Posts by Ascoli65

Shane, thank you for giving me the opportunity to better explain my position on some sensitive aspects of this debate. You have raised many important points, and I 'd like to reply in detail.

Quote from Shane D.

But you strongly imply fraud, and that is just as bad as saying it. It is obvious to everyone where you are going with this. If you will, please stop with the insinuations about sinister motives.

No, I'm not implying any fraud. Fraud has a very specific legal meaning: "the intentional use of deceit, a trick or some dishonest means to deprive another of his/her/its money, property or a legal right." So, to be considered fraudulent, intentional deceits should have the motive to deprive someone of money, or the likes. Contrary to many people here on L-F, I've never talked about these sinister motives. So, I'd will but I can't stop doing something that I've never done.

Quote

That includes all involved, …

Yes, of course, stopping to imply fraud should includes all those involved in our discussion, even Rossi. My opinion is that any accusation or insinuation of fraud against anyone should stop. I hope the mods will urge everyone to avoid using words like fraud, fraudulent, fraudster, scam, scam artist, and so on. A web site is not a court, and no one has been judged guilty for the facts we are talking about.

Quote

…. from the UOB professors, …

As for the UniBo professors, I didn't insinuate anything. Instead, I openly pointed out that the UniBo calorimetric report on the January 2011 demo contains 3 misrepresentations of the calorimetric data, which caused the overestimation of both the output power (by a factor greater than 15) and the total energy (by a factor greater than 30). Having these amazing results "revived immense worldwide interest in the whole field of LENR", as reported in 2015 by the scientific journal "Current Science" in its special issue on LENR, I think it is very important – from a mere (pseudo)scientific point of view - to know where these misrepresentations came from.

Quote

… to Prof. Price.

Could you please better specify what I would have unfairly insinuated against him? I just openly criticized the way he applied the concept of "reputation trap" to Rossi and to LENR field. I think it's legit.

Quote

Yes, it smacks of censorship, but even more important to us is to protect respected scientists reputations from destructive speculation.

I fully agree with this basic principle. In addition, I would say that also normal people and their trust in science must be protected. The best way for scientists to protect both their reputation and science is to follow what said by THH (1) "… science flourishes from opennness and the willingness of academics to publish ideas, accept criticism, and reply to it, all in the open so that anyone can judge who is right." Let me ask you again (2), do you agree with this sentence?

Quote

I do not mean to dissuade you from critiquing their testing methods, or results...that is fair game as part of the peer review process. Just stay away from the personal stuff.

This is what I'm already doing. I'm discussing the results of the 2011 Ecat tests, which were brought directly to everyone's attention by means of internet and other media, so they are not personal stuff. These results are wrong, and I think it's fair to understand how it could have happened.

(1) Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

(2) Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

Quote from oldguy

Your goal posts are not mine.

[...] You might have an objective of producing half the world's electricity with LENR but we need to have definite near term goals before we can reach such futuristic objectives.

You misunderstood my comment. I was trying to show you that CF/LENR has never been a scientific argument. It has always dealt with other less solemn objectives, and Rossi has been (and still is) the best interpreter of its spirit.

Quote from oldguy

"The bottom line is that there was not a conclusive Rossi test to report that we witnessed."

And never will be! This is exactly the way a never ending bluff must work: control the public bias, convince people that a whatever LENR effect might be real, feed the doubt, exort to wait&see.

This same strategy was presented at a Colloquium on LANR held on August 2007 (1):

"Dr. Michael Melich discussed “Some Thoughts on the Creation of Useful Models of CMNS Systems,” including experiences he has had associated with convincing other people that something “real” is involved in cold fusion. He identified a potentially important way to convince people that the effects might be real by appealing to “conditional probability” ideas that, in fact, form the basis of speculative arguments that can mimic human activity. Specifically, E.T. Jaynes has pointed out that within the context of probability theory, biases can and do occur. Dr. Melich and his colleague, Dr. Rodney Johnson, have used what Jaynes has suggested, quantitatively, to illustrate how biases can become dominant." [bold added]

Who better than people trained in philosophy can deal with such "speculative arguments"?

Just then, one of them was trying to meet Piantelli or Focardi.

(1) http://www.infinite-energy.com…e/issue75/colloquium.html

Quote from ZenoOfElea

... the Bologna events that Ascoli65 is interested in.

Not just me. The Bologna events are those that have led to all the following developments in the LENR field, not just regarding the Ecat.

On February 25, 2015, the Indian scientific journal "Current Science" dedicated a special issue on the LENR theme, a 170-page collection of 34 cold fusion papers written by many of the stalwarts in the field (1). This special issue was greeted with enthusiasm by the LENR community because it was an initiative of a peer-reviewed journal (2).

