Posts by ZenoOfElea

Not sure if this has been linked to before.

Data from European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control on vaccine effectiveness.

I found the link in this current article from the BBC.

How vaccines changed the course of the pandemic.

"Researchers at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have been modelling how many deaths have been prevented, based on the infection rates seen as countries have relaxed restrictions.

They estimate vaccines saved 157,000 lives in England alone, and more than 470,000 across the 33 countries in Europe which were studied.

Researchers called the Covid vaccines a "marvel of modern science".

They have essentially transformed a continent reliant on lockdowns to one that has cautiously started returning to normal.

But the vaccines are now facing perhaps their biggest challenge yet - Omicron.

There are fears the new heavily mutated variant could get around some of the defences built up by the vaccines.

If the worst fears are realised, the vaccines may need to be updated. But many experts expect that won't be necessary and they will still provide pretty good protection, and help prevent severe illness."

Quote from interested observer

The amateur social scientist in me really wants to know whether there are any Rossi followers who don't buy into any other sort of fringe beliefs but just stubbornly adhere to Il Douche. I would be truly astonished if the faithful don't believe all sorts of other nonsense, conspiracy theories, and whatnot.

My observations of ECat World would tend to support your view that a general inclination to be too credulous opens the door to all kinds of bunkum.

But you don't have to go to ECat World to find such things, LENR Forum has a wide range of members and topics

What is science, what is fringe science, what is pseudoscience and what is outright scamming? This is open to interpretation.

Everybody gets fooled. Intelligence may not help, in fact it may make it possible for you to fit the facts to your theory or find "alternative facts".

Steven Pinker has a series of programs on BBC Radio 4 about critical thinking which I am catching up with.

THHuxleynew

1. So that supports the point I was trying to make.

As Sam has rightly said, things degenerate into one group saying "Your are wrong, change you mind" and the other group saying "No it is you that is not open minded". Thus I was trying to sidestep this and look specifically at those who have changed their minds.

Perhaps "all" was a bit too general, but I contend that the flow of mind changing has been overwhelmingly from believers to non-believers and that flow has been increasingly one way as time has passed. For those who claim the case for believing in Rossi is weak then I think this demonstrates that weakness.

2. Call me pedantic but I object to the word "genius" being connected with Rossi, I see no evidence of genius from him in any capacity. Maybe smart or clever (more disparaging words are available but lets try and keep this civil).

So Sam,

The term "sceptics" has been turned into a negative term and then made into "skeptopath" as a label for those who are deemed to be incapable of changing their minds.

Scepticism, as in checking facts, demanding evidence, and being willing to admit that I might be wrong is a good thing. Even a "believer" should be sceptical.

Scepticism is also a defense against doing stupid things, such as being conned and following incorrect and possibly dangerous beliefs, such as conspiracy theories.

Of course I agree with you that sometimes scepticism is misplaced. I could point to cases where scepticism from the scientific community has held back progess in areas such as continental drift and Cold Fusion. And sometimes crazy ideas and crazy things do turn out to be right (wow the Earth actually is a globe).

But for the sake of discussion;

If we assume that some sceptics are incapable of changing their minds ("super sceptics").

And if we assume that some believers are also incapable of changing their minds ("super believers").

So lets ignore them and focus on the middle group who have actually changed their minds.

Then how many believers have become sceptics and how many sceptics have become believers?

Of course this is anecdotal but I was initially a believer when I first read about Rossi, but then I changed my mind, now I no longer believe.

Even on ECat World some have stopped believing.

My claim would be that of those who have been willing to change their minds all changed from believers to non-believers.

Why do you think that is?

But maybe I am wrong, do you know of any cases where a sceptic has become a believer?

The Rodney Brooks Rules for Predicting a Technology's Commercial Success

"Building electric cars and reusable rockets is fairly easy. Building a nuclear fusion reactor, flying cars, self-driving cars, or a Hyperloop system is very hard. What makes the difference?

