only thread, one of the dozens dedicated to this very special "CF researcher".

I would like to know if sigmoidal believes you also in this case.

Quote

Earlier I reported one of the temperatures Rossi gave me: 101 deg C. Later, I replaced with another temperature he gave me: 103 deg C. The difference between them [...]

I just told you, that I'm not interested in the last tests. You can keep valid whichever temperature you want. I'm not going to dispute any results of the tests carried out after the official withdrawal of the UoB. They are private affairs within the CF/LENR field.

Anyway, this your insistence to address the Doral test confirms what I said before. You want to focus all the attention on the last tests, and this provides a possible explanation of your pretense to confuse the first ones.

Quote from Rionrlty

I certainly wouldn't consider them unbiased.

Who ever claimed Dewey was unbiased? I'm not unbiased. I know that you are not unbiased from your posts. Please show me any poster on this website (or any other for that matter) that isn't biased in some manner. In my mind, that doesn't make Dewey uninformative or a 'trollbot' much less a super trollbot. I don't think you are a troll, or a trollbot, even though I think you are biased and I might often disagree with your conclusions. I can also consider your view and learn from it.

You seem to think we should disregard everything Dewey says because he has a financial stake in IH, or worse, for some reason he needs to be condemned and personally insulted because his perspective includes a pro-IH 'conflict of interest'.

I'd suggest that you can relax. We already know where Dewey is coming from. It's already factored in and considered when we read his posts. And yet, I find them quite informative (and entertaining).

YMMV

Peace.

Quote from Dewey Weaver

RiRi - lets clear something up. Planet Rossi unleashed a slander, defamation and misinformation tidal wave last Spring that just happened to coincide with the launch of his litigation. I was outraged at this and started posting to counter their lies. IH asked me to stop as they wanted to let the smear campaign from Planet Rossi cycle out on its own. I tried standing down for a little while but couldn't stand-by while Planet Rossi twisted stories and fabrications against some of the finest men I know. The onslaught of garbage that came out of several bloggers was so outrageous that I couldn't sit back any longer and decided to make a stand. First on Mats blog until the truth got too hot (with the accompanying Planet Rossi call for moderation) and comments were turned off, then over to E-Catworld until Planet Rossi called for moderation to stop the heat rounds. I was effectively banished there both as nckhawk and Dewey Weaver. The last remaining forum for exchange was L-F where there initially was a lot of bias towards me (and IH). That has calmed down dramatically as more folks have realized that Rossi might be wrong and operating from a 4 decade old pattern. This has actually been a great distraction from my work but I think that it has been a useful exercise. I do look forward to being able to focus on progress / the hunt and will rejoice when that day fully returns.

Dear Dewey,

Take please two statements:

A. early during the 1MW test IH has informed the world that

the 1MW plant does not work and it is zero excess heat;

B. a campaign slander, defamation and misinformation

was unleashed after the start of litigation;

There are differences between A. and B.

- A. is untrue, B. is true;

- A. cannot be proved, B. is easily provable.

Just exactly the contrary of what you say is true- IH's outer supporters have started the campaign targeted on Rossi as person, the plant was attacked slowly, step-wise simultaneously with retro-writing of the history of the Test.

What you call now Rossi Planet was just asking howcould IH keep a valid contract if the Plant is not OK, or how they tolerated non-functional equipment and bad instruments used for faulty measurement, how could they collaborate

with such an evil man?

Those who dared to ask such things were punished verbally

going up to their intelligence and mental sanity being put in doubt. The questions were about IH's strategy, not laudatio's of Rossi.

I remember an ugly episode when IH loyalists have invaded the site of Mats Lewan stopping it.

I will not speak about my experience- everything is on the Blog and in e-mails etc. Demonizing of Rossi, demolishing the plant. Shouting and insulting

My grandfatherly advise to you is to not insist on this, it is perfectly documented that your part has started the defamation, character assassination campaign. You know why-insteAd of focusing on the technical proofs.

I am no historian and have better things to do than disputing this. It happened, happens, OK, it was your decision, it will be your responsibility and your merit, positive or negative.

peter

Sigh...

The un-calibrated Stepanov experiment with thermocouples far from the middle of the device, delaying the normal crossover that occurs when the centre get hotter than the outside in a concentric hot tube design...

Quote from Ascoli65

Sorry, but also in this case I think you are kidding.

What? Because I was momentarily confused about which test this was? Is that, like, a Federal Crime?

You can't let go, can you?

Quote from Alan Smith

However, to get back to the point, if I was IH, I would not want to take the risk 'however remote' of such a thing [a claimed crowd validation of Rossi's formula] happening at an inconvenient moment. So I expect we will hear nothing.

I'd not expect IH to release all technical info from Rossi, just in case something in it (legacy of Focardi) has some merit. while they are altruistic they have a duty to inventors to keep IP where they can, and given no-one knows what LENR is almost anything could end up being valuable IP. even if the chances of that are low you keep it. That is quite separate from whether Rossi's stuff works.