Here below, you find an excerpt from the Preface (3):

"It is precisely at this juncture that there comes the latest twist in the LENR story. An unknown ‘outsider’, an engineer–inventor from Italy, Andrea Rossi surprised us all by announcing that he has invented a working, industrial-grade Ni–H LENR reactor. On 14 January 2011, he gave a semi-public demo of the same in the presence of an invited audience and later in the year he followed it up with a demo of a 1 MWth (Megawatt thermal) reactor (composed of over a hundred of the basic 10 KWth modules connected in a series/parallel fashion). Now this ‘development’ (some would say that, in the absence of a peer reviewed publication, we should treat it merely as an ‘unproven’ claim) has revived immense worldwide interest in the whole field of LENR. Dozens of websites have cropped up to follow Rossi’s Ecat." [bold added]

Well, consider that the "revived immense worldwide interest in the whole field of LENR" has been triggered by a test, whose surprising results were based on experimental data misrepresented by scientists who had publicly taken the burden of ensuring the correctness of the calorimetric measurements.

(1) http://www.infinite-energy.com…s/pdfs/CurrentScience.pdf

(2) https://e-catworld.com/2015/02…dian-academy-of-sciences/

(3) http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/04/0491.pdf

Quote from oldguy

I guess I am "old guard". It seemed as though with Rossi, the goals moved away from science and understanding to commercialization and large outputs (at least 1kW). But to me, my goal posts are in the science.

CF has moved away from science long before the Rossi's arrival, practically from the beginning of its history, as was explained by Melich - a main protagonist of the field - at ICCF3 held in 1993 (1): "There are two sets of criteria that have been in play from the beginning - the scientific criteria and those associated with patents. It was commonly assumed, particularly since the FPE was presented in a public press conference, that the most important criteria were those of science, yet a careful examination of what was made available in 1989 suggests that patent criteria were primary."

So, the patent criteria - ie those of commercialization - have always been predominant over the scientific ones.

The patent approach was already followed at the time by the ENECO, and Melich himself was involved in it (2): "Michael Melich, during the time he was a government employee, was also involved in the private company ENECO before it folded. ENECO aggressively began collecting cold fusion patents in 1991 and eventually obtained the original University of Utah patents for the Pons-Fleischmann discovery."

ENECO disappeared at the beginning of 2008 (3), exactly when the last and most brilliant comet was rising in the sky of CF/LENR, accompanied hand by hand by the same exponent of the old guard (4): "I heard how Mike became involved in starting to explore what he was doing. Rossi claimed to be closing in on producing a working LENR technology. He had American partners who had worked with the U.S. Navy and were familiar with the continuing interest of the Navy in energy technology. In late 2007 the company requested someone with technical interest and competence to view a demonstration. It took until summer 2009 before the promised demonstration was nearly ready. The demonstrations were organized at the company’s facilities and several government scientists were invited to observe four to five hour demonstrations of the startup of the reactor and its operation and shutdown. It was an impressive demonstration. Although independent electronic instrumentation was not available, a rough estimate of how much energy was produced could be made. What Rossi said that night was that he was heating his offices in a factory building where he worked with the heat from his invention. That certainly got my attention. As soon as we returned to the U.S., I began to look into his background and realized it would take a lot of research to properly report on Andrea Rossi. His history included extraordinary inventions such as a technology that converted waste products, literally garbage, into a useable fuel oil. But he had also gone to prison, a story that either cast him as a hero who’d gotten in over his head in mixed circumstances or the opposite. He had explained to us that his interest in cold fusion began in prison, when he passed the time by reading scientific papers about it. Whoever he was, it was my husband’s job to be one of the people to try to figure out if what he had was real."

So, Rossi's arrival has been the logical and coherent completion of the evolution of the CF/LENR field. Now, after 10 years, you can easily figure out not only what Rossi really had, but also what LENR really is, and where its goal line (or posts) could be.

(1) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MelichMEbacktothef.pdf

(2) http://newenergytimes.com/v2/n…1/36/3616ideologies.shtml

(3) http://newenergytimes.com/v2/n…30-jgk39gh12f.shtml#eneco

(4) http://www.infinite-energy.com…ng-a-lawsuit-in-lenr.html

Quote from ZenoOfElea

There was a lot of excitement around Rossi in 2014 and you are right to say that the Lugano results helped to give Rossi credibility.

I didn't say that. I was talking about the Bologna demo held on January 2011, the event that gave a worldwide fame to the Rossi-Focardi method based on presumed Ni-H reactions, and great credibility to the Rossi device, that has since been called Ecat.

Quote

Huw Price and Tom Darden at the time all sounded very positive.

I didn't found anything on internet that gave any clues about Price as a Rossi's advocate before his article published on Aeon in December 2015.

Quote

Do you know of any further research that has been done by Bologna? Any publications?

The Physics Department was involved in some way in all the dozen tests carried out during 2011 (1).

In January 2012, the Department announced the rescission of the research contract with Rossi. Subsequently, the cooperation continued only on a personal basis, with some of the UniBo professors, but the name of the University appeared on the test reports of Ferrara (2013) and Lugano (2014). A great emphasis was also given to the publication of the Lugano report on the UniBo digital library (2).

Quote

Unfortunately, short of proof of fraudulent behaviour by the scientists, I think there is no-where to go with this.