The answer, in a word, is experience. The difference between the possible and the practical can only be discovered by trying things out. Therefore, even though the physics suggests that a thing will work, if it has not even been demonstrated in the lab you can consider that thing to be a long way off. If it has been demonstrated in prototypes only, then it is still distant. If versions have been deployed at scale, and most of the necessary refinements are of an evolutionary character, then perhaps it may become available fairly soon.

Electric cars are a relatively easy technology. We have more than 100 years of experience engineering and manufacturing windshield wipers, brakes, wheels, tires, steering systems, chassis, and much more.

We have more than 20 years of experience making digitized drivetrains.

On top of that, we already have a whole infrastructure for driving, including roads, parking spaces, safety standards, auto insurance, and government licensing of both the vehicles and the drivers. So to go from internal-combustion-engine cars to electric cars, you don't have to invent everything from scratch and then figure out how to deploy it at scale.

The self-driving car is arguably the single most anticipated technology right now. Here the difficulty lies in attempting something that has no real precedent.

Last year I wrote in this magazine on one aspect of the problem: the unexpected consequences that self-driving cars might have on human behavior. I pointed out that pedestrians and the drivers of other cars might find autonomous cars a tempting target for antisocial behavior. I also noted that the owners of self-driving cars may use them in ways that they would never use a regular car, perhaps succumbing to antisocial behavior themselves.

Another problem is what are called edge cases, which involve robotic cars bumping up against the limits of their capabilities. Some of those limits are not known ahead of time.

Driverless cars will not simply replace cars that have human drivers. Instead, we'll install special lanes, even geofencing the self-driving cars into lanes or entire roads, of their own, to protect them from human-driven cars and vice versa. Also, we'll change the norms for where it's acceptable to pick up and drop off people, where to park, and many other things.

We'll need changes in safety regulations and in how we assign legal liability. And for the laws to change, attitudes must change.

At first the cars will operate in restricted geographies and markets, such as malls, industrial campuses, and other places where human-driven cars are not allowed. Perhaps they will be restricted to certain times of day and certain weather conditions. The various problems of the self-driving car will be solved—eventually. But it will all unfold more slowly than the enthusiasts think."

I agree with him about the HyperLoop. Nice idea in a science fiction story but in reality sending people down small tunnels at great speed in an earthquake zone does not seem smart to me.

Most technologies start very slow and then once market penetration commences they speed up dramatically, digital watches, desktop computers, mobile phones etc.

As far as LENR is concerned, once the process is mastered and proven safe we do not need any AI, we just need it to plug into the grid, or where the home boiler sits, and generate heat or power.

So according to Rodney Brooks rules I would guess LENR is more like an electric car than a self-driving car.

In the UK at the moment people are being encouraged to swap out their gas boiler and replace it with a heat pump.

Maybe in ten years we will be able to swap out the heat pump and replace it with a Brillouin boiler.

The video is VERY impressive.

Godes, McKubre and Hagelstein provide an imprint of scientific authentication which straight away raises the level of credibility from hundreds of other claims.

As does the efforts by Brillouin to have their work verified by SRI in 2018.

But what to make of it?

Brillouin have been overpromising and under delivering for many years.

2016

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Lead Fight for Energy Independence

"Racing such companies as Lockheed Martin Skunk Works division, which also have claimed recent breakthroughs in this area, George explained to Truthout that BEC is only about two years away from a commercial boiler system prototype that a manufacturer could begin reproducing."

2019

Letter from Warren Walborn 2019

"Now the company is raising a $15 million round for the final 18-24 months of development to get them to commercialization, and we are evaluating investor candidates to lead and follow in this round."

So "are we there yet!"

What is the purpose of the video?

It is now 24 months after the previous investment round. Are they after more money?

I made a note of what Jed said in 2019 and I hope he does not mind me quoting him.

"No one will be manufacturing or installing cold fusion devices until there is a library of books describing the reaction, the manufacturing techniques, the dangers, the regulations, and every other aspect of the technology. Modern society, modern governments, and the public will not stand for the kinds of risks and unknowns that were accepted decades ago. The people at Brillouin imagine they will quietly sign contracts, and manufacturers will begin shipping machines to customers. That is a pipe dream. That cannot happen! First, because it is light years away from how modern industry and government works, as I said.

