Mistrial!

See also RvD trial day 2 (Mistrial)

10 jurors were selected yesterday. First 3 of them requested to be excused, that was known yesterday. Pace agonized over allowing this. On the one hand … and on the other…

Pace suggested interviewing them (I.e., as in the original selection.) Altonaga said she had no questions, it was all written and clear.

Then Altonaga announced there were two more. At this point, all the lawyers agreed: mistrial.

Lawyers in court at 9 AM, Friday the 30th, to go over juror questions. Selection begins at 10 AM. If that finishes, opening statements, deja vu all over again. More when I get home, I’m sitting outside the courthouse.


I have a few minutes before leaving for the Court. Reading the LENR Forum discussions,  a few clarifications and brief comments.

The trial actually started with 10 jurors seated on the 28th. The Judge read the case summary (see the docket), then Rossi and IH presented opening arguments (Chaiken and Pace respectively). So there was a bit more than an hour in actual trial.  Then, before adjourning, the Judge noted requests from jurors to be excused due to conflicts, said that this would be addressed in the morning at 10 AM. There was some hesitancy on IH’s part to accepting the requests. Pace was really unsure, huddled with Darden. Then the Judge said there were two more requests,  and all the attorneys agreed on a mistrial. I had a chat with one of the lawyers, who pointed to the real problem: jurors were not prescreened for “five week trial.” So a lot of time was wasted interviewing jurors who weren’t ready to serve. We’ll see what happens today.

Chaiken said that jurors will see evidence from Penon. That might be the video deposition.

Practice makes perfect. Chaiken and Pace get to present their opening statements to a new jury. The jury will again be cautioned that lawyer claims are not evidence. When I get a transcript I may be handing out some Pants on Fire awards.

Shanahan’s remarks are totally off-topic, but Jed is right: Shanahan is fringe,  and keeps himself there by not actually seeking communication and agreement, merely claiming he has been unfairly rejected. Ironic, eh? I’ve been pointing out the irony for years, and have many times offered to assist Shanahan in settling issues. Yes, “random CCS” was an error. There are errors aplenty on all sides. So? There are places where a full and complete discussion can take place. I created one on Wikiversity. Shanahan ignored it. On Wikipedia, Shanahan kept attempting to put information in the Cold fusion article that did not meet Wikipedia guidelines. It was not just “CFers” who removed it, it was ordinary Wikipedia editors. An article on CF calorimetry with his ideas was deleted by JzG, a very much anti-CF administrator. I rescued it for work and  review. My reward? Shanahan supported my ban.

There is something special about actually meeting Rossi and the others. This is no longer dealing in abstractions, these are real human beings.

The document referred to as the Cassarino (Ampenergo) deposition is actually a much longer document containing all the depositions IH is planning to introduce, with annotations showing attorney objections, etc. Rossi, because of “technical difficulties,” planned to present that in person to  the Court.

Many writers (on all sides) are cherry-picking the evidence. One example is IHFB’s continued insistence that Woodford considered the Rossi technology “core” for their investment; in fact, the statement in an email has a clearer interpretation: Lamacraft was commiserating with Darden or  Vaughn (I forget which) over the disappointment, because Rossi was core to the original investment. Not the Woodford investment.

Again and again, it is asserted that IH used the Doral test to recruit investors. There was only one major investment after Doral began, and that was Woodford, and it is quite apparent that Woodford insisted on this being an investment into a UK limited liability company, which would then own Industrial Heat. Not in IPH, which had a contractual relationship with Rossi (and which was the original idea). IH did not actually use Doral to raise money, but Lamacraft wanted to see Doral, I’m sure. The Ampenergo notes (I have covered them in detail) show that Lamacraft was not particularly impressed.

And I must leave now. I have no internet access while I am in the Court, until I retrieve my phone from security and walk outside, and they would not be pleased by retrieving it for a few minutes…. I may still apply for a press pass, but until I have one …. I have limited facilities here.

 

I posted on JONP June 27

I wrote:

Bob Belovich, perhaps I made that call, I did publish this on coldfusioncommunity.net at 9:20 AM Monday. I was informed, last week, of the change to Wednesday, so it is odd that Dr. Rossi apparently did not know. (His comment here is why I checked, first thing Monday.) Judge Altonaga’s office told me that Jury selection would begin at 12:30 PM.

I waited until comments after this were approved. This comment was, then, likely “spammed.” Recent comments approved after Rossi said he would not be attending to the blog (but someone would be approving posts, or spamming them Continue reading “I posted on JONP June 27”

The study of Rossi v Darden provides an endless supply of flabber.

The Quark-X is powered by quantum accelerated coherent collapse (quacc) of  Meshe Gas with itself. E-cats are fueled with liberal applications of Flabber Gas and Rossi Grease. Rossi v. Darden provides  a limitless supply of flabber, enough to serve the needs of sarcastic writers far into the future.

Every time I look at Rossi’s blog, or at the case documents, there is no shortage of material, the question is always where to begin.

Mike Dunford of The Fogbow was flooded with flabber, reading the License Agreement. I am told that Fogbow is flooded with lawyers. I’ll agree, it seems that way, but … it takes all kinds. In any case, Mike reported that he had to read the Agreement more than once, because he wasn’t believing what he was reading. It couldn’t be that stupid.

Of course, Mike has not been following Rossi. It could be that stupid, and routinely is. So, then,  the koan: if Rossi has the reverse Midas touch, that whatever he touches turns to shit, why did Industrial Heat, which has a long history of engaging with risky ventures, and which certainly would afford counsel and indeed, had in-house counsel handling IP issues, go ahead and agree, and pay Rossi $1.5 million for the Plant and $10 million, based on a very shaky “Validation Test”?

That is a koan for advanced students. The answer I came up with is counter-intuitive, but few of us would have the intuition needed to cope with Darden’s primary business, Cherokee Limited Partners, an LLC that creates many LLCs, each one taking on some risky project. If these projects fail, they will lose up to $25 million or so of Cherokee Funding.

Normal thinking Is that if a risky business fails, the investment was a mistake. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The business of Cherokee would not be in avoiding risk, as such, but  in estimating, perhaps quantifying it, and comparing that to possible gains. CIP projects might fail more often than not (though I don’t think they do), but if CIP invests in projects with sufficient possibility of success multiplied by the probability of success, it cannot be said that an investment was an error, merely because it failed.

If Darden et al’s sense of possibility and risk is, in general, more likely to be right than wrong, in mercato veritias. If they are losing money on every  transaction, but trying to make up for it with volume, they would not be running a $2.2 billion investment fund, apparently successfully.

In 2011 and 2012, Rossi enjoyed massive publicity in the LENR world. He was commonly discussed on the private CMNS list My sense of the majority opinion was that it was possible he had something, but his rejection of sound scientific approach (“I don’t need controls, because I already know what a control will do: nothing”) was very visible. The errors of Kullander and Essent were obvious. But those errors did not prove that Rossi had nothing, only that their conclusions were flawed. And that Rossi was “eccentric.”

It appears that by 2012 Darden et al had decided to enter the field of LENR research and development. It appears that their first investment was a modest one, in Brillouin Energy. However, all other LENR working groups  were working with modest levels of power, at best. Clear XP at a watt is often considered a significant result.

Who would want to invest in technology that is so far from commercial feasibility, when Rossi was claiming many kilowatts? They decided that they needed to know the truth of Rossi’s  claims, and they needed to know either way, because the uncertainty was causing harm to the field. There is an IH deposition where they stated that if there was any possibility of a reality underneath Rossi’s bluster and even obvious deception, if this was as low as 1%, it would be worth continuing. In 2011-2012, I would have estimated the possibility of Rossi Reality (i.e., a real LENR effect, generating  significant power, as would be known  with conclusive tests), at perhaps 10%. (90% he was mistaken or creating fake demonstrations.)

Given that functioning LENR at the power levels claimed (say 10 KW per reactor, at a COP of 6) could be worth a trillion dollars, a 1% chance of success could be worth $10 billion (but investors would’t cut close to those values, unless the buy-in is truly cheap.) They were obviously willing to risk about $20 million. I would assume that they knew it would be difficult to recover that investment if Rossi were insane or even a deliberate fraud, unless actionable fraud could be shown, and if Rossi had let matters stand as they stood before the fraudulent Guaranteed Performance Test, he might have gotten away with it all.

It didn’t work out that way. That Rossi took IH to court has to stand as a major mystery in this case. I explain it with insanity,  which more or less means “it doesn’t make sense.”

However, I have called the IH investment “brilliant.”  That’s because it created desirable results. Confining desirable results to commercial success with the Rossi technology will miss that they wanted to find out, and to find out they needed independent testing, fully under their own supervision, and validated by others. To do that they needed to buy the IP. So I assume that they had already decided to accept the Validation Test, no  matter how much it stank.

Rossi wrote the Agreement. It’s bonkers in many ways. It gets even worse to  see how Rossi interpreted it and the Second Amendment. IH could see this, I’m sure, it was immediately obvious when I saw the Agreement, and more than one lawyer has opined in this direction. Mike saw this, from the Agreement, section 16.18.

Any controversy or claim arising out of or relating to this agreement, or breach of it, shall be settled exclusively by the Court of Miami, Florida, USA.

Rossi did not have a lawyer draft the agreement. As Mike points out, this is a $100 million agreement, secured with an immediate $1.5 million payment. In case anyone doesn’t notice, there is no “Court of Miami.” This usage is common on Planet Rossi. Given that the specified court does not exist, for it would necessarily be referring to  a specific court, this was a major flaw. However, the entire thrust of this provision is something that no ethical lawyer would recommend. IH certainly had fallen into a “controversy,” but lawsuits are a last resort. Before then, instead of jumping into Court to settle the issues, the parties will attempt to settle the issues, by negotiation. Instead of attempting negotiation, before the end of the “test,” where IH raised their lack of agreement to GPT and ERV — which is very well supported, possibly enough for summary judgment — Annesser threated to sue them immediately for anticipatory breach. Pugncious in the extreme. Lawyers like this create losing situations for their clients … but more legal fees.

However, it is possible that Annesser was just following orders. The lawyer had a fool for a client.

Another little tidbit from Rossi’s blog:

Yrka
June 23, 2017 at 9:39 PM

Dear Mr. Andrea Rossi.
I wish you success in court.
You will win! Serious interference in your work will be eliminated.
Advise where you can follow the course of judicial supervision.
Yuriy Isaev
engineer
Russia, Tyumen

Andrea Rossi
June 23, 2017 at 10:46 PM

Yrka:
Thank you for your sustain.
I think the official pacemaker is the source for information on internet, but I am not sure.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

There is common opinion that Rossi is many of those who comment on his blog. For some of these, evidence is reasonably clear. However, in this case, the question may be sincere. Rossi’s answer, again, shows his lack of clue. There is at least one follower of Rossi who has acknowledged the  value of this blog, and especially of the Docket page here.

The “official source” is PACER. See our introduction to the docket page. “pacermaker” or “pacemaker” is a complete error We have also seen “the pacermaker of the Miami Court.” Or variations. PACER is the document retrieval system of the U.S. Federal court system. It happens that the United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida is currently located in Miami.

Pacermonitor is a site that sells access, and that, for a short period of time, shows the Docket entries. They charge roughly  twice what PACER charges (Pacer is being sued over the fees being illegally high, at ten cents per page, with no limit for some documents, like the docket itself, they charge to show a subscriber the index to the documents.)

So if the questioner is sincere, Rossi misled his supporter. Someone with a conspiratorial mind might think that he doesn’t want his supporters reading the actual documents. Some have bailed after reading them.

Rossi also says that the trial begins June 26, tomorrow. Maybe. The information I have is that it begins Wednesday June 28. I will be talking with the Court tomorrow,  and, obviously, I will be checking. Rossi also treats “one month” as a fixed length of time. He’s naïve. However, it may not matter.

i have confirmed, this morning (Monday) with Altonaga’s office. 12:30 PM Wednesday, June 28 starts jury selection. I knew this last week (I.e., I had information, and I was told it was public.) So why didn’t Rossi know it?

 

Fogbow and community discussions

Because it was linked from LENR Forum, I wrote some posts on Fogbow recently, and the experience reminds me of why I avoid such fora. This is not a particular problem of Fogbow, it is generic to open fora without disciplined moderation or clear and efficient decision-making structure.

I wrote this before noticing some comments that may shift my view. So what will be read here, first, is how this all occurred to me, is not some sort of final conclusion or definite and overall judgment.

The topic there is Rossi v Darden : Cold Fusion Trial

The motto of Fogbow is: “Falsehoods unchallenged only fester and grow.”

However, what is “challenged”? If someone writes, “The moon is made of green cheese,” is the falsehood challenged by someone writing “You are an idiot”? That comment would be a violation of Fogbox rules, as an insult. However, what if the person had asked “why do I think that the Moon is made of green cheese,” would “Because you are an idiot” be an insult?Yeah, probably. But if you say, “That’s an idiotic idea, like the other ideas you have advocated,” is that an insult? Apparently not, though the actual effect is almost identical. The direct insult to the person, however, is easily recognized, and sanctioned, it’s blatant, whereas insult to idea or an assumed general stand or an entire class of people is allowed, even if clearly and deliberately provocative.

Trolls, defined by the goal of enraging or outraging others, then become skilled at making statements that will provoke as insults, but not be immediately recognizable as such. Such a person may appear to those who don’t know the circumstances as merely opinionated or even correct. They may become skilled at making plausible allegations. Yet the goal is to enrage. That goal will not necessarily be visible in an immediate interaction, it could show as a pattern of behavior over time.

There is no clear dividing line between pseudoskeptics and “debunkers,” and trolls. The effect can be the same. Discussion sites like Fogbow and tend to become infested with trolls and pseudoskeptics. Sometimes “believers” can also troll, as to provoking the others.

Bottom line, understanding of truth is not spread by merely “challenging” falsehoods. That idea is common, and it fails. Falsehoods can be asserted with brief statements that convey complex ideas, to actually answer them better than a mere challenge (“Lies!”) takes lots of words, or sometimes it can be done relatively briefly with references. On discussion sites, though, the routine practice becomes sound bites, considered entertaining, and some people who are not trolls themselves enjoy the fray.

I concluded quite a while ago that there was mostly insufficient benefit in “confronting someone who is wrong on the internet.” It’s endless, and discussions where that is the norm commonly go nowhere, failing to create genuine corrective analysis and structure, efficiently accessible.

The topic of the Fogbow discussion that I posted in was the lawsuit, Rossi v. Darden, and LENR in general. LENR in general, when brought up anew in a forum, generates a host of very predictable comments, too often stated confidently by users with one of two positions: “this is the truth, and is how mainstream science views this topic,” or “here is my original idea, aren’t I brilliant and aren’t they stupid for not thinking of this.” The discussion format encourages this, and useful content is not built.

I am considered by many to be highly informed on LENR, familiar with the arguments. However, LENR is a fringe topic, or, possibly more reasonably, an emerging science, still considered fringe by many. I hope to be able to show, within the next year, some far stronger experimental evidence on something that was already strong, as, I hope, was shown in my Current Science paper (2015). However, that’s not what I want to focus on now. Last year, I began writing on Rossi v. Darden (mostly on LENR Forum). I recognized that there was no archive making the case documents readily available. (“Pacermonitor” was often represented as a place to get “the docket”, which was quite misleading. Various documents had been downloaded and were hosted in many different places, erratically. So I created an archive, originally in the filespace for the newvortex mailing list. Then I moved it to this blog, and it is recognized by many as the best such resource available. (There is also Eric Walker’s googledrive, but it is not indexed and organized for rapid access, and there are files on thenewfire, also not well-organized (but some of those documents are OCR’d which makes for easier quotation.)

But that is not all I did. I also studied the pleadings and created analytical pages where, say, all the cited documents were linked and page-referenced for fast access; to do this, with the Motions to Dismiss that I studied, required reading or at least literally seeing all those documents, and often rereading them. As a result of this, it is possible that I know more about this case than anyone else on the planet (possibly even including the lawyers and parties). I mentioned this on Fogbow. As could be expected, on a site like Fogbow, this attracted derision. The possibility that it might be true, or true in some ways, was totally disregarded.

There was an apparent lawyer commenting there. His comments were generally correct, in my view, about law, but were not well-informed about the particulars of the case. And that attracted support, and his comments were considered to be “correcting” me. I will look at that one narrow issue, but my decision to restrict my posting to Fogbow is much more about an issue of the allocation of time than about any specific offensive comment there. But here was that commentary (and Startibartfast may be one of the better writers there):

[better than I thought, see below for another post by Starti)

Startibartfast wrote:

[blue, first-level indent]

Mikedunford wrote:

I don’t – despite Slarti’s attempt to make my head swell – consider myself to be one of the “real lawyers.”

Sorry to embarrass you, but what you wrote essentially proves everything I said about you, so you kind of torpedoed your own modesty. In any case you once again demonstrated that you have some small understanding of what you are talking about.

I’m licensed, but I’m not a practitioner and have no immediate plans of becoming one. What I am is an early-career legal scholar

Even a baby legal scholar is still a legal scholar and I thought Abd needed to understand that. Thanks for showing him! :thumbs:

Um… what was shown to me? I responded to Mikedunford, assuming that he had knowledge of law, but not necessarily the particulars of this case, which is unlikely in anyone without extensive study, no matter how much they know about law. Yet we are seeing confident expression of opinion without that study. I will return to this.

(who really should be working on a 20K-word dissertation instead of procrastinating here),

And Abd really should be getting ready to travel to Miami to cover the case (and for reasons that are fairly obvious from what has routinely happened, “cover the case” seems to have been interpreted in some very weird ways, such as “testify as a witness” or “have some interest” — i.e., as an involved party.)

What is the value of writing on Fogbow? It is not building content that can be efficiently accessed. Right now the RvD discussion there is 120 comments, the RvD Developments discussion on LENR Forum is at over 8900 comments. The same claims are made over and over. Sometimes those who might correct them burn out, and stop. It cannot be assumed that the latest comments are the most cogent, it can merely indicate that the “survivor” was the most fanatic, the most stubborn. It’s a structural problem. Fogbow software is even worse than LENR Forum software. Quotations do not refer back to the original comment, so context cannot be checked, tracking the flow of a discussion becomes difficult. There is no method of creating a content hierarchy, of tagging individual posts with meaningful categories. (But threads can be categorized, but only so vaguely as to be nearly useless.) The flaws of Fogbow include most of the flaws of LENR Forum, but cutting a bit deeper.

Right there with you. For me it’s writing my father’s eulogy and preparing a brief for a meeting next week.

Sorry about the father.

with relevant degrees from a couple of places, a solid foundation in US law, and (hopefully) a better-than-the-average-lawyer understanding of global intellectual property law.

Do you have any idea how hot you look right now? :lovestruck:

In other words, MikeDunford may be an ordinary lawyer with some specialization (“better than average”) in intellectual property law. I have no difficulty accepting that. The only problem here is that IP law is not at all the core of the case.

Law360 got it wrong. This is not a licensing dispute, even though it involves a licence. There were some licensing claims in the original Complaint, they were dismissed, and what remains relating to them is very weak and mostly irrelevant.

I would suggest that if Rossi and HI et al. had a lawyer or two who understood global IP law when they were writing their deal they might not have needed to spend a combined $15 million on lawyers for a contract dispute.

Just sayin’.

This obviously assumes that the problem was an ignorance of “global IP law,” and that Andrea Rossi would be interested in and follow legal advice when writing that Agreement; on the other side, it assumes that it would have been practical for IH to modify what Rossi was suggesting according to their own legal advice. It is highly likely that IH had significant access to legal expertise. They were faced with a problem that is not even on the radar screen of this “just sayin'” writer. They knew full well that the investment was risky. IH accomplished what they set out to do, as one possible result. I’m not going to explain what I’ve seen as their strategy in detail, beyond mentioning that Dewey Weaver, one of their investors and the only one discussing the case in public, has affirmed it, and it matches what is in the IH depositions.

That Rossi would sue as he did was not something easily anticipated. He had no history of initiating legal action. He was paranoid. A choice apparently had to be made: allow him what he wants, or no deal, nothing discovered. The Agreement is obviously flawed six ways till Sunday, but the legal costs cannot be traced to flaws in that Agreement, since, as written, the Agreement protected IH adequately; Rossi basically ignored the Agreement and fact to sue. Putting in stronger protections, such as a provision for binding arbitration or something that would have weakened the decisive role of the ERV, would probably have led Rossi to bail. IH needed to know if Rossi had a functional secret, if his technology worked, because it would threaten any other LENR technology. So they bought it.

They found out, not as an absolute proof, but as a clear demonstration that nothing Rossi said could be trusted, that he would shamelessly cheat and lie, and that he also was able to fool scientists and others — there is a major trail of wreckage, where scientists (such as the “Swedish professors”) blackened their records with serious errors, and that is all still working out. And IH still has a hedge, the License, just in case Rossi pulls a Wabbit out of a hat.

IH really looked like they had screwed up, to me, when I started studying this case. However, as I went deeper, I came to see their plan as absolutely brilliant, even though I still do not agree with every detail of how it was executed. There is a proof: Woodford. The initial Rossi investment and followup was about $20 million. The IH goal was not profit, as such, their original interest was environmental, they are what is sometimes called “socially responsible investors.” Their goal was to support the possibility of LENR. They hope to make a profit with their investments, on average, and they commonly make risky investments in pursuit of their goals, and they are patient, willing to follow the long term. Woodford is similar, apparently, and invested $50 million in what became the parent company of IH, IH Holdings International. This was obviously set up to protect the Woodford investment from Rossi predation. Woodford also committed an additional $150 million if needed.

So Darden and Vaughn amplified their own $20 million, and that they took the risk with Rossi made the world safe for further investment, not in Rossi, but in other LENR research and technology. They are still cash ahead, even considering the legal costs, and they may be able to recover those, from two defendants: Rossi, who may own on the order of $10 million in Florida real estate, though that is probably being mortgaged, my guess, to pay his own legal bills, and Johnson, Rossi’s real estate lawyer, who supported the fraudulent representation that is quite obvious from case evidence. In addition, there are aspects of this case that call attention to possible lawyer misbehavior.

There is a pattern shown in the Rossi pleadings. He has accused Jones Day of legal misconduct, while his own lawyers may be more in line for sanctions for that, he accused Darden of perjury, whereas he has, himself, almost certainly committed perjury, demonstrable by comparing his depositions and attestations with clear evidence, his own emails, and, of course, there was the basic case filing itself, claiming fraudulent inducement, when there is no evidence of that on the IH side, and plenty on the Rossi side.

So, what did MikeDunford show me? His posts. Search for Rossi v Darden to see the seven posts (at this point)

Fri Jun 16, 2017 3:50 pm

I haven’t weighed in on the legal issues yet, and won’t unless/until I get a chance to read the papers in some detail. (Which is very unlikely to happen in the next several weeks.) I’ll also freely admit that my patent law knowledge could be getting blurred because it’s not my primary area, but it is one where I’ve done the basic-level class for multiple jurisdictions. That said…

My recollection is that the validity of a patent is generally relevant in a patent licensing dispute, because if there is no valid patent, there is nothing to license. Whether or not the invention actually does what it says on the tin is generally relevant to validity, because a patent for thing that can’t possibly do what it claims may be invalid for lack of utility.

So I do think that the science may be relevant. But this sounds like a strange arrangement of contracts, so I’d have to take a good long look to be sure.

Sounds like a smart lawyer, actually. What I would point out is that the validity of the patent has not been legally challenged. The idea that this was a patent dispute appears to be common. It isn’t. It is, indeed, a contract dispute, with a few odd claims relating to IP tossed in. IH is claiming that if Rossi knows how to make working devices, he didn’t show them, so he’d be in prior breach. The only relevance I know of patent law is application to some of the dismissed claims in the Complaint. Rossi claimed that by adding a co-inventor to a patent application, they had somehow infringed on Rossi’s patents, which, is, ah, cloud cuckoo land. I’m confident that Mike would agree.

IH is not asking for the patent to be invalidated.

Fri Jun 16, 2017 4:44 pm

Having skimmed a couple of the summary judgment motions, I feel very sorry for the judge and her law clerks. And that’s all I’m gonna have to say about that.