Contrary to many other tests, the January 2011 demo provides plenty of proofs that the experimental data, and hence the calorimetric result, have been misrepresented by the scientists who performed the measurements and calculated the energy balance. It happened because it was the first Ecat test documented on internet and it was not well understood how many side information were possible to infer from photos, videos, and other material published on internet. So, the January 2011 test provides the best evidence ever that scientists, especially in a controversial field such as LENR, can tell people any extravagant result they want and be believed only on the basis of their alleged reliability and correctness.

Quote

However much you wish it the Bologna scientists have no requirement to answer your questions or mine. No requirement to come into the public domain and explain themselves.

They only have a requirement to justify themselves to their peers and to their funding bodies.

Their funding body were (and is) the Italian state, and therefore the Italian citizens. The ptofessors chose to skip the normal scientific procedure that requires to submit a paper to a reputable journal and be subjected to the scrutiny of their peers. Instead, they sought easy approval from the wider public by letting publish their data and results directly on internet. So they had the duty do justify themselves for any objections raised on internet by the public, and a double duty towards any Italian citizen.

Quote

I think we cannot know the reasons for their actions we can only guess.

I'm not talking about their reasons. Whatever they were, they published misrepresented data, refused to give reasons for these wrong data, and threatened legal actions against their critics. This example demonstrates how easy it is for scientists involved in the CF/LENR, especially for those belonging to high reputable scientific institution, to disseminate wrong data without any consequence.

Quote

I personally think fraud is unlikely and more likely is foolishness or naïvety.

As I have already told you, it's not my business to speculate about fraud. The only discriminator is if they were aware that the data they published were not right. The documents available on internet demonstrates that it was impossible not being aware of this. In any case the Italian state doesn't spend a lot of money to prepare hundreds of PhD in physics, choose the bests for teaching at the universities, and let them be fooled by a controversial philosopher.

Quote

Jed and many others have criticised the calorimetry.

Let me say, that you are continuing to confuse the Bologna demo on the LT Ecat whit the successive Ferrara and Lugano tests on the hotcat. This is the same position JR tries to enforce, postponing the starting of the Ecat story to these later tests (3).

Btw, this is what JR wrote about the January 2011 calorimetry:

Quote

You see a number of scientists who have apparently done something dumb or bad.

But remember, Rossi selected these scientists.

Please, remember that I'm talking about university professors. Well-trained people, whose formation did cost the collectivity a lot, and that, before being selected by Rossi, were already selected by the state to prepare other physicists, carry out valuable and real researches complying with the scientific procedures, and – last but not least – identify and denounce charlatans.

Quote

Rossi controlled the demo (as became clear afterwards).

You should look more closely at the documentation available on the Bologna demo.

Quote

Rossi is indeed a maestro at conducting his followers and fans.

I didn't paid Rossi, nor invested in his funders, but, as Italian taxpayer, I 'm paying who should have warned the collectivity against those like Rossi.

(1) Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

(2) http://www.e-catworld.com/2014…ams-acta-digital-library/

(3) Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

Quote from ZenoOfElea

It seems to me that the real point is 3. You think the Bologna physicists are guilty of falsifying or fabricating data or some kind of professionaly fraudulant behaviour.

I would avoid the word "fraudulent", because it's too close to legal aspects in which I don't want to enter. I would rather say that they should respond of many misrepresented experimental data and some kind of other severe scientific misbehavior.

Quote

If what happened was just a demo controlled by Rossi and no scientific papers were produced then it will be difficult for you.

In particular (but not only) I'm referring to the public demo held on January 14, 2011. I don't know when you started following the Ecat affair, but the January 2011 test is unanimously considered the starting point of the public interest in this topic.

The calorimetric results of this test have been presented in a report with the UniBo logo on the first page (1). It was first published on an Italian site on January 23, where it was presented as "official report" (2).

In essence, that document states that - during the January 14, 2011 test - the calorimetric measurements, performed under the responsibility of the Physics Department, showed the undoubted generation of 12 kW of heat coming from a device powered with about 1 kW of electricity.

Did you ever read this report? Do you realize the importance of statements it contains?

Quote

If scientific papers were produced but they are full of errors and poor measuring then the best you can hope for is to have the authors censured for sloppy science.

The above report is full of misrepresented data, which resulted in a huge overestimation of the output heat, which otherwise would have been much lower than the input power, as normally expected for an electric heater. Despite these evident misrepresentations had been pointed out repeatedly on the internet, they have been never admitted and corrected by the professors involved in the Ecat tests, nor censured by their scientific institution or any other supervisory authority.

Quote

If what happened was a real scientific test and papers were published with falsified data then there is a real case that you should submit to the appropriate institutions and bodies that funded the work.

Regardless of whether it could be considered a real scientific test or not, those who participated in the demo, performed the calorimetric measurements and calculations, and released the report, were real physics professors of a real well known university. The above mentioned calorimetric report, as well as the subsequent numerous public declarations released by these professors to various important Italian media, confirmed the generation of a dozen of kW of heat for about 40 minutes.