Second, because after 5 or 10 machines are installed, people will find out, experts will say "yes, it is real" and that will be biggest brouhaha of the 21st century. It will be the biggest news story, dominating headlines and news website for weeks. You can no more keep this under wraps than you could keep it quiet if someone invented a machine to convert lead into gold, and began manufacturing tons of gold. ...

I am not suggesting that cold fusion will be banned for safety reasons. Everyone will soon see it is much safer than other energy sources, so it will be allowed. However, it will only be allowed after extensive safety testing. This will take millions of hours and cost billions of dollars."

I don't really care who delivers LENR to the world, as long as someone does it, and the sooner the better.

But clearly even if Brillouin, or others, have a product this very day then bringing it to market will still take years and a lot of money.

Maybe it needs a national government to get involved to speed things up (as governments did to help Covid vaccines arrive in record time).

In my early days as a Rossi believer I bought into the Woodford fund.

The promises from Rossi, Woodford, and IH were very exciting.

Fortunately I got out (with significant losses) a few months before the fund hit the buffers.

Evidence now leads me to a firm opinion on Rossi as a genius inventor and on Woodford as a genius fund manager.

In regards to Darden and IH the jury is still out.

They made a hash of the Rossi contract and then went dark.

Whether IH have anything, and even if they have, whether they are capable of doing something with it, is still to be discovered.

I would welcome significant breakthroughs in LENR from any source, but I am not hopeful in the case of IH.

It is possible they have seen something compelling, (perhaps a heat anomaly), but are more interested in positioning themselves for a future patent fight.

The fact that some very rich persons, such as Gregory Powell became involved suggests that they have some evidence to show their investors.

And yet the in April 2021 the inheritors of Woodford's IH shares wrote down their value (again).

Ex Woodford Trust dives after 20% writedown.

"The value of Industrial Heat was also reduced by Link fund Solutions, administrator to the trust, due to 'a lack of technical and operational progress'".

Austria to go into full lockdown and enforce vaccination.

"Days after Austria imposed a lockdown on the unvaccinated, it has announced a full national Covid-19 lockdown starting on Monday.

Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said it would last at least 10 days and there would be a legal requirement to get vaccinated from 1 February 2022.

He was responding to record cases numbers and one of the lowest vaccination levels in Western Europe."

The USPTO is a government body and therefore could be directed to change their policy.

The solution then is a political one.

The Biden administration are looking for solutions and breakthroughs to aid the US meet its climate commitments.

Therefore a suitable approach should be knocking on an open door, best chance in years!

Maybe somebody could clarify some context questions for me.

The NASA Lattice Confinement Fusion paper is very interesting.

The fact that Vladimir Pines and Lawrence Forsley and therefore GEC are involved raises some questions around GEC.

Presumably this means the lattice confinement approach is part of the GEC tech, is this correct?

The suggestion is that they are getting some level of energy out but currently not enough to be a standalone power source, hence the trickle-charger and hence the Thorium hybrid reactor.

I am confused by the private vs government relationship in the USA.

On the one hand GEC are a private company and presumably want to keep their IP and research confidential.

On the other hand Gregory Byron Goble has said that “the US Secretary of the Navy retains rights on GEC patents and likely controls aspects of market entry and licensing agreements.”

On the other, other hand (three hands ) NASA publish a paper about research that GEC and NASA are involved in.

So what is NASA's role in this? Clearly NASA are interested in a space energy tech. So are NASA just providing funding and possibly lab resources?

And why is NASA able to publicly post details of tech that belongs to GEC and the US Navy?

Does NASAs involvement mean they have some ownership of the research?

Does the publication of the Physical Review C papers mean that GEC is now confident enough to make details of their research public?

Hoping for some enlightenment.

Thanks Gregory Byron Goble

I had a look at the website. Very interesting.

I agree that the GEC claims are, on the face of things, outlandish.

