Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions

  • Well, my criteria for believing this has always been the same: if at least two or three highly reputable universities or government agencies replicate any of these effects with zero involvement by anyone associated with the LENR/CF field and with no failures, then I will believe it is real, too. When you look at how quickly IH disproved so many of the claims that people on boards like this point to as "real scientific evidence", it's clear that expert independent testing is the only way to verify this.

  • LINR (that is pretty funny in and of itself) - with one exception, we have found math errors, some unintentional self-deception, some see what you want to see

    and / or orders of magnitude measurement issues in the projects we have parked. The remaining projects have survived that level of scrutiny and we have brought in world class outside expertise to help us sort through balance of the portfolio. We don't plan to continue with any project that doesn't pass the muster of an external qualified 3rd party verification. For the record, the 3rd party standard is very high.

  • LINR (that is pretty funny in and of itself) - with one exception, we have found math errors, some unintentional self-deception, some see what you want to see

    and / or orders of magnitude measurement issues in the projects we have parked. The remaining projects have survived that level of scrutiny and we have brought in world class outside expertise to help us sort through balance of the portfolio. We don't plan to continue with any project that doesn't pass the muster of an external qualified 3rd party verification. For the record, the 3rd party standard is very high.

    Heh, what does LINR stand for? Laugh Inducing (non) Nuclear Reactions?

  • Quote

    None of this implies an improper relationship between Levi and Rossi except in the limited sense noted above - that Levi is a bad choice of validator for Rossi.


    I know of no evidence for collusion between Levi and Rossi to cheat anyone about the ecat. But as I said before, if Levi is not a conspirator with Rossi, he must incredible incompetent. How else to account for his lack of diligence and capability in properly testing the early (steam and lower temp) ecats? It requires a bit of knowledge of thermal physics but not all that much and he failed at it miserably and continued to fail at it for 6 years. So in addition to incompetence, he doesn't learn well and doesn't pay attention to advice, even when it comes from someone as illustrious as Dr. Brian Josephson (see my prior posts on this). Maybe that is why he is still an assistant professor after all the years he has been at U of B and maybe that is why he has essentially no research papers of note in which he is a principal author. Levi is sort of a mystery because he never talks on the record.


    Come on, Alan. Admit it. You would love to be a fly on the wall when Levi and Rossi talk ecat. So would I!

  • Dewey Weaver

    Quote

    It gives me great pleasure that Planet Rossi types have been and will continue to be the last to know.

    Maybe but you have to admit you are far more cryptic than you need to be. Cat and mouse games like you seem to play here seem childish and counterproductive.


    Quote

    LINR (that is pretty funny in and of itself) - with one exception, we have found math errors, some unintentional self-deception, some see what you want to see and / or orders of magnitude measurement issues in the projects we have parked.


    Gee! What a shock!


    Quote

    The remaining projects have survived that level of scrutiny and we have brought in world class outside expertise to help us sort through balance of the portfolio. We don't plan to continue with any project that doesn't pass the muster of an external qualified 3rd party verification. For the record, the 3rd party standard is very high.


    I hope it isn't world class Swedish mice, obscure assistant professors from Italian universities, or world class McKubre's and Swartz's and Hagelstein or Miles. Or for that matter Storms. I don't know him but from his work and what his students have said, he seems immensely likeable and trustworthy but in the end, he is also a believer. While of all of them, I would trust him the most, my point is that the people you choose, Dewey, should be well known and established, experts in thermal physics or engineering and heat flow, and completely uninvolved, thus far, in anything "LENR". I suspect Darden and Vaughn's original vetting of Rossi (and Brillouin) was done without those precautions and used many of the "usual suspects" or "blind mice" and that is how IH got so roundly blindsided, flummoxed, and bamboozled by Rossi. Not that any number of internet trolls like me or Krivit could not have warned about it. Darden never asked.