These results were taken so seriously in consideration that in the following years many Italian representatives submitted to the government various requests for funding the CF research, motivated by those results and by the reputation of the professors who claimed them

So, there is no need to inform anyone. I'm only here to participate to a public discussion on the Ecat topic, sharing my point of view with those who are not satisfied with the narrative no.1 (Rossi has the good) and no.2 (Ecat is just a Rossi's scam).

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LeviGreportonhe.pdf

(2) http://22passi.blogspot.com/20…le-esperimento-della.html

Hi Zeno, thanks for your pertinent and frank comment.

It seems that you - like most here - embrace the narrative no.2 about Rossi (the narrative no.1 was that he had the good), which gives him all the responsibilities of the Ecat affair in order to save the rest of the LENR field. But if you look with care at the documented facts, you can see that the real responsible are the scientists who gave him all the public credibility he needed.

Anyway, let me reply to your single points.

Quote from ZenoOfElea

Some of those people are scientists, who provide useful cover for Rossi.

Scientists can be gullible or naïve just like anyone.

Yes, but not in the amount we have seen in the Ecat case. A controversial man like Rossi could have briefly fooled a single physicist, provided that he was not well informed about his past, not many members of a Physics Department for years.

Quote

Or perhaps their curiosity hooks them.

Curiosity is an essential stimulus for research, but it doesn't allow the scientists to derogate from the basic rules of scientific correctness.

Quote

Or perhaps they are arrogant enough to think they cannot be fooled.

This is not arrogance. It's normal that a professor in physics can't be fooled on his field by a philosopher, at least not for so long.

Arrogance is:

- deliberately misrepresenting the experimental data of the 2011 tests, in order to demonstrate the capability of the Rossi-Focardi method to generate commercial level of excess heat;

- choose to disseminate these results directly to the public by means of newspapers, TV channels and the internet, and not by submitting a paper to a legitimate scientific journal, thus avoiding any peer review;

- refusing to provide the explanations required by the same public to which their results have been directly addressed;

- threaten legal actions against those in the public who were rising criticisms on these results.

Quote

Anyhow; it is Rossi who has banked the millions of dollars.

Nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of public money wasted on CF/LENR since 1989.

Quote

The scientists who have supported, or been used by Rossi, have had little to show from it other than criticism and a risk to their reputation.

Perhaps this is the reason they are less than open.

No, I don't think this is the reason, as I already explained: Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion .

Quote

I do not support your attacks.

Mine is not an attack. We are here to better understand the facts about the Ecat affair and the LENR field. I'm just proposing my point of view, and I'm interested in knowing yours. Please, tell me, is it acceptable for you that a Physics Department allowed misrepresented experimental data to be release on internet and then threatened legal actions against those who were rising objections on them?

Quote

Better to have more curiosity and try to encourage openness. Sure some scientists might be made to look foolish but we need more scientists to be willing to come forward not less.

Curiosity and openness are good when they are not used to mislead people, as instead happened to LENR.

Quote from THHuxleynew

The question of what makes a useful replication is interesting, and highly relevant to LENR.

The only relevant question to LENR is how it has been possible that a controversial man like Rossi climbed in a few years at its top, eventually ending being almost identified with the whole field.

The answer is very simple, and has been unequivocally revealed by the Ecat affair. Being LENR inexistent, the only achievable target is convincing as many people as possible for as long as possible that there could exists such an ephemeral phenomenon. It is not possible to get more, in particular it is not possible to have a replicable LENR method or device. This is the reason why a philosopher and marathon runner like Rossi has become the champion of this field. The only winning strategy for LENR is wait&see, change horse and wait&see, change again and wait&see, and so on. AR on JoNP - and his supporters on the other websites - are just applying this strategy, month after month, year after year.

This strategy lasted for almost 30 years thanks to the credibility provided by academics who have been allowed to produce and disseminate erroneous and even misrepresented experimental data without any effective scrutiny and adequate criticism by their peers (except during the first few months), also benefitting from the protection of their scientific institutions, and from the patronage of some political apparatuses.

CF/LENR is a big bluff. A bluff is not replicable, but it can only be raised again, and again, and again, …

Quote from Roseland67

If Hugh Price truly believes that “Rossi is the new champion of LENR”, then Hugh Orice was also conned.

I don't know if Huw Price truly believed in what he wrote. His first Aeon article ended with this note: "The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of TWCF." Have you some doubts to this respect?

Anyway, these are some of the 23 overall citations of Rossi in the same first article on Aeon:

And these are some of the 15 citations from his second article published 3 months later:

Now, even assuming that a Cambridge professor like Huw Price - with all his contacts with world class physicists - could have been conned on such an extravagant claim, ie that some amateur devices could generate kWs of excess heat from some undefined nuclear reactions, who and what misleaded him? Rossi and his Rossi-says?

You started following the Ecat topic on 2011, didn't you? Tell me, please, did you get interested because a controversial self-proclaimed engineer claimed to have invented a commercial grade cold fusion device, or for some other more convincing reason?

Quote

Andrea Rossi is a fraud

This is not the point in discussion here. But I have no problem agreeing that the Rossi effect (intended as a physical effect) does not exist, and therefore the Ecat devices (intended as energy generators) do not work at all.

