Of course, this is all silly talk because all Rossi has is an ordinary electric heater. Doubt it? Ask him to loop back the heat and disconnect the electricity.
Well, he has already done that. For example, 6th of october 2011, he unplugged the e-Cat that was under demonstration, and let it run for a few hours without any electrical input. Several scientists and engineers, including Mats Lewan, were there and verified this.
You can listen to what Mats Lewan had to say about this, from 2:30 in this video:
I think it is easily understandable that Rossi is not concerned with demonstrations right now. At the same time I agree that if the e-Cat works as promised, he really should have been able to get enormous investments, billions, not a few millions, and have thousands of scientists working on the development of this technology. But Rossi is quite eccentric, so it is not always easy to know his reasoning for the way he does his business.
There are good reasons to think that the e-Cat may be real, and there are some good reasons to be sceptical as well.
I think the wisest thing to do is to keep an open mind.