I do not dispute the technology; it seems likely have something along the lines of what they claim.

I do not dispute their 20 years of development and expertise.

It is their stated plans to conquer the world that I find incredible.

Certainly if they can demonstrate the technical breakthroughs that they claim then financing will not be a problem, they will quickly find they have more money than they know what to do with.

But they have a Thorium based power reactor that they want to sell at scale.

They also say they want to build GEC cars with their new trickle charging technology.

They want to do both these things at scale, on top of many other irons in the fire such as working with NASA and likely various other government/defense departments.

As far as I am aware GEC are a small company.

Entry, at scale, into the energy market or the automobile market will likely take many, many years and require a massive growth in the company.

To do what they want to do they will need fabrication facilities, which will need to be built to fabricate the new technologies.

Just looking at automobiles;

Tesla was founded in 2003 and under Elon Musk, one of the most driven entrepreneurs on the planet. They had a steep learning curve and a very ambitious schedule to create gigafactories around the world. And now seven years later, Tesla's global vehicle sales were 499,550 units in 2020. Musk now has 0.7% of the world automobile market.

I just cannot see how GEC can seriously talk about building their own cars and dream of taking over the market.

Google is a large company but if they said they were going to start designing and building automobiles I think there would be some incredulity. Most of their hardware projects have ended in failure (Google Glass anyone).

What might be more feasible is if GEC either lease the technology or partner with a large car manufacturer, but then the latter option would limit their market to whatever models the car manufacturer was selling.

Another option, if they make a big enough impression is that somebody may just buy them out.

I hear the Saudis have a lot of money, or possibly Musk.

So I am a bit concerned that their technology may be great but their delivery aspirations seem unrealistic. Maybe that is just for financing purposes but I would be more reassured with a realistic short to medium term business plan. If they try to grow too fast or head off in too many directions they will likely trip up.

Already his supporters are filling in the blanks with imaginative explanations.

Ecat World report has the following comment from Frank.

“Unfortunately it seems that there is a reluctance for almost anyone who wants to maintain a reputation of being respectable to be publicly identified of having connections with Rossi and the E-Cat, I think because of the controversy that seems to have always followed him. Rossi’s claims about his technology are so outside of mainstream, that unless there is absolutely rock solid evidence for them (which we have not yet seen), most people feel safer to steer well clear of any public association with him.”

Of course this is fantasy but if, for argument purposes, we accept the statement then if it were true that “customers feel safer to steer well clear of any public association” then the logical conclusion would be that no customer would touch Rossi therefore he has no customers.

Perhaps a leap too far for many of his supporters.

I also found the statement “The presentation will be made in a laboratory of Leonardo Corporation”.

A subtle implication that Leonardo Corporation has multiple labs and therefore, by association, a team of researchers.

So IMHO the take away message is that Rossi has had extensive discussions with his imaginary customers, and will now be doing the D&P show in his imaginary laboratory with the assistance of his imaginary staff.

I think I also upset some people yesterday, for which I apologise.

I have been a long time follower of the LENR story and am also interested in the blight of pseudo-science. I put my foot in it by referencing specific experiments or projects as examples, when my actual intent was to make very general points. I get that certain experiments or projects have passionate followers.

As a lay person I am not in a position to provide scientific criticism on specific research. I don’t know which might be valid and which not. And even if I read all the books and papers that they generate I would still not be able to say.

But the topic of this thread is whether LENR is pseudoscience or not.

So after a rethink of what I am trying to say hopefully these comments are generalised enough and “common sense” enough to promote general agreement.

What I learned from Orbo;

It is often impossible to prove to everyone that something is pseudoscience or even an outright scam. It is always possible to make the argument that if only more money or time had been available then miracles would have been delivered.

What I learned from Rossi;

YouTube videos with clever talk and pretty lights do not constitute proof or evidence.

Are the claims exceptional? – then be sceptical.

Is there money being taken? – then be sceptical.

Is there some reference to a fundamental theoretical paradigm shift? – then be sceptical. There are always a dozen or so instances of parties with theories that require a paradigm shift in nuclear physics, they cannot all be right and maybe none of them are.

Now, as I said above, it is difficult for a lay person to judge the validity of a science experiment. But you know what else I learned from Rossi – even university professors and savvy business men can be misled. So who is able to say whether something is valid or not? Which of us cannot be misled?

Ultimately we have to put our trust in the scientific method.

Eventually every endeavour will fall by the wayside or success will be the proof for all to see and replicate.

I really hope that at least one of these bold energy projects succeeds because the world needs it.

I said above that I would guess that LENR is on the scientific fringe but hopefully will become mainstream. So “scientific” and not “pseudo-science”.

What I find compelling about LENR:-

It is a community of researchers, based across the world, that has survived the slings and arrows aimed at it, and continued to make steady progress. And many of these people are clearly not in it for the money. To me this makes LENR more credible than a lone maverick or one fringe project.

The impression I get is that the main criticism from the “scientific mainstream” is the problem of the Coulomb barrier. From what I have read it is not felt in the LENR community that a full on paradigm shift in nuclear theory is required but perhaps a reformulation or loophole might provide the answer. Again this seems to me to be more credible.

Rather like Wegener, as I mentioned above, LENR is held back while it is in search of a convincing mechanism. But like Wegener, what it does have is evidence. As Jed has stated, there have been many results from thousands of experiments. The weight of evidence is the most persuasive thing for me, it supports the case that there is a real LENR process.

Hopefully the ARPA-E LENR workshop will move things forward.

Thanks Curbina,

Actually I am not that interested in Safire, I am here because I am interested in LENR, but I will take a look at the thread.

Is Safire LENR or something different?

I certainly am not in a position to debate Safire. Is anyone in a position to say whether it is real science or not?

If and when they produce something concrete then we will know.

Anyhow this is not the appropriate thread and it is not my intention to get into a discussion over that specific topic.

As I said the area of free energy or cheap energy is plagued by pseudoscience.

It is sometimes very difficult to work out what is genuine and what isn't.

It seems clear that the phenomena of LENR is a real scientific phenomena. The problem is that LENR operates at the scientific fringe and needs to be progressed into legitimacy and eventually mainstream. Hopefully the ARPA-E LENR workshop will move things forward.

The whole area of free or cheap energy is littered with false science.

From the most kooky end of perpetual motion machines (Orbo etc, etc) to the exoticness of quantum theory and zero point energy.

In some cases it is genuine scientists who are fooling themselves and then when they fail to convince others they claim they are some misunderstood and persecuted genius.

Of course it is always possible, if unlikely, that they are misunderstood and persecuted, see comments below on Wegener.

In some cases it is charlatans who are not even scientists but dress their pitch up in pseudoscientific language.

For instance the following link is an interesting criticism of the Safire project.

The Safire Project is not real science.

If Safire, or BLP or others want to convince the scientific mainstream then experiments and data are required not videos of flashing balls of light!

Serious researchers likeMcKubre and Nagel do not indulge in such YouTube theatrics, so it has to be asked, why do it? (I have my own views on this).

As we all know, far as LENR is concerned there are clearly hundreds of results from thousands of experiments which makes it compelling, but still on the scientific fringes with no theory and no reliably reproducible experiment. But LENR has suffered from its own instances of fraud and scandal which damages the credibility and gives ammunition to those who wish to attack it.

Fringe science is usually ignored by the mainstream and at worst is attacked and ridiculed. Alfred Wegener was ignored by most and attacked by a few. He had no credible mechanism for his theory and the large number of pieces of evidence he offered were simply ignored. But in the end continental drift was confirmed and went from fringe science to mainstream. I expect that LENR will similarly be widely validated and accepted, just 40 years later than it should have been. Hopefully we won't have to wait too much longer, the planet needs LENR now.

Went out to see a comedian last week. It felt weird to get out to a show.

He was pointing out how most normal people do not have the time or knowledge to check everything so most people rely on the advice given by experts, for better or worse.

He did a little story of one of his mates.

Mate "What you wearing a mask for?"

JM "Well you see there's a pandemic, its been on the news and everything".

Mate "They don't stop farts."

JM "Sorry?"

Mate "Masks don't stop farts so they are not going to stop a virus."

JM "Well, I don't know, I am just going by the advice of the government experts."

"But the way I look at it is, worst case scenario, if I am wrong then I just look stupid, but if you are wrong then someones gran dies".

Dark energy may yet turn out to be a fallacy.

Sabine Hossenfelder discusses the possibility that the dark energy models are based on a flawed application of the concordance model.

New evidence against the standard model of cosmology.

Article on BBC about Theranos scandal.

She was "the world's youngest self-made female billionaire", trumpeted Forbes magazine. The "next Steve Jobs", said Inc, another business magazine that put her on the cover.

In 2014, Elizabeth Holmes, then 30 years old, was on top of the world. A Stanford University drop-out, she had founded a company valued at $9bn (£6.5bn) for supposedly bringing about a revolution in diagnosing disease.

With a few drops of blood, Theranos promised that its Edison test could detect conditions such as cancer and diabetes quickly without the hassle of needles. Bigwigs from Henry Kissinger to Rupert Murdoch invested.

But by 2015, the seams were coming apart, and within a year, Ms Holmes was exposed as a fake. The technology she touted didn't work at all, and by 2018 the company she founded had collapsed.

Ms Holmes, now 37, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of the 12 charges of fraud against her.

Her trial which begins next month, US v Elizabeth Holmes, et al, will be closely watched and she is expected to plead not guilty.

Whether Ms Holmes will take the stand herself is unclear.

"The toughest thing with any case involving fraud is proving that the person intended to defraud," says Ms Baker.

"So prosecutors will have to use her texts and emails, and argue that she knew the technology didn't work but said it did anyway."

This is the sort of level that the US Government start to get involved in. You have to defraud Murdoch and Kissinger and seriously impact the stock market.

Even then the likelyhood of a successful conviction is not certain.

So in the case of a minor fraud;

Fictitious example; say "somebody" defrauds a bunch of nobodies on a website (e.g. edogworld.com).

I guess it is unlikely that a conviction would occur.

Ergo crime does pay.

As far as Invermectin is concerned there have been trials that have found it ineffective. But then some say these trials are not to be trusted.

It is also claimed that Invermectin is being suppressed in the USA, although if the usual 3.6K prescriptions has risen to 88K prescriptions it would be interesting to know where the ceiling is before the USA hits a supply shortage.

As far as the rest of the world is concerned there must be some blessed realm where Invermectin has been widely used and thus Covid has been conquered.

And yet so far nobody has been able to provide me with any examples.

And what about HCQ, surely the countries that widely use this must have very low Covid deaths (such as India)?

Come on chaps, show me the evidence.

Quote from JedRothwell

The other day someone in the mass media complained that there is politics because the public health agencies will not tell us "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." This person did not realize that no one knows the truth in science. You never know "the whole truth;" you don't even know how much whole truth there is left to discover. What is worse, in biology the truth itself keeps changing as the virus mutates. This person was making impossible demands on the scientists.

I have thought the same thing.

Scientists are asked a question and provide the best answer in accordance with the data.

But the data is open to debate and interpretation so the scientists then ask for more data to settle the debate.

Scientists and medics have been dealing with pandemics for hundreds of years so they know many things.

But clearly Covid-19 has its own characteristics and the scientific opinions have changed as more data has been gathered.

E.g. see my link above for changing data on how fast the virus can mutate.

Some members of the public then lose trust saying that the "experts" don't know what they are talking about.

Then of course you can always find some maverick scientist or medic who will have their own fringe opinion.

And once politicians get involved then the whole thing becomes a pig's breakfast.

Thanks to the forum members we are getting plenty of data and discussion.

Clearly the posters on this forum are generally smarter than average and well educated, and yet even on this forum there are diametrically opposed interpretations of the same data.

So how average Joe is supposed to make sense of it all?