I responded to this with general agreement, but then some details. Mike came back with:

Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:30 am

This is complicated, but in summary, I had argued that the Judge erred in dismissing the Motions for Summary Judgment without looking at any fact and legal argument. What Mike asserted about Summary Judgment was all general truth, but Mike did not address my specific claim. He merely gave a conclusory comment, an opinion based admittedly on a shallow review. here were his notes:

1: Even if the other side has the burden at trial.
This was a note to “The burden to persuade the court that summary judgment is appropriate rests with the moving party”. That is correct, AFAIK.
2: It’s a lot harder for a plaintiff to win on summary judgment.
I think so, as well. The “Partial Motion for Summary Judgment” filed by Rossi was preposterous, not even close to what might have succeeded, in my opinion. As well, IH as counter-plaintiffs had a tough row to hoe. Most counterclaims required matters in controversy to be decided. There might have been some relatively simple ones. As a tactical matter, my impression is that Jones Day attempted way too much and so got nothing. But IANAL, and assessing the practical reality of that is beyond my pay grade.
3: I agree that the 4-page blanket denial was a bit of a slap at the lawyers; I’m not sure it was an unwarranted one. The motion I read (the Int’l Heat one) was very hard to get through and did not do a great job (IMO) of clearly setting out the basis for summary judgment.
It was not merely “hard to get through.” To actually study it required reading the SOMF, and to understand what was happening with the SOMF required reading the evidences asserted, and that was, as these documents exist, tedious. Did IH “do a great job”? No, they didn’t. That’s obvious. A great job would have won at least one issue for summary judgment. Or would have resulted in the Judge clearly rejecting the arguments and explaining why. What they got was zilch. No examination. In my training, when I get results like that, the training is to take responsibility. “I failed …” However, this wasn’t my pleading, I did not write it and wasn’t asked to review and perhaps edit it before it was filed.
Mike actually says he’s not sure. I am more sure, but have likely spent an order of magnitude more time studying those documents. This is not about familiarity with law. Mike and I appear to agree on the legal principles. Mike did not actually address my central claim, that the Judge didn’t do her job, reviewing and accepting or rejecting arguments. She just threw up her hands in … despair or disgust? It’s hard to tell. This was not the assessment of uncontested fact that I would have expected. The result: the Rossi strategy of generating massive smoke screens worked. He could make up a set of unsupported arguments and she took this as a “disputed fact.” It didn’t matter if those arguments had any relevance or evidentiary basis. I think that’s error.

The result is a complex trial expected now to take a month. Some of this might have been unavoidable. She apparently is pushing for settlement. If she had dismissed what was dismissable, based on uncontradicted evidence and arguments (and particularly on the original complaint issues, thus the standard should have been easier, this was IH as a defendant), settlement might have become more possible.

Mon Jun 19, 2017 4:45 pm

This got convoluted. I pointed out that the term “absolutely” was a “bit strong,” he wrote “not a bit strong,” but we actually agreed on the substance, and his restatement did not use “absolutely,” nor any equivalent.

As I said above, technically speaking the defendant doesn’t need to produce any evidence in opposition. It’s a good idea for the defendant to try to produce evidence, of course, but the defendant can – through argument – convince the finder of fact that the presented evidence is simply insufficient to meet the burden of persuasion.

In the most significant and clearest of the issues covered by the IH MSJ, IH was the defendant. I did not claim that all the IH MSJ issues were worthy of much attention, and Mike’s argument, apparently thinking of IH as plaintiff, focuses on plaintiff arguments, but I still am concerned about what the Judge did. This was a complex case, with two initial plaintiffs (and confusion over the identity of one of the plaintiffs), four initial defendants, and then counterclaim plaintiffs and originally about eight counterclaim defendants, reduced by one when Penon could not be found for service. The Judge wanted all elements included in a single motion, of restricted size. She also created a much earlier trial schedule than what the parties had agreed upon, and refused to allow consensual postponement of deadlines. That all raised my eyebrows. Other than not allowing the parties to have what they agreed upon, however, her prior rulings all seemed within reason.

 

At a point where I agree with Mike (saying “that is correct,’) he wrote:

I’m relieved to learn that my years of legal education have not been entirely in vain.

Not a good sign….

Nothing shown to me here that I did not already know. I was thinking I’d write more detail, because Mike went on to present speculations as if they were facts …. but I’m losing interest rapidly. Mike is clearly knowledgeable about law, but then made hosts of assumptions about the specific facts. He did ask me for an example of what MSJ might have been granted, but I’m not convinced the question was sincere. I’ve covered that extensively here. Someone else can answer him.

And then:

Tue Jun 20, 2017 4:32 am

tjh wrote:

So … ONE person (though not an attorney) who knows BOTH the law AND the technology? My vote’s for Abd.

Mine isn’t.

Abd’s knowledge of the law is clearly substantially weaker than Abd thinks it is.

Apparently his vote is for himself. Surprise? I am not a legal expert, I merely have more knowledge of law than many lay writers. Mike imagines he knows what I think. He did come up with a stronger statement of what he thinks are my errors.

Tue Jun 20, 2017 8:29 am

It’s tempting to respond to him, but …. no. I will lay out what I will do, but what I will not do is to engage in these bar conversations. His comment above is an insult, a comment made either as trolling or in reckless disregard of normal responses. His subsequent comment actually addressed issues, but … context matters. If anyone has questions regarding any of what I wrote or what he wrote there, ask me here. Comments are open; only the first comment from a user requires approval. There are some loose ends to tie up. First of all, thanks to tjh for the kind comment. However, we are not running for office and there is no job on offer, nobody is to be established as The Authority. I merely know more than the usual about some things, but I make mistakes and that is one reason why I generally provide sources and links. I don’t always do that, so if anyone disagrees with what I’ve written and it was not sources, please ask. If you have the question someone else might, as well.

So, tjh. I had not seen his post.

Mon Jun 19, 2017 11:21 pm

vic wrote:

Sterngard Friegen wrote: [quoting Abd, adding a highlight]

“I don’t need this forum for anything in particular, I posted here Just Because I know more about the topic (that lawsuit) than almost anyone else on the planet, and this discussion was mentioned elsewhere.”

Regarding the highlight – an ego is a terrible thing to waste.

I’m the one who created this topic, and referenced it on https://www.lenr-forum.com — which might be why Abd came here.

Yeah.

But I will endorse his comment “I know more about the topic (that lawsuit) than almost anyone else on the planet”.

Let me put it this way: I’ve spent a year studying the suit, and then creating the resources on coldfusioncommunity.net, I read the documents again and again. There are some people who know things that are not public, and sometimes people notice things about the documents I have missed, but … when I read the comments of those who have not studied the documents, I notice the many errors that are common, and I know how I know what I know, because I’ve been over and over those documents, reading what others write about them, and my comment was an opinion that might be fact in some ways. And the reception was chilling, overall. People mostly go away when treated that way, sane people do (women will almost always not tolerate it)

One commenter imagined I didn’t know what a troll was. I’ve been dealing with on-line community since the 1980s on the W.E.L.L. People confuse their own ignorance or differences of opinion with the ignorance of others. “Troll” is a word. What it means is up to us. We use language, or we let it use us. I prefer the former.

Rossi’s and IH’s attorneys may know more about the law …

They certainly do. Some abuse it. My knowledge will also be spotty, incomplete. I often comment from a common-law perspective, more or less equivalent in some ways to “common sense,” though common sense is not necessarily common.

but they know (and care) little or nothing about the technology. Read the depositions.

Right. Jones Day has a real blooper in one of their pleadings. This is what I know about professionals in my life: they know more in general, almost always, but they don’t know my situation as well as I do. So I use professionals without making them into gods. I’m responsible for my choices, not the professionals I might consult. They are responsible for sharing their experience and knowledge with me, but they are advisors, not governors.

(From the technology end I would love to cross-examine ALL of the “technical experts”. How to do it legally … no idea. I do know that major cases can hinge on ONE question, eg “Is there any possibility you MIGHT have seen the microcode?”)

One of the nutty things that was tossed at me was the idea that I was trying to intervene in the case, to get the Judge to read my work. Basically, people make up what fits their preconceptions, so what I wrote was read that way. In fact, what I had suggested was that a clerk might use certain documents here that had links added; the clerk would not trust the document, but would verify that the links were what they purported to be, that the copies were true, etc. That would be much faster than creating it from scratch. Maybe ten times as fast. I spent many days creating some of those documents. With such a document, hypertext, reading the MSJs would be far easier.

(I never completed those documents, they would still be useful to someone who wanted to make it easy for the Judge to review. Frankly, my opinion, attorneys should be required to present documents like that, instead of what they have been doing for way too long. It should be possible to verify a claim in a pleading as to what is in evidence, in seconds, not several minutes per claim.

Lots of people (with whom I have corresponded on forae and by email) know lots about the technology. (eg Rothwell, Storms) …
[Edit]: but little or nothing about the law.

That’s what they tell me, they are honest about it.

Abd has an excellent technical reputation in this the technical area (I met him first online on vortex, but he got thrown off for rationally defending a religious attack).

Given Fogbow, it’s ironic. The fellow was a birther and that was a major part of what I confronted. That is, in fact, where I learned about that flabber.

So … ONE person (though not an attorney) who knows BOTH the law AND the technology? My vote’s for Abd.

(He sure ain’t modest, he sure ain’t polite — he’s dinged me for posting some hignorant stuff. )

Sorry. Not about not being modest (though simply saying that I may know more than the vast majority of people on some topic is not immodest, if it’s factually based), but about any hurt feelings. I have learned what I learned by writing and, on occasion, being corrected by those knowledgeable enough to accomplish that. Some have been polite and some not, but the opportunity is there for me. I would probably learn much on Fogbow, but it ain’t gonna happen. Most of those conversations were far too boring, on matters where I discussed the stuff to death years ago.

AND I’m still not going to defend Cold Fusion / LENR here.

It doesn’t need defense, or, at least not on Fogbow, which will make zero difference in what happens with LENR. In fact, I’m strongly suggesting that people without high knowledge stop arguing about LENR, and people with high knowledge usually have something better to do.

And then Startibartfast.  Tue Jun 20, 2017 12:05 am

[I am creating links for his footnotes, and backlinks just for fun]

I find it fascinating how quickly bad blood can arise from a failure to understand each other’s position (and grumpiness too, also1). In an effort to get an interesting thread back on track and prevent someone who seems to me to be making a worthwhile contribution from getting turned off, let me see if I can help explain… or at least make things worse.
:towel:

Since I was a moderator on the W.E.L.L., I have been noticing social pathologies in on-line discussion, probably related to the lack of direct visual and auditory cues, and the depersonalization related to the low bandwidth of text. It’s an issue I have worked on since then, because there are also vast possibilities from there being a clear and accessible written record of conversations. However, what I saw, then, and continue to see, is that this possibility is largely missed because it is overwhelmed by social phenomena and how people routinely form opinions. To review the record to find the original of conflicts was, in practice, almost useless, because people mostly will not read the record, and will assume that references to the record are “cherry-picked” or otherwise simply reflecting the political position of the one making the references. This is an aspect of general dysfunction in how we form our identities and beliefs. To move beyond it generally takes training, and that training is not routinely supplied or expected.

Those who might be expected to see beyond these reactive patterns often don’t. I saw a professor of linguistics argue with one of the most skilled trainers on the planet, that he was using words wrongly. If anyone should know that language is a tool, not  truth, it would be such a professor. He walked out, because he could not tolerate “wrong.”

Stern,

I don’t think Abd is trying to peddle woo, I believe he is just someone who, based on his own informed opinion, believes that cold fusion is real4 and hopes that, one day, it will result in commercially viable energy production.

Thanks. To be clear, I am informed more than most, and less than a few. I am sufficiently informed to be able to participate usefully in conversations with experts, and to be able to write a review paper and see it pass an initially negative peer review and have it be published, and cited by the person I most respect of all the experts. However, I do not “believe” that cold fusion is “real.” To be sure, the word “believe” carries many possible meanings. A more neutral statement of how I think is that I have concluded through a preponderance of the evidence, pending the availability of better evidence, that at least some of the reported effects sloppily called “cold fusion” are real, not merely artifact, and that it is nuclear in nature. This view is probably consistent with the view of the majority of informed experts. Cold fusion, like some other fields, is afflicted with experts who do not know the evidence, so “informed experts” would mean those who are somehow tasked with a review and study. People like McKubre and Robert Duncan. I just noticed that a Rossi voir dire asked if jurors had seen the CBS special on Cold Fusion, where we saw Duncan investigating cold fusion.

I use the term “cold fusion” for political purposes. That is, the evidence shows that the reaction is likely the conversion of deuterium to helium. That conversion, regardless of mechanism, would routinely be called “fusion” as to effect. Steve Krivit has never understood this and argues at great length that most in the field are promoting a wrong idea, fusion. But then he means by fusion “d-d fusion,” which is easily understood as either impossible or in any case not what is happening with the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect and the production of gammas. Huizenga point it out long ago when he noticed the heat/helium evidence, considered this an amazing report (it was!), that it would explain a major mystery of cold fusion (the ash!), but that it would probably not be confirmed (because no gammas!). That opinion was obviously based on an assumption that if heat and helium were correlated, the reaction must be d-d fusion. That is only an assumption. There are other possible pathways.

An information cascade formed in 1989-1990, where a “scientific consensus” arose, meaning broad and common opinion among scientists, that was never based on completed or conclusive scientific study and findings. Gary Taubes wrote the best skeptical book on Cold Fusion, Bad Science. Even though he finished the book after the Miles announcement of heat/helium correlation, he never looked at it, and the reason is obvious: his simple story of bad science, a long-term theme of his, became really complicated, and he needed to finish the damn book! Later, he investigated some other information cascades and wrote compellingly about them. These cascades are still in place, but falling apart as real research is done. Taubes, indeed, founded NuSci to facilitate that research. I like Taubes, a lot, even though some of my LENR friends hate his guts. He worked his butt off. For some understanding of how information cascades work, google “Taubes Tiernan information cascade”. Here:

Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus

How the Low-Fat, Low-Fact Cascade Just Keeps Rolling Along

Information cascades are not “bad.” They are a mechanism by which society creates more efficiency, but they can fail to recognize anything that is outside normal thinking or what is easily accessible. Overcoming them can be quite difficult. I’ve been looking recently at the history of the recognition that h. pylori infections case gastritis, ulcers, and stomach cancer. The creation of review bypasses could have saved many lives and improved the quality of many more. The cost of the rejection cascade was in the billions of dollars. My guess is that the collective cost of such phenomena is in the trillions of dollars per year. That does not mean that people should be so open-minded that their brains fall out. Rather, it only takes a few to review and spread the news, if structures are in place.

Creating those structures is my goal, long term. Cold fusion is merely one example of an information cascade where what became insanely strong rejection, if it delays the commercial application of LENR, costs about a trillion dollars per year in lost opportunity cost. Even if the probability of such applications is low, this would be worth many millions of dollars in review costs, including, of course, definitive experimentation.

In discussions of LENR, N-rays and polywater are often mentioned as prior examples of “pathological science,” tossing cold fusion in that basket. However, N-rays were shown to be artifact by a conclusive experiment. That experiment did not “prove” that N-rays were not  real, but that the evidence for them was not based on objective observation, but was a product of observer expectation and interpretations that “seeing is believing,” even if the seeing is … at the edge of clear. Polywater was shown to be artifact by an experiment that conclusively provided a prosaic (though remarkable in itself!) explanation, contamination of the water by condensed sweat from the researchers.

The core findings of LENR were never shown to be artifact, i.e., the heat. The early neutron radiation report was, indeed, artifact, retracted. That was often considered proof that the heat effect could not be real, because d-d fusion would always generate copious neutrons, but the interpretive error is obvious. As well, the conclusion that the heat was nuclear in nature was premature. Pons and Fleischmann actually had, when they initially announced, three evidences of “nuclear.” First, the level of heat was beyond chemistry, in their judgment, and chemistry was their expertise. Second, they saw evidence for neutrons. Third, they found tritium. The neutrons and the tritium, however, were far below the levels expected from d-d fusion. The neutron evidence was artifact. However, that was never shown for the heat, nor for tritium, and both of those effects were widely reported, confirmed. A few neutrons have even been shown, but those findings are not confirmed.

As such, this trial is of interest to him just like many other trial threads on the Fogbow are of interest to you and the rest of the boogle2.

Yeah. It was doubly interesting, because it is a convergence of two significant interests. It might be a good place to ask legal questions, for reasons that Starti makes clear. However, it’s also a public comment forum, with very loose administration, with all the down sides of that. I broke a rule. No administrative warning, just some blame from a troll and friends. Yes, some explained the rule I had violated. Yet from the common severe disrespect and contempt shown, the initial offense, the kind that seriously damages discussions and tends, for example, to drive away women or others not interested in bulls butting heads, and endless waste of time in discussions that never go anywhere, that rarely accomplish any measurable benefit, was tolerated, and it was repeated. I.e., the judgment of “insult” was superficial. This is a product of the limitations of narrow administration without decent structure. That is a discussion forum default because it’s easy and familiar and can be controlled by the owner. There are far more powerful options. Hybrids, essentially, and few have experience with them.

You might find cold fusion to be nonsense, but Abd doesn’t and seems willing to discuss LENR on the merits.

Yes. If you look around this blog, you will find serious discussions with serious skeptics. I don’t expect a knowledgeable skeptic to lay down and play dead. My stand is for all to express what they know. Emphasis on know. As part of the process, there is the expression of opinion, which is reactive, not exactly knowledge (though necessary in human process).

More precisely, the opinion that “cold fusion is nonsense” is obviously an unsupported judgment as apparently held. It would depend on a definition of “cold fusion,” wouldn’t it? I’ve had this argument with some atheists. Speaking at a university on Islam, a young man stood up, proud to express his opinion. “I don’t believe in God.” Great. I asked him, “in what God do you not believe?” It appeared that nobody had ever asked him that question, he was dumbfounded. I then said, “The God that you do not believe in, I don’t believe in either.” Now, I’ve had this discussion with serious atheists, who were not naive college students. Their ultimate objection: I capitalize God, and I capitalize Reality, and I define God as Reality. Period. No ideas attached, not as belief. There are some explorations and possibilities, that’s all.

The “cold fusion” that is nonsense is an idea in the mind of the pseudoskeptic, typically unquestioned, almost invisible, because it is assumed that we know what is being talked about, i.e., say, the claims of Pons and Fleischmann. However, they did not actually claim fusion. Their paper claimed an “unknown nuclear reaction.” In the title, as I recall, they had Fusion? at the end. The editors lost the question mark.

The history of cold fusion is an extensive comedy of errors, a demonstration of how very smart people can make very stupid mistakes. All of us can. In my ontology, “mistakes” are the fastest way to learn, if we pay attention and are not attached to being right.

Which is perfectly reasonable from a scientific point of view3.

Thanks. To echo Mike, I’m grateful that my fifty years of observation and study and training have not been wasted. (But I actually do thank you, I am not being sarcastic.)

Anyway, I think Abd is adding value to the discussion (and certainly a lot of knowledge about the particulars of the case) and, at the very least, isn’t doing any harm.

I doubt that whats-his-face, the user I set to ignore, will leave because of my “insult.” The insult was actually calling him a troll, as I recall, which was very obviously reasonable, i.e., if someone trolls, they are, in that interaction, a troll. No action exclusively creates identity. I was not claiming and would not claim that the only thing the fellow does is troll, that he is a “pure troll,” only that he was obviously trolling, and I drew a conclusion from that, which was personal, that I was not going to continue interaction. If he wants to communicate with me, this blog is open for comments. I have no assumption that he has nothing of value to contribute; such an assumption would violate my basic ontology and stand. Mike is merely opinionated and quick to judge, I didn’t see trolling there. Mike has actually raised an issue worth exploring, which I intend to do here, but not today, I need to get ready to travel to Miami.

In any case, I don’t think he really deserves all of the scorn you’ve leveled at him. Certainly not because he chose not to answer a hostile comment on Saturday afternoon by Sunday morning7. Just my opinion.
:towel:

Indeed. That was trolling, highly offensive, provocative, and … obviously tolerated, and, my guess, much from him is tolerated, probably because he is seen as a “valuable contributor.” That is an error very common in site administration. It is possible to create and enforce civility without losing truly valuable contributors; that this is thought not possible is a result of failure to respect the capacity of users to cooperate, when that is tested. Most will cooperate with civility rules, if they are clear, and clearly and reliably enforced, but it takes some administrative work, and admins are typically overworked and definitely underpaid.

p.s. I didn’t know the story about your avatar, so, if nothing else, I’m grateful to Abd for getting you to share that.

You’re welcome. My comment about his avatar was not a claim — as he represented — that he had created the avatar to insult me, which would have been stupid and egotistical — more or less his point in making the claim. Rather it appeared to be a symbol of his interactions, not just with me, but with many. It’s not just grumpy, it is in-your-face grumpy. It is or has become his identity.

Abd,

Please correct me if any of my suppositions above are untrue. You seem very forthright and write long, detailed comments (see below :towel: ) and you’re arguing the counter-orthodoxy5 without, in my opinion, crossing the line, all of which gets my sympathy, but I think you’ve made some (very understandable) blunders due to circumstances you aren’t aware of.

That’s life. I don’t think they are “blunders,” however. When I toss a pebble in a pond and its splashes, it would not be a blunder unless it creates damage to some goal important to me. In fact, the splash tells me far more about the pond than a more cautious approach would. I assess actions based on outcomes, not on presumed freedom from “error” as if that were an intrinsic characteristic of the actions, which the language of “blunder” incorporates. If my goal were not to break rules, it would be a blunder, or, in my training, that is called a “breakdown.” But it is also said that “from breakdowns come breakthroughs.”

I became, as a result of the comment, very quickly aware of many aspects of the situation that I might not have learned for a long time. Not only has no harm been done, I saved myself a great deal of wasted work. Writing details responses takes much time. Mark Twain said, about a long letter, “I would have written less but I didn’t have time.” That is, writing effective polemic, if it is to be deeper than “you’re an idiot,” takes time. Providing sources takes time (and this is part of how I learn when writing sourced material. To provide a link, I have to look at the source again. So I end up seeing sources over and over. Basic method of learning: exposure to material. It can actually be superior to what we call “understanding,” which is often an illusion (meaning that we have some conclusion that fits into our world-view).

This forum, while having long ago branched out, started as an anti-birther forum. Conspiracy theorists in general6 are still a major focus.

What I see as the Fogbow condition correlates with that. Moletrap was started by Steorn debunkers. RationalWiki was started by Conservapedia debunkers. These become insular, self-reinforcing social structures. RationalWiki does build content, but it is heavily biased in a particular direction. Moletrap doesn’t, generally.

It is not that the debunkers are “wrong.” It is that contrary views are buried in mud. On Moletrap it was quite obvious. That community effectively denied the existence of pseudoskepticism, which is an extreme view, with no distinction being made between pseudoskepticism (which fails to be self-skeptical) and genuine skepticism (which does not require brains falling out, it does not require accepting and believing “woo,” and the very term “woo” is pseudoskeptical, it has no clear definition other than “stuff we think is loony.”

As such, two things are true: first, some of the people, especially those who have been here for a long time, have a very quick trigger when they think people are supporting frivolous arguments or woo, and, secondly, while the membership here is very diverse, it is still skewed heavily towards lawyers.

This could be both a strength and a weakness. Lawyers are skilled in argument, at inventing arguments to support any position whatever, including attacking and discrediting the views of others. Some lawyers are skilled at dispute resolution and mediation. Some are fight-to-the-bitter-end-never-give-up hired guns. And then they follow those same principles with their own opinions, a busman’s holiday.

Unfortunately, you happened to run afoul of one of the most well-respected8 and grumpy of those lawyers, who seems to have thought that your comments implied beliefs that were frivolous or unscientific and, as you pointed out, he trolled you about them. Now, you’re certainly right that he showed contempt for your ideas, and while the motivation for your insult was certainly understandable, you are the one who broke the rules.

The rule I broke was calling him what he obviously was, i.e., the name of one who engages in his behavior. That was from one incident, and would not, in itself, an identity define, but what I saw was clear enough to make the call, and what is being said here confirms that the call was not just my own opinion, but matches the community opinion. But he is “one of us,” and I wasn’t. One of the claims made as a result of my comment (besides a call to effectively ban me —  sorry, not allowing comment on the topic of interest, but only in the Cesspool or the Dungeon or whatever it is called may not be “censorship,” but neither is total ban, because the banned person is not prevented from expressing their opinions except in one place. It would still be a ban) was that I didn’t know what a troll was. Which would, of course, be inviting argument, since I have thirty years of experience with on-line conferencing. I was not claiming that the fellow was an “actual troll,” which would require showing that he lives under a bridge, but rather was behaving like a troll, showing signs of habitual trolling, and that claim is confirmed here. But apparently accurate description of behavior is not allowed on Fogbow, if it gores the valuable contributor. This is very common, and boring.

