ICCF21 Thread

Jed Rothwell: the gatejeeper

Don't you remember, here is a reminder...

Jed Rothwell	1/22/12
to vortex-l

I would like to quote the founding policies of this discussion group, written by Bill Beaty:

http://www.amasci.com/weird/wvort.html

"NO SNEERING. Ridicule, derision, scoffing, and ad-hominem is banned. "Pathological Skepticism" is banned (see the link.) The tone here should be one of legitimate disagreement and respectful debate.

Vortex-L is a big nasty nest of 'true believers' (hopefully having some tendency to avoid self-deception,) and skeptics may as well leave in disgust. But if your mind is open and you wish to test "crazy" claims rather than ridiculing them or explaining them away, hop on board!"

See also:

http://amasci.com/weird/vmore.html

Many people who have shown up here lately seem to be unaware of these rules, or they are unwilling to abide by them.
They have been carrying out vendettas, writing insults, using off-color language, and calling other people here bad names. They do act according to academic decorum, which calls for a large measure of polite hypocrisy. Some degree of "ridicule, derision, scoffing, and ad-hominem" is inevitable. It is human nature. But there has been far too much lately.

These people include Mary Yugo, Axil Axil, John Milstone, Eff Wivakeef and others. You know who you are. If you will not stop this childish nonsense, I ask you to shut up and go away. I ask Bill Beaty to ban you. I have been adding you to my personal kill file, but there seems to be so many of you lately, and you are so noisy, you are interfering with scientific discourse, and perverting the spirit of this forum.

The Internet is unbounded. You can form your own discussion group. You can subscribe to this group while you post your attacks and ad hominem elsewhere. Or take it to VortexB-L. Of course we welcome your contributions to the technical discussion here.

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Daniel Rocha	1/22/12
to vortex-l

Axil Axil believes in Rossi. He just opened a thread about him, with ideas on how the powder was chosen.Please, pay attention.

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On Mon, 23 Jan 2012, Shaun Taylor wrote:

Quote

Oh so now Vortex is only a PRO Rossi discussion group?

Yes. Exactly.

Now you're getting it.

What part of BIG NASTY NEST OF 'TRUE BELIEVERS' didn't you understand?

You apparently haven't read the forum rules.

Is there ANY reason I shouldn't ban you and several other obvious and flagrant Skeptics for repeated violation of #2? As stated, you should have left in disgust long ago.

Vortex-L is a "believers" forum, a tilted playing field, always has been,

and avowed skeptics are only tolerated.

To all users: Is your mind open? No? Then unsubscribe immediately, you should not be here. If you do not, I'll be going through the list and banning many users.

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Vtx thoughtcriminals. "Scoffing" and anti-fringe behavior, but didn't leave in disgust as suggested. Ungood! Time for Periodic Cleansing.



removed:



"Mary" "Yugo"

effwivakeef

Dusty Bradshaw

Shaun Taylor



Vortex traffic temporarily suspended. Getting everyone's attention.



I'll leave "subscribe" turned off for weeks/months, "unsubscribe" remains active. Email me directly for problems, suggestions.

Quote from axil

Don't you remember that you almost got me banned from Vortex because of my criticism of Rossi?

I have no power to ban anyone at Vortex. No influence at all. Furthermore, I would never ban you or anyone else even if I could. I wouldn't bother. When people annoy me, I block them with Gmail and I never see their messages again. They become invisible. (This site also has that feature but it not work as well.)

Quote from axil

Jed Rothwell: the gatejeeper

Don't you remember, here is a reminder...

Jed Rothwell
1/22/12

to vortex-l

I would like to quote the founding policies of this discussion group, written by Bill Beaty:

I was just pointing out the policy. I am not a gatekeeper in any sense. I wouldn't bother to keep the gate because, as I said, I block people from my own email and I never think about them again.

