News about Woodford and Industrial Heat

    • Official Post
    Quote from rubycarat

    google had research, and they failed. Why?


    It has been suggested that they failed because they did not want to 'contaminate' their research programme by taking a lot of technical advice directly from scientists already working in the field. So they asked Ed Storms about calorimeters, and acknowledged his help in other papers, spoke a little to one or two others some time ago. But AFAIK there has been no ongoing dialogue between the GoogleX team and those outside the team who have published compelling - or even interesting - results.

    Quote from rubycarat

    taking bets on how many more pile-on articles there will be?

    The human factors in war stories are so much more interesting than the technology.

    The cold fusion war of the last three decades won't rival the Illiad for grandeur and deaths

    but a book entitled "Cold Fusion Now Won" might engage a few for five minutes on Kindle,


    An appropriate date for publication

    My bet ..2020 


    This is not fair. Rossi is not the same as LENR. Google guys thought it was fair given urgent need for clean energy + continued life in LENR research to revisit the matter and try to find what 30 years of previous work had not.


    That was laudable. And they have made some real contributions: calorimetry, and measurement of DH2/D2 loading, and (maybe less) shielding at lower energies. Don't knock it.


    Maybe what you are asking is why do this now, when the current resurgence of money and interest owes no small part to Rossi's PR and the waves he made.


    Well: if you want LENR stuff invetsigated - in other words you are on the side of those who hope, and are prepared to take risks, you take money, and wider interest, when you get it, and use that to do science.


    Are you saying that if you were in the position of the google guys you would NOT do this project now, because Rossi is a fantasist who appears serially to defraud his business partners?


    More generally I think the element of comment here which is essentially "the google guys did not try properly - did not take correct advice - were incompetent - were part of some conspiracy to suppress LENR"


    Is grossly unfair. One thing, if it was typical of the response, that it will do, is discourage any serious interest in LENR. What is the mileage in it if you do your best with (surprise, surprise) inconclusive results, and then you get called a liar because people do not like your results.


    Had these experiments proved more positive everyone here would have been jumping up and down thanking google. Science, it is worth remembering, is 99% failure and 1% success. The failures still advance matters (see above for two examples of what google have done that are helpful).


    THH

    • Official Post
    Quote from Alan Smith

    Here's another version of the link -which is paywalled for some.

    The long-shot science that attracted Brad Pitt and Neil Woodford _ Financial Times (2).pdf


    Not a flattering article about LENR (they refer to as CF), or IH. Anyone who makes a cursory read of it, would think LENR is a fringe, disreputable science. That IH is using it in some scheme to sucker wealthy investors like Brad Pitts out of their money, and anyone who invests in it should be ashamed of themselves.


    I get the impression they are trying to hang this whole Woodford mess, on IH and CF. IH may have to do some damage control to counter this.

    Quote from Shane D.

    Not a flattering article about LENR (they refer to as CF), or IH. Anyone who makes a cursory read of it, would think LENR is a fringe, disreputable science. That IH is using it in some scheme to sucker wealthy investors like Brad Pitts out of their money, and anyone who invests in it should be ashamed of themselves.


    I get the impression they are trying to hang this whole Woodford mess, on IH and CF. IH may have to do some damage control to counter this.


    LENR is a fringe science: we would all like it to become mainstream - but it ain't there yet.


    Is it disreputable? Yes if its advocates give credence to the likes of Rossi, as some but no ways all LENR researchers did 5 years ago.


    Let us all work for it to have a high reputation.

    • Official Post

    Yes- here's a not untypical quote from a poster on the ADVFN Financial website.



    'I am quite angry that a fine Englishman like Neil Woodford esq may have been taken for a ride by some not-so-fine gentlemen over the pond. Neil, bless him, was supposed to be looking after our home-grown bright sparks.'