Now that’s certainly not a cardinal sin and, even if you do get thrown in the FEMA camp (and I don’t believe you should or will), you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference (except that people would be free to insult you and vice versa),

FEMA Camp is a user group. From Fogbow Forum information:

FEMA Campers is a closed group. Birthers, SovCits, trolls, and anyone else who joins the forum in order to hassle us are put in this group. Then they can only post in FEMA Camp 7½, a hidden forum.

The FEMA Staff & Visitors group can see the FEMA camp. If you don’t join, you don’t see us dealing with the troublemakers.

Sterngard Friegen is in a group of his own, for reasons that will become apparent when you get to know him. He is the Super Grumpy Geezer.

Why in the world would I write for FEMA camp? I can write on Quora, say, and have 2.6 million page views, I can write on my blog and create useful pages and discussions (and blog posts, i.e., opinions, though some pages express opinions), and have many appreciative readers and why should I care about the others — they don’t care about me. (If they do, they will comment and I respect them and generally reply, even if they are telling me what I’ve heard for as long as I’ve been writing, I write too much. To that comment I say, “Don’t read it, then. Or ask for a summary. Or wait until someone comments and reply to that. Your choice.”

I would surely notice that I was not allowed to post in a topic of interest. Or if somehow that post is there (not rejected by the software), I would notice that I couldn’t see it when not logged in. I don’t know how Fogbow implements this ban that it pretends isn’t a ban.

Fogbow administration obviously has decided that Stern is an exception and may insult others (perhaps as long as he avoids the direct insults that are easily seen without having any idea of the topic). So he can troll others, those people who come to Fogbow to “hassel us, ” because that serves a useful function: when the person, generally a noob, responds like an ordinary human, returning insult for insult, that person can be FEMA camped for breaking the rules. I saw this strategy used to great effect on Wikipedia, there were users who freely broke the rules, in order to tempt “POV-pushers” to violate the rules, to, then, provide easy cover for administrators, their friends, to ban those people. The administrators had points of view that they pushed, but often had difficulty with what they called “civil POV pushers.” Those who followed the rules to push a POV. Wikipedia fell into some internally contradictory tropes, such as the idea that neutrality can be found by excluding people with strong points of view. It often excludes, then, experts, from participating in the discussions.

In this case, if I were to tendentiously argue that this was all unfair, that Stern was truly a troll, i.e., had been trolling — there is no other objective definition — the community, with established habits, would pile on and I could be actually FEMA camped. I won’t do that on Fogbow, and, in fact, I’m not going to argue on Fogbow at all. What I will do will not be argument, itself. Mostly, though, I won’t be reading or following Fogbow, but may look at discussions there pointed out to me. Whatever, it depends somewhat on how much free time I have and what I have to do with that time. I wrote that I posted on Fogbow “Just Because.” I.e., no particular good reason, and I’d chalk it up to testing the waters.

but, if you’re going to hang around here9, I would suggest that a sincere apology to Stern for the insult would probably go a long way towards getting people to take the time to look at who you are instead of who they think you are.

What would a “sincere apology” look like? My opinion, now strengthened, is that Stern trolls users, at least he was trolling me. I don’t see any sign that he was harmed, other than possibly being, himself, trolled into making some stupid comments. But his friends think he is brilliant. Personally, I think that the community is enabling him and harming him. I’m also an “old geezer” (73), and think that when people conspire with my stupidity, they are truly harming me.

So how could I apologize “sincerely”? I know how to influence public opinion in situations like this. But do I want to? Is Fogbow my target audience? (No. Not lawyers, for the most part. Scientists and decision-makers in funding agencies. My blogging is to create a channel for meeting possible supporters for the long-term work, to recruit leaders and empower them and “leaders” can include genuine skeptics who will actually study a topic, seeking deeper understanding.)

I am not willing to lie or deceive in order to generate popularity. I will shut up about some things, not every truth or opinion must be stated. I’m not going to break the rules, though what I’ve found is that if someone is considered an outsider, the rules may be interpreted to ban them, it’s common. What I will do on Fogbow may indeed create some deeper tests. Anyone watching will be able to learn from this.

It’s a small matter and everyone knows you didn’t violate the rules intentionally (and that Stern is a expert at walking the line without crossing it — not to mention really grumpy), but it would be a show of respect for the community and probably enough to let the matter die and return the discussion to the case (or cold fusion in general), which I believe is what you would like.

I am not maintaining the discussion on Fogbow. If that community wants to beat a dead horse, they can continue the conversation. Communities like Fogbow typically prefer to discuss personalities rather than principles and objective fact. What happened on Fogbow is quite common.

You said:

Abd wrote:
I am not a “real lawyer,” for sure, but I’m in regular consultation on these issues with one, and others are chiming in.

Which was simply true.

You clearly want the respect that you think you are due for your knowledge and expertise,

I actually DGAF. However, I understand that if I have knowledge, I have an obligation to share it. It is up to others if they take advantage of this or not. Those who do, learn, those who don’t — I am not responsible for them. They make their choices. I do not “hide my light,” under some idea of pious humility. I don’t consider that kind of humility to be a virtue, at all. Genuine humility, to which I aspire: I know I make mistakes and will consider what is pointed out to me as error.

However… trolling never brings this out, not directly, though I can still take advantage of the opportunity.

but, in trying to convince us that you deserve respect you unknowingly disrespected the knowledge and expertise of this community. Roughly half of the people that are engaging with you are real lawyers (and good ones).

If I tried to convince people of that, the effort would be self-contradictory and doomed. Human beings deserve respect, even from lawyers. (Cue a series of Bad Lawyer Jokes.)

Most people (including friends who don’t know me face-to-face) will not correctly assess my goals and motivations. That’s just the way it is.

In particular, in your exchanges with Mike Dunford it is very clear that you don’t understand that, even in a group of outstanding attorneys, Mike is special. When he gives his opinions, everyone listens carefully, because after over 7,000 posts demonstrating his knowledge and insight he’s earned enormous respect. When he says, “I’m relieved to learn that my years of legal education have not been entirely in vain.”, everyone here is quite aware of just how erudite a legal scholar Mike is.

I don’t doubt it. However, he was making assumptions about the case based on shallow knowledge of it. The greatest expert in the world who does that is out on a limb. The number of posts on a discussion Forum like Fogbow is not a particularly impressive credential, by the way, I place more credence in your own opinion.

Which is not to say that your knowledge and insight into this case isn’t welcome, but it is generally a good idea for IANAL types to be careful about asserting themselves as legal authorities, especially when in discussions with actual lawyers (which is pretty much every thread here).

I have a habit of assertive writing. I will describe things as I see them. IANAL (I am not a lawyer, folks) will cover that there will be things that I misunderstand or miss, but in real-life conversations with real-life lawyers, these are easily fixed. Real-life lawyers, in my experience, listen to my comments, because I’m coming from outside the box and I might see something that, out of habit, they might have missed. Or not. I might be seriously mistaken, so they say so, directly, and if they are true experts instead of stuffed shirts, they can and will tell me why, ordinarily.

If you do a little listening and then ask some questions, I’ll bet you will learn some new things about the law yourself. I certainly have11

I may ask questions, though I do have a lawyer I can call for that.

and:

Abd wrote:
I posted here Just Because I know more about the topic (that lawsuit) than almost anyone else on the planet, and this discussion was mentioned elsewhere. I’ve been funded to cover the trial, and I have multiple places to publish that coverage.

Okay, so you’ve been trolled and scolded and talked about and you’re probably thinking, “why should I bother to stick around?” What you just said is why. I don’t believe you can find a more discerning audience to which to publish your coverage or a more knowledgeable group with which to discuss the merits of the case.

The Fogbow software sucks and is not designed to handle the kind of writing I would want to do. I will publish here (or maybe in Infinite Energy, it’s been suggested, but I have no agreement with them.)

Another place to publish with a wide audience is Quora, where I have many followers, and where there are deep experts on just about everything.

There’s a long standing tradition on the Fogbow of having BOTG (Boots On The Ground) for trials of interest. Members (both lawyers and non-lawyers) post their notes and then the ask questions and start speculating on the meaning and significance of what happened. There is much popcorn and good times all around.

I’m on a low-carb diet. However, I have nothing against good times. If Fogbow sends a Boot, we might have some good times if we meet. I’m big on real-life meetings, it is far more fun than pounding on a keyboard. Or Fogbow could consider me a Boot. It will be up to the users and how they use the opportunities that I present.

So here’s my challenge to you: stick around long enough to post some coverage from the trial and answer the questions you get from Stern and the other lawyers and then see if the analysis they give is correct. I bet it will be. And I bet you will find it a worthwhile experience too. also. What have you got to lose?

Everything and nothing. I stand for the nothing part. I’m not LANCB. I call that “binding the future,” and it is generally a stupid thing to do. People do it because they don’t trust themselves, which is a generally disempowering position.

Questions, I haz some. You say you are being funded to cover this trial, by whom and what is their (and your) interest?

I don’t ask them. Some donors may be seen publically on the GoFundMe site. Some donations have come from a lawyer who saw what I was doing and offered to cover Pacer costs. He wants to be anonymous. But I can say that he has no connection with the parties in the case. Indeed, so far, no donor has any known connection with the parties. What has been said is that they are supporting my reporting, the Rossi v Darden resources on this blog, and they trust my honesty. Most would be called, perhaps, “believers,” i.e. they think LENR is real.

However, that does not bias my reporting, at least I hope not!

My interest is in the outcome of the first major investment by a commercial entity in LENR in a long time. My interest in going to Miami is to see the parties and witnesses myself, personally, instead of just what is written. We can’t see the video depositions, which might convey something. I also may meet with some of the involved people. That is likely, though not arranged yet. I am, as part of this trip, visiting Washington, D.C. and will meet with at least one scientist there. Maybe two.

Mostly, though, I’m interested because It’s There. I like fact and evidence, much more than opinion and conclusions.

What are your relevant credentials and experience? I assume from your name that you are (or were) a graduate student, is that correct, and if so, what did you study?

No. I never completed college, nor was I a graduate student. Abd is not “All but degree.” It is the first noun in my Muslim name, I accepted Islam in about 1970, and have written more about Islam, overall, than about any other topic, over the years. The name is Abd ul-Rahman, “servant of the merciful.” (“Abdul” is not actually a Muslim name, but a fragment of a phrase taken as if it were a word.)

I attended Cal Tech, sitting in the Feynman lectures in 1961-63. I dropped out, became a musician and became involved with “spiritual communities,” and was recognized as a teacher. I created a career as a kind of electronics engineer, and still have some income from the design service I started. I retired on social security, but then went through extensive training from Landmark Worldwide, perhaps specializing in community projects (not “Landmark community,” the training actually prohibits projects involving Landmark graduates specifically, but must be “outside community,” with measureable results. I was a Wikipedia editor, known as standing for community rights vs the “administrative cabal,” which was a Jimbo Wales term. Later, if you called them a “cabal,” you were labelled as a conspiracy theorist, but … no conspiracies are needed. Cabal behavior functions through shared watchlists and interests, cabal members defend each other and attack “enemies.” Sometimes very effectively, if there are members who are administrators. Wikipedia is largely helpless to deal with it.

You referred to later work (after P & F) verifying LENR. Could you give us a layman’s summary of that work and the strength of those results? It might help if you could give us a clear statement about what you think is established science and what you believe that hasn’t been demonstrated yet.

That’s a huge topic. There is a video published by Jed Rothwell that is decent. Focusing on what is the most established science would be my paper published in Current Science in 2015.

I do not agree with everything in the video. But nobody is perfect.

On an unrelated note, do you know anything about Steven Jones, former colleague of Pons and Fleischmann? I’m curious as to the quality of his earlier work given what he did later13.

I’ve met Jones, at ICCF-18 in 2013. Jones is far from popular in the LENR community. His work was entirely different from the FP Heat Effect. He was reporting very low levels of neutrons, and a reaction rate far below what could generate major heat. I shook his hand, congratulating him for being the only skeptic to actually critique the published work of Melvin Miles on the heat/helium ratio, in a peer-reviewed journal. What is unfortunate, though, is that though he pointed to possible heat measurement errors (probably not real, but this is a very ordinary objection) and possible helium measurement errors (the standard one is leakage from ambient, though some results are above ambient, just not the Miles results), he did not address the correlation, which is very difficult to explain with a theory of artifact. It is the correlation, not the separate results, that was significant about Miles.

As to his later ideas, well, sometimes people go off the rails. It does not tell us much about his earlier work. There are mysteries in the 9-11 evidence and there is common thinking that goes “if it isn’t explained, it must be …. [fill in theory].” When someone actually creates a theory that fills in a few blanks, they can become quite enthusiastic about it.

I concluded years ago that there are mysteries that will never be resolved. That is more or less meaningless. What a mystery shows is that for someone, something is not explained, they don’t know enough. So if one wants to know, investigation is in order, but most people are looking for quick answers, real investigation is far too much work. Or might even be impossible. I’ve looked at the videos. There are people who believe that the radio tower vaporized, and that one is obviously an appearance, unsupported by the videos if one looks carefully (this is an element in a directed-energy-beam theory).

Anyway, sorry your welcome to the Fogbow has been a little rough, but know that your comments have been appreciated and I hope that you will persevere and discover the quality of this group. I may be a wee bit biased, but I think the Fogbow is quite simply the best community on the internet.
:bighug:

Not in my book, though, to be sure, I don’t know Fogbow other than only one set of interactions. I was threatened with FEMA camp, but not warned by any administrator, nor did any administrator suggest to me that either I was safe, or in danger, or warn me.

However, Quora is fantastic, with a community of some of the most skilled writers on the planet. It has problems, mostly due to naive administration (Facebook people!). But, still, there are writers there who are, routinely, a joy to read. The format more or less discourages the kind of endless argument that is common on some blogs and sites like Fogbow.

Mike,

It has been bugging me for a while now and I gots to know… WTF is “1 Cranch 137, 177”?
:confused:

1 Cranch 137, 177 is a device used by a lawyer who wants to display his insider knowledge, his familiarity with esoterica. To others it would Marbury v. Madison.

From Wikipedia, “while serving as a Circuit judge, Cranch also served as the second reporter of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1815. At the time, the reporter was an unofficial post and he used his own funds to produce the reports.[citation needed] Cranch took on the responsibility because of his respect for precedent.[citation needed] He was slow in producing his reports of cases and their accuracy was questioned.[citation needed]

So what might be cited as 5 US is instead cited as 1 Cranch, the reporter. “5 US” would be a later name, 1 Cranch is the original publication. Volume 1, I imagine. 137 may be a page number or docket number, I didn’t find that. Someone who actually looks at the book may find this. Someone familiar may simply know. Remarkably, Googlebooks does not seem to have it.

tjh,

Thanks for starting this topic! I’m really enjoying it.
:thumbs: :popcorn:

I personally find the topic fascinating, a drama, a comedy of errors, one ridiculousness after another, stranger than fiction in many ways. Shallow, knee-jerk reactions appear common in all directions.

1. To Abd: “Too also” is a common Fogbowism, not some kind of speech impediment. (back)

When in Rome, too, also.

2. To Abd: a collective noun used to refer to the membership of the Fogbow. I believe it is the name for a group of weasels or some such. (back)

Something like that. I was put in that group.

3. So long as a hypothesis isn’t falsified (and no one has proven LENR can’t happen), a scientist is always free to argue for it on the merits. (back)

In fact, scientists, like everyone, are free to argue for anything forever, regardless of flabber like “proof.” By the way, it is generally considered impossible to prove that “LENR cannot happen.” That was in the first U.S. DoE review. Rather, it could happen that evidence appears to discredit reasons to think it exists. Unfortunately for the knee-jerk “impossible” debunkers, cold fusion is known and accepted to exist, as muon-catalyzed fusion. (Steve Jones’ specialty, by the way, but this is not controversial). So the question is whether or not there are any other possible catalytic or other processes. I consider the heat/helium evidence very strong, and widely confirmed, with no substantial negative evidence, but … many people remain skeptical because blah, blah, hence the effort to increase precision. That is a classic test of fringe or pathological science: does the effect disappear when precision increases? (Researchers in the field already know that in some cases, it doesn’t, but skeptics can always claim “file drawer effect,” which is a genuine hazard but does not apply to the best research.

4. Which is to say that it will be scientifically demonstrated one day. (back)

My hope is always in the revelation of reality, I trust reality, not my ideas about it or anyone’s ideas.

5. Which I know is hard. (back)

Only if one is attached to convincing someone. My training is not to convince, but to offer opportunities. I have had little trouble, though, finding skeptics who agree that testing heat/helium is a great idea. Pseudoskeptics keep repeating “bogus,” or “even if it’s real, it could never be practical,” or “you are just a stupid believer,” or they say it more politely on occasion. I really only care about encouraging scientists to do genuine, careful research and encouraging those who want to see that happen to support and fund them. So Andrea Rossi can be seen as a huge distraction, someone who wasted millions of dollars in his own fantasies.

I was thinking about this on the way home. In some ways, some of the evidence indicates that he believed his effect was real. There are other ways where he clearly lied, but sometimes fanatic believers will lie, thinking it is justified by necessity. In any case, that’s basically over. Anyone who invests in Rossi or anything like his claims will likely be far more careful in the future. No more pandering to paranoia.

6. Such as sovereign citizens. (back)

We are sovereign, but idiots have appropriated the concepts and live in cloud cuckoo land, or that probably is a nicer concept than the cobwebs filling some minds.

7. I’ve certainly done much, much worse myself… :towel:  (back)

Basic discussion rule: nobody is ever obligated to answer anything if it doesn’t come by service of process or at least registered mail. If someone is asked a relevant question, and that is confirmed by others, and keeps on posting repetitive nonsense where that question’s answer may be significan, this might shift as to what is socially acceptable, but trolls imagine that they make the rules for everyone to follow. Except for them, of course.

8. For good reason. (back)

I.e., excuses.

9. And I sincerely hope that you do. (back)

Thanks. Not going to happen. You are welcome here, and I am likely to occasionally ask questions on Fogbow, as long as that generates value, and I may post occasional comments there, but only as links to this blog. I’m not going to write the kind of explanatory posts that are obviously disliked by some, the expression is pearls before swine, which is not a claim that my comments are pearls of wisdom or that Fogbowers are swine, but that my writing appeals to some and not to others, and writing for Fogbow, the little I did, is not fun, too much work for too little value. I can write for Quora and get millions of page views, if readership is what I want. But at this point, I’m not writing much for Quora, and am almost entirely writing here. And people who like my writing can cite it and link to it, and those who don’t like it can ignore it.

11. I can cite 4 centuries of jurisprudence making President Obama a natural born citizen.12 (back)

I’m sorry.

12. Which is now, of course, totally irrelevant. :crying: (back)

There, there. Remember that it was fun while it lasted.

13. He completely abandoned his scientific integrity to become a 9/11 truther. (back)

I’d rather not sit in judgment of the scientific integrity of a man just because, on some topic, he goes off the rails. If I had time or interest, I’d look more closely at his claims. But I don’t.

There are millions of stories in the Big City. I choose stories that create inspiration. That one doesn’t. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but … the stories we follow create the lives we lead. What does that one create?

Ah, one more point before I publish this. Mike brought up a question that is worth answering. What elements in the Industrial Heat Motion for Summary Judgment were worthy of acceptance? I was vague about that, and focused on the failure of the Judge to cover the facts and arguments. Mike has an impression that the Motion was not well-argued. Is that true?

This is not a question to be answered off-the-cuff, and I won’t get to it, until, at least, I’m on the bus to Miami or even later. I would expect to take at least a full day to write something like that, even though I created some study documents that will make it easier.

How does estoppel work if all parties do not agree?

On LENR Forum, oldguy wrote:

And how would estoppel work if there are three parties that were to agree to any changes. It is unclear that Ampenegro gave any indication of approval of any changes to the agreement.

An essential legal fact in Rossi v. Darden. There is no doubt that Ampenergo (AEG) deliberately rejected the Second Amendment. This is so clear that it’s a bit of a tragedy that the Judge did not take this on board and rule for Summary Judgment on what depends on this Amendment (like the entire initial Rossi case). However, that’s not the question here.

The Agreement was quite explicit about full agreement of the parties to amend it, and Ampenergo was a party. Payments were due to AEG per the separate agreement between IH and AEG. As a very interested party, then, AEG would have had standing to sue IH for failure to pay the $89 million, if they believed it was due. It appears from the record that they did not believe that, and, unlike Rossi, they are not greedy and insane. They obviously trusted IH, and do not believe that this trust was violated.

Rossi wrote in an email to Cassarino (AEG) that the Second Amendment was “cancelled.” That was Rossi-speak, commonly imprecise. It failed, it was a draft that was never completed. It could have been completed at any time, it did not have a time limit in it. It did contain two signatures out of the four required: a signature for IH, and of Rossi, who neglected to sign for Leonardo Corporation. That latter defect would have been of little consequence because, with everything else in place, a party will be estopped from asserting some minor technical error, and given who Rossi was with respect to Leonardo, Lenardo would not have later been able to successfully claim, “No we never signed it. Go after Mr. Rossi personally.”

(Notice how Annesser and Chaiken have argued quite the reverse with respect to Cherokee. The Agreement did not contemplate a relationship with Cherokee, and was obviously created as an Industrial Heat agreement to avoid that. Darden was not about to approve an agreement with a contingent liability of $100 million, which is about four times the standard Cherokee investment in a project, and this project was far outside of normal Cherokee investment. Investors could have sued them. The agreement contained an integration clause, but that didn’t stop Annesser from asserting the legally impossible, and it worked, because their pleadings had asserted or implied that Cherokee was a sole owner of Industrial Heat, which was never true, it was only true that officers of Cherokee were involved.

It was also possibly true that Darden and Vaughn assured Rossi that if the payments became due, they would be able to raise the money. After all, look at Cherokee! Rossi tends to interpret everything as what he wants it to mean, but any attorney would have told him that, no, read the Agreement. There is no Cherokee guarantee unless you have it in writing. Oral representations (which can easily be misunderstood or misremembered) are not valid for actions to take place more than a year into the future, and an integration clause makes them explicitly invalid from the start.

We also know that the Second Amendment was a draft only, because the date was never filled in, and there is the matter of the “Six Cylinder Unit,” obviously an idea from 2013.

So, what the Second Amendment draft shows, however is that IH was willing to set aside the fixed timing of the original License agreement. To use technical language, that agreement was really dumb ab initio, the problem was easily anticipated. My assumption is that Rossi wrote this; regardless the stupidity is moot. The timing failed. At that point there was no liability of IH to pay the $89 million.

However, because there was obviously a (proposed) agreement between Rossi and IH, and because IH and Rossi were free to make separate agreements (and did, vide the Term Sheet with JMC), and if the conduct of the parties shows that they behaved as if the Second Amendment were valid, it is possible that IH would be estopped from claiming that there was no agreement. This is the legal theory Annesser is operating on.

The evidence of such an agreement is very thin. Key question: what were the terms of this unwritten agreement? When would the Guaranteed Performance Test begin? The Second Amendment was explicit that it would begin as agreed upon in writing by all the parties. If we are going to reduce the Amendment to a separate agreement between IH and Rossi, no such written agreement has been found. It appears to me that Rossi decided to create a GPT, but to avoid asking IH to agree. What he did was to set up some of the conditions of a GPT: an installation that would monitor the operation of the Plant, as supervised by a person who was previously the Engineer Responsible for Validation, and it would last, as a test, for 350-400 days. To encourage IH to agree to this, Rossi lied about the “customer,” repeatedly and plainly, it is not deniable. He avoided any confrontation over “GPT,” but blames IH for not objecting to a “GPT” to what he did not claim until much later.

He attempts to convert a lack of objection, when the issue was not ever raised, into an agreement to accept.