You have some peculiar ideas about me. You seem to think I revel in dark power over cold fusion. I have no influence. If I had influence, people would have done many experiments that Fleischmann and I urged them to do. Fleischmann also had little or no influence, which I think shows that no one has influence over researchers. Trying to get them to do anything is like herding cats.

You also have some crazy notions and conspiracy theories about how physics conference chairmen control or ban people. Have you ever been to a conference? A cold fusion conference in particular? You don't seem to have any notion what these conferences are like. Also, I doubt you have met Greenyer if you think a 70-something physicist could intimidate him or shut him up.

Quote from axil

If what you state is in fact the case, way weren't the rules of the conference suspended as a courtesy in light of the high respect that is being universally afforded to Bob and his open source organization?

Axil this is not a sensible question or concern. I have chaired or co-chaired 3 of these ICCF’s. We are an enthusiastic group. At every ICCF I have had someone come up and say “my work just must be presented”. As someone already noted to do this would be a discourtesy to someone else – equally enthusiastic – who has submitted an abstract. It is also an added burden on the organizers. In terms of “the high respect that is being universally afforded to Bob and his open source organization” respect for Bob and the MFMP has not risen to the point that normal conference rules would or should be broken. I know of only ½ dozen people interested in the field who have attained this level of respect (all but the last dead): Martin Fleischmann; John Bockris; Julian Schwinger; Giuliano Preparata, Edward Teller; Brian Josephson. We would also (probably but entirely at the Chair's discretion) allow a big money funder to talk without submission or a big wheel in government. Bob belongs to none of these groups but was treated well and sympathetically. If he has a specific complaint about events of which I am unaware, he should take it up with Nagel or Katinsky, or with Bill Collis (appointed Chairman of ICCF22).

Quote from mmckubre

Axil this is not a sensible question or concern. I have chaired or co-chaired 3 of these ICCF’s. We are an enthusiastic group. At every ICCF I have had someone come up and say “my work just must be presented”. As someone already noted to do this would be a discourtesy to someone else – equally enthusiastic – who has submitted an abstract. It is also an added burden on the organizers. In terms of “the high respect that is being universally afforded to Bob and his open source organization” respect for Bob and the MFMP has not risen to the point that normal conference rules would or should be broken. I know of only ½ dozen people interested in the field who have attained this level of respect (all but the last dead): Martin Fleischmann; John Bockris; Julian Schwinger; Giuliano Preparata, Edward Teller; Brian Josephson. We would also (probably but entirely at the Chair's discretion) allow a big money funder to talk without submission or a big wheel in government. Bob belongs to none of these groups but was treated well and sympathetically. If he has a specific complaint about events of which I am unaware, he should take it up with Nagel or Katinsky, or with Bill Collis (appointed Chairman of ICCF22).

A post ftom Bob

The observations and their interpretations that Bob Greenyer will make on his analysis of the inner workings of a number of open source LENR systems are antithetical to anything that you can beleive. Yes, I doubt that you will accept it. I know that Bob has the courage to buck main stream thought and I know that the price that he will pay will be high.

My only interest is pursuing truth and I know that Bob is only interested in that too. With this upcoming highly sensitive situation close at hand, I am super sensitive to any gate keeping and ridicule that might prejudiced the Truth as I see it. That being said, I regret any overreaction that I might have made.

Quote from JedRothwell

Correct. December 2017. It is a shame. I was going to report that tomorrow. I talked to Dennis Pease, who worked there. He hopes to continue the work. He says they got positive results last year, but then the results faded away in the last months so they had to close.

So: if the results were truly positive, but in a long-running system they persist for only a few weeks and then stop, that is no reason to stop. Here by positive I mean unambiguous replicable evidence of some unexpected source of high energy density.

However, if by "faded away" he means that better controls showed that unclear results were in fact false positives that is different.

I think it helpful that false positive results be tagged as this - with documented mechanism, since it helps future work.

Regards, THH

Quote from Dewey Weaver

7of20 - not quite. After the empty reactor with a COP of 8 incident, R was allowed to run enough rope out during that one year to effectively end his career as a cold-fusioneer. We didn't think that he would actually litigate with all the data and facts stacked against him but the guy's audacity is beyond compare. He is quite good at what he does.

Yes, Rossi is proficient at what he does and he has been practicing with success (a blip in Italy where things went wrong) for many years. He has made a good living from it.

The IH episode and resulting exposure has the merit of making it very clear to everyone (a few diehards on ECW excepted) what precisely is his area of expertise. I know there was technical evidence before: the court discovery adds to that a lot of black and white deceit.

I'm not sure whether Rossi is actually getting more money now from investors. I think most will be very cautious, however well he talks. Rossi himself has enough money to keep the show on the road for a long time. Along with Bob I think Rossi, while definitely liking money, and good at getting it, also likes adulation. He might well self-fund the show for a long time in the hope of future funding and the present reality of keeping a core group of fans.

There is similarity between Rossi's behaviour and that of a cult leader. Not identical: I don't think Rossi takes over the lives of his adherents to the same extent, though I remember from posts here that he has broken a few hearts. Similar because he is charismatic and while being deceitful and making money from his victims, he also believes his own nonsense. I know we have argued here whether that can be true but it is the power of a truly charismatic leader is that they have absolute faith in their own views no matter how many deceits go along with them. Some people have a unique ability to believe their own lies: Rossi does this more flagrantly than most.

Quote from axil

The observations and their interpretations that Bob Greenyer will make on his analysis of the inner workings of a number of open source LENR systems are antithetical to anything that you can beleive. Yes, I doubt that you will accept it. I know that Bob has the courage to buck main stream thought and I know that the price that he will pay will be high.

My only interest is pursuing truth and I know that Bob is only interested in that too. With this upcoming highly sensitive situation close at hand, I am super sensitive to any gate keeping and ridicule that might prejudiced the Truth as I see it. That being said, I regret any overreaction that I might have made.

Axil: may I suggest that if you are interested in getting to the truth you tone down the "I know" count and stop treating everyone else with contempt? Sometimes other people are right...

THH - the SKINR EOL story is complicated and the core research lives on. There were forces aligned against them that did not want that mission to continue. There were also some self-inflicted wounds as well as was some deception on verification side of the Spring 2017 XH results and promised funding. The clock ran out with departments at the school more than happy to take over the lab space. The other shutdowns of last year were not unrelated and the moral of the story is to keep your friends close along with a critical close eye on your frenemies.

Slides and preprint uploaded:

Higgins, R. and D. Letts. Modeling & Simulation of a Gas Discharge LENR Prototype (PowerPoint slides). in The 21st International Conference for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF-21. 2018. Fort Collins, CO.

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HigginsRmodelingsi.pdf

Higgins, R. and D. Letts. Modeling & Simulation of a Gas Discharge LENR Prototype (Preprint). in The 21st International Conference for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF-21. 2018. Fort Collins, CO.

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HigginsRmodelingsia.pdf

Storms, E. The enthalpy of formation of PdH as a function of H/Pd atom ratio and treatment (PowerPoint slides). in The 21st International Conference for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF-21. 2018. Fort Collins, CO.

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEtheenthalp.pdf

Quote from THHuxleynew

So: if the results were truly positive, but in a long-running system they persist for only a few weeks and then stop, that is no reason to stop.

There are a million reasons why it would stop. Pease knows this, and has some ideas about how to restart it, which he may be able to implement. It persisted for months, not a few weeks.

Quote from THHuxleynew

However, if by "faded away" he means that better controls showed that unclear results were in fact false positives that is different.

Based on my conversation with Pease, I think the controls and instruments were unchanged in the last few years. He didn't mention anything about a possible instrument artifact. He said it was working, but it stopped. He is a very cautious person. His previous ICCF papers pointed out errors that looked like excess heat but were not. This time, he was confident the results were real.

They ran out of money and they ran out of time. It is a shame.

Greenyer is quoted:

"I would just like to clarify that I never sought a slot to talk . . ."

So there is no dispute. Nothing for Axil to get upset about.

"I was told there were free slots and to go and talk to X,Y,Z. I did so, and was told that the slots had gone - a couple of more times I was told there were free slots after this . . ."

That's what happens at academic conferences.

"I was allowed to present guerilla style in the poster room and was very happy to do so . . ."

He wasn't "allowed." EVERYONE at a conference does this. That's the whole point of poster sessions. It isn't "guerrilla" style; it is normal. It does not have to be formal, properly prepared poster. Abd put up a few sheets of hand-written papers.

". . . It allowed free-flow of questions and all the time needed to present the data, though it was inefficient and only a fraction of the attendees got to hear what would seem, on the face of it, to be one of the most important results in LENR history."

If it was so important, he should have submitted an abstract.

"At the end of the conference I was apologised to that no proper slot could be found and asked if I would write a paper for the proceedings, I said that I have too much to get out the door to write a formal paper and thanked them for the request. . . ."

Say what? It is the most important result in history but he can't be bothered to write a paper? I don't buy that. What would be a higher priority than communicating the most important results in history? I and others could assist with writing a paper.

If he is too busy to wrote a "formal paper" then he was right not to submit an abstract or ask for a slot, and he shouldn't have been given a slot. People who are too busy to write papers should not formally participate in conferences. They are welcome to participate in informal, poster session and hallway schmoozing.

Axil has nothing to complain about. I don't see where Greenyer is complaining.

I combined all ICCF-21 Abstracts into one document, because why not? Because it is more convenient. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ICCFabstracts.pdf

They are downloaded from:

https://www.iccf21.com/submit-abstract

Uploaded slides from Miles:

Miles, M. Excess power measurements for palladium-boron cathodes (PowerPoint slides). in The 21st International Conference for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF-21. 2018. Fort Collins, CO

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesMexcesspowe.pdf

Dewey Weaver

Quote

There were also some self-inflicted wounds as well as was some deception on verification side

"deception on the verification side?" What does that mean, exactly? How egregious was it? Why did it happen? Deception is what murders projects and even concepts, for example, Rossi.

David, F. and J. Giles. Alternatives to Calorimetry (PowerPoint slides and poster). in The 21st International Conference for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF-21. 2018. Fort Collins, CO

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DavidFalternativ.pdf

Quote from JedRothwell

Uploaded slides from Miles:

Miles, M. Excess power measurements for palladium-boron cathodes (PowerPoint slides). in The 21st International Conference for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF-21. 2018. Fort Collins, CO

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesMexcesspowe.pdf

This material is highly unsatisfactory. Perhaps I am missing some context that all at ICCF21 would have, but here is why I say this:

(1) The presentation is about excess power measurements

(2) The precise amount of excess power is headlined and discussed as though it indicates something important about the system

(3) These are (presumably) electrolysis experiments in which (presumably) input power is non-zero and >> excess power.

(4) We are asked to compare results across experiments longitudinally in time and with different electrodes

(5) The slides discuss significance, because some excess power measurements are claimed insignificant.

Yes, I cannot find the input power anywhere, nor any analysis of the calorimetry errors. This is crucial because this type of calorimetry could have

various errors that match the form of the results, at low levels, and the many different calorimeters will all have different errors. The only error stated (3mW) does not indicate how calibration to active errors are bounded (the error in this would not be a fixed value). So we don't know how to evaluate this because we do not know the level of excess as fraction of input power. And it applies to only one calorimeter.

We cannot even compare results across experiments unless we know the input power stays the same (not stated), or we know how fraction of input power artifacts and systematic errors are bounded.

What I can't understand is how experimental results can be presented in this way? Anyway, perhaps somone who was there can enlighten us as to the crucial missing data.

It is precisely this type of looseness that allows many outside the field to dismiss LENR.

From my POV it would be easier to take LENR seriously if, at conferences, there was some minimum standard of rigor required.