    ;-

    And from the same source

    Https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/analysis/3077052/regulatory-questions-to-be-asked-as-woodford-investors-capital-value-could-plummet

    Https://moneyweek.com/509010/rock-star-fund-manager-woodford-gets-booed-off-stage/

    Https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/news/3077372/fresh-blow-to-woodford-as-hargreaves-lansdown-drops-income-focus-fund


    https://www.investmentweek.co.…-woodford-patient-capital

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    LENR is a fringe science: we would all like it to become mainstream - but it ain't there yet.


    SM is 80 years true fringe science too and nobody stops it.


    SM is unable to:

    - give the proton radius

    - or to calculate any measured property (mechanical moment, mass, magentic moment,radius of a known particle...)

    - claimes to see particles (e.g. quarks) in contradiction to information theory - in fact they only measure resonances.

    - unable to calculate gamma radiation, halve live etc.. of a nucleus

    - invents fake forces like strong force...but never could measure it...

    rubycarat wrote:

    Quote

    TRANSLATE: Research would have disqualified Rossi.

    google had research, and they failed. Why?


    Not sure what you mean by that. Woodford's error was trusting Darden. Darden is the one who failed to vet Rossi properly. Darden should have consulted first and foremost with Krivit. Then, he would have known of Rossi's extensive record of criminality and failures. Darden should have contacted a DOD representative involved in the thermoelectric project with Rossi -- the one that cost them upwards of $9M and resulted in junk.


    But Darden's worst failure was to not adequately test the old ecats. As even JedRothwell and other variously rabid Rossi critics said from the start in 2011, this is not all that difficult to do but it requires independent experts in calorimetry. Any proper test of the original ecats involving sparging of the output steam or careful mass flow calorimetry would have revealed that they did not work. Rossi's specific methods of cheating, which IMO changed at times, would have been revealed. The other essentials for the tests would have been blanks and calibration which Rossi steadfastly refused to allow. Nobody involved in any way with Rossi should have been relied upon for testing his claims. This was especially true because of his

    obvious and well documented record.


    ETA: Rossi would have most likely refused truly independent and competent testing but of course, that also would have revealed that the ecat did not work.


    So in summary, the original screwup was entirely Darden's and IH's advisers, whoever they were. Woodford's errors were blindly trusting an improbable claim, not hiring his own capable consultants and then shutting down polite debate about it on the company's own discussion web page back in 2013 or so IIRC. For this, he deserves every bit of failure which comes his way. He and Darden had every opportunity to get it right but they ignored every attempt by capable people to inform them of how. Many acolytes of Rossi's felt free to treat his critics with scorn, censorship, and even doxing, stalking and threats of violence. Do you think these people will now apologize? If you do, get a clue!


    Meanwhile Rossi = happy = condos.

    Wyttenbach


    I don't know if the failings you find in the standard model of physics, whatever exactly that is, are real but if so, they do not justify rote belief in outlying ideas. There is a lot we don't know, maybe starting with dark matter and energy for an example. Our ignorance of the cosmos doesn't justify belief in improbable alternative theories. For example UFO's do not equal "aliens."


    And while there is much missing, we have learned a lot, especially with the advent of supercomputers, very powerful particle accelerators and of course, the wondrous Hubble telescope.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    More generally I think the element of comment here which is essentially "the google guys did not try properly - did not take correct advice - were incompetent - were part of some conspiracy to suppress LENR"


    Is grossly unfair.


    . . . did not try properly. There is no way to judge from this paper. I can say they did not present their results properly, because -- like I said -- the paper tells us nothing.


    . . . did not take correct advice. They might have read this advice at LENR-CANR.org, but they did not ask any of the experts that I know. I can't tell whether they followed the written advice, because the paper tells us nothing.


    . . . were part of a conspiracy to suppress LENR. Manifestly, they were part of a conspiracy! They published a biased paper in Nature. It was grossly distorted. They left out the most important aspects of cold fusion, implying that it has not been replicated when in fact it has been replicated thousands of times, and these replications are in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals. Furthermore, their article was accompanied by three other hatchet job attacks so blatant, so outrageous and factually wrong that no ordinary scientific journal would think of publishing them. If the authors of this paper objected to having their article accompanied by such outrageous attacks, I think they should have said something in the paper. Or they should have refused to publish in Nature. Nature is accusing these authors of doing fake, pathological, bad science. Can you imagine something like a medical research paper accompanied by three editorials accusing the authors of being frauds who deliberately kill patients for money?