    Just out of curiosity, Dewey, were you involved in that original evaluation of Rossi before or around the time he got his $10M? Did you agree with Darden about that? And if so, for God's sake, WHY? And if you thought running a vague test of a complex kludge for a year was better than testing a simple low temperature ecat for a few weeks, I'd love to know how THAT happened too. Not to mention how it came to pass that Rossi had full control of everything about the tests, the customer, the use of the heat and his old cronies (Penon worked with Rossi in 2012!) were the principals involved in the adventure. That all could use some insider explanation!


    Penon 2012 test paid for and set up by Rossi (note similarity to Levi's test Jed liked and to Lugano): https://www.scribd.com/doc/105…ctradius&medium=affiliate

  • MY - I was not involved with R at all outside of studying the broader IP landscape to determine an IP map, sector status, some IP strategy development as well as determining whether or not there was anything blocking already in the mix. I had some expert help at that and we did a decent job in our assessment. TD said that he was going to make a crazy bet (a splash) that would create other possibilities (ripples) and we eventually determined that I should follow the ripples and see what was out there. The rest of the story is pretty incredible. While the three ring circus was running, I was able to meet some of the most amazing people that I have ever known and proceeded to engage them on their own terms. Most had given up important, high paying positions in what turned out to be a substantial sacrifice to chase CF. Without exception, these were very fine and credible folks. I've developed what is turning out to be some life long friendships in the process and believe that at least one has a real chance at grabbing the brass ring. Lots of mistakes have been made and the education / adventure continues. For the privilege of seeing what I have seen and knowing what I know, I consider myself to be one of the luckiest guys on planet earth.

    • Official Post

    Without the two Levi HT reports (Ferrara/Lugano), it is very unlikley Rossi would have carried this as far as he did. Both reports served to placate IH at critical decision points. However, while there is some smoke, there is no fire that would implicate Levi, so he should be afforded the benefit of doubt.


    However, IMO his scientific reputation will always have an * next to it, because of his close association with Rossi. About the only way I can see him getting rid of that *, is to either redeem himself with

    a replication, come up with some proof that his Lugano results were good, or hope like hell Rossi comes through for him.

  • Mary....."I hope it isn't world class Swedish mice, obscure assistant professors from Italian universities, or world class McKubre's and Swartz's and Hagelstein or Miles. Or for that matter Storms. I don't know him but from his work and what his students have said, he seems immensely likeable and trustworthy but in the end, he is also a believer. While of all of them, I would trust him the most,"


    I was not aware that Storm had students. Hagelstein does but Storms is not a teacher/prof.

  • Quote

    MY - I was not involved with R at all outside of studying the broader IP landscape to determine an IP map, sector status, some IP strategy development as well as determining whether or not there was anything blocking already in the mix. I had some expert help at that and we did a decent job in our assessment. TD said that he was going to make a crazy bet (a splash) that would create other possibilities (ripples) and we eventually determined that I should follow the ripples and see what was out there. The rest of the story is pretty incredible. While the three ring circus was running, I was able to meet some of the most amazing people that I have ever known and proceeded to engage them on their own terms. Most had given up important, high paying positions in what turned out to be a substantial sacrifice to chase CF. Without exception, these were very fine and credible folks. I've developed what is turning out to be some life long friendships in the process and believe that at least one has a real chance at grabbing the brass ring. Lots of mistakes have been made and the education / adventure continues. For the privilege of seeing what I have seen and knowing what I know, I consider myself to be one of the luckiest guys on planet earth.


    Well, OK. Interesting. "The broader IP landscape", hey? Not sure what that means exactly. Did you not read Krivit's stuff, Gary Wright's and mine? Pomp and Ericsson et al. for example? ( https://www.nyteknik.se/opinio…kritiskt-om-e-cat-6397480 ) (use Google translate if you don't read Swedish). With all Darden's and therefore your resources, you guys still gambled $10M on a completely absurd test and then allowed Rossi to essentially run ALL of it? For an f'n year? All to get your foot in the door of LENR? I'm sure you're not mostly the one who made those decisions but they are startling.


    I am reminded of another billionaire, Dick Smith. When strongly encourage by various people who had been (some still were, I think) with NASA to invest a million or more in Defkalion, he had his people read the internet critiques and he contacted the principal critics, Krivit and me included. Far as I know, nobody told him NOT to invest. What I and others told him was what questions to ask and what testing to demand (and by whom). It was all quite modest and reasonable and would not have risked IP, taken long or cost much. He presented it to Defkalion, they got angry and took their toys and left, and that told Smith everything he needed to know. And now, it turns out they were rank liars just like Rossi and had been deliberately and knowingly faking results, just like Rossi. I am mystified that Darden (and I guess you, Dewey) did not check on Rossi's history of consistent lies, past failures in similar tech ventures, and horribly bad testing. I mean is $10M (and the legal fees) simply chump change to Darden?

  • Quote

    I was not aware that Storm had students. Hagelstein does but Storms is not a teacher/prof.


    You may be right. I remember seeing an article and a bunch of photos in which students were operating Seebeck and other calorimeters studying CF and they wrote how much they liked it and their professor. I thought that was Storms but maybe it was John Dash. I bet Jed knows. Anyway, just from listening to him and reading him, Storms seems much more sober and cautious (and pleasant) than the other usual suspect LENR proponents. So I have been disappointed that he did not come out early to denounce the crap done by Defkalion and Rossi.

  • That was not an "early test".


    The issue there is simply that the tester was Levi (with Rossi) and no-one else actually doing the testing. Levi has shown himself both before and after this test to be profoundly unreliable as a tester. The documented issues are:

    Recording impossible flowrates in early tests
    Getting IR calorimetry wrong in a way that gives a false positive result in Lugano and when asked to check maintaining that his erroneous method is correct . . .

    I didn't say it was an early test.


    So anyway, you did not find any errors in the paper I cited. I'll take your non-answer to mean "no."


    You addressed many other important issues in your response, but -- as I said -- I did not find any errors in this paper and evidently neither did you. Taken as a stand-along paper it has not been disproved.


    I am just speculating here, but perhaps most of work in this paper was done by someone else on the team, not Levi or Rossi. Perhaps that is why this is good work with a positive result and the other papers are lousy. I don't think that is the case, but it is plausible.

  • Well, my criteria for believing this has always been the same: if at least two or three highly reputable universities or government agencies replicate any of these effects with zero involvement by anyone associated with the LENR/CF field and with no failures,

    That makes no sense, for two reasons:


    1. Over 180 highly reputable universities and government labs replicated, as shown in Storms Table 2. They all had zero involvement before 1989, when no one knew about cold fusion. No one anywhere was associated with cold fusion except Paneth and Peters in 1927, and Fleischmann and Pons in 1989. What you are saying is that as soon as someone at Los Alamos, China Lake or BARC replicates, that makes the institution tainted and we can no longer trust them. So, no institution will ever be able to replicate to your satisfaction.


    2. If you insist on "no failures" you will never accept the reality of any physical effect or experiment. Experiments always fail. Even industrial production fails at times. Up until the mid-1950s, with many transistor types, nearly every device in a batch failed. Rockets have been in intense development since 1945, and they often carry payloads worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, yet they still often explode.

  • Are they? apparently not enough to win a court case by proving a fraud that should be blatant, according to you and THH

    I wouldn't put it that way. They were not willing run the risk of losing a court case to a stupid jury, because even if they had won Rossi would probably not have paid. He would have fled the country. If he had any money left, he would have hidden it. I.H. would have to pay their lawyers for weeks more in the court, and in the end they would get nothing even if they won. It would be a Pyrrhic victory at best.


    As I said, it resembled asymmetrical warfare. I.H. could lose, but they could not win the trial. So from their point of view it was best to call it off.


    Criminal fraud is an entirely different matter. That is not subject to a civil case. It would not be I.H. pursuing it. That would be the police. I.H. would not have to pay anything. Whether the government finds it cost effective to pursue this I cannot say, but I am sure it is fraud. The government cannot possibly go after every lawbreaker and every white-collar criminal. It does not have the resources.

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