Rossi has diligently searched for and has found evidence that IH knew that a test was under way, and apparently called it a 350 day test in one email. This was not an email sent to Rossi, and he could not have relied upon it. The existence of correspondence between Darden and Penon over a test protocol shows that Darden knew that there was a test aspect to Doral. But a “test aspect” does not equal “GPT.” The conditions of a GPT were never anything other than explicit, and a major one was agreement of the parties as to start date (which would allow them to effectively object to any aspect of a proposed GPT that was not satisfactory to them.) IH would have reasonably believed that they were adequately protected.

I don’t know that anyone anticipated just how insane Rossi was. The steps IH took to protect themselves appear to be reasonable within ordinary business practice, even dealing with frauds. In my study of the evidence, it appears to me that Rossi has perjured himself, directly contradicting clear documentary evidence. That’s insane. It is a puzzle that Annesser and Chaiken have allowed this, and may speak volumes about what those two attorneys are up to.

So, in theory Rossi and IH could have separately agreed on an equivalent to a GPT. If so, AEG would have rights, pursuant to the original Agreement, if a payment to Rossi were of the nature of royalties or licensing fees (and it is easily arguable that, if this was the equivalent of a GPT payment, that AEG would have a right to payment.)

However, there is a lack of evidence that there was such an agreement, only some vague noises or hints. This was not a GPT as contemplated. In the contemplated GPT, IH would have physical control of the reactor. It is not clear if Rossi would have any right to touch it, but if his being kept away from the reactor could have arguably caused it to fail or to not function after a failure (or at all), he could have argued, fairly, that he should have the right; IH would then have, I assume, provided for tightly managed “interference.” Really, to be careful, Rossi would have not touched the controls, but would have instructed someone from IH what to do (and this is how the Lugano test might have been accomplished to keep it relatively independent).

It would have been insane for IH to agree to what Rossi actually set up as a “GPT.” What evidence exists shows that IH was reluctant to directly challenge Rossi, preferring to follow a long-term strategy, a necessity ab initio, of “give Rossi what he wants.” Without that strategy, there would have been no continued agreement, it would have failed in 2013, if not earlier. IH would not have answered the critical questions that they had: whether or not, in spite of all the obvious appearances, Rossi actually had, underneath the blatant bluster and deceptions, something real.

They did not find out with complete certainty, that could be impossible (unless we learn more than we presently know). Even if Rossi totally faked the GPT, he might have had something previously, Storms has opined that Rossi had something, and lost it, which, given the history of LENR, has to be considered possible. He kept trying to improve it! This is not science, it is rather primitive engineering. Given something as poorly understood as LENR, one would properly hold on to positive results until they were thoroughly documented and examine, not keep working to “improve” them before knowing in detail their reliability (measured!) and such matters as ash (if the heat is as Rossi claims, there should be abundant ash, increasing quantitatively with accumulated energy release).

(That error, though, is common in the history of LENR.)

However, IH created enough evidence by the interaction to know, and for the world to know, that Rossi is utterly untrustworthy, that he has fooled scientists into issuing reports that are blatantly in error — and that cannot be published under peer review. Given that Rossi’s claims were entirely outside the envelope of what existed before, there is no reason to believe him, and to have high skepticism of any test where he was present and at all active. We know without doubt that Rossi has faked tests. IH took a risky path, seeking to develop deeper knowledge, deeper than simply repeating fact or innuendo about Rossi’s past. They gained that knowledge, and it is now available to the world, regardless of the outcome of Rossi v. Darden. No sane investor will touch Rossi with a ten-foot pole, not because of any alleged IH campaign to denigrate Rossi, but because of his own very obvious actions. It was actually obvious from his Complaint: his attempt to pierce the corporate veil would put off any investor using corporate forms for liability protection, his inclusion of Cherokee as a defendant, the major activity of Darden and Vaughn and their cash cow, and his willingness to file a blatantly deceptive Complain and to tenaciously defend the indefensible in it, and his claim of fraud based only on an alleged failure to pay and Rossi suspicion, all would mean that an investor would be risking more, perhaps much more, than actual payments, starting with high legal fees to defend against and insane and highly persistent inventor.

There is more in the crazy results from the “ERV,” the claim in them of steady power of 750 or 1000 KW, without any evidence of necessary heat exchange (and Rossi’s public deceptions about this, until he finally claimed a “second floor heat exhanger”). If I saw that a jury was convinced by this, I would still think it ridiculously unlikely, given all the known facts.)

Of course, I have not yet seen the presentations in a trial. Nobody has. Lawyers will point out that everything could shift, which is true. But we have seen the better part of a year of diligent efforts to discover and present evidence for the Rossi case, with the best result, from a Rossi point of view, being that the contrary wasn’t considered proven yet. Rossi will have to prove his claims to the satisfaction of a jury to prevail on any point. The motion re spoliation failed, but a jury could still decide spoliation, and one of the first words I heard from an attorney about this cases was one word: “spoliation.” This was about the removal of the test instrumentation by Penon.

I can see many possible Jones Day errors, such as not vigorously objecting immediately to that spoliation, such as not requiring Rossi to keep all evidence in place (like the piping or anything else necessary for reactor operation) — or to allow full documentation by IH if anything relevant was to be removed, and, in the pleadings, failing to lean on the absence of the written agreement required by the Second Amendment. They barely mentioned it. That was a much stronger and clearer argument than the matter of signatures and “Six Cylinder Unit,” which can easily smell like technicalities, readily estopped. Written agreement was fundamental.

If it is said enough, does it become true?

Certain ideas are repeated over and over, in spite of obvious correction. One particularly egregious example is what Paul Lamacraft of Woodford allegedly wrote when Industrial Heat gave him a preliminary copy of their press release in March, 2016, at a point where Rossi was claiming to his public that there was no problem with IH. This is commonly misquoted in a way that allows an interpretation that is weak or impossible with the original Lamacraft comment, pursuing a Rossi theme, and this began with Rossi making the claim in court, with that misquotation. This is so bad that a misquotation ends up as “agreed” by the parties. Essentially, a subtle difference can sometimes be overlooked.

On LENR Forum, SSC wrote:

oldguy wrote:

It makes perfect sense – They (Peter and Henry) traveled around the US visiting most of the researchers supported by IH. It would be hard to say they could not visit Rossi. Your assertion that Darden used Doral as a showcase is not correct. I think the “showcase” was elsewhere (possibly the work by Cooper and that by Miley).

You keep on discounting all the other work and the visit on the same US trip by the Woodford group to all the other places. Rossi (I think) was the last place the visited on the way back to the UK.

You assume way to much.

You are assuming too much when you say that the showcase was the work of Cooper and Miley. Everyone knows that the most famous name in the LENR world has long been that of Rossi and it was Woodford (or rather McLaughlin, if I remember the name well) to say that Rossi was their core business. So it is far more likely that Darden has focused above all on the Doral plant to attract investment.

As is common on LF, this is all unsourced. There were two visits by Lamacraft to Doral, one in February, at the beginning of the “test,” and before there was any preliminary Penon report, and one in August, after Rossi had rejected the Murray visit and IH was definitely on edge, and shortly to explicitly deny that Doral was the GPT and Penon the ERV.

Oldguy often writes as if he has inside knowledge. I am not aware of evidence on the “Woodford” visits to other researchers or inventors. However, Oldguy might well have some kind of private knowledge — or I have missed the evidence. However, SSC then cited something he “remembers” which is misleading. This has been brought up many times by IH Fanboy, as alleged “truth,” always with misquotation, so here is, once again, the reality:

In reply to J.T. Vaughn, Paul Lamacraft wrote:

This is clearly very disappointing, given that Rossi’s technology was a core element of the initial investment.

Rossi, having obtained this email in Discovery, presents it as evidence to support a claim, but reinterprets it (by adding an “explanation” in brackets — which explanation then, if Lamacraft had actually stated that, would be proving his point. This is an example of what I found in reviewing the Rossi arguments: the manufacture of evidence through creative interpretation. He wrote this:

On March 4, 2016, Woodford Funds explained that “Rossi’s
technology was a core element of the initial [$50 million] investment.”

Was Lamacraft referring to their $50 million? It would be strange, in context. “Explained” is supplied by Annesser; this is actually Lamacraft commiserating with Vaughn, a principal at the company that actually made the “initial investment,” in 2012-2013. It would be odd for Lamacraft to refer to their own investment in IHHI — which didn’t go to Rossi at all — as “the initial investment.” If he meant what Annesser is claiming, he would have referred to “our investment.” That investment was apparently, from the Ampenergo notes, committed in 2014, before the Doral test began — and what was committed was up to $200 million, also covered by the Darden deposition, as I recall. That IH owned a Leonardo license, would be important for reasons I have explained many times. However, Woodford did not invest in “Rossi technology” as such, that’s obvious, they invested in LENR research, so oldguy is essentially correct. Rossi has distorted reality to make him and his technology the center of the LENR universe.

Yes, Woodford would want to see the Doral plant for themselves. However, Rossi’s claim is that Darden and Vaugh touted the Rossi technology in order to induce Woodford to invest. It’s actually not his business, this is all part of a Rossi smokescreen to create some sort of appearance of impropriety, whereas IH did not actually receive any money from Woodford, directly. Woodford invested in IHHI, insulating their investment from all things Rossi. IHHI can decide to pay IH expenses, or can let IH fall into the gutter. It’s a choice. They own it.

Rossi, in his Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, has:

55. In May of 2015, during the course of the GPT, Defendant IH closed on a $50 million investment by non-party Woodford Investment Funds. See Composite Ex. 3 at 170:9-14, 204:25-205:5; 206:6-207:6; IH-00021986 (4/21/2015 IH memo from Darden to P. Lamacraft); IH-00080193
(5/15/2015 email chain between Darden and J. Spear, S. Hartanto, P. Lamacraft, N. Woodford, and S. Saha); IH-00099714 (3/4/2016 email chain between P. Lamacraft and Vaughn); IH-00112920 (11/2/2015 IH Business Development memo), appended hereto as Composite Ex. 34.

56. Woodford Investment Funds later claimed that “Rossi’s technology was a core element of [this] investment.” See IH-00099714 (3/4/2016 email chain between P. Lamacraft and Vaughn), appended hereto as Ex. 35.

It is true, apparently, that the Woodford investment “closed” during the Doral test. But that it was based on the Doral test is quite unlikely, given the timing and known facts. Woodford committed about $200 million in total funding, in 2014, as shown by the Ampenergo notes. The initial payment was to be “$25-50 million.” Lamacraft visited the Doral plant in February, 2015, as the Doral test was just beginning, there would have been no report from Penon. The investment apparently “closed” in May, 2015, i.e., that is when the $50 million shows up in IH Holdings International, Ltd, the company set up, at Woodford request, to receive it.

This quotation in ¶ 56 of the Lamacraft statement is again misrepresented, to make it appear to refer to the $50 million. In the other quotation Rossi counsel did at least have the full quote and only added an interpretation. Here, they eliminate the word “initial,” replacing it with “this].”

In the Joint Pretrial Stipulation, this is listed as agreed fact, though it is incorrect. The brackets have been dropped.

89. In May 2015, IH closed on a $50 million investment by non-party Woodford Investment Funds (“Woodford”). Woodford claimed that “Rossi’s technology was a core element of this investment.”

It is possible that IH attorneys did not notice the shift.

In fact, what Woodford thought is not really relevant to Rossi v. Darden: this was a casual comment in response to the coming IH press release (not any kind of official Woodford statement; it was private email, a personal note).

The context here presents the conclusion that “this investment” — which is not what Lamacraft actually wrote — was the $50 million. If Woodford actually thought that (I cannot consider it impossible, though that is not consistent with continued IH and IHHI behavior after May, 2016), it still has no legal relevance. If IH used the fact of the “Rossi investment” for some kind of gain — in this case to raise money for other research — this would not be unjust enrichment, it would merely be a consequence of their very risky investment.

reliability NOT

This is too juicy. On JONP, Leanne or Joanne wrote:

Joanne
June 16, 2017 at 8:32 PM

Dr Andrea Rossi:
Let me inform the readers of the JONP of what is happening in the blog paid by IH ( Lenr Forum): a guy presented himself as an attorney of the USA, expert of litigations like yours with IH. He wrote a lot of stupidities, like you will lose the case because of a lot of issues that still have to be discussed in court. Since no serious attorney would ever discuss publicly about a litigation on course of which he is not part, I asked an attorney my friend if he could check if this guy is really an attorney. My attorney, after one hour, informed me that:
1- in the USA does not exist any person with that name that has ever participated to a case in a court
2- this fake attorney has stolen the identity of a person that never appeared in any court (this is why I prefer not to name him)
3- at the address indicated on Lenr Forum of this “attorney”, there is a post office!
This having been said, since he cites particulars that only the gang of the ventriloquist of Raleigh can know, it is clear that this clownerie has been organized by IH in their home-blog.
Certainly IH must be scratching the bottom of their barrel… The comic aspect of this squalid thing is that a puppet of the ventriloquist -obviously on Lenr Forum- has commented that a NEUTRAL (!!!) attorney, at last, has explained to us the truth about the litigation.
Comments?
Ad majora,
Leanne

 Previously, this JONP user posted as “Leanne,” Leanne Tuffy,” signed as “Joanne” and now as “Leanne,” seems strangely confused as to her name. I assume “her” because the identity is female, though many of Rossi’s apparent socks on LF (which Rossi claims not to read, though he often has responded to comments there … though usually through an obvious sock.)

Andrea Rossi
June 16, 2017 at 9:22 PM

Joanne:
No comment.
By the way, I do not read LENR Forum.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

Rossi has commonly referred to LF, as I recall, as “owned by IH.” It is a very strange opinion for those who are familiar with that Forum. If anything, LF is owned by a person sympathetic to the idea of Rossi Reality. The claims by Leanne or Joanne or whoever are strange. I don’t see a real name, nor any address, in the LF commentary on this alleged lawyer. Rends wrote:

It is like painting pictures, Howard Michael Appel, nickname woodworker … https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/user-post-list/2411-woodworker/

…a very experienced lawyer, describes his experiences inside the US law system and gives Rossi et.al no chance at all to win this trial. But, is this really the truth? Maybe, but the Americans have also elected Donald Trump, so we have to see what happened to Rossi. 😉

… a quite ignorant comment, because Trump was not elected in a deliberative process, but a primitive amalgamation, well-known to be vulnerable to massive stupidities by voting system experts. Trump is not the question here, but is this a Forum moderator doxxing woodworker? By the way, if woodworker revealed private data and later deleted it, I would also delete references to it here, unless the public interest in identity becomes overwhelming (which I don’t expect). Mary Yugo outed herself, by an apparently inadvertent post years ago, but that does not make it a wilful revelation of real-life identity. Mary is persistent and sometimes “her” real-life identity is relevant, but I won’t insult Mary by claiming that doxxing is harmless. It can chill discussion.

(Note added: Simon kindly pointed to where Howard gave his name.)

The link Rends provided is only to woodworker’s contributions. It does not establish the name. However, this was in the first post by woodworker that is still up (there could be more, and the profile might have had personal information, removed)

I am a noob to this site (sort of). I spent the last month or so catching up to this point and still have another 12 or so pages to fully catch up. I have held off replying/commenting on posts so far because I thought it best to wait to see if comments I might respond to had already been addressed. But I have to respond to Mr. A. Smith’s comment “Deeply untypical. And whatever happens it will be appealed by one side or the other. That’s when I expect to see rebuttal evidence, not before.”

No disrespect to Mr. Smith, but this is total nonsense. I am not a scientist nor an engineer. I am an attorney who has practiced for over 25 years, including opposing Jones Day (a/k/a Jones Day, Night & Weekends for the amount of billable hours expected of their associates and Jone, Day, Reavis, Pogue & Satan, also by their associates). I started with a “small” firm called O’Melveny & Myers and then spent time with Hughes Hubbard & Reed before going inhouse.

This is not consistent with the LF owned by IH claim. Alan Smith is a moderator, one of the most active. Nor is this friendly to Jones Day, Night, Weekends, Holidays, and the Kitchen Sink.

This is, however, lawyer humor, very recognizable. And woodworker definitely writes like a lawyer, he’s well-informed on law. The claim that a real lawyer would never say these things would be made by a person naive about real lawyers. They say all kinds of things, particularly in private or where they are not legally responsible. Who is this person? Rends has an idea, and does not say where he got the idea, his link is nothing specific. However, Howard Michael Appel is definitely a lawyer. It is possible that there is more than one by that name, most information sites were a bit vague, and the California Bar member listing was down. A California attorney information site had:

Howard Michael Appel
Admitted to Bar 9 June 1992 (25 years ago)
Status Active
Bar Number 158674

Woodworker on Fogbow signed Howard Michael Appel (Ca. State Bar No. 158674).

This establishes high probability of connection. Leanne/Joanne is likely lying, as before. However, what if LF “woodworker” is an imposter? Why would Rends name this person, since woodworker didn’t (on LF)? Or did he? [He did, I just missed it.]

As is common on LF with some users, more attention is paid to conclusions than to fact. It’s true that lawyers will be normally cautious about predicting trial outcomes. This is common with professionals in difficult fields. I asked my urologist what would happen if we didn’t treat my prostate cancer. He said, “I can’t say.” I then said, “You have experience. I am not asking for a definite prediction for my case, but, in general, in your experience, what is likely to happen?” He then told me, and I concluded, with support from published medical literature, to stick with “watchful waiting,” which proved to be an excellent decision, so far. In fact, for a time we thought the cancer had disappeared. In fact, it simply never was large, it was small enough that a second biopsy later missed it, and it shows no sign of rapid growth.

If you want the best advice, you need to know what questions to ask and how to get informed answers, in a situation where doctors are afraid that any incorrect statement can earn them a fat lawsuit.

However, a lawyer with experience can, in fact, predict outcomes with better than chance success, sometimes much better. Woodworker gives legal fact and also his opinions. Those who don’t like his conclusions ignore the facts presented, that’s all too common. His opinions, however, were factually based. That doesn’t create a rigid and certain conclusion, merely something considered likely.

Woodworker is not the Fogbow user who started up a Rossi v. Darden thread, where I have added some comments. In that thread, there is some good reporting and analysis and the usual uninformed knee-jerk reactions whenever cold fusion comes up. And I’m going to visit a real live human, now, I’ll be away from the computer till tomorrow. If all hell breaks loose, save it for tomorrow. (actually I get notification by iphone of comments here, which is now usable since I enabled a good spam filter.)

How to beat the law

Don’t try to do it to often, don’t push your luck, but it’s actually easy to experience. Just buy lottery tickets (as a weak example, but easy to understand) until you win. Look at that transaction only: you beat the odds but you won. With some games, you might win immediately, you’ll have a net lifetime gain, unless you continue playing, having decided that you are lucky or smart or whatever. Then it becomes

Usually, anyway. This post is inspired by Simon Derricut’s defense of his ideas, and because he’s exposing some basic principles, worth looking at, and commonly misunderstood, I’m giving this a primary post here, instead of it merely being discussion on posts that aren’t on the point. So below is his last effort, responding to me:

(The Laws of Thermodynamics are statistical: they may be violated with isolated interactions, and this is all well-known, except that people forget and say things, quite commonly, that are inconsistent with that, giving impossibility arguments that are not actually the Laws as understood by those who know them well. This sometimes impacts LENR discussions.)

Take it away, Simon: (my comments are in indented italics): Continue reading “How to beat the law”

On desperation, genius, and developmental disorders

Learn something every day. Yesterday, I encountered Miles Mathis, from a post on LENR Forum.

I think Mathis is way cool, for the same reason my daughter, at 14, thought Donald Trump was way cool, or something like that. (And then she actually met Bernie face-to-face). Mathis is definitely thinking and investigating out-of-the-box. This is actually the evolved task of many or most teenagers, and some of us never grow up. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is considered a developmental disorder. It can also be seen as a genetic variation, an adaptation more successful in hunter-gatherer conditions than for a settled, agricultural and centrally structured society. From the post of Eli on LF:

The world desperately needs a new source of energy. (Governments, banks and energy companies, ARE AGAINST).

I already know where this is going from the first sentence. Desperation creates very poor thinking, where the associative power of the cerebral cortex is reduced to supporting the immediate demands of the amygdala, which routinely will confine that vast power to figuring out how to justify the emotional reaction, in this case, a sense of desperation and the wrongness and animosity of “governments, banks, and energy companies.” In other words, the collective; yet there is a paradox here, a different collective that is not organized, it’s fuzzy. Elisha wrote:

We need to unite us, share what we have, and open business opportunities to all!, United we are Strong!

Obviously. We would be strong if united. However, we are already united in some ways, and this unity is manifest through governments and other organizations, but the writer here doesn’t see that; rather he sees and is talking about something else, an unorganized unity. Unity of what? Well, all right-thinking people, of course! People who think like us!

When such a unity does manifest, with sufficient motivation, it can and has created vast social tragedy. I immediately think of China and the Communist revolution there, which replaced the “bad people” — landlords — with “good people,” right-thinking, the “vanguard of the proletariat.” and then which purged all defective elements within itself, and on and on until the society finally vomited and began to actually create synthesis, i.e., what Marx would have predicted, instead of fixing itself in opposition. Or I think of Adolf Hitler, who appealed to the sense of some terrible conspiracy behind every perceived disaster, or, say, Donald Trump. And I am not comparing Trump to Hitler, except to note that both were populists, appealing to what was called the “silent majority.”

On the internet, it becomes easy to find others with whom we will agree, and thus the “social test of reality” becomes possible, putting off the “ultimate test,” allowing us to believe in a reality without substance, merely created by what is called “conspiracy,” in my training. Example of conspiracy: “My wife doesn’t understand me.” Conspiracy: “Yeah, women are like that!”

If science is simple, common, and accessible to all, that they can not suppress it. That is the advantage for the world, but the disadvantage for manufacturers, since anyone can copy it.

Again, I notice the polarization that does not characterize true inspiration with genuine transformative power. This is not Mathis writing, this is Elisha, who has apparently attached himself to Mathis-as-authority, which is ironic. The teenage me didn’t and doesn’t attach to anyone as authority, but … I did actually meet and spend substantial time with Feynman, and what Feynman inspired in me was not belief in his conclusions, but excitement over his approach, and his writing still does that for me.

Mathis is approaching physics, in some ways, like Feynman, but with something else that contaminates his work. It shows in his “polemic.” Feynman loved people, you can see this in, for example, his imitation of Italian, and many other stories. At the same time as he recognized and confronted “institutional stupidity,” he loved the people and maintained a high sense of humor.

The SECRET of LENR is this.

Nickel with monohydrogen, excited with Electrical current in one direction and Magnetic stimulation at Larmor frequency at or below 90 deg.

Aw, hogwash. Sure, there could be some effect, but the conditions described do not apply to the most basic and most confirmed LENR phenomena. First of all, there is, in gas-loaded work, no “electrical current in one direction” and how one would get “magnetic” Larmor frequency stimulation in a conductor (nickel and hydrogen) without induced AC current is beyond me. Larmor frequency stimulation is apparently used in the Letts dual-laser work, involving a teraherz beat frequency, but Letts dual-laser has not been confirmed and is clearly not related to the basic confirmed LENR results — and IH did apparently attempt to confirm Letts, and the Murray deposition implies that they had no success — except that they may have considered low XP findings “only low level,” which is scientifically irrelevant, if the XP correlates with a much lower laser power (as I think it does in Letts’ reports)

Elisha is not standing on science, but wants us to unite in science? What is wrong with this picture?

(Mathis is not responsible for the fawning extension of his idea into LENR.)

The polarization of nuclear spin axes with static magnetic field does not affect nuclear beta “decay” rates, but the addition of a perpendicular high frequency alternating field at the Larmor frequency, does. With maximum stimulation, does not occur exactly at 90deg nuclear spin precession, but at some angles a little below and a little above 90deg ….

This is the source: http://milesmathis.com/main2.pdf

This does not establish any connection with cold fusion. That’s Elisha’s idea. The source is Mathis’ praise of himself, reflecting his assessment of his communications with genuine scientists. Any genuine scientist is likely to appreciate and benefit from out-of-the-box thinking, it can be hard to find. However, that does not translate to “Mathis is right,” though Mathis himself seems to be promoting that idea. And what does he seek?

My new solutions to old problems are being talked about and seriously considered by working physicists. Do you know any other “internet crank” that can say that? I don’t.

Mathis’ ignorance of the range of human experience and behavior is not a proof of anything, it is hardly even evidence. Mathis is obviously an internet crank, which does not mean he is wrong on any particular idea.