    These three seem clearly true to me. I see nothing unfair about pointing them out. If this is not a conspiracy to make cold fusion look bad, what would be? How much more outrageous does it have be before we call it an attack?


    The authors may also have had some ordinary scientific curiosity and intentions. They offer some lukewarm support at the end of the paper, surrounded by a scaffolding of lies. They let academic politics run roughshod over their presentation. Perhaps they had no choice. Perhaps the editors at Nature said this is the only way they will allow publication. I would have said "no thank you."


    I have no way of knowing, but it would not surprise me to learn that one or more of the authors deliberately set this up to be a hatchet job, to kill off cold fusion once and for all. It looks that way. It might have that effect, whether they wanted to do that or not.


    fringe science: scientific work not accepted as correct science by most scientists where the current publications are mostly outside mainstream journals


    high reputation: state where negative comments like the ones above many here don't like will not be written.


    has their been a poll: no idea. In any case polls are not reliable.


    I thought I was clear above:

    (1) LENR is currently fringe science

    (2) Not inasfar as it is linked in PR terms with Rossi or other scam-like enterprizes.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    fringe science: scientific work not accepted as correct science by most scientists where the current publications are mostly outside mainstream journals


    That would be "science as a popularity contest" or "science replaced by academic politics and funding battles." Those are the reasons cold fusion has been relegated to outsider status. The reasons have nothing to do with the merits of the claims. Cold fusion was not attacked because it appears to violate some laws of physics. Many other claims do that, but they are not attacked. Claims such as multi-universe theory have no experimental support at all. They are purely imaginary. But no one attacks them, because they do not threaten big budget program funding.


    Cold fusion was attacked first, foremost, and to this day mainly by the plasma fusion people because they are getting billions of dollars in government money, and anyone can see it will be cut off if cold fusion succeeds. This is about money -- m-o-n-e-y. So, "fringe science" is science that lost the cut-throat competition in Congress for government largess.


    It also upset many high muckety-muck theorists who hate experiments that show they may be wrong.


    The mainstream journals are also all about money. They are in the business of fleecing university libraries out of large sums of money, selling them information that the taxpayers paid for. The universities are getting tired of it. It is a thoroughly corrupt business model. Take something which belongs to the public, get a copyright, and sell it a hugely inflated cost that is paid for by middle class tuition and student debt. Fortunately, free online scientific publications such as PLOS ONE are becoming the norm. Let us hope they put Nature and the others out of business soon.

    JedRothwell ; REALLY!


    Google spent millions, and a group of researchers spent several years or their lives, as part of a conspiracy against LENR.


    What has LENR done lately that would inspire such measures, have amazing advances been made that are threatening to certain parties that we dare not name?


    Have I wandered onto ECat World by mistake?!?


    No doubting that Nature took the opportunity with both hand and both hatchets to further sneer at LENR.


    But LENR is currently not showing any signs of going anywhere, or do you suppose that Google and Nature are reading this forum and are concerned that there may be certain signs of progress. REALLY!


    I personally think Trevithick is sincere, and not part of the deep state apparatus.


    I could come up with several theories to explaining Google and their actions, but what is the point, they need to speak for themselves. And in that I agree with you.

    I also agree with McKubre that maybe we should be grateful to Google, potentially.


    Google need to communicate. But it almost looks like we are putting Google on trial. Things need to open up, not close down.


    By the way; this is the Woodford\IH thread, not the Google so probably should be moved.

    I don't disagree that scientific research incorporates lots of corrupt and questionable practices. But the claims for cold fusion are that it can yield useful energy on cheap fuel and produces no radiation, Were it possible to demonstrate the claims credibly to reasonable well educated scientists and entrepreneurs, there would be no problem getting funding. Much of the distaste for cold fusion and LENR in the scientific community arises from grandiose claims which never came to anything approaching fruition. You can count most of the honest "usual suspects" as well as crooks like Rossi among those responsible. There is no way that a credible project would not find funding in the likes of Gates, Buffet, Musk, and Bezos not to mention many "lesser" multi-billionaire investors.


    LENR proponents claim Gates has invested. What more do you want? If his original investment bears fruit according to his hopefully unbiased in house talent, the sky will be the limit, just from that one billionaire and his altruistic foundation. You can't have it both ways.


    BTW, here's a thought. Have Godes from Brillouin and Tanzella from SRI go on Shark Tank. Their application should be accepted eagerly and there are always at least two technologically well versed investors on the Tank. And all they care about is making money. Start here: https://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/applications

    Quote from ZenoOfElea

    JedRothwell; REALLY!


    Google spent millions, and a group of researchers spent several years or their lives, as part of a conspiracy against LENR.


    It wouldn't be the first time. Some large, well funded programs were run by people who despised cold fusion, and who apparently did all they could to prevent the experiments from working. The NEDO program for example. It cost over $10 million. I don't recall how much. The researchers complained about it and tried to get out. After years of effort, some of the cells that Mel Miles were running began producing heat. One produced quite a lot. The project director refused to come down the hall to see it. They later published a exhaustive report that did not mention that experiment. Miles did not hear about the report. They didn't tell anyone outside of Japan. Someone sent me a copy. I translated it. Mel was pretty upset! Fleischmann thought it was a put up job from start to finish. He railed about it in letters to Mel. Look for "NEDO" here:


    https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanlettersfroa.pdf


    I wouldn't know if it was intentional or not. It can be hard to tell the difference between stupid and malicious.


    I have no idea what happened in the Google research. Practically no experimental technical details have been published. Especially, nothing about the Pd-D work has been published, which is the part I know the most about, and which I might be able to judge. The work might be great, or it might be awful. I have no idea, and I am not going to try to guess. The only thing I can say is, this is not a very good experimental science paper. They should have said how many cathodes they tried . . . and much else. Maybe they will say this, in a follow-up paper.

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    But the claims for cold fusion are that it can yield useful energy on cheap fuel and produces no radiation, Were it possible to demonstrate the claims credibly to reasonable well educated scientists and entrepreneurs, there would be no problem getting funding.


    It has been demonstrated credibly in hundreds of the world's best laboratories, at power levels that anyone could have measured in the last 240 years, at astronomically high signal to noise ratios. You deny this, because you have no idea what constitutes "credible" in a scientific experiment. If any other phenomenon had been demonstrated with this much credibility in only five major labs, every single scientist on earth would believe it. They don't believe it only because they refuse to look and they know nothing about the results. Look at any opposition mass media article on the subject and you will see they misrepresent every aspect of it. Their version of cold fusion is a fantasy. Heck, look at the Google Nature article. As a review of the subject, it was a travesty.


    What you say has no basis in science or rationality. You do not have a scrap of quantitative evidence. You are making claim after claim with no more support than someone who says vaccinations cause autism. You think that you can wave your hands and dismiss replicated scientific evidence from hundreds of the best instruments in the best laboratories. Just because you personally don't want to believe it, for some perverse reason. Dismissing scientific evidence without a reason is the extreme opposite of science. No pathological skeptic has ever given a valid reason to reject any major experiment. They have never published any reason in any paper. Morrison and Shanahan tried, and you can read their papers at LENR-CANR.org. You will see they don't have a leg to stand on. Neither do you. At least you don't try to pretend you have reasons -- you dismiss the science for no reason at all.


    Your opinion, based on absolutely NOTHING, without a single technical fact or argument to back it up, is not science. You look pretty foolish coming to a science discussion forum and making claims without a shred of evidence. You are dismissing the whole of chemistry and physics going back to 1800 or so. You are saying the laws of thermodynamics don't work, because you will have a hissy fit and you won't like if they do. In a sense, I welcome you, because you reveal how bankrupt pathological skeptics are.

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