Quote from Roseland67

However, this does not happen because the results of these experiments are virtually impossible to replicate, (as above).

When the results cannot be replicated, the previous results, no matter how extraordinary, are assumed,

(maybe incorrectly so), to be anomalies,

And unworthy of academic investigation.

I agree. This is how legitimate science is expected to be held in universities. But, but, BUT, …

Although it developed in a scientific context, the Ecat phenomenon we are talking about is NOT science, it rather has do with sociology, psychology, philosophy, etc. (the same applies to the CF/LENR field in general). In any case, it had tangible effects on many people, and possibly (in conjunctions with the many others utopian solutions to the energy problem) on the fate of humankind.

Therefore, this topic certainly deserved the attention that a professor in Philosophy of Science, like Huw Price, dedicated to it. Price also correctly identified Rossi as the new champion of the LENR field, the man who best interpreted the deep spirit of the whole CF history.

But, at this point, he made the huge mistake of incorrectly applying the concept of "reputation trap" to the wrong direction. He erroneously attributed to this sociopsychological phenomenon the guilt of having hindered the development of an alleged real and hopefully human-saving technology, rather than analyzing how the this same feeling (that should normally function as an antidote to the abuse of the freedom of research in the academy) didn't work well in the case of the CF/LENR field, failing to prevent too many experienced academic physicists and their universities from giving credit to a controversial man like Rossi, confirming the unfounded energy performances of his devices.

Now, after such an inconceivable error, the "B. Russel" professor at Cambridge University has himself become an interesting object of scientific investigation. How is it possible that a well trained and introduced scientist like him fell in the same "reputation trap" he was warning of?

I see a couple of possible reasons. The first is large dose of naivety, trusting his peers, the academic physicists he mentioned in his articles, who had supported the reality of the Ecat. The second possible reason is … well, wishful thinking?

Quote from THHuxleynew

I criticise them too, but I think the most likely reasons for silence have a lot to do with fear of cans of worms having been opened, and little to do with arrogance.

Please, THH, examine the facts in their development over time.

A few days before the January 14, 2011, the Department of Physics releases a communication announcing that a "test will be held by a researcher of the Physics Department of the University of Bologna, and will take place before a selected public of researchers and professors of the same Department."

On January 23, a report - with the UniBo logo on its cover - is published on the internet, where - thanks to multiple misrepresentations of data – it is claimed the generation of 12 kW of heat from a tabletop device powered with 1 kW of electricity.

In Italy and elsewhere many people enthusiastically welcome this news, because they trusted the credibility of the scientific institution to which they belonged the physicists who made the calorimetric measurements, calculated the energy balance, and published the results. But in addition to all these enthusiastic followers, there were also people who raised doubts on the results and asked the academic testers for more info.

In March 2011, the director of the Department asked the website of the Italian Skeptic Society – which was hosting a debate on the Ecat - to publish the pronouncement I have already addressed to you (1). Did you translate it? Did you get its meaning? Which word other than "arrogance" can you use in English to describe the tone of that statement?

Consider that at that time the Physics Department was far from separating its responsibility from the Ecat issue, because in April 2011 the Department Council, made up by all the professors, approved a contract with Rossi for a two years research on the Ecat. If they really wanted to keep sealed "the cans of worms" they should not have approved that contract!

You summarized very well what science is expected to be: "… science flourishes from opennness and the willingness of academics to publish ideas, accept criticism, and reply to it, all in the open so that anyone can judge who is right."

How much of this basic requirement has been followed by the academics involved in the Ecat affair and by their institution?

(1) Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

Quote from Shane D.

We get that part Ascoli.

Yes, I know, but let me say you got the wrong part. Not the first time it happened, I'd say

Blaming Rossi for all the LENR misadventures can be entertaining, I understand, but it doesn't provide any explanation for the CF/LENR phenomenon, which - since 1989, after being rejected by the mainstream science – is no longer a scientific issue, but sociopsychological and philosophical.

The two articles by Huw Price on his concept of "reputation trap" are enlightening whit this respect. He is a guru of the present time. He teaches Philosophy of Science at one of most famous university, so he knows for sure the History of Science, and necessarily he should have a vast scientific background. He could be a member– and probably is – of the world's most important think tanks that now are planning the future of humankind. Despite all his knowledge, he celebrated the scientific geniality and the achievements of a man like Rossi. Ask yourself why. What is the real reason of this absurd and inconceivable accident? Was it Rossi?

THH concluded a previous post (1) saying: "… science flourishes from opennness and the willingness of academics to publish ideas, accept criticism, and reply to it, all in the open so that anyone can judge who is right." Do you agree with him? I do!

Does it comply with the way the academics - who in 2011 published their astonishingly measurements and results of the Ecat tests – behaved? Is it a responsibility of Rossi if they misrepresented the data and refused to provide any explanations to the common people, or even to reputable scientists, who were asking further information about the results they have proclaimed?

Please, tell me, who are to blame for what has happened since then around the Ecat affair? And in the entire CF/LENR field since 1989?