If you want the real numbers applied to specific experiments, I guess you will have to hire me.

And someone might, and that will not prove anything other than possible curiosity and willingness to invest some resources in investigation (money or time). However, seeing this has the effect on me of suppressing interest in his ideas about physics. Caring about being paid is not what I’m accustomed to seeing from the real vanguard; rather, that arises with frauds and a certain kind of self-obsessed crank.

Our own joshg (Josh Guetzkow) wrote an article on “Mathisian physics.”

What will the advent of cold fusion mean for establishment physicists? Will they be able to bend over backwards with ad hoc band-aids to patch up the same theories that keep telling us cold fusion is “impossible?” Or will it require a massive overhaul of our understanding of the physical universe? In that case, we will need a new paradigm and new theories to rebuild it from the ground up. As it happens, someone already has rebuilt physics from the ground up. His name is Miles Mathis, an independent, self-taught polymath. I believe his revolutionary theories hold the key to a comprehensive explanation of all LENR processes, and I am writing this to explain why.

In the “believer community,” which overlaps the “cold fusion community” and the “CMNS community,” there is a concept that is shared with the “skeptical community,” they actually agree on it — and it is, rather obviously, false, and has been known to be false, by the best scientists, since 1989. This idea is that “known theory” somehow proves that “cold fusion” — what’s that? — is “impossible.” We see this idea over and over in Huizenga (1992 and 1993), and it is clearest in his second edition. Huizenga clear has a concept of what process must be occurring if “cold fusion is real.” Yet the actual claim, from the first FP paper, is of an “unknown nuclear reaction.” The analysis that Huizenga applies is to, not an unknown reaction, but a known reaction, or some alternative known reactions, such as d+d -> 4He, the direct and simple fusion by overcoming the Coulomb barrier between two deuterons.

Looking at the Miles results on the heat/helium correlation, he says, in the second edition that this result is amazing, and, if confirmed, would solve a major mystery of cold fusion (i.e., the ash, which was unknown until then, with only a few speculations that it might be helium). Then he says that he expects it will not be confirmed, “because no gammas.” The conversion of deuterium to helium almost certainly requires a high-energy gamma, known to be produced when this conversion occurs as a rare branch of normal hot fusion. The gamma appears to be required by conservation of momentum; but that is only true under two conditions: first, that this is the specific reaction, for if some unexpected catalysis allows, as an example, the fusion of four deuterium atoms to form one 8Be atom, this would generate no high energy gamma (which is what Huizenga expects, low energy photons, if nuclear in origin, are called “gammas” but those are not known to be missing, and would be difficult to detect, leading us to the second condition: that there are no halo states capable of storing the energy for what may only require something in the femtosecond range.

The point is not that multibody fusion is the explanation, but that the impossibility argument fails, as it must, and as was well-known in 1989, being well expressed by Schwinger and others.

What we call “cold fusion” is an “unknown reaction,” now known by a preponderance of the evidence, with very little contrary evidence, to be the conversion of deuterium to helium with no other major persistent products other than heat. (So tritium and transmutation evidence, which may relate to rare branches and secondary effects, can confuse).

There is no violation of “existing physics,” in this, other than the general idea, easily in error — and in error many times in the history of science — that if an “unknown reaction” possibility existed, it would have been observed. In fact, such phenomena are observed, often, but the observations can be missed because they are unexpected. There is a great example of this in Mizuno’s book, a major PdD heat event, before the Pons and Fleischmann announcement, that he passed over as one of those unexplained things that will never be understood.

Was that LENR? From his description, probably.

To examine the vast body of work by Mathis would be tedious. I watched two videos of his on the “Pi = 4” trope. He is crazy, that’s really obvious. That isn’t coming from a belief that pi is not 4, but rather from his redefinition of pi. Pi is used in certain calculations, and may then generate some incorrect results if the calculations do not take into account all relevant conditions. Mathis’ demonstration is blatantly flawed, which is covered over with poor explanation; essentially he assumes that two ball bearings with the same initial velocity, rolling in two tubes on a flat surface, will continue to move with the same velocity, when one tube is straight while the other is curved into a circle. What he finds, summed up, is that the ball bearing in the circular path takes longer than that in the straight path. This is utterly unsurprising and the unstated assumption underneath his argument is obvious: that the ball bearings will move with the same velocity in each case. What he does is only to show that the circular motion slows the ball bearing, as it must, from some simple physical arguments. But he assumes constant velocity to “measure” distance travelled. This is so obvious that I wonder about Mathis’ sincerity.

His explanation of the circularity of a rainbow is more interesting, and less easily punctured. His presentation of rainbows as being images of the Sun is interesting and supported by photographs. It is entirely possible to find long-standing explanations of things that are unreal. If anyone might do this, it could be Mathis. He’s smart, he actually is a polymath, but his conclusions, his personal attachments to being right, if he has them, as appears, are no more likely to generate wisdom than what he’s rejecting.

Feynman did what he did, often, by examining problems ab initio, not looking first for explanations from others. Doing so, he invented new approaches, he found things that had been overlooked. But he did not fix on himself always being right, and warned about attachment to being right. Mathis, if he could recognize his personal psychology as being rooted in a developmental “disorder,” — a misleading characterization for a possibly genetic variation that is called a developmental disorder because it can be disabling in some ways, but that also creates an ability to do things that “normies” don’t seem to be able to do — might be able to make far more progress, and might be far more useful for the development of science as a social phenomenon.

Ratwiki — as it is affectionately known — has an article on Mathis.

Rational wiki is a site dominated by pseudoskeptics, originally organized to ridicule Conservapedia.

Ratwiki is dominated by adolescent psychology, polemic, and the kind of pseudoskepticism, “scientism,” found among, say, “modern atheists” and those who came to dominate CSICOP, the “debunkers,” highly sarcastic and supremely sure of self. One will not find articles there that are overall, “objective,” and “rational.” They are having fun, ridiculing others. That’s the goal, not objectively and neutrality, which they strongly dislike.

I have admin privileges there, which is completely useless except it will allow me to read deleted content. They grant those privileges to almost anyone that any administrator likes in any way, and any admin can grant or remove admin privileges. It’s a formula for vast waste of time, if anyone is interested in confronting the “community point of view.” Been there, done that! Mostly, what I found useful there was in seeing how certain prominent Wikipedians actually thought, what they actually believed, which was much more visible there than on Wikipedia, where they would pretend to be neutral.

I just checked, I still have the sysop privilege, I could still waste my time at great length. Once in a while, I make an edit there. I haven’t in three years.

In any case, joshg ignores the Pi fiasco. His idea is that Miles may make some mistakes, but that his “physics” may contain the clues to LENR reality that the world needs. Joshg is free to discuss this here, but …. this isn’t what the CMNS community needs, to be associated with the radical fringe. It needs the opposite: it needs synthesis, integration, genuine and effective communication. If you believe that an entire community is wrong, you will be, almost certainly, unable to communicate with them. Effective communication requires understanding and sympathy, and that is why this blog welcomes genuine skeptics. Skepticism is rational, to a point. As is pointed out on Ratwiki, “Rational wiki is not rational.” It is almost a parody of itself (that’s the best thing about it.)

I just now went to Mathis’ mathematical “proof” that Pi=4. Proofs like this are familiar to anyone with substantial math experience, I was looking at these before I was a teenager. If anyone is tempted to accept this argument, comment and I’ll look at it and explain it in more detail, but the flaw is completely obvious, and that Mathis still defends it speaks worlds about his psychology, if he isn’t just pulling our chain.

Mathis assumes that a zig-zag path, with an obvious and stable path length, independent of step size, equal to the sum of the two directions, will approach the path length along the circle. In fact, the nifty videos linked below avoid something obvious: if you lay out the circular tubing along the straight tubing, it will not extend to four diameters, but to pi diameters. That is the ordinary meaning of path length along a circle. How much tubing is needed to create a circle with diameter D? Not 4 D, for sure.

This is pure confusion and fog, and Elisha apparently believes it. Zephir_AWT pointed to the Pi confusion, with photos he believed to be Mathis. He wrote:

Miles Mathis suffers with macromanic inventory delusions. He thinks Pi equals 4.0 and other crazy stuffs. This is what disease does with talented people.

The first source is a video by DraftScience, who is implied to be Mathis. (In fact, DraftScience is a critic of Mathis.) The second source does not explain “macromaniac inventory delusions,” whatever they are, but is simply the RatWiki article. The third link is to an article by Miles Mathis on Stephen Hawking being an imposter, fake, (and the original deeper source would be on milesmathis.com.) The last link is to Mathis’ art from google images, and that points to a mathis art page where one can find, for example, a bio of Mathis with photos.

Elisha was unfazed:

First, What is your contribution ?, since emotional critiques serve to entertain us, but they do not serve to advance in science.

There are relatively objective critiques on or linked from the RatWiki page.

Second, this man in not miles mathis. He is a follower of him.

Miles Mathis can be seen at the RatWiki article, taken from a book cover. This image is claimed to be roughly 17 years old. The image on LF is recent. Mathis writes this about the “man”:

ANNOUNCEMENT, added 8/25/16, some of my readers have been confused by a guy on youtube with a channel called DraftScience. They think that is me. It isn’t. He links to me and discusses my stuff a lot, apparently, although I haven’t watched more than a couple of minutes. I don’t know him, have never talked to him, and have no links to him. Although there is some resemblance, since he is about my age and blond, that is about it. His hair is much longer and less curly, he doesn’t sport a goatee, and he smokes. I don’t.

Here is Mathis’ “extended biography,” and it includes more photos of him. Unless these are fake — hey, if Stephen Hawing is fake, why not Miles Mathis? — Mathis is right, and so is Elisha, on this point. However, being right on one point doesn’t rub off on other points, even though the opposite, being spectacularly wrong on a point, and persistently so, does color everything.

Third, there is a experiment that confirm that pi is 3.14 and 4 this depend of the use case.

Now, first of all, we see these sweaty claims, frequently, and often from people whose English is extremely poor. What does the command of English have to do with one’s cogency? In theory, not at all, but in practice, poor English is associated with lack of care and caution, lack of concern for accuracy, lack of clear thinking, all that. When it is combined with arrogance, it’s ugly.

Elisha points to a video of the “experiment,” which does not do what it purports to do; rather it gives a result that will confuse those who make a basic unstated — and incorrect — assumption, that if a ball rolls with a particular velocity in a level straight path, it will roll with the same velocity in a circular path. That assumption would not, by itself, generate “pi = 4,” but no analysis is given of how linear momentum is converted to angular momentum, but it’s quite clear that converting the motion to circular would slow the ball, yet for the video to make any sense at all, the ball velocity must remain the same, since distance is being measured (marked off) by time.

This is not “skepticism,” it is straightforward and clear analysis, easily done by a careful child. The discussions on that video are appalling.

DraftScience comments on the proof video, imagining that the difference in velocity is due to friction. At least he understands that the velocity is different, but I doubt that the difference is from friction, even though friction would also slow the ball. His argument is incorrect, so if one understands it, that’s a clue one is confused.  Joshg shows up commenting there.

Listening further, DraftScience does recognize that the friction argument is missing something: bottom line, he’s “explaining” off the top of his head, a video blogger, and in this is like many bloggers who just blabber on without developing coherence. Further, DraftScience is not a “follower” of Mathis. Quite the opposite. So this whole conversation was bonkers. Rather, DraftScience realizes, at least in some ways, the error. However, he does not address the math, AFAIK.

The original math summary, again. RatWiki points to an allegedly clear exposition. It’s not wrong. The writer’s frustration is apparent. This is not coming from “belief in the mainstream” or any other such nonsense. It is coming from grounded common sense, easily verified experimentally. Mathis redefines words to confuse himself and/or readers. Instead of the “circumference of a circle” being a distance — representing, in practical terms, how much material one would need to build the circle, how much ink it would take to draw it using a compass, etc., like ordinary distance, it becomes a vastly complicated entity. Reality, ordinary reality, is much less complex than Mathis’ world, and that is why children can understand it. I derived most of this stuff as a child, I disliked memorizing formulae and wanted to understand directly.

Mathis creates a fractal, as pointed out, and then assumes that the length of a fractal is the same as the length of a curve that it seems to approach. However, fractals are imaginary structures that can have unlimited length in a confined space, and it would not be difficult to show this, by defining a structure (line) that zig-zags within that space which can be as small as one likes (i.e, as close as one likes to a defined curve).

This is diagnostic of Mathis’ delusions, and shows how dangerous belief in one’s own superior rightness can be. Again, that doesn’t mean that one is wrong, and I would never recommend that people give up what they think is correct, just because others disagree. Rather, what I recommend is an attempt to understand why they disagree, what’s the basis? For a nice little study of a kid who didn’t give up when ridiculed, I posted this early on: The Mpemba effect and cold fusion

Okay, I kept looking a little before publishing this, and found an actual child who demolished Mathis. Well, is an apparent high-school girl a “child”? Maybe not. Nevertheless, here it is: accurate, simple, easy to understand, and devastating.

Another video from her. Now, this young woman is going to change the planet. Or at least will continue to have fun, which, in the end, may be far more useful than being a sweaty, convinced he is right, “polymath.”

And another about Pythagoras. I’m in awe. There is hope for the planet, because she is the future.

Patient, Persistent, Stubborn, Fanatic

I’m okay if my enemy is bad continued covering this obsession, that if it can be shown that Cherokee Investment Partners are bad in some way, this will help Rossi’s cause. The drumbeat was maintained on Rossi’s blog:

Anonymous
June 10, 2017 at 9:06 PM

Leanne:
Great!

Tyron
June 10, 2017 at 9:50 PM

Leanne:
Bravooooo!
Tyron

Readily noticed: when someone puts up obvious errors on, say, E-catworld.com, it is normal for another user to correct them. Yet here, “Leanne” makes a post dense with error — such as the idea that Cherokee built houses on the Zeneca/Campus Bay property — and it is simply praised. The user names on JONP, except for a few ECW users who post there from time to time, and who use very different language and concepts from the ones we think may be Rossi socks, show a radical difference. While ECW is explicitly intended for E-Cat supporters, and it does repeat many Planet Rossi memes, it is more normal repetition from people who simply believe or trust that Rossi’s work is real. The JONP claque is not that (again, setting aside the distinct users who ask Rossi questions, etc., like Frank Acland and some others). It is, as it were, fanatic.

E. Zatopek
June 11, 2017 at 3:30 PM

Dr Rossi,
The ventriloquist never thought this trial was going to
be heard by an honorable Jury.
Victory is right around the corner. Never give up.
Cheers

Ultimately, Rossi is boring. “Ventriloquist” is an oft-repeated Planet Rossi meme for Darden; however, Darden has expressed no opinions on the subject of whether or not the case would go to jury. (My own opinion was, as I’ve expressed, that Rossi’s primary case would be dismissed on Summary Judgment, or part of it, but that other matters would still be presented to a jury.) Darden, as far as we know, is not telling anyone what to say or think. There is only one regular participant in discussions who is in communication with Darden, and that’s Dewey Weaver, and I don’t recall Dewey Weaver predicting that the case would not go to a jury. Maybe he did, but, if so, I missed it.

Dewey Weaver does not sound or write like Darden, what we have from Darden, at all. Yet Rossi has obvious puppets who, not surprisingly, sound like like, use his language and concepts, far more closely than seen with any other group. Some attempted to protest the usage of “Planet Rossi” — though that is not, in itself, pejorative — by using “Planet IH.” But there is no such extensive coherence of ideas and language, there is only what we would expect from people who have studied the same thing and may have similar ideas.

I do use “Planet Rossi” to include many who write on ECW, but … Planet Rossi is a broad term, and it does not mean “Rossi puppets.” Yet Rossi and his puppets do frequently assert “puppetry,” where, in fact, the only common theme of these “puppets” is critique of Rossi.

Emanuel Cirelli
June 12, 2017 at 11:26 AM

Leanne:
Fantastic discovery, at last the king is naked, as somebody said.

This all appears to be intended to counter worship of Darden as savior of the planet, but … I don’t see anyone doing that. We will see this theme become more explicit on LENR Forum, with the claque there.

As well, the stories and documents found don’t mention Darden. Some of them reveal Cherokee Investment Partners as having invested in Campus Bay. The most that I see in the documents revealed (and many others I have reviewed) is that Cherokee underestimated cleanup costs, but contrary to the stories promoted by Planet Rossi, they are not in legal trouble. They are technically and conditionally liable, but not as Cherokee, rather as Cherokee Simeon Ventures I, which limits possible losses to their investment (not a known figure, but my guess is about $25 million — though it may be less). They did not go into bankruptcy as had been claimed. (A case was filed and then dismissed at their motion.)

Their partner, formerly known as Zeneca, is a huge pharmaceutical company that had set aside $100 million for remediation, and is actually responsible, from before, and had, before Cherokee invested, spent some of this on a plan that they imagined would save money, but didn’t, and which may have made the situation somewhat worse. The real toxic waste disposal problem was quite old. So “the king is naked”? Someone has a strange imagination. Who is the little boy and what does he see?

Cristin Kozan
June 12, 2017 at 11:50 AM

Dr Andrea Rossi,
The ventriloquist says Cherokee Investment Partners has been a victim of the environmental disaster of Richmond, California…after they made all the money disappear…isn’t it funny?
Cristin

What money? ele, the probable current Rossi account on LENR Forum, provided a list of “awards” to a Cherokee-affiliated finance company, seeming to think that Cherokee was getting more than $50 million per year in “taxpayer money.” Planet Rossi is not known for clear intelligence. Those were tax credits, not cash grants, to encourage investment in brownfield projects. This was all long after, as far as anything I’ve seen, the Cherokee Simeon Venture I project and probably had nothing to do with it . There are no claims of missing money outstanding with any Cherokee project. Except, of course, from Planet Rossi, which seems to think that Darden has this magic that makes money disappear, allegedly $250 million raised by Industrial Heat by bragging about Rossi’s reactors, all of which was old rumors, misunderstood, apparently (and not supported by case documents, contrary to ele claims. There was only $50 million from Woodford, which didn’t go to Industrial Heat, but rather to the new parent company and it appears that much of it is still there, much as cash, the rest as assets (which might, of course, be of unclear value: a major asset would be the Rossi License, what is that worth?)

I thought that “they say” may have been a reference to me, I may have pointed out at some point that Cherokee lost money, but I didn’t call them a “victim.” They take on risky remediation projects and apparently do quite well with them, on average. It is not clear what the ultimate outcome will be of the Campus Bay project.

However, others have pointed out something similar. In one old case, the Enfield project, Cherokee sued a former project officer for embezzlement, which may have contributed to that project failure. What Planet Rossi has been doing for some time is dredging up anything that might make Cherokee look bad as long as one squints. Unsavory exercise of political contributions. Failed project that had raised public money as grants, where there was shoddy oversight and so an investigative reporter tossed some mud. No follow-up has been found showing any improper Cherokee behavior. Just accusations with no resolution. Very Planet Rossi.

I could look at the discussions of ele on LENR Forum, but, today, this is enough. Basically, those who are accusing others of being “puppets” and lying … are lying. ele attacks Dewey Weaver, of course, but Dewey Weaver, like Jed Rothwell, myself, and quite a few others are real people using real names and responsible for what we say. Who is “ele”?

On Planet Rossi, at the center, Rossi himself, lies and deception are normal and excusable, and so Rossi would want to accuse everyone else of it. But the Rossi v. Darden record doesn’t show any lies on the IH side and many on the Rossi side, even dragging in others, inducing them to collaborate in deception: certainly Bass was so induced, Johnson appears to have allowed the Johnson Matthey idea, not contradicting Rossi though he knew much more than was revealed to Industrial Heat, and then Fabiani seems a tragic case, how much he knew is unclear, but he was loyal to the liar-in-chief and destroyed data.

I know people who knew and trusted Rossi. He betrayed them.

I’m okay if my enemy is bad

The effort to dig up dirt on IH continues on Rossi’s blog. I covered this a week ago in A word to the wise is sufficient – a hint to the foolish is proof.

Then, it was Anonymous and “Leanne Tuffy” Now, it is Leanne, or is it Joanne? She seems a bit unclear on her name.

Leanne
June 10, 2017 at 9:50 AM
Dr Andrea Rossi,

I discovered that Cherokee Investment Partners LLC, the company that owns Industrial Heat and is owned principally by Tom Darden and John Mazzarino, is liable for the catastrophic environmental disaster happened during the remediation and re-vitalization of a brownfield named “ZENECA SYTE- CAMPUS BAY”, in Richmond, California.

Not even Rossi claims any more that CIP owns IH. The claim that Darden and Mazzarino “own principally” Cherokee is probably false, but I’ve never seen ownership stats on Cherokee. As to Cherokee being liable for that “catastrophic environmental disaster,” this appears to be false. Bad start when the first paragraph is so densely wrong or so poorly established.

The poor grammar and spelling (site as “syte”) are SOP for Rossi blog socks as are various other usages (Taxpayer with a capital T, the use of “nothing,” etc.)

What happened is that they got financing for enormous amounts of money of the Taxpayer and after getting this big money they remedied nothing, re-vitalized nothing, but built houses upon the poisoned land of the brownfield.

I don’t think so. The story that Shane D. found has it quite differently. I have not seen figures for the financing of that project, nor has “Leanne,” apparently.

What Cherokee routinely does is to create an LLC for a project. They put in perhaps $25 million, other investors toss in their nickels, and then loans and grants are obtained. Some of these projects fail. “Taxpayer money”? Sometimes. In this case, as we will see below, the LLC involved with this project declared bankruptcy in 2012, I confirmed that. The major debt was $42 million from a loan, not taxpayer money. Without doing more specific research, I cannot tell if the LLC (Cherokee Simeon Ventures) received any grants. From the Law360 coverage of the bankruptcy:

EnviroFinance said that Cherokee Simeon failed to honor its loan obligations due to a flurry of interferences.

“Shortly after the loan was made, things started to fall apart for [Cherokee Simeon], EnviroFinance said. “A citizens’ group prodded the Department of Toxic Substances Control to take supervision of the property, and the remediation effort appears to have been more extensive than [Cherokee Simeon] expected. In addition, the real estate market fell apart and [Cherokee Simeon’s] financial condition worsened.”

As a result, Cherokee Simeon could not progress on the rehabilitation project, the firm said.

This is the story according to the company suing Cherokee Simeon. That is probably what happened! Back to “Leanne”:

In that field, upon which they built houses, the Department of Toxic Substances Control has found carcinogenic substances, hidden under the houses. I knew this from a person of a Citizens Committee, made after cases of cancer appeared with anomalous statistics in the area.

This appears to be a distorted rumor from what Shane found. Leanne is probably lying, telling a story derived from news. It does not appear that any houses were built.

This person informed me that Cherokee Investment Partners LLC, after the Department of Toxics Substances Control has published a report with the results of the discovery of the risk of cancer for the population, has filed for Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) in the State of Delaware of their “front company”, named Cherokee Simeon Venture I LLC, that they used for the “job”. Obviously the money collected from the Taxpayer disappeared.

The bankruptcy was filed in 2012, long after those problems were found. Cherokee Simeon was not charged with toxic waste violations, rather those charges were against Zeneca and the University of California.

Who is the “they” that used Cherokee Simeon? That is not a “front company,” it’s an actual remediation project company. If this is actually a Cherokee company (which seems possible, this is the kind of work they do), this is how they do it. “Front company” implies something that is not at all evidenced here.

When one of the project LLCs goes bankrupt, Cherokee loses their investment. If they actually made money “disappear,” they’d be in very hot water. In a bankruptcy, the creditors will be searching for any “leakages.” Basically, when one of these LLCs loses money, Cherokee loses money. They make money, overall, based on the balance, for when projects succeed, they can become very valuable. Some fail!

Now: I wonder how Cherokee Investment Partners LLC can still be qualified to receive public funding by means of their their society ” Brownfield Revitalization LLC”.
Cheers,
Joanne

CIP didn’t go bankrupt. This particular project failed, the most likely reason being that cleanup was going to be far more expensive than anticipated. This extremely fuzzy thinking is common on Planet Rossi. So … ele brought this promptly to LENR Forum. At one point, ele claimed not to read JONP. Yeah, right. And Rossi surely never mentioned “Johnson Matthey.” They made that up, those greedy bastards. Heh heh.

ele wrote:

[quoting the entire post by Leanne/Joanne]

Googling I have found also some interesting links with millions dollars of public money about that Brownfield Revitalization LLC:

I’m presenting the links more compactly, and giving the award sums. This is a series of awards to Brownfield Revitalization LLC, which provides loans for remediation projects. I’m also sorting this by year

2007 $92 million
2010 $56 million
2011 $50 million
2012 $50 million
2013 $43 million
2016 $70 million

If I understand well the average amount of public money given to that compeny was about 50M$/year for 6 years this sum up to about 300M$ !

Well, not necessarily. Is this an allocation of public money or is it something else. Perhaps the intrepid researcher here could get a little curious. These are NMTC Awards. TC means “Tax Credit.” From the About page of the Awards web site.

The CDFI Fund achieves its purpose by promoting access to capital and local economic growth in the following ways:

2. through its New Markets Tax Credit Program by providing an allocation of tax credits to Community Development Entities which enable them to attract investment from the private-sector and reinvest these amounts in low-income communities;

These are not cash grants. Rather, it appears that this program allows a CDE to provide financing for projects at lower interest or taking on higher risk, through allocations of tax credits (making the investments more attractive). Ele has completely misunderstood this. These are not “taxpayer dollars,” as such. No money is given to the LLC receiving the awards, just an allocation of tax credits which they may then provide to investors according to the rules of the program.

WOW !
more documents can be found:
[Google “Cherokee Simeon Venture I LLC”]
So the content of the comment in the Rossi Blog seems real !

It seems real to those who have no clue what they are looking at, but are simply looking for dirt or what seems like dirt to them.

Rossi had attracted the interest of a group of investors who run a multibillion dollar company, apparently quite successfully, and he spat in their faces. Not so bright.

I found, through the search above, a ruling on a motion for sanctions against Cherokee Simeon Venture I LLC for an alleged bad faith bankruptcy filing. The document does give a little information. Yes, this is the same Cherokee (i.e, affiliated with Cherokee Investment Partners, though there are many related Cherokee funds). (The motion for sanctions failed.) Cherokee Simeon Venture I LLC was a joint venture of Zeneca and Cherokee Simeon Holding Company, LLC. Originally the latter was the managing partner, but in 2011 this was taken over by Zeneca.

I’ve been attempting to find out what ultimately happened to that Richmond property. There is no sign of taxpayer money going into it. Cherokee Simeon Venture withdrew that bankrutpcy petition and appears to still be operating. See this 2015 meeting requesting reduction in assessed value.

There is weird stuff in the search. There is a pages claiming that there is a women’s clothing store called “Cherokee Simeon Venture I LLC.” The address of the store is a toxic cleanup site. Dun and Bradstreet.

Aha! Proof!

Proof of what, I have no idea, but WOW!


 

Update

A more detailed newspaper story on the history of Zeneca / Campus Bay, Providing the history that UC Berkeley, owner of the adjacent contaminated propery, had joined with Simeon Properties as a partner, and Cherokee Investment Partners and Simeon created the joint venture that later filed for bankruptcy. However, as was surely missed by our intrepid wanna-be Sifferkolls, that bankruptcy petition was withdrawn. From the article:

While the university was legally responsible for cleaning up the legacy of California Cap, AstraZeneca—the giant London-based pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturer—was held liable both for the Stauffer site and for contamination at RFS that had come from the Stauffer plant. 

Aha! Proof! A U.K. based chemical company! The plot thickens. Zeneca was also a partner in Cherokee Simeon.

Now, notice this: if one buys a contaminated site, one can become responsible for the cleanup, and at the time of purchase, the full expense of that may not be known. Doing what Cherokee does is then very risky, though ultimately beneficial. This would be the equivalent of a Cherokee LLC buying the PetrolDragon Italian properties, if we want to compare with Rossi’s history, as has now happened on JONP.

Reviewing this, it is completely obvious why Cherokee uses special-project LLCs for this investment: it would otherwise be way too risky, one failure could take it all down. The ultimate result is public benefit, but there is also a risk of public loss: these cleanup operations can attract grants, and sometimes a project that receives public funding fails. They can and do take out loans, mortgaging property. There are various missteps in this that could create more legal problems, but this is common in business.

However, entirely contrary to what was claimed on JONP, Cherokee did not cause the toxic waste problem, but attempted to support remediation. The citizens advisory groups were not angry with Cherokee, at all. The University of California took most of the flak, and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, which had asserted jurisdiction, and which was seen as inadequate (which could have come from their concern being water quality, due to toxic chemicals leaching into the Bay, possibly fixed, at least for the near future, by the burial and capping which was done

The plan the water board approved for cleanup at the Stauffer site proved controversial from the start, in part because it called for burial of most of the hazardous wastes on site rather than their removal to an approval toxic waste disposal landfill—the costlier option chosen by the university.

Possibly as a result of community pressure, jurisdiction ultimately devolved to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), an agency staffed with a wide range of scientific experts.

As a result, the Stauffer cleanup cost expanded dramatically and probably unexpectedly, and, as reported above, there was also a drop in real estate values, leading to possible Cherokee Simeon Ventures insolvency, hence the Chapter 11 protection issue. I still have no information on current status of the project, most Google hits are old.

So on JONP:

Leah
June 10, 2017 at 4:16 PM

Dear Dr Andrea Rossi:
I read the comment of Leanne of today: now we can understand all the falsity and the hypocrisy of the “Minime” of Darden ( JT Vaughn) when in his deposition said how scandalized they got when they read about your past!!!
Please win for us all against this gang,
Godspeed,
Leah

LENR Forum dislikes detailed examination of issues, but then tut-tuts when users, instead, simply express reactions, like, “What idiots! Pure Planet Rossi!” However, the solution: point to analysis elsewhere, like here! Increasingly, LF moderation is not tolerating evidence-free or misleading posts like those of ele.

So what is Leah talking about? There is no mention in the pleadings of Rossi’s Italian environmental disaster; my first thought was that “Leah” was thinking of Krivit, who is not mentioned anywhere in the case that I’ve seen (beyond a mention of him, mispelled, by APCO’s McLaughlin in an email to Rossi)

However, someone has possibly read the Vaughn depositions (there were at least two) and there is plenty in the depositions that has never been cited in the pleadings, such that I’d have noticed it. Slogging through this stuff can take high motivation. So who would be highly motivated?

The Vaughn depositions are listed on this study page. (Eventually I would hope to condense that; as can be seen, there are many exhibits from the same depositions, but they may include different deposition transcript pages. As the case stands, it is a colossal mess. However, depositions are generally text files and can be searched with the site search facility — many documents are images, not text. I’d say that the court system is about two decades archaic and primitive.)

“Petroldragon” is mentioned in the deposition of Rossi.

Not, apparently, in any Vaughn deposition, and I also looked for other terms with no success. However, anyone is free to point to what I might have missed due to the nonspecificity of the “Leah” claim or some inadequacy in my search.

It would not be surprising, and would not show any hypocrisy. Cherokee, and Vaughn — corporations cannot be “hypocritical,” that requires being human — did not cause the Zeneca-Campus Bay mess, it was created long before Cherokee existed. Rossi created the PetrolDragon mess, by commission or omission. People can argue about whether it was his “fault” or not, i.e., may assert “excuses,” but — no Rossi, no PetrolDragon disaster. Cherokee and Vaughn are not remotely close to that level of responsibility. Legally, they are not responsible for cleaning up the Zeneca site, rather than lies with those who caused it (Zeneca has inherited that responsibility from Stauffer), and then, that failing, with those who own the property, and the closest Cherokee Investment Partners gets to that is that they are investors in a joint venture that bought the property, so they can lose their investment. Zeneca is a large corporation, now AstraZeneca

with assets, according to Wikipedia, of $60 billion. However, notice: AstraZeneca did not buy the property, but Cherokee Simeon Ventures did; they are investors in CSV. The company most in trouble over Campus Bay would be AstraZeneca. How did that arise? Stauffer Chemical.

Stauffer was bought by Imperial Chemical Industries, which, in turn, divested itself of its bioscience businesses, creating Zeneca. And that is how Zeneca ended up holding the bag.

The wreckage of the past lands somewhere. It is only relatively rarely that we can find someone clearly responsible for cleaning it up, and possessing the means. Lack of caution about environmental damage was routine, until recent years.

Qur’an, about those who came before: “for them is what they earned, for you is what you earn.” 

Look around! I point to what is obvious for me, with what I have seen, and I attempt to make it possible for others to see what I’ve seen. That can be quite unpopular: in my training, there is a saying, “If they are not shooting at you, you have not done anything worth wasting bullets on.”

If I err here, or anywhere, please: corrections are welcome. I am responsible for what I create, including all my errors and omissions. Taking responsibility is how we create a future worth living into.

Blaming others is how we maintain being stuck in the past. It is, practically by definition, disempowering.

 

 

 

 

How not to address summary judgment

My free subscription to Law360 expired, so I can’t easily read the whole article there. However, it reminds me to examine the Altonaga decision, which at the time struck me as woefully uninformed.

My guess is that Altonaga did not read and consider the evidence and arguments, but, instead, simply took the word of one (or both) parties that the alleged facts were “disputed.” She was overwhelmed by verbiage, claiming “dispute,” where the underlying facts were not, in fact, disputed. Rather, the disputes actually alleged were over possible interpretations or implications of the facts, and by taking a dispute as being “factual,” she was left with nothing to judge. Continue reading “How not to address summary judgment”

Unspecified “they” is always a figment of our imagination

T is for Them :: U is for Us

Joshg is one of the most coherent writers identifiable as Planet Rossi.

On LENR Forum, he wrote:

JedRothwell wrote:

I had high hopes that I.H. would fund research. I think they would have, but they have been derailed by the lawsuit. They fired the technical staff. They may be funding a few studies, but I doubt they will contribute significant amounts of money.

So that R&D center they opened up near Raleigh headed by Antonio La Gatta is just a figment of our imagination?

This is common on Planet Rossi: “they” is fuzzy and amorphous. Genuine questions:

  • Is there an “R&D center” opened “near Raleigh”?
  • If so, who opened it?
  • What does this have to do with Industrial Heat and their plans?

First of all, see this LENR Forum report, posted by Alain Coetmeur, in May, 2016. The company in question is HMRI R&D, Inc. The Registered Agent is Paul T. Winter, very likely this CPA. This is largely meaningless, CPAs often serve as registered agents with very little involvement in the actual business. The business office shown is 13000 Weston Parkway, Cary, NC 27513, which appears to be a 57,000 sq. foot office building, that was for sale and for lease in 2015. Other companies have the same address, so HMRI — or their accountant — may only have a small — or larger — office.

The creation filing, August 12, 2015, shows an “incorporator,” who is merely an attorney, Byron B. Kirkland with a Raleigh address, and then two initial Directors: Antonio La Gatta and John T. Vaughn, with the same address shown as is shown for the Registered Agent. These are the persons of interest.

Antonio La Gatta. La Gatta was working with R&D at TSEM, a sponsor of ICCF-19 in Padua in 2015. His sister is a manager of that company. She told the interviewer this, in May, 2015: “my brother Antonio will travel to the US to direct the new US operational units in Texas, in collaboration with MIT, Texas Tech University, Indusrial Heat [sic].”

This was a plan in May. While there may be a correct substance to it, it’s a confused rumor. “Collaboration” with MIT is meaningless. MIT is not involved with LENR. Peter Hagelstein, a professor of electrical engineering there, is. “Operational units” of what? TSEM? Perhaps HMRI is a “unit” of TSEM? As to Texas Tech, again, this would likely be a reference to the Duncan et al group there, which was announced at ICCF-19.

While a connection between Texas Tech and HMRI is certainly not impossible — they were looking for additional labs to work on the heat/helium project, beyond themselves and ENEA (Violante) in Italy — I have no information about such a connection. Industrial Heat is not connected to the Texas Tech project, which was independently funded.

However, Vaughn is an initial director. This is JT Vaughn, an officer of and investor in Industrial Heat — and a defendant in Rossi v. Darden. This news, however, does not establish that Industrial Heat “opened up a research center near Raleigh.” Cary is indeed close to Raleigh, about twelve miles. What is HMRI R&D up to?

There is some information in the Murray deposition, for which we have the full transcript. IH had a research operation, investigating various LENR approaches, and Murray reports on some of that. He testifies:

·1· · · · Q.· · Of all the systems you tested in Industrial
·2· ·Heat, were there any that you were able to validate and
·3· ·verify?
·4· · · · A.· · No.

This is thoroughly discouraging, for many. However, this, or most of this, may have been seeking to find a way for Plan A: rapid commercialization. Plan B was my name for retrenching, going back to the most basic science and nailing it. For Plan B, small results can still be very significant, even more so of the “small results” show correlations. Heat/helium is the quintessential Plan B project, because there are many supporting reports, and the vast bulk of the evidence confirms the correlation first reported by Miles in 1991. This has practically nothing to do with NiH research, which, if NiH effects are real and not artifact, would surely have some different ash. Murray goes on:

15· ·[…] And in many cases the heat that they were
16· ·producing, the excess heat, the anomalous heat was very
17· ·small.· They, they had amounts that were very small.
18· ·And so any small errors in their sensor systems or small
19· ·errors in their assumptions would mask that level.
20· · · · · · · So we went through and carefully analyzed
21· ·their data, and in a few cases we actually reproduced
22· ·their experiments.· We had two groups that in the
23· ·validation verification phase we came up with what I
24· ·would describe as nebulous results.· They weren’t
25· ·positive, but we certainly just couldn’t say here is a
·1· ·major problem that has to be overcome before we could
·2· ·legitimately verify and validate it.· And so in those
·3· ·cases we worked very closely with the inventors and
·4· ·organizations to help them do independent reproduction
·5· ·in our lab.
·6· · · · Q.· · Okay.· And those were successful
·7· ·reproductions?
·8· · · · A.· · No.· Ultimately, the reproductions, yeah, we
·9· ·didn’t find anything that had excess or anomalous heat.
[…]
15· · · · A.· · The first one was Dr. Mizuno in Japan.· That
16· ·was a plasma-based system.· And the second one, which
17· ·was very much at arms length, I did not have privy or
18· ·access to this one, was HMRI.· It was a, it was only a
19· ·partial investment into it.· And so I was kind of, me
20· ·and the rest of the engineering team were kept at arms
21· ·length.· We weren’t allowed to have access to all of
22· ·their data, so I just got summary reports and briefings
23· ·on some of the things they had done.
24· · · · Q.· · I thought you were able to reproduce their
25· ·experiments in your lab.
·1· · · · A.· · So, yeah.· No, we, what we did was, based on
·2· ·the limited knowledge we had of their system, we
·3· ·reproduced an electrolytic cell that to the best of our
·4· ·ability looked like what we had understood they were
·5· ·doing.· And we could not achieve the same results that
·6· ·they were giving us at this kind of arms length.

There is a little more description of the HMRI relationship:

25· […] Likewise with HMRI, the way the contract was
·1· ·structured, we were kind of at arms length, so we only
·2· ·got a little bit of information, and the information we
·3· ·were able to receive, we structured some experiments to
·4· ·understand it.· That was actually very late.· That was
·5· ·probably June of 2016.

There is more about HMRI, some misc findings, on Misc Mash. There is an indication that I could not confirm that an HMRI “proprietary process” was being “moved overseas.”

Back to Joshg’s claim, essentially that “IH” established HMRI “near Raleigh.” From what we have, HMRI is independent and the collaboration expected (from La Gatta’s sister) was arms-length, and limited. While there was likely some IH investment in HMRI, it was limited and it cannot be reasonably said that this Cary lab shows IH’s continued commitment to LENR research.

On Planet Rossi, though, extremely limited information is interpreted and extended and reports as fact, and then others repeat it and it becomes “well-known,” like the alleged $200 million investment by the Chinese, and then the question becomes “where did that money go,” rather than the question that would reasonably precede it, did it exist at all?

A brilliant example of all this arose on LENR Forum, it’s mentioned on the Misc Mash page.  March 2, 2016, David Nygren wrote:

Now we need to dig deeper! It is valued to over 1bn dollars?

IH HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09553031/filing-history

This is not my field so please help. For you who are good at counting, do these tasks!
23M shares * $ 45 = weather over $ 1bn??

Here we have 20 companies listed (59 page / 8 Jun 2015)
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09553031/filing-history/MzEyMzczNDg0OGFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0

Indeed, not his field. However, he does not show where the $45 came from. He links a listing of companies on a signature page for an authorization to issue Series A shares, i.e., ordinary shares, valued at $0.01 each, some for cash and some for other consideration. The total value to be alloted, I read as $11,098.78 plus $25.907.15, total $37,005.93. A tad short of $1 billion, eh?

Barty asked David what this meant. The blind leading the blind.

AlainCo provided some correct information (the $50 million investment by Woodford a few days later), but did not actually correct the Nygren error. AlainCo noted the use of different classes of shares that can allow company founders to retain control even when receiving a large investment. AlainCo’s other post on this, Mar 3, was much better but still confusing and inaccurate.

June 30, 2016, I came across the discussion, researched it, and corrected it, giving sources for everything. The Woodford investment has been incorrectly reported by news sources that apparently did not look at the original documents. Woodford invested exactly $50 million US. To be precise, Series A shares (not the original Series A, apparently, later called “ordinary shares”) were preferred shares, issued at $45.049996 per share, and two Woodford trusts bought 1,109,878 shares, which works out to $49,999,999.50. My guess is that they actually paid $50 million, so inquiring minds want to know where the extra fifty cents went.

sifferkoll immediately exploded:

are you playing stupid again Abd? I said $1bn valuation, which roughly means Woodford bought 5% of IH with $50M.

Later, I remembered the $1 billion error was sifferkoll’s, probably because of this post. My guess is that Siffer had written this on his blog — I’m not researching that now — and that Nygren had picked it up from there. Maybe. What Siffer is showing is a total lack of understanding as to how a company is valued, and what that means. Had Woodford purchased ordinary stock for $45 per share, this would have made some sense, though it would still not have created a billion dollars for Darden to somehow “disappear.” But Woodford did not do that.

My point here is that LENR Forum and those who write for it have no habit of correcting errors. We can see people coming up with false information years later, because they read it in a post, perhaps, in this case, a post by the Founder of LENR Forum. There is a reservoir of held ideas about IH and this case, based on what was stated back then based on assumptions from shallow research. “Toilet paper stock,” mentioned by Sifferkoll, is a common idea. “Shell corporations.” (But the only genuine shell corporation here is JM Products, Inc.)

Siffer wrote “Darden simply pocketed the money and made it dissappear [sic].” But what money? A billion dollars? In fact, Woodford invested $50 million and, while IH Holdings International doesn’t broadcast much detail, much of the money still exists, as cash or other holdings of IHHI (including some valuation for the Rossi License). Siffer has in mind a billion dollars that he made up, that never existed. And then there is the alleged $200 million from the Chinese, that apparently also never existed, or if it existed, it had little or nothing to do with Industrial Heat, it was Chinese money, invested in a Chinese project with very little connection with LENR, if any.

Derricut on investment flabber

Simon Derricut, as a comment here, wrote:

(and I comment).

One thing about the money that is being talked about is that every year IH (and all the other players) will need to produce accounts and pay taxes. That means that people who do some digging will find out the truth or otherwise of all the rumours. There are legal implications for lying about the money.

Indeed. Darden and Vaughn have high experience with Cherokee, making risky investments, where some fail, and would be thoroughly aware of the possible pitfalls of failure to fully disclose risk to investors, and knowing that fraud would likely fail to escape detection. In the attempts by Planet Rossi to show that Darden and Vaughn are crooks, examples are dredged out of Cherokee history; but, when examined closely, none of these have held up as evidence of fraud or deceptive behavior; the fact that reporters have strongly implied fraud and that investigations have been started is used by Planet Rossi as if it were proof, but the lack of conclusions is actually evidence of the opposite. The worst thing found, so far, was an accounting error, an understandable one, arcane, where a particular expense was, by securities regulations, not to be charged to investors, whereas IH did make that charge. No wrongdoing was found, only error.

Similarly, if IH did get Rossi’s IP to actually run, and later try to sell it without acknowledging (and paying) Rossi, then he will have legal redress. They can’t “steal” the IP and get away with it.

Right. Again, Planet Rossi must imagine that somehow the IP would be hidden, disguised. I can only imagine that as possible if the IP were not actually patentable. Further, to pull off this scam, IH would be risking billions in legitimate profits, all to … what? Take some secret payments under the table from some other company, perhaps Brillouin, where they have only a relatively small and old investment? They would be risking that some whistle-blower would reveal their perfidy. Rossi tried hard to find evidence along these lines and apparently failed, though we may not have seen everything.

The point about VCs (Venture Capitalists) is that they are gamblers. Where most investors want to get a certain return on investment, VCs estimate the risks of losing their money and calculate whether the possible gains outweigh the risks so that, on balance, they gain more money than they lose, but it is known that since the investments are high-risk then a certain proportion will in fact fail and they’ll lose their money on those ones. In fact, if not enough projects fail then the VCs are not earning their money, since they ask a high percentage of the profits of those that succeed. No-one would take a low-risk project to a VC, after all – it costs too much.

This accords with my understanding. VCs are gamblers, but in a game where they can act to play odds that, overall, favor them. This all is dependent upon their ability to estimate those odds. Typically, there are not betting the farm on a single project, but engage in many projects, distributing risk, increasing the potential gain, or hedging it.

(That is, they might bet on exclusive possibilities. This is the simple answer to why IH was not immediately offering to return the License. After all, what if Rossi actually has something? What are the odds of this? And … what would Rossi be offering in return? He seems to have imagined that he could just unilaterally cancel the License “for nonpayment,” but the Agreement was certainly not written that way, this was just another Rossifiction. IH has a License until and unless they give it up or a Court takes it away — which is unlikely unless their investment is returned, at least the original investment.)

Analysing the risks correctly requires that the truth be told by the receivers of the VC backing. At least the truth as far as they know it. IH of course knew that Rossi tended to not tell the truth, which raised the risks somewhat, but the payback if Rossi had actually had some real technology was sky-high and a 1% probability of that was deemed to be worth the risk. Dewey states that 1% probability as their cut-off point.

They will, if sophisticated, include the possibility of lies in their estimations. Humans lie.

1% is actually conservative, if the loss can be sustained. I estimate the value of a practical LENR technology, something like what Rossi was claiming, at about a trillion dollars. So 1% would, in theory, be worth about $10 billion. However, straight game-theory play is not how humans actually operate. We want better. We also have alternatives, other ways to invest, and may seek maximization among choices, not merely some absolute average return from one.

I think that all of the above should be pretty self-evident to most people who have been watching, and that most of these points have been made at various times. Everyone (IH, Woodford etc.) should have been aware of the risks of backing Rossi. There’s also an obvious risk in backing LENR in general, since the main scientific consensus is still that it is a measurement error.

Yes. The risk involved with LENR, however, may depend on time-horizon. Short-term returns in LENR are very unlikely. Longer-term profit is much more likely, even probable. But “longer-term” might be in excess of twenty years. I assume that IH and Woodford were quite aware of risk, and quite aware of the extensive criticism of Rossi. They certainly knew about Krivit, and we see McLaughlin taking Krivit (mispelled) into consideration in February, 2015. I would assume they had read everything Krivit had written. Krivit, however, is a yellow journalist, and draws firm conclusions from evidence that is less than conclusive. And WTF does a certain unfortunate figure’s child molestation prosecution have to do with Andrea Rossi? Is Rossi responsible for every reprehensible action taken or allegedly taken by everyone who supported him?

Krivit wrote about the obvious, so I’d assume that IH knew all this, likewise Woodford. This was all extensively discussed in the CMNS community, which was mostly very skeptical of Rossi.

Still, the big profits go to the people who correctly bet that some fringe science can be turned into a technology. Of course, the profits can be even bigger if you can get the government to put the initial research money in and you then utilise that research, but that’s another story….

Right. So part of an IH strategy might be to encourage and support governmental and other non-business investment in research. That is where APCO might shine. I see a sane long-term IH approach as being an observer, ready to act quickly if the opportunity arises, but not routinely spending a large budget. Probably maintaining a lab but only engaging substantial staff for specific and vetted projects.

As I see it, IH began with a fairly low estimation of achieving success, and during the Doral test that estimation went down (below 1%) because of the way Rossi ran his operation, stopping any verification of his process. It seems unlikely that Tom Darden would have kept such estimations secret from Woodford or anyone else who intended to invest, since that would open him to being sued for fraud by such investors. Since we haven’t seen Woodford suing Tom Darden, it stands to sense that they must have been happy, and are still happy, with his honesty in telling them what he knew of the risks.

For reasons that others have stated, we cannot conclude from the absence of a lawsuit that Woodford is happy with IH. However, there is no sign that they are unhappy, so far. There is no sign that they have attempted to withdraw their investment. I’m sure they are unhappy about so much being spent on lawyers, but it is possible that this, or some of it, might come back from Rossi and Johnson. I don’t expect Bass and Fabiani to be big sources of recovery. Sad cases, in my opinion. I doubt criminal indictments would stand there, but … if one through carelessness aids a civil fraud, one can be held liable, and this could be “joint and severable” liability, where the total liability can be collected from each.

Though we’re not privy to what went on between IH and Woodford, that lack of any legal proceedings implies strongly that there is no problem with that relationship and that Woodford are happy with the information they received from IH. They may be annoyed with Rossi, though.

Though we may not be able to trust what people say, what they do is a reliable indicator.

The operative word is “indicator.” So often in internet discussions, indications are taken and presented as proof.

More on the investment flabber

On LENR Forum, Eric Walker mentioned a post by joshg. While the link was incorrect, I did some searching for joshg (LF), and Josh G (ECW). I found comments I had overlooked.

joshg, himself, overlooks timing. It’s easy to do this when one is defending a thesis, looking for proof. One will come across some evidence that seems to prove the thesis, but events have been collapsed, and what happened later, in fact, can be asserted as a cause of what happened earlier.

4/21/2017, joshg wrote 

I have frequently been challenged to substantiate my claim that Darden et al. basically defrauded investors by using the 1MW test to raise $50 million from Woodford (plus some kind of joint research endeavor with the Chinese plus who knows what else).

Josh is not promoting the $200 or $121 million Chinese investment in IH meme. However, was the 1 MW test “used” to raise the $50 million?

Continue reading “More on the investment flabber”

The Troll’s Playbook

The Secret Playbook of Internet Trolls. ‘Disrupt, Misdirect and Control Internet Discussions’

It’s ironic — or is it? — that Planet Rossi routinely accuses the “Ventriloquist of Raleigh” of spreading FUD, of paying people to attack Rossi. At the same time, IH Fanboy claims that those who claim others are lying are likely to be liars themselves. Many are eager to find fault with others, to toss any garbage they can find or invent, and this does happen on all “sides,” — but Planet Rossi is organized around Rossi Thought, as expressed for years on his blog, JONP.

A common troll tactic is having a series of Favorite Topics, arguments, sometimes based on something resembling a fact or which can be claimed to be fact, that are then raised to avoid discussing something else, such as any losing issue. Ele did that with the claim that IH had raised $250 million (as if this proved Rossi Reality, if it were true) and I covered it on

… and that second post goes into some detail on origins of the “$250 million” story.

Eric Walker, on LENR Forum, confronted ele over this (as previously mentioned). ele came back:

ele wrote:

Cite and quote the court document that has this number and I’ll move your post back to the Rossi v. Darden thread. Eric

Ele normally does not provide accurate citations, has no academic habits (which is like Rossi, who has not worked in academia for a very long time). What ele quotes here was not written by ele, but was a comment added by Eric Walker when he moved the off-topic comment to the Playground. Before going on with the ele response, here was that original ele post, what Walker moved:

oldguy wrote:

250M exists only in “Rossi says”.

No. is written in the documents of the trial. This figure was cited many times here and no one from IH have never negated it.

Darden’s visits to Doral with investors are alo [sic] documented.

Cite and quote the court document that has this number and I’ll move your post back to the Rossi v. Darden thread. Eric

I’ve looked and have not been able to find one. But there are thousands of documents and some of them have hundreds of pages. However, I have found what appears to be the original claims. It was very likely Rossi Says.

ele responds with what does not address Eric’s challenge. He claimed a court document, that’s what Eric dinged him for, not for the $250 million itself. He then provided some “evidence” for large numbers, but not $250 million. Not the court document number that anyone can check.

Basic troll rule: make claims difficult to verify. Waste the time of those who might disagree with you, burn them out with repetition. This is not mere disagreement, people may disagree and then collaborate in finding reality. Trolls are about provoking upset, which can include irritating others through repetitive, unresponsive claims. While insulting them as having nothing, as ele did in this sequence, even though those others were simply stating what is obvious from court documents and community discussions.

I would assume that Eric would want to see the original post edited to make it potentially useful. Not another post adding “more evidence,” never checking or confirming the original claim.

This is like the repeated claims of Dirt in Cherokee history. These claims have been tracked down and analyzed many times, there is very, very little there, essentially nothing surprising for a company that works as Cherokee works — which is legal. Evidence is cited that, if one actually follows it (most people don’t follow evidence, take the time to read court documents, etc), shows Cherokee as a victim of fraud, not a perpetrator of it. But the fraud was an officer in a Cherokee company! So it looks bad. This would be like condemning Cherokee for fraud because they engaged with Rossi. In fact, the trolls do that. They should have known better, and, obviously, they only wanted to impress investors to extract money from their pockets. Yet the documents don’t show that, not at all. IH only dealt with investors who knew and were willing to assume the risk. Woodford has a different class of investors, to be sure, but Woodford has only a small percentage of those funds invested in LENR, through IHHI, not IH, and, while Rossi’s alleged technology is part of the full IHHI portfolio, the Woodford money didn’t go there, which probably pissed him off no end.

IH did visit Doral with investors and others. However, we know from the Ampenergo memo that Woodford, in particular, was not terribly impressed, at least according to Vaughn, speaking privately with Ampenergo well before the Doral test was over, and with no reason to lie to him. The timing of investments and the documents we have on them do not support the Rossi claim that investors tossed in funds based on being impressed by Doral. Definitely not Woodford, that investment was planned before Doral started up. Another visitor was Pike, who may have Chinese connections, but Pike was already an investor (a fairly large one).

ele went on:

Dear Eric,
The big amount of money raised from Darden is also a public information.
Just as an example please have a look to this page: Donbot.com

It is rather easy to notice that this is not a court document. It is rather easy to notice that the page doesn’t source most of the information. However, it was taken without credit from another page that does give more sources, on Hydrofusion.com, the web site of Rossi’s licensee for a few countries.

One of the sources is a Huffington post article, Interview With Andrea Rossi, LENR Energy Pioneer, October 6. 2015. Full of errors — and Rossi lies, including Stuff and Nonsense about the “customer,” the monitoring systems in Doral, etc.

Quote
WIM, or Woodford Investment Management, had said earlier in the year that they had invested in Industrial Heat. At the
beginning of October, they revealed that they had performed due diligence for 2.5 years, and their investment came to $50
million USD. [….]

While this is not precisely correct, it’s true in round outline. Woodford did not invest in IH. They invested in IHHI, which bought all outstanding IH stock, exchanging it for IHHI stock. Woodford received “preferred stock,” which doesn’t give operational control (Woodford doesn’t have voting power commensurate with the value of their investment) but which does have certain other special rights. It is reasonable to claim that Darden raised this funding; Woodford apparently trusts Darden. This money, however, did not come because of the visit by Woodford reps to Doral. There were actually two visits, one very early in the “test,” and the other after relations had actually broken down, after Rossi refused to allow the IH engineer, Murray, to visit the Plant. Woodford did not invest because of these visits; they were apparently not impressed. A plant with a steam outlet running through a wall into an inaccessible area, and no visible signs of generating a megawatt, but only the say-so of the inventor or the puppet Bass — now there is a legitimate usage of “puppet” — would not impress any intelligent observer. Unless they like seeing all those blue boxes, Rossi did, indeed, put on a show!

But this isn’t the point. Where’s the beef? The other $200 million or so?

Tom Darden, CEO of Industrial Heat, signed a cooperation agreement with a newly created strategic financial center in
Beijing. The “Technology Ministry of Science and Innovation Park” will participate in technology transfer with 20 companies
from the U.S. This sparked rumors that the E-Cat technology recently patented in the U.S. would somehow become the sole
property of the Chinese government. However, these ideas were assuaged, and China invested the equivalent of $121 million USD in LENR technology.

This is copied from Hydrofusion. I’ve added a link that was there. The link is to Google translate for a document on that Park. While Darden is CEO of Industrial Heat, he is also CEO of Cherokee Investment Partners, and many organizations are (or were) involved with that Chinese project. There is no sign that LENR is a major part of it, though it’s certainly not impossible, and Darden may have spoken about LENR in China.

Where were the “rumors” “sparked”? I can think of one likely place, where Hydrofusion might get their information. There was this, about the Park. I followed the link to the article in Chinese. No cheese down that tunnel.

It is clear, though, that Darden was in China representing Cherokee and possibly Research Triangle Park, not Industrial Heat.

And then this E-Cat world article cites Hydrofusion for the $121 million figure. While ECW, following Hydrofusion, speculated that the $121 million was for LENR, the research Park would be a huge project, with probably billions involved. And the plot thickens. From that ECW article:

Alain asked Andrea Rossi if he knew about this on the Journal of Nuclear Physics today, and Rossi responded, “yes, I saw it, it has been reproduced from other publications”. Alain asked if AR was involved in this deal, and he responded, “no, it is an action IH made in his Territory, for which has been licensed from Leonardo Corporation”

Notice that Rossi assumed it was about LENR and the E-Cat.

ele claims that “This figure [$250 million] was cited many times here and no one from IH have never negated it.” Of course, he has just responded to Dewey Weaver, the only person blogging on these issues known to be from Industrial Heat — as a contractor for them and investor, apparently from the beginning, who would know about such transactions as an insider — who had just denied it. If ele is not lying, ele is not seeing what is immediately in front of him.

Trolls, when they make mistakes, almost never go back to correct them….

Frank Acland went on:

It’s still a bit vague as to what exactly is being financed, but Industrial Heat does have an E-Cat license for China. Perhaps they are going to be manufacturing E-Cats in China in this Science and Innovation Park that has been established, or since IH is supporting other LENR groups, funds could be used for supporting non-E-Cat LENR technologies.

Still, it this number of accurate, it shows a significant commitment from the Chinese to support the development of LENR.

Like much speculation on E-Cat World, there is practically no basis for this. Someone might, I suppose, have asked Hydrofusion where they got that information. Did they? AlainCo asked Rossi, not Hydrofusion, but Rossi only had second-hand information.

There is no evidence I’ve seen anywhere that IH received substantial funding from China. The agreement signed, from the Chinese sources, was for technology cooperation in establishing a research center in China, there is no clue of any major investment in (or involvement by) Industrial Heat.

The Darden visit to China was in September, 2013. IH had just received the 1 MW Plant. It is highly unlikely they would have been heavily promoting anything at that point.

So that is not a “Rossi Says”.
Here :
https://translate.google.com/t…spx%3Fid%3D845&edit-text=
is the photo of Darden in China…..

Darden visited China, proving … proving what?

That there are “documents of the trial” is “ele Says,” which certainly sounds like Rossi Says. Now, Rossi has seen IH discovery, that we, as the public, have not seen. To reveal this, though, ele would have to out himself. More likely, Rossi, like others, picks up rumors and repeats them as fact, particularly when they serve his purposes. The general purpose here would be to provide “evidence” that the IH people (a whole series of them) are liars, since they claim they could not confirm the technology, but they “sold” it to so many investors for so much money.

Of course, in September, 2013, IH had not had time to confirm the technology, other than by relying on the Validation Test and Penon’s analysis. Rossi Says is commonly clueless about time, when things happened.

Eric didn’t buy it.

Well, let’s look at the (surely misleading) numbers you quote. Nominally from Woodford we have 50 million, and nominally from the Chinese we have 121 million. That’s 50 million + 121 million = 171 million dollars. You’re short by 79 million to get to your 250 million that you’ve mentioned on several occasions.

Normal people will concede points to trolls. Eric, here, is not accepting the $121 million figure, but is only pointing out that the original claim of $250 million is off by a third, even if that figure is accepted.

Now let us recall the article that clarified that only 20 or so million from Woodford had been disbursed to IH.

I noticed the problem here and so did ele, of course. “The article” is vague, and what is reported is possible an interpretation, by someone unspecified. What I know of is the IHHI financial information. It does not specify what is “disbursed to IH.”

Go to Companies House.

07 Nov 2016 Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2015

I can read and interpret this such that, as of the end of December, 2015, the first year of IHHI operation (the Woodford investment was in May, 2015), IHHI had spent roughly $17 million in the year, and had current (short-term) liabilities of about $3 million. They had cash beyond those short-term liabilities of almost $14 million, but they had “investments” valued at almost $28 million. Without knowing what those investments are, saying that only $20 million was disbursed could be very misleading. That might, for example, include the value of IPH, i.e., mostly of the Rossi license. The total investment in IH was about $20 million, raised from the original group of investors, apparently. (That was the stock issue authorized when they raised the $11.5 million in 2013). So, with the Woodford $50 million, of a total of $70 million raised, it appears that it has been spent on Rossi and other operations, so far, leaving roughly $14 million. We could probably come up with what they have spent on Rossi, I think that’s a court document. Millions of dollars went to Ampenergo, all part of the cost of the original Agreement.

And let us recall that the Chinese number was probably a commitment and does not appear to have been intended to be directed to IH.

Speculation but reasonable. The stories cited as sources in the old discussions of the China connection do not show any investment in IH, at all. This was, first of all, Cherokee participation, not IH. (Confusing Cherokee with IH is a Planet Rossi trope, it’s very common, and there are news stories that also confuse the two.) Then this was all about a technology park in China paralleling Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Not about LENR. That was Planet Rossi speculation, making the kinds of assumptions often made in that community.

There is no source for the $121 million, which is an awfully specific number to stand as a vague rumor.

We are now far shorter [short of] the 250 million. Please stop repeating that IH raised 250 million as though it were a fact unless you can substantiate it. Or, if you do repeat it as though it were a fact, your post will probably go into the bargain bin.

Clearance Items. Far superior to arbitrary (or judgmental) deletion.

ele came back again.

Eric Walker wrote:

That’s 50 million + 121 million = 171 million dollars.

This is not just few money. I remember also other figures in the docs and I will search the exact document….. but ok lets take 171 for now

In other words, “I was wrong but I win anyway, because $171 million is a lot of money! Therefore Darden is a lying crook! That I lied is not important. So what if I lie? I’m just a troll, you don’t know who I am, and I can disappear anytime I like, like randombit0.

Eric Walker wrote:

Now let us recall the article that clarified that only 20 or so million from Woodford had been disbursed to IH.

Please cite the aricle yourself. You have not.

Above I cite a source. I think, though, that Eric had something else in mind, that IH spent about $20 million on the Rossi affair. That wasn’t from Woodford, though some of the last expenses may have been supported with Woodford money, through IHHI, which is sole owner of IH.

Eric Walker wrote:

And let us recall that the Chinese number was probably a commitment and does not appear to have been intended to be directed to IH.

Are you sure ? The only internet articles I found with this figures are related to Darden visit. Remember that IH holds the rights for China.

This was all Planet Rossi, making assumptions, i.e., Darden = Industrial Heat = Cherokee. The articles actually talk only about Cherokee and Raleigh and Research Triangle Park there. No mention of Industrial Heat. Somewhere, though, there is an indication that Darden may have mentioned LENR. The timing of the Darden visit to China is an issue here. It was September, 2013, when IH had only the month before received the Plant, certainly did not have time to test it.

Yes. IH holds the E-cat rights for China, which shows what? They were nowhere near starting up manufacture. You can’t make millions if you can’t make one. Cherokee doesn’t hold the rights, never invested in Industrial Heat. Rossi was never clear about who and what he was dealing with.

Eric Walker wrote:

Or, if you do repeat it as though it were a fact, your post will probably go into the bargain bin.

As you see I’m not repeating.

I feel, but of course I can be wrong, that there is a double standard here. People from IH can openly offend and insult other while I’m just trying to reconstruct how much money IH has rosen.

Raised. Liar.

He is trying to prove something, not to learn or “reconstruct.” There are, so far, no sources for either the $200 million or $121 million figure, other than a report from Hydrofusion that seems to have inspired a flock of reports. That report is itself vague and implies previous discussion, talking about “rumor” The story has “the equivalent of $121 million,” implying that this was not a US dollar investment, and many have opined that if China were to invest, it would not be in a U.S. company like Industrial Heat or IHHI (which denominates investments in USD).

We know how much money IH has raised: $11.5 million in 2013 with a stock offering, with that issue allowing up to $20 million, and since they needed more money, I assume they did raise it, probably up to the limit. Then Woodford invested $50 million in IHHI, and there may have been some smaller investments, I don’t recall the numbers. So we are looking at total investment, not counting promised future investments, of roughly $70 million. There is no sign of anything else. It certainly isn’t in IH Holdings International, Ltd.

No, ele was claiming that Dewey Weaver, who would actually know, was lying, by claiming that this $250 million figure was well-known and then, nutty as it was, pointing as proof to a way-crazy web site, donbot.com, without bothering to look for actual sources.

And then there was this unfortunate post:

Rends wrote:

The main question remains, had IH the full sum of money in order to meet the obligations of the license agreement at any time available?. The answer is no!

Speculation as to how they could have raised money is superfluous, because they have signed a contract with the knowledge that they can possibly not raise the sum and so they could not be interested seeing Rossi successfully running a long term test – because they did not have that $89 million at no time!

Rends, quite simply, has not been following the documents (and has shown that he doesn’t understand what he does read). Woodford gave $50 million to IHHI to support LENR research, and committed another $150 million. If it were needed, they had found the money. No, they never had it sitting in the bank, but companies almost never do. Money sitting in a bank is wasted. They didn’t have the $10 million for the IP payment either, until a few days before. But they knew how they could get it.

I signed a contract to buy a house, to pay the better part of a half million dollars for it. I didn’t have the money — but I secured the agreement with $1000. This is totally routine! For a house, I could obtain a mortgage, and did. It is paying large sums for nothing, or something of highly speculative value, that’s difficult, but Darden has high experience at risky investments. The companies he has started through Cherokee, investing about $25 million of Cherokee funds, have often raised hundreds of millions of dollars, it appears, with investments and loans and grants.

See the Ampenergo memo for information about the Woodford commitment, but there are other documents in the record. The idea that IH didn’t have the money, and therefore defrauded Rossi when they signed the Agreement, is a standard Planet Rossi trope. Rossi himself apparently believes it. His attorneys tried hard to claim that.

I transcribed the entire memo.

this is from the first page of it, dated October 3, 2014:

Woodford > first deal / public deal
$25-50 M (up to $200 M) (or more if they need to buy out Rossi)
Dutch entity > will become parent
Dutch entity > currently a subsidiary of IH. IH’s IP has been transferred to Dutch entity

So an initial Woodford investment was planned by October 2014. The plan then was to make IPH (“Dutch entity”) the parent. Instead, Woodford wanted IHHI to be formed in the U.K. (see page 7 of the memo).

The Ampenergo memo is devastating to many Planet Rossi tropes. Cassarino was (and, I’m told, remains) a friend of Rossi, from way back. Ampenergo had invested in Rossi. Ampenergo is also an investor in IHHI; owned equity in IH; this in lieu of some of what IH owed Ampenergo for their release of the License to them.

Any questions?

Enough idle chatter, the market is the judge

One minute of silence is worth a lifetime of idle chatter.The Joys of Live Alchemy, Michael Levy.

“Enough idle talk.” He stood up. “I must return to the laboratorium.” “But, sir, can you not — ” “I have no time for petty matters,” he said, turning for the stairs. Alchemy and Meggy Swann, Karen Cushman.

Bernie Koppenhofer
April 6, 2015 at 8:09 PM

Dr. Rossi: There are so many super skeptics ready to discredit your results (should they be positive (: ) what steps have you taken to insure the results are “iron clad” showing your customer has saved x amount of dollars during your year long test?

Andrea Rossi
April 7, 2015 at 7:41 AM

Bernie Koppenhofer:
The rules of the market are totally strange to the chattering: if the test on course will confirm that the E-Cat works and the Customer is satisfied, the E-Cats will invade the market.

I give you a simple example: when cars have been invented ( late XIXth Century) most of experts said that those things could never substitute horses, for a lot of reasons, theoretical and experimental.

But cars worked, people bought them when the industrial manufacturing made an accessible price available and from then the contrary opinion of the experts counted nothing.

This is how things go: what is important is not what sceptics say, what is important is the product works properly.

Warm Regards, A.R.

Setting aside the weird argument about cars, Rossi has long argued that the market is the judge. Real customers, real money changing hands, real power being generated and used, saving the customers money and them gratefully paying for that.

Andrea Rossi:

June 9, 2010 at 8:13 AMFortunately, the real judge is the market: to copy a paper is easy, to say to have invented something is easy, but to sell and make a plant you need the plant. That’s not easy and that’s the real difference between a wannabe and a technology maker.

January 16, 2011 at 4:01 PMWe have passed already the phase to convince somebody. We are arrived to a product that is ready for the market. Our judge is the market.

April 16, 2011 at 2:27 PMThis is why we continue to repeat that the market, only the market will be the final judge: if our E-CATS WILL RESPECT THE GUARANTEES OF ENERGY PERFORMANCE AND SAFETY, WE WILL BE PAID. This is the sole validation that counts really, at the end.

August 7, 2011 at 3:45 PMI have already explained all that my attorneys told me to explain. The rest will come from the Court. Of course during a litigation there are two different versions, this is why we want a vedict made by a judge, to have an undisputable truth. Facts, not chatters. And, by the way, there is not much to dispute: we made all our duties, they did not respect their financial obligations. The sole reason of the break is this, all the rest is chatters.

Deja Vu all over again. “The market is the judge,” until the Judge is the judge, apparently. This was all chatter. As is common, Rossi does not understand legal process. It does not generate — nor does it need, in civil matters — “indisputable truth.” Markets, to be sustained, ultimately need to be grounded in reality, that is the reality behind Rossi’s oft-repeated and hypocritical claim.

The above was about Defkalion. It appears that Defkalion, taking a closer look at Rossi claims, decided they could fake heat just as easily as Rossi, at lower cost. The market judged. As far as we know, no litigation or arbitration was filed. (But we do not know with clear and legally-admissible evidence what happened with Defkalion, unlike the case with Industrial Heat, where there is an enormous body of sworn testimony, which Rossi and proxies continue to lie about. I am here looking at a tiny fraction of it.)

July 26, 2012 at 9:01 AM: I am not at all worried about external reactions. I receive daily blackmails, insults, subtle proposal of collaboration aimed to hit us from snakes disguised as enthusiast friends….( we have very good intelligence): just tennis balls against a tank. We are marching, the market, supreme judge of any product, will confirm if our work is useful or not.

The market has spoken, mostly by not speaking. Rossi, in April, 2015, misled a strong supporter of his, Bernie Koppenhofer, about the “customer.” How did he established that the “customer” was satisfied? Who was the customer?

There were two, one paying real money, the second a legal fiction, nothing other than Rossi and Friends, run entirely by Rossi, funded entirely by Rossi, with Rossi as sole defacto authority while pretending independence. How would we know if the “customer” was satisfied?

Rossi hired a retired engineer, paid him to speak for the customer, and told him what to say, this is all in the attested evidence, indisputable. That engineer, James Bass, told visitors that he was very satisfied. Johnson, the President of Leonardo Corporation and of JM Products, Inc., the shell corporation Rossi and Johnson created, owned by a trust with an old friend of Rossi as beneficiary — the old friend put in no money and risked nothing — supported Bass and Rossi claims by submitting invoice requests to be billed $1000 per day per megawatt, as informed by Rossi.

So, of course, if a “customer” was willing to pay so much for power, it must be real! But who would have paid those invoices, if IH had gone ahead and submitted them?

Rossi paid all JMP expenses through Leonardo Corporation, this is totally clear. Rossi claims that this was to be repaid by JMP out of the sale of processed product. Sale to whom? To Leonardo Corporation, of course — or anyone else who buys the product. What product? “Product” is alleged, as a vague word, but what do we see when we get down to brass tacks, real market considerations, when we look at “how much product?” What was the product made from? A few grams, at most, of palladium sponge. No matter what was done with that sponge with low-temperature steam, the “megawatt” could have been replaced by any ordinary tea kettle, for far, far less than $1000 per day. And then there is a claim a small amount of graphene processing. Again, no sales actually evidenced, and certainly no independent sales. This was Rossi playing with some materials, at enormous cost, in order to have a cover story.