But the chances of Rossi replicas working is remote. IH will have put much more effort into it than typical people can, and they have not got it to work. Not even a little bit of validated Nobel prize worthy replicable excess heat. Nor, BTW, has any of the post-Parkhomov replication led to replicable positives. there has been much interest and were this possible i'd expect it to have happened by now. If you listen to what people were saying back when the replication started it was generally agreed that if real definitive results would be got within 6 months.

Quote from Ascoli65

His initial fame among thousands of his believers have been mainly boosted by a worldwide massive propagandistic campaign, which started immediately after the January 2011 demo, and was totally based on the credibility of the professors involved in the test. You can realize it looking at what JR wrote on Vortex the day after (1): "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.

Evidently I was wrong about that. It is possible some of the early tests were positive, but in light of what happened later, I doubt it.

Quote from Ascoli65

His initial fame among thousands of his believers have been mainly boosted by a worldwide massive propagandistic campaign, which started immediately after the January 2011 demo, and was totally based on the credibility of the professors involved in the test. You can realize it looking at what JR wrote on Vortex the day after (1): "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.

Yes, I am familiar with the 2011 demo. That was a long time ago, so I had to review my private emails and some blog posts to remember my thinking from back then. In review, I was very skeptical of that demonstration, but was still trying to get more information. From my private correspondence, I see that by the end of June, 2011, I had investigated as much as I could online, and was convinced Rossi was a con man. (This is actually earlier than I remembered off the top of my head). By that time in June, my best explanation regarding Levi was that he was not a very competent experimentalist, and in reading a few of his papers, he wasn't a significant theorist. Regarding Focardi, my best explanation was that in his twilight of life, he may have been hoping/grasping for confirmation of his theories.

Quote

Rossi may be a crook but he could not persuade Levi to destroy his career. The fact that Levi and other established professors took part in the experiment is about 4 orders of magnitude more significant than what Rossi may have done, ..."

Perhaps the 10^4 figure is reasonable. From my perspective at the time, my sense of the validity of Jan 2011 demo, given all the limitations and lack of independence:

10^4 X (Rossi's almost nothing, like say 10^-10) = (a very small number) => Insufficient Evidence of Validity

So, personally, I did not then and do not now find that demo convincing. I mean, even the parties involved called it a 'demo', not a scientific test. The most a 'demo' can do is show promise, not validity. So by design, it was not a scientific test. Perhaps this point (demo vs. test) is where we diverge in our conclusions.

At the time, I felt strongly that easiest and most straight forward way to 'validate' the E-Cat was to do a controlled experiment with water flow calorimetry involving no phase change.

The fact that Rossi, when directly asked by Krivit and others (Collis I believe) to do that and refused to do either (controlled with blank/ no phase-change flow) convinced me that he was purposefully hiding something.

So again, my explanation then and now for the enigmatic initial confirmations by Jed and the Swedes is simple: they were too trusting of Rossi. They were conned. It happens.

Obviously you disagree, and have postulated a Big Conspiracy.

I find that silly.

Quote

What you call now Rossi Planet was just asking how could IH keep a valid contract if the Plant is not OK, or how they tolerated non-functional equipment and bad instruments used for faulty measurement, how could they collaborate

with such an evil man?

Peter. An eccentric inventor who is unreliable and deceptive, while unpleasant, is not necessarily evil. You go from painting Rossi an angelic saviour, to supposing him evil, when in reality he is just one of many inventors with vapourware. He is dangerous because so capable of convincing others - a rare and valuable talent. And he is pretty certainly fraudulent, and possibly criminally so. Evil though? That gives him more than he is worth.

As for how IH could keep the contract with Rossi, knowing his defects, it is quite simple. There are actually multiple plausible reasons and I don't know which is true:

(1) The Lomax sting. (First suggested by Abd) IH needed to get Rossi to show his goods properly in such a way that if they did not work he then would be exposed and unable to continue a scam distracting money and good people from Pd/D LENR towards Ni-H LENR. If the stuff works, however deceptive Rossi is, however bad his demos, IH can stand that to get working LENR 5-10 years before they expected.

(2) The Uncertainty game. IH gambled on the possibility that Rossi's stuff might work, in spite of the known problems and the fact that very likley it would not work. A high stakes gamble for very high but very uncertain return. Having started, and paid $10.5M, they lose nothing by keeping Rossi on good terms, even though they have secret very very large reservations, because he might help them to get something to work, as the contract obliged him to do. Why alienate him? If the test ends up working, regardless, they will be happy to pay. If it does not work there is no way, given the legal deficits, and the fact that there is no customer, and the fact that the test can be shown not to work, that they have to pay. They maybe did not expect Rossi's irrational "I'll sue the snakes" reaction.