(1) Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

Quote from THHuxleynew

People (including you here) underestimate the human capacity for self-delusion. It knows no bounds. Which is not to argue that in this case Rossi is self-deluded, there is other evidence that points more in the direction of deliberate fabrication. I'm just arguing that based on his statements about physics and the demos he could be so.

People here (including you) are continuously missing the target. It's not Rossi. Among all the protagonists of the Ecat saga, he is one of the few that could really invoke being self-deluded - at least initially - on the performances of his method, and then deluded by the LENR experts and physics academics who have examined and evaluated his devices.

The results of the 2011 tests carried out under the responsibility of the professors can't be attributed to self-delusion or to Rossi's manipulations, as was reported by someone who was very well informed about the facts:

Anyway, self-delusion can't excuse the arrogance of professors to refuse any public confrontation on the data that they chose to divulge directly through internet, thus contravening to the normal academic procedure of submitting a scientific publication and coping with the examination of their peers. They called the public as judges of their measurements, and when some of them asked further clarifications, they tried to intimidate them by threatening legal actions.

Even Price - not a normal man, but someone who can daily meet some of the most authoritative physicists in the world - has been an indirect victim of this arrogance. Thanks to the support given to Rossi by some irresponsible colleagues of him, he dedicated two long articles (1-2) to the "reputation trap", taking as example the Ecat episode and citing Rossi dozens of times in both his pieces. Now, after more than two years, it's time that he completes his trilogy dedicating a third article to the "arrogance trap" in which he himself fell.

(1) https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-…ossibility-of-cold-fusion

(2) https://aeon.co/ideas/is-the-cold-fusion-egg-about-to-hatch

Quote from Roseland67

Replication is the key, screw the theory

OK, this scheme applies to legitimate science, but in the case of CF/LENR the scheme is a bit different: "Replication is the key, screw the fake data". This is what happened in the Ecat case.

The replication race to the so called Rossi effect began in October 2014, immediately after the release of the Lugano report. It was launched by this article on PESN:

The purpose of this invitation to replicate is clear, as was anticipated three years earlier on Vortex:

At the time, replications were not the preferred way to publicly support the Ecat reality and – as shown in the mail above - the appeal to academic authority was considered the most effective way to convince the public. But toward the end of 2014 there was a sudden change in the propaganda strategy.

The first and best known result of this strategy were the Parkhomov replications appeared on internet since December 2014 (1).

On April 2015, a post on ECW provided further reflections on this race.

This is how the replication race should appear to the public: a crowd of replicators who is trying to catch the leader running toward the top of the mountain. More specifically, they are trying to replicate the results reported in a 2014 article, whose lead author had misrepresented the results of the Ecat tests performed in 2011. In other words, on the top of the mountain there is nothing but a dogbone in the trash.

But statistically speaking - thanks to the positive bias of the people who are invited to join this race - the replication strategy did work. The balance after one year from its launch was quite good (2) and Rossi can conclude (3): "Thank you, very useful collection. It must be said that about the 35% of them has been successful already", leaving his fans deduce that the remaining 65% has not still understood how to replicate his effect (... actually because most of them even don't know which effect is on stake).

(1) http://www.infinite-energy.com…issue120/russian.html#top

(2) http://www.journal-of-nuclear-…&cpage=11#comment-1125778

(3) http://www.journal-of-nuclear-…&cpage=11#comment-1125793

Quote from THHuxleynew

I have some sympathy with your oft-repeated views here. [...] Were they a genuine effect you would expect by now replication at higher (less questionable) levels. Such as what rossi claimed, but did not provide.

Not Rossi, please, the profs!

I appreciate your sympathy, but even if - as you reminded - I oft-repeat that those who claimed the high excess heat levels were the academics, you continue to put the name of Rossi in the forefront. Why? Did you ever believe Rossi?

Quote

As for institutions requiring profs to admit to mistakes: academic freedom makes such difficult, and who judges what is a mistake?

Academic freedom allows the professors, which – remember – have been selected among the most competent PhD, to investigate any idea that they deem can widened the horizons of the science. However, it doesn't allow them to misrepresent the data, fooling the taxpayers which support their scientific institutions. Every PhD in physics could have seen after a normal due diligence examination of the experimental data released after the January 2011 demo, that those data were false.

Quote

Anyone capable, reading the public record can tell whether work is a one-off, not properly replicated, or whether it is the start of something new and interesting.

Are you sure? The article by Huw Price demonstrates that even a Cambridge's professor in science did not realize that the Ecat results were junk. How can you expect that "anyone capable [of] reading the public record" can reach by himself this conclusion?

Quote

In some cases (people here would argue LENR is such a case) the jury stays out on whether reported evidence amounts to some real but not properly understood or identified effect, or whether it amounts to self-delusion and wishful thinking. It is not easy to separate the two unless the effect gets validated.

We are talking about 12 kW in output with only 1 kW in input. No way they can be attributed either to self-delusion or to wishful thinking. On the contrary, it is either a supernatural miracle or, more prosaicly, the result of multiple deliberate misrepresentations of experimental data.