The only “market” here was fake, and Rossi lied about it again and again. Something may be noticed, though. Rossi did not directly lie to his fan. He merely allowed the fan to read his comment in a certain — normal — way. This is quite visible in many filed documents. Rossi did not, in writing, claim that the “customer” was Johnson Matthey, but wrote many things that would be read by a normal person as confirming the JM involvement, and, as well, claiming an independent customer, strongly implying it was JM, reporting what the customer supposedly told him — when, in fact, he was, for all intents and purposes, the customer.

What brought all this up for me was an ele comment on LENR Forum.

JedRothwell wrote:

Rossi’s 1-year test is not a scientific claim. It was a crude attempt to defraud people. Anyone familiar with conventional instruments and boilers can see that the Penon report is fake, and that even [if] the data and configuration in it were real,

Again your usual Leit Motive. Now you push even further no evidence eve if data is true.

A perfect example of “Four legs good, two legs bad” statement something you have to repeat and repeat and repeat so to try to convince others.

Idle chatter, evidence-free. The issue of the Penon report data has been extensively discussed, and is at issue in the trial.

Rothwell’s point stands, the Penon Report is not a “scientific claim.” One could never get it published in a scientific journal. The only reason Penon is not a counter-claim defendant in Rossi v. Darden is that he disappeared, made himself unavailable to be legally served. One of Penon’s largest errors was in his claim that it was unnecessary to even inquire about the customer’s usage of power. This was not the statement of a “nuclear engineer,” but a legal and business opinion, and any engineer worth his salt would know that one needs as many validations of measurements as possible.

If Rossi really did have a heat exchanger running, that could have been an independent validation, from measurements of the air flow and air temperature elevation. Much more likely, at this point, is that Rossi simply lied about that, this time under oath, and my suspicion at this point — I am not a lawyer — is that this might be provable beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard for a criminal conviction.

Rossi has accused Darden, in a pleading, of perjury. He may want to duck, bounceback incoming!

So for you a COP >80 is nothing ?

http://www.e-catworld.com/wp-c…7/03/197-03-Exhibit-3.pdf

This is the exibit. If you don’t agree go in the Court and explain your reasons under oath.

Very Planet Rossi, ignorant of legal procedure. Rothwell has no standing to say anything in Court, unless subpoenaed. He isn’t a witness, he is an independent observer with substantial experience relating to what he writes about. Rothwell saw Penon data long ago, and wrote about it, and was roundly criticized for claims that he could not prove. The actual Report, once published, confirmed what he had written.

Planet Rossi misrepresents IH claims in the suit. They have not claimed that anyone “faked” data. Rothwell might say that, casually, but he’s not in Court, is not IH, and is not speaking for IH.

“Fake” data is not well-defined. What is clear from the Penon data is that something is off. Just to start, the data was crudely reported, making analysis very difficult. Fabiani’s data shows that data collection, while reported to four significant figures, very high apparent precision, was, in fact, only digitized crudely, losing much information. The instruments were poorly chosen. Legally, Rossi can defend that by claiming that IH approved the “test protocol,” which appears to be true or at least reasonable, but there is no evidence that the “test protocol” was for a Guaranteed Performance Test, merely for a different “350 day test” with Penon as “ERV” — and that itself was never explicitly confirmed. This appears to have been done because Rossi wanted it — and didn’t mention “test.”

Rossi represented the Doral installation as an opportunity to sell power to an independent customer — allegedly much more “believable” than the test IH wanted to set up — and to demonstrate the technology for investors, to sell Plants, costing only $200,000 to make, for presumably much more (Rossi’s megawatt Plant price was $1.5 – $2 million, stated at various times.) Suppose he’d been straightforward and had written “and we can complete our Guaranteed Performance Test, so you can pay me the $89 million that is burning a hole in your pockets. Heh. Heh.”

I think we know what the outcome would have been.

Rossi claimed IH didn’t have the money to pay, never intended to pay, but this is all extensively contradicted by the evidentiary record.

What is most bizarre here is not that a lunatic or con artist — I’m not sure which it is! — is crazy or lying, but that he has fans who continue to support utter nonsense, repeating it as if fact. If they read the court documents, it’s even more amazing to me. If they go back and read JONP, how can they miss it?

But people apparently do miss it.

Apropos of little, I just watched a bit of Feynman. Don’t fool yourself, for you are the easiest person to fool.

So, what’s it like to be a 17-year-old kid, over the top in intelligence, I didn’t know anyone as smart as me … until I went to Cal Tech, where comparisons became difficult. Like me, many had 800 Math SATs. Off-scale. … what’s it like for such a kid to meet Feynman?

You could ask!

And what’s it like for that kid, now in his 70s, to read “science-worshippers” — “cargo cultists” in Feynman language — like Henry … or, for that matter, so apparently on the “other side” … ele?

(Or before ele, randombit0)

… with their comments about Science and “professors” that show terminal cluelessness as to the science, the love of beauty and truth and reality beyond authority and attachment, I drank with milk, sitting with Pauling and Feynman and then diving into the pool myself.

Fun, that’s what it’s like, tinged with a sadness. Life can be so much better! A kind soul just gave me a session in an isolation tank. Yipee!

A word to the wise is sufficient – a hint to the foolish is proof

Transmutation is accomplished by complementing the frequencies of the elements by means of symphonic wave interactions of light and sound.

from Cabalsgame.com

My occasion here is a post by Ahlfors on LENR Forum. This was put up in Rossi v. Darden Developments, where it was almost totally off-topic, then moved to the Playground.

“There is no $250M investment from anybody (yet) and your ongoing spewage that R was central to anything … Cheers, Sustain and Godspeed”

The quotation was from Dewey Weaver. I’ll return to the “$250 million” issue below. “Sustain” was sarcastic, imitating RossiSpeak.

And then followed an Ahlfors trademark, an image of text, with no source. I googled a phrase from it and found the source, the description of a fraud involving the sale of a right to purchase stock that allegedly gathered 2,000 pounds within hours of opening an office in Cornwall — and then the seller disappeared with the money, about $1 million in today’s dollars.

The book is The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison, By John Emsley, and it has an extensive section on alchemy, and this passage was a piece of it.

This led me to Franz Tausend, and the lead phrase apparentlylfrom him(?).

See also RexResearch on Tausend. From that article:

Just before World War II, a controversial young man named Franz Tausend entered into the industrial manufacture of gold. His business methods led him to be accused of fraud, but there is some evidence that he actually did realize the secret of low-energy transmutations of base metals to gold.

There are many aspects to this old story of interest to us. And none of it proves anything, other than the human propensity for foolishness, and for treating managed demonstrations as if scientific evidence.

Ahlfors seems to be suggesting that there is chicanery involved in Industrial Heat. Planet Rossi commonly suggests that there is something sinister about “shell corporations,” though, as far as what I’ve seen, there are multiple entities, all right, but with an open and reasonably logical relationship. The plan was to move overall ownership to IPH in the Netherlands, but when Woodford came on board, they wanted a U.K. company to be formed, since they were becoming — by far — the largest investors. So IPH remains a simple holding company for the IP, owned entirely by IH which is owned entirely by IHHI.

The idea of $250 million disappearing is common on Planet Rossi, I think Rossi has mentioned it several times. I did some digging on this and found that there was a claim of $200 million being invested in a Chinese venture loosely connected with Darden — who definitely visited China. There is nothing more than a vague hint that this had anything to do with LENR, and this would have been Chinese money going into a Chinese venture, not Darden’s pocket, as is commonly and casually assumed. There is nothing to connect this Chinese investment — if it existed at all — with Industrial Heat and the Rossi Agreement, other than Rossi’s idea that the world revolves around him.

So ele bringing up the $250 million, as one of his many RossiSpeak posts, is not surprising.

Rossi has been fishing for dirt on IH:

Anonymous
May 28, 2017 at 8:43 AM

Dr Andrea Rossi:
The puppets of the “ventriloquist of Raleigh” have made a mess about your past, from which you have been cleared, but we have discovered that Cherokee and Tom Darden, through affiliate companies, have a very dirt skeleton not only in their past, but also in their present, related to series of frauds in the environmental and financial fields, about which they are far from being cleared. We are a group of American citizens that sustain your work and we are disgusted by what is going on against you. We are preparing a dossier completed with all the precise references about what written here above. Where can we send it?
Never give up, you will win this litigation and from the papers so far published your case is much stronger than theirs.
Anonymous

Andrea Rossi
May 28, 2017 at 1:46 PM

Anonymous:
No comment.
Warm Regards,
A.R.
P.S.
Send the evidence, if any, to:
info@leonardocorp1996.com

The appearance of posts on Rossi’s JONP blog that repeat the Rossi party line, using the same idiosyncratic phrases, such as “the Ventriloquist of Raleigh,” apparently Tom Darden, and using other Rossi language (such as “sustain” for “support.” That was pointed out as a false friend cognate from Italian. (The U.S. English usage would have “sustain” mean “provide material support for,” not just approval, the way Rossi uses it, “thanks for the sustain,” and he doesn’t mean “thanks for the donations,” he uses it for any comment of praise or appreciation.

There is no evidence that Darden is involved with any of the derisive commentary on Rossi or Planet Rossi, found mostly on LENR Forum, and setting aside Dewey Weaver, who is openly an investor in Industrial Heat, a contractor to them, and who is strongly opinionated; there is no clue that Weaver is commenting on behalf of Darden, he is simply an insider with a higher level of direct knowledge than almost everyone who writes on the subject.

Rossi, however, formally accused IH of a defamation campaign, based on communications with Levi and Bo Hoistad, targeting his Nobel Prize chances. That fell like the lead balloon it was. (There is no Nobel Prize for engineering and invention; this was all a fantasy rooted, apparently, in the late Sven Kullander being on a Nobel committee.)

IH has not emphasized the Rossi past, aside from the technical violation of the Agreement with regard to tax payments; that only got attention because Rossi, instead of simply admitting what was true and, if there had been a problem, asserting that it was fixed and ultimately harmless — which it apparently was — made a huge fuss about how it was all coming from evil intentions to bring up his “messy” past.

Rossi and others routinely lie about that past. It was not all “cleared up.” Rossi served time and was released for time served, not because of being “cleared of all charges.” This is all irrelevant to Rossi v. Darden, it only makes a difference in how people moralize about it. Darden and Vaughn, like anyone with a serious interest in LENR, knew about that past. My own conclusion was that — obviously — there was a risk of Rossi being dishonest, but that we could not tell the difference between an inventor who wanted to look like a con artist (the Mats Lewan idea, after Rothwell) and a con artist who wanted to look like an inventor looking like a con artist.

Rossi approves all posts for JONP, presumably. He picks, then, what will appear, and, over and over, it’s what he wants to say or suggest. Then, for legal reasons, he writes “no comment.” Even though sometimes he comments.

The dirt referenced almost certainly is about Cherokee Investment Partners, because this has been brought up over and over, on JONP and on LENR Forum, and even here as an anonymous comment that was irrelevant where placed (this has nothing to do with Rossi v. Darden).

Leanne Tuffey
May 29, 2017 at 11:31 AM
Dr Andrea Rossi:

I agree with the comment of Anonymous published here yesterday and I too have information to send you on the matter. They are “serials” and repeat every year the same things with the same system.
I am sending too material to you.
Godspeed,
L.F.

Andrea Rossi
May 29, 2017 at 12:29 PM

Leanne Tuffey:
No comment.
Warm Regards,
A.R.
P.S.
Send the evidence, if any, to
info@leonardocorp1996.com

If it is every year the same, how many years have they been at it? There ought to be copious evidence, one would think. The evidence that has been presented, so far, is miniscule and inconclusive, showing nothing more than ordinary business for the kind of venture capital operation that is Cherokee.

If these JONP posters are real people, they are idiots.

Nobody has been censoring this “evidence.” However, it seems LENR Forum is getting a bit weary of the repetition.


Update

Today this appeared on JONP:

Anonymous
June 4, 2017 at 8:41 AM

Dr Andrea Rossi:
Did you receive the papers that Leanne and Tuffy promised you regarding Cherokee?

Andrea Rossi
June 4, 2017 at 2:36 PM

Anonymous:
Yes, I received 1247 pages related to the activity of Cherokee from 2002 to today. We are studying. …

I’d be astonished if Rossi asked his attorneys about this and they said, “Sure, fine publish that!” Unless they wanted to earn more fees. Rossi has provided, on the blog, with this reasonable cause for a request for production of those pages and all information about their provenance.

If these people had truly hot material, seriously harmful, they would be doing harm to Rossi by providing him the information like this, distracting him (dirt about Cherokee is irrelevant to Rossi v. Darden and he would not be able to introduce it unless somehow it were directly relevant and he could show that), and tempting him to break various laws or commit various torts.

Anyway, I decided to look for more comments about Cherokee on JONP.

April 26, 2016, a post by Luis Navarro copied gossipy material from comments on Lewan’s blog, by Josh G. Most of it is familiar. Looking over that Lewan blog page, we can see the same arguments that have been presented over and over, questions asked as if they have never been asked before, even though they have, and have been answered ad nauseum. (But, there, some of these are asked for the first time, though, to be sure, taken from Rossi’s Complaint as if the claims there were fact.

April 7, 2016, Rossi made his classic claims:

In the press release of IH they write that ” for three years they tried to replicate the Rossi effect, with no avail”: very good, but during those three years Industrial Heat collected about 60 million dollars from Woodford, more millions from other sources, exclusively based on my E-Cats technology. This before making shopping to buy other patents. Now, the cases are two: either they are lying when they say they didn’t replicate, or they made a fraud collecting 60 millions from Woodford, more from others, not to mention Cherokee fund. You had to see Tom Darden and JT Vaughn dance like ballet etoiles around the investors, showing them the E-Cats, and telling them that the E-Cats had been built by them! “Stellar” coherently Darden, in his role of etoile, repeated to the enchanted attandees, ready to spend 50 millions. Now, that my bill arrived, the E-Cat had not been replicated , they say. For three years. Again, I am just answering to a press release of IH.

Woodford invested $50 million U.S., but it appears from court filings that this was planned before the Woodford visit in February, 2016; Woodford actually closed the investment in May, 2016. The investment was obviously never “exclusively” based on Rossi technology, since it was then spent on other approaches, very little on Rossi. Woodford insisted that this money go into IHHI, incorporated in the United Kingdom, where they could watch it closely. At that Woodford visit, it appears that Rossi paid Bass to be “Engineering Director” of the “customer,” and to tell the visitors how well it was going, how happy they were.

“Just answering”? No, he’s presenting what he imagines is a legal argument, his circumstantial argument that IH must be lying,  one that won’t fly in court. IH behavior in this period is quite well documented. It simply does not match the Rossi fantasy, but Rossi has fans who lap it up.

D.T.
October 19, 2016 at 1:24 PM

Dear Andrea:
As you probably have seen, Brillouin has published their demo at the ICCF of Japan: congratulations, you have got another replication of your effect: their reactor is a true copy of your old Hot Cat. After their agreement with Cherokee-IH, they have got from Darden your technology and replicated it. Probably you noticed that since their agreement with IH, Brillouin has just repeated as a parrot every move of you…even the reactor that resambles a pencil.
You must really be ready to invade the world with a strongly competitive, economy scale based product before disclosing your QuarkX. Cherokee-IH-Brillouin will try to copy the QuarkX immediately and will say that their is “original”. Darden has to make his investors bite the toilet papers he filled with IH, that remained an empty box after your departure from Cherokee-IH. They made the money disappear and substituted it with the toilet papers of things that never worked and never will work. Now they, together with Woodford, must convince all the investors of Cherokee and Woodford that IH has a value of IP worth the money that disappeared from IH. They know that they can replicate you in laboratory, but cannot violate your patents in the real market…Beware, Andrea and remember here you have big friends.
From Russia, with love,
D.T.

I’ve written about D.T. posts before. The language is Planet Rossi, including the “toilet papers” and “they made the money disappear.” Rossi made extensive efforts to discover evidence of disclosure of his technology to Brillouin and others, apparently failing — but IH did have the right to sublicense, under the Agreement. D.T. would be correct that the patents cannot be violated in the real market, but … IH holds a license for the Americans, so if Brillouin does develop a product, with Rossi IP, they would legally be required to pay royalties to IH. However, I’ve studied the recent Brillouin press release and this does not resemble Rossi technology, at all, beyond being nickel hydride. It is also less than convincing, the report from SRI was preliminary and not internally approved by SRI for public release.

Also Planet Rossi is the idea that Cherokee invested in Industrial Heat. Apparently, they never did. IH spent roughly $20 million or so, their original investment, attempting to confirm the Rossi claims. That is the money that “disappeared.” IHHI money, some of it, has been spent on other efforts, supporting research, and apparently has not developed commercially useful IP, and that is surely known to the investors. IHHI, from their formal statements filed in the U.K., is in the field for the long term.

Eric
May 5, 2016 at 12:05 PM

[This begins with “INDISPUTABLE FACTS:” and then proceeds to allege as if it were fact what is innuendo, suspicion, and guilt by association (Cherokee was apparently defrauded at one point) with little fact, and to cite evidence that actually contradicts the claims made, a pattern that also is found in the Rossi pleadings in Rossi v. Darden.]

Ing. Michelangelo De Meo
May 21, 2016 at 9:38 AM

[This points to a mention of Cherokee in a story about investment company practices, referring to a case which I have covered elsewhere. In 2016, Cherokee settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the matter of an apparent accounting error, the allocation of costs for complying with new regulations. This was the equivalent of a parking citation in impact on Cherokee, and the settlement made no admission of any wrongdoing, only error (and thus the minor fine). Rossi thanked Ing. De Meo for the “interesting information.”]

There is a lot more, but … enough for today.

Reproducibility of Excess of Power and Evidence of 4He in Palladium Foils Loaded with Deuterium

This is a slide presentation from 2005, authored by M.Apicella(1), H. Branover(2), E. Castagna(3), I. Dardik(4) A. El Boher(2), S.Lesin(2),
G. Mazzitelli(1), M. McKubre(5), F.Sarto(1), C. Sibilia(3), E. Santoro(1), F. Tanzella(5), V. Violante(1), T. Zilov(2)
(1) ENEA Frascati Research Center V.le E. Fermi 45 00044 Frascati (RM) ItalyV. le E. Fermi 45 italy
(2) Energetics, Ltd, Omer Industrial Park 84965 Israel)
(3) La Sapienza University, Via Scarpa, 14 00100 (Roma) Italy
(4) Energetics LLC 7 Fieldview Lane, Califon, NJ 07830 USA
(5) SRI International 333 Ravenswood Ave, Menlo Park CA 94025 USA.

I’ve uploaded the file here. The occasion today is that Kirk Shanahan posted a commentary on this presentation on LENR Forum, in response to my suggestion that he read my 2015 Current Science paper — I had cited this document for a small part of it. Kirk commonly turns every conversation into his favorite topic, this was no exception. Perhaps we will learn something here.

Abd said I should read his paper, so I did. Nothing but recitation of what others say.

Indeed. It’s a review, not something new, and most of what is cited was quite old. However, what I wrote in that paper was considered significant by McKubre, enough to be mentioned in his 2016 ICCF-20 keynote.

In his review of helium-4 and heat correlations in 2015, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax[10] states: “Miles was amply confirmed, and precision has increased. While there are outliers, there is no experimental evidence contradicting the correlation, and only the exact ratio remains in question. In this, we have direct evidence that the effect is real and is nuclear in nature; the mechanism remains a mystery well worth exploration.” For an experimental result of earth shattering importance, first reported publicly in 1991, it took until 2015, 24 years, for this conclusion to be stated with such clarity and conviction. Why? And even now not every researcher in the CMNS world would agree that helium-4 is the primary product, or even a nuclear one!

What was largely new with the paper was the title, “Replicable cold fusion experiment: heat/helium ratio.” This, unlike most LENR experiments, is quantitatively replicable.

He referenced a Powerpoint presentation by a group of authors whose primary CFer is McKubre that details some positive CF experiments (http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ApicellaMreproducib.pdf) that I’d like to comment on.

“Primary CFer” is standard Shanahan insult. Because of language like this, I’m not about to take any issues that are legitimately raised here to the CF research community for comment, but if such consultation becomes appropriate, I’ll restate it all, leaving out the load of carp.

Many of the authors are familar names to me. Then again, I actually study the field instead of just throwing darts at it occasionally. Links added.

At the end in the background material there is a slide that actually has a calibration equation on it for their isoperibolic calorimeter. It gives electrolyte temp as a function of input power. The equation is: Telec = -0.1649 * Pin2 + 5.3636*Pin + 24.337, and it has a multiple R2 value of 1, implying it is a very highly precise equation.

The document doesn’t actually say “Telec” but it is probably the electrolyte temperature. It is the average temperature of two PT-100 sensors. The caption does not thoroughly explain what this is. “By electrolysis in LiOD” is vague.” It is presumably a D2O solution of LiOD. But calibration by electrolysis, if that is what they mean, would be problematic. It gets complicated with deuterium evolution, etc. I’d think they would calibrate with a resistor. So this is a question that could be asked of Violante.

That is a curve fit for calibration data, not precisely, only plotted. I’m not thrilled with the claimed R2 = 1, but it may simply mean that the behavior was within measurement precision. This wasn’t a scientific paper, it was a presentation at an APS meeting, by multiple authors working at different institutions. It was not peer reviewed, I expect.

“Their” refers to ENEA Frascati, i.e., Apicella, Santoro, and Violante, and to their Laser-triggered work using isoperibolic calorimetry. that also measured helium.

This can be reversed to predict Pin given the Telec values. I did it by computing Telec for Pin values of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6W, and then using the Excel fitting routine for a quadratic. I got this equation: Pin = .0022001*Telec2 +.0060493*Telec -2.6978, with an R2 = .99997 (I’m not sure why it didn’t give 1.0, probably round off error). Of course excess power (Pex) is given by Pex = Pout – Pin, and in calibration we set Pout = Pin.

The question is what a small change in calibration constants would do to apparent excess heat. So I started with the McK equation to compute Telec for the Pin’s given above, then changed the linear and quadratic term constants in the reversed equation by +1%, and recomputed the ‘new’ expected Telec.

A small problem. This is not a “McK equation.” This is for ENEA Frascati work. There is much more information on this specific work in Apicella et al, Some Recent Results at ENEA, 2005.

Then I went back to the original McK equation and computed the Pout values for those new Telec’s. At 6W Pin, the shifted equation gives an apparent excess heat of ~78 mW. In my Storms’ reanalysis, I found a +/- 2.5% shift, which translates here to a 195 mW 1 sigma value (for 2.5% shift). Thus the 3-sigma band is +/- 585 mW, which can be rounded up to 600 mW band. Thus theoretically the excess power signal needs to exceed 600 mW to be ‘out of the noise’ if a 1% CCS has occurred.

A signals has no need. We do, as humans. Need for what?

I would certainly not assert that the ENEA results are “major heat,” however, a 1% calibration constant shift would be large. Shanahan’s work and conclusions have never been confirmed. I have not verified his calculations here, but I have no reason to doubt them, they simply are not surprising, in themselves, i.e., Shahanan has been writing this for years.

In careful work, calibrations are not just done before an experiment, they will also be done after. Calibrations do shift, though the magnitude he is proposing seems high. Most electrochemists dismiss Shanahan out of hand, his CCS has been called “random.” However, in fact, he is proposing a systematic shift. If it is systematic it should not be difficult to confirm.

Shanahan’s complaints, though, are not likely to lead to that.

McK, et al have several slides claiming excess power. For example, their 3rd slide shows an excess power peak from a flow calorimeter of ~90 mW in a spike, smoothed I say more like 70 mW. This is approximately the same magnitude as the 1% CCS effect.

This presentation is not “McK, et al.” The lead presenter, by which the paper is cited, is Apicella of ENEA. Slide 3 should be compared with slide 2, which with H2O and 0.1 M LiOH. Notice how the cumulative energy out remains below the cumulative energy in, showing apparent calorimetry capture of 97.5%. There are lots of aspects I don’t like about the presentation. Slide 3 may be mislabeled, at least in the ICCF conference paper this is captioned as isoperibolic.

So … a 1% CCS effect is imagined to appear in the middle of an experiment like this, and then disappear? I do understand the irony: excess appears in the middle of an experiment and then disappears. