Posts by interested observer

THH, point taken. Unless the thing works - i.e., it produces energy in a way that is not commensurate with known devices - then it doesn't much matter what is going on in the black box. On the other hand, if it did actually work, I would imagine that there would be a great deal of interest in whether there is radiation of any kind and so forth. In any case, we can do just fine with a calorimetry expert who doesn't know a boson from a bozo.

Lots of comments on my criteria for being convinced about the e-cat.

To Jed: by "their own methods", I meant not using some ridiculous measurement forced on them by Rossi. Of course a reputable entity would use standard, well-accepted methodologies.

To Alan: my idea of a reputable, independent entity would be something like NREL, NIST, or comparable European laboratories. You know, someplace respected as an authority in measurements. Who knows? Maybe even someone who knows about nuclear science and calorimetry? And if Rossi's device (which his worshippers believe is striking terror in the hearts of all energy executives worldwide) were offered up for testing to one of these places, you had better believe that somebody would do it. You really think nobody would volunteer? After all, all it takes is one of the 18,000 scientists at NASA to say something positive about LENR and fans run around the Internet claiming "NASA believes in LENR". Furthermore, if there was a high-profile test of Rossi's gadget at a prestigious laboratory by renowned scientists (as opposed to coffee-brewing experts who teach computer programming), peer review would be a no-brainer.

The time has long since passed for making lame excuses and entertaining conspiracy theories for why this thing hasn't been proven to work. Occam's Razor should be used liberally here: the e-cat hasn't been proven to work because it doesn't work. Whether LENR in general is real or not is not a pertinent question.

If an e-cat is tested by a reputable independent entity in a transparent manner using their own methods, equipment, and protocols and the results verified by peer review, I would be convinced that it was the real deal. There is nothing remotely of the kind that has occurred to date.

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Parkhomov's experiments are disproven

The concept that you cannot prove a negative seems to be totally alien to true believers. There will never be proof that the e-cat does not work. There cannot be. But far more important is that there is not and likely will never be proof that it does work. The inability to see the distinction seems to be a common syndrome in these parts.

I think those of us who are skeptical (to put it mildly) about Rossi's claims have made it pretty clear what it would take to change our minds. Pretty simple, really.

My question for "open-minded" people like IH Fanboy is: what would it take to convince you that Rossi has nothing and is a con man? Surely there must be something that would do it.

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Why in the world would anyone, anywhere believe anything this guy says?

To be honest, that is the only thing that is genuinely interesting about this whole affair.

Sorry joshg, but anyone with a decent knowledge of physics who reads or listens to Rossi's statements about science finds them laughable. There have been numerous examples of this over the years. You are just falling into the "he must be the greatest, most talented con man in history because he has fooled me" fallacy. Rossi's only talent is choosing his marks and he is great at it.

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I think your view that LENR hasn't had convincing, unambiguous proof-of-principle evidence that it exists puts you in the minority here.

That is true. I am sure that most people here think otherwise. And the people here are probably the majority of all the people on earth who share that view.

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You really think LENR is the wet science dream of some people on the internet?

Pretty much. Oh, I am sure that there are literally hundreds of people out there who share that dream with those who live on the LENR websites. I can only imagine how empowering it must feel to be one of the elite couple of thousand people on a planet of 7 billion who alone know the truth. The rest of us unwashed hordes have to muddle along in our ignorance.

IHF: You can draw any line you want through one data point. This is apparently what keeps you going, so good luck to you.

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Well, the fossil fuel industry's bankers know about LENR, and follow it closely. (E.g., Blackrock)

A fine example of exuberant extrapolation that is the sole content of so many believers' arguments.

In 2012, Blackrock made a comment that they were keeping an eye on startups in various fields including LENR. From that one-time remark, the conclusion is drawn that the fossil fuel industry is focused on LENR.

I guess if you have nowhere to stand, all you can do is execute an endless series of leaps of faith.

IH Fanboy: your 5 categories probably account for about 5% of the people who think that Rossi LENR doesn't work and that he is nothing but a classless crook and con man (as close to calling him an evil empire as makes any sense.) The other 95% of us hold our position because it has been jawdroppingly obvious for 6 years and thinking otherwise is utterly inexplicable to the overwhelming majority of people who bother to look into this at all.

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the deeply entrenched political and economic powers that currently control the world's energy supply do not want to see their control and profits evaporate due to LENR

This is no doubt true, as it is true for renewables such as solar and wind power. The fossil fuel industry has for the most part done whatever they can to make it tougher for renewables to succeed. They probably have delayed the ultimate domination by renewables by a decade or two. But ultimately, they will have failed. However, there is a crucial difference between those facts and what I consider to be some combination of self-serving rationalization and tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories surrounding the non-progress in LENR.

The "powers what be" cannot prevent people from providing an unambiguous and convincing proof-of-principle that LENR exists. To even think that requires that every qualified scientist on the planet is under the thumb of the nefarious forces of energy evil. Sure, they can make it tough to get funding, but it is pretty lame to argue that LENR has not been validated because of lack of funding. And the counterargument that such proof already exists is nonsense. Only a tiny handful of people think that way and most of them have no scientific expertise. And make no mistake about it, if such proof was forthcoming, there would be a mad gold rush in LENR and there isn't a damned thing that Exxon-Mobil could do about it.

LENR has a long way to go before the bad guys could be bothered to plot against it. It is just plain silly to think that a 5 trillion dollar industry is sweating bullets about the pet science dream of a few thousand internet fans that the overwhelming majority of the world has never spent 5 minutes thinking about.

Let there be a convincing, reproducible LENR demonstration and then we can talk about the entrenched forces fighting against it.

@Shane: your evolution over the past five years gives me hope for humanity

Part of the self-deception required to not admit to being fooled by Rossi is the kind of comment you often see from his supporters to the effect: "if this was really a scam, it would have to be the biggest, most far-reaching scam in history".

Seriously? Bilking the offshoot of a smallish venture capital fund out os $12 million dollars and bamboozling a few hundred internet physics wannabes doesn't even make it to the major leagues in scams, much less "the biggest in history". Check into a dude named Bernie Madoff, for example.

No, the implied meaning of these statements is more like, "if a scam has fooled me, it must be the most amazing scam in history".

joshg: Who are these pro-IH people? IH is a shell company that (obviously) has made a terrible investment in a con man and otherwise has no other claim to fame. What is there to like about them? And who has ignored any red flags about them? Once this endless, idiotic lawsuit is over, I would not be surprised if IH is never heard from again. One can only hope that Rossi fades into obscurity as well.

From day one, the Rossi saga has been far more interesting from the standpoint of human nature than from any sort of possible scientific content.

The remaining stalwarts who still grasp at straws to argue in favor of Rossi actually having something real are people faced with the dilemma of two choices:

Either Rossi's devices actually work, or

They have been gullible fools who have ignored countless enormous red flag warnings for 6 years.

It is human nature to go all in and choose option one, hoping for a miracle, rather than admitting to option two.

The conflation of Rossi with LENR as a whole is undoubtedly the most damaging thing about his activities. Of course, a good chunk of the so-called LENR community got involved with the topic because of Rossi and this is most unfortunate. Personally, I am quite skeptical that LENR is a valid phenomenon, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with Rossi. If Rossi is ultimately universally branded as a fraud (I can't say proven to be a fraud because I am not sure what could constitute proof), it will have no effect on my opinion of LENR. I have considered Rossi to be a con-man since 2011 when I first started following the story. It seemed obvious at the time and has only become more self-evident over the years. As for the field in general, I am certainly open to being convinced by better evidence that includes unambiguous and open replications of results. The notion that skepticism about LENR is equivalent to being "against" it is utterly absurd. In the meantime, the circus surrounding Rossi can only harm the reputation of the field outside of the small fringe group that avidly follows it. The few remaining Rossi believers here think that their misplaced loyalty is somehow a way of supporting LENR. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The incessant use of the term "FUD" here is hilarious. If there is anybody with a lick of sense that doesn't have uncertainty and doubt about Rossi, they need to take some lessons in critical thinking. As for fear, there is only the fear that they have been bamboozled for years, and it is a legitimate fear.

No matter how much I try to figure out the rationale for the debate going on here, I just can't quite succeed. The claim is that some magical gizmo in this little space in an office park in Florida was producing 1 MW of power pretty much continuously for an entire year while consuming considerably less power in the process. Better yet, nobody noticed. Whether this actually happened is being argued on the basis of the diameter of pipes, the existence or lack thereof of a window pane, and whether or not there was a giant invisible heat exchanger in the attic. The only so-called evidence that anything like this actually happened consists of the ravings of someone whose endless lies for years on end have been breathtaking in their brazenness. And yet, some 6,000 posts later, the argument goes on. I guess I just don't have the "special" perspective that many here do. From where I sit, the whole thing is too absurd to argue about with a straight face.

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But I think it would be ill-advised to put on blinders to all evidence because of it. Don't just take in the evidence that appears damaging to Rossi. I would encourage you to take in all of the evidence.

It isn't really appropriate to assess evidence in quantitative terms, but if one were to compare the amount of evidence damaging to Rossi with what is favorable to him, the imbalance would be staggering. Of course, to our oh-so-neutral colleague IHFanboy, what constitutes "evidence" in favor of Rossi is almost entirely far-fetched speculation based on the reading of tea leaves, flights of imagination with respect to blurry photographs, and the deliberate suspension of most of the laws of physics.