Quote

Rossi posions this imperfect but largely working model by feeling popular free energy hopes under the guise of scientific credentials. He has been good at persuading academics - we know the aspects of has character and education that make him persuasive, also people are susceptible to stories of scientific miracles.

I disagree. Rossi has the big merit to have uncovered a long time poisoned environment in which too many people took advantage of their privileged position to acquire even more unjustified fame and undue benefits. Rossi provided the king and the royal family of the invisible clothes they yearned for, so that now everybody can easily realize that their majesties are naked.

Quote

I don't think this is much to do with institutions, nor do I see many academics with real reputations who have publicly supported Rossi.

How many institutions and academics should endorse a scientific discovery before it has to be taken into consideration? The Ecat got the support of the oldest university of the Western world, and of many professors from two other famous academic institutions in Sweden, with some connections to the most prestigious scientific prize in the world. Then it received the support of academics as Brian Josephson, the youngest Nobel laureate in physics, and Huw Price, the B.Russel professor in Cambridge. Isn't it enough?

Quote

There may be reasons for this, but they are not scientific reasons, since science flourishes from opennness and the willingness of academics to publish ideas, accept criticism, and reply to it, all in the open so that anyone can judge who is right.

Exactly! The Ecat story clearly shows how this fundamental requirements of science have been disregarded by the academic people and institutions involved.

The January 2011 demo took place in the presence of the highest representatives of the physics department. Since the UniBo physicists decided to use the web to directly announce to the world the exceptional generation of 12 kW of heat by a device fed with 1 kW of electricity, the director of the department should have required his colleagues to give to the same internet audience all the asked clarifications on this epochal achievement. On the contrary, this is what he asked to be published on the web site of CICAP, the Italian Skeptical Society, where people were discussing the data released by his fellows:

Please, translate by yourself. Essentially he said that the Department will not answer any objection to the test results raised on that site, and threatened the critics to inexorably denounce them to the judiciary authority.

This is the openness of the institution and people that were involved in the Ecat saga, and their willing "to accept criticism, and reply to it, all in the open so that anyone can judge who is right".

Quote from Alan Smith

I think you mean Huw Price.

Yes, thanks. I will correct my comments.

Quote from Roseland67

If their results are replicable by anyone Using the same BOM, build instructions, testing procedures and protocols then their results MUST be taken into consideration,

Yes, your point is correct, but begins with a big IF which introduces a condition that until now has never been fulfilled. All the alleged positive results claimed by the CF/LENR researchers – regardless of their status - have never been "replicable by anyone".

Faced with such fleeting results, the only other element that could provide some indication to decide whether they are rubbish or, on the contrary, labile clues of a real phenomenon is the respectability of the proponents, especially if they ask for public money to ascertain the possible existence of a new phenomenon.

This is why the first act of the Rossi's adventure in the LENR field was to contact one of the two academics who first proposed the NiH way to CF, and eventually hire Focardi as his consultant and "respectable" testimonial of the alleged positive performances of his devices.

Therefore, I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with your following sentence:

Quote

Damn their reputations and institutions.

Huw Price, who teaches Philosophy of Science in one of the world's most prestigious university, emphasized the importance of the reputations of scientists, in writing the most important eulogy of the CF/LENR field in many years (1), which is mostly dedicated to Rossi. In fact, the web page shows a suggestive image of a 1 MW Ecat plant above the text, in which Rossi is cited 23 times, versus the 7 recurrences of Fleischmann. Price did it only because Focardi was a professor "at Bologna, [and] claimed similar effects with nickel and ordinary hydrogen", otherwise he wouldn't have risked his reputation and the ridicule by writing such a surreal paean in favor of the "lone engineer with a somewhat chequered past".

But he is not alone. Many LENR supporters are sensitive to the charm of the academic professorship. Here above, Shane D. wrote: "I absolutely do not "still think the Ecat works". I do think, and have said it many times going back to ECN's, that there is a slight chance Rossi has a small, unreliable effect in the same low power, low COP range others before him (Piantelli), and after (MFMP, SongSheng) have reported."

Leaving aside the Ecat replicators, Shane D. is confident about the effect reported by Piantelli. What is the difference between Rossi and Piantelli? It is the P-factor! Not the P of Piantelli, but the P of Professor. For many LENR believers, Piantelli deserves confidence just because he was a professor, that is, he was a member of a respectable scientific institution (a public University in his case) which is supposed to provide full assurance that its members are scientifically competent, and correct. However, the entire CF/LENR history, and in particular its latest Ecat chapter, has amply demonstrated that this is not the case.

Another example. JR just wrote: "I would not say that Rossi is the source of interest in NiH it so much as Piantelli and Arata, and more recently Takahashi, Mizuno and Beiting." All five people mentioned have (or have had) a recognizable affiliation, but the stress is on the first two, the academics, those with the P-factor, because what they say should be necessarily true.

But also Focardi and his fellows at UniBo had the P-factor, when they misrepresented the experimental data of the Ecat tests performed under their responsibility. Thanks to those tests and to the related documentation made public, we now know that the P-factor doesn't assure any scientific competence or correctness. It is only a seal of old P-rivileges that still holds in the dusk of our industrial era, the privilege to be believed on their own words, thanks to the prestige of the scientific institutions to which they belong.

So, it's really a problem of reputations and institutions. In particular, the problem is that the institutions have not defended their reputation by strongly requiring their members to follow the scientific criteria of correctness and transparency, or at least by officially informing the public about their howler mistakes.

(1) https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-…ossibility-of-cold-fusion

Quote from Shane D.

Yes, I did not mean to include Alan or Russ. But in defense of the garage tinkerers; many are respected scientists either working on their own time, or retired and doing it as a hobby. So we can not discount their influence on the issue. Higgins is a good example. He retired from Motorola years ago, but does his own work, and is still influential and highly respected. As many here have said, when he talks, everyone listens. Same goes for Storms. He is retired, tinkers in his lab, and is highly regarded.

OK, Shane, I know, the people you mentioned can be considered scientists even if they work in their garages. But, let me repeat once again the Alan Smith words: "scientists who still believe Rossi". So we are talking about their belief on Rossi, that is – considering that Rossi is not believable – on the performances of the Ecat, as reported by their Cat.1 colleagues, those who attended the Ecat tests, and misrepresented the experimental results.

Hence, regardless of what they are doing now, they belong to the Cat.2 scientists, those mistakenly believing in the results reported by not reliable scientists.

Quote from Shane D.

It remains to be seen if these Dogbbone replications have some merit, but no matter how it turns out, they are not delusional. They may be seeing something not there, interpreting the data wrong....but delusional they are not.

OK, my language error. I meant deluded, not delusional. I'm very sorry.

Quote

I see no reason to discourage them from pursuing it further.

I agree with this. Everyone should feel free to do what he wants in his garage, provided that it is not harmful to anybody.

The problems come when a world authority in the philosophy of science as Huw Price (Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge) writes an article in which Rossi is mentioned almost in every paragraph, and where he states: "We all have skin in the game, and parts, indeed a planet, quite seriously in peril. We are like a thirsty town, desperate for a new water supply. What we drink now is slowly killing us. We know that there’s an abundant supply of clean, cheap water, trapped behind the dam. The problem is to find a way to tap it."

Phrases like these go far beyond the Dr. Storm's garage. They embody the deep reasons of the perils we are facing right now. The proposed illusory solution (I mean the irrational faith in a technological breakthrough which will provide the world with "abundant supply of clean, cheap" energy) is in fact the main cause that has pushed the humanity so far from a safe shore. The LENR chimera did also contribute to this nefarious outcome.

Quote from Shane D.

I really do not know how many categories we can cram them into, but one particular category no one has mentioned yet, is the Dogbone replicator community. [...] It is almost like a cottage industry of garage tinkerers, and most are anonymous.

Shane, please remember that our speech was about the words of Alan Smith: "scientists who still believe Rossi". So we are talking about scientists, not garage tinkerers.

To be credible, these scientists must be respectable as said in the Price's article (1). He also provides some example of what he means as respectable scientists. They can be either academics - as the "Swedish and Italian physicists whose scientific credentials are not in doubt" -, or be employed in public "leading research centres", or be "technology forecasters for a very large enterprise". In general, they must belong to some recognized organization which give them the necessary indubitable "scientific credentials" that are necessary to make their statements credible to the public. This is also the reason why they can't be anonymous, because most of their "scientific credentials" derives from their affiliation to a reputable scientific institution or enterprise, which, in turn, is expected to guarantee the public on the competence and correctness of its affiliates.

The plethora of Dogbone replicators you mentioned hardly belongs to the above reputable organizations, so there is no reason to take their results into consideration. Even if some of them are real scientists, and assuming that they really believe they can get some excess heat by replicating an Ecat device, they should first have believed in the reported results of the Ferrara or Lugano tests, so they should belong to the second category that I mentioned in my previous comments. Hence, in conclusion, they are delusional because they are trying to replicate the results claimed by not reliable scientists.

(1) https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-…ossibility-of-cold-fusion

Quote from Bob

First I have to agree with Ascoli, that if scientist "X" is parlaying support for Rossi because scientist "Y" witnessed a Rossi controlled test (the only kind there ever has been remember! Even Lugano was conducted by Rossi and Fabiani with the profs only "dropping in" some unknown number of times) then they have nothing. [...]

The so called second group, scientist that have actually seen a non-Rossi controlled demo/test, is not existent in my opinion. Rossi would never let that happen.

Thanks for agreeing with me, but you probably didn't read my comments carefully, or they were not quite understandable.

Leaving aside that you switched the two groups of scientists, making it more difficult for the readers to make a comparison with what I said, you - as most people here – continue to explain the misrepresentation of the experimental data reported by the scientists involved in the various Ecat tests with the presence of Rossi. This is not my position. What happened in the Ecat tests carried out in 2011 clearly shows that the responsibility of the data released by the academics depends entirely on them.

Anyway, I fully agree with you when you say that the risk of reputation trap can't be invoked by any responsible scientist in order to avoid to publicly manifest his belief in the Ecat performances, if he really deem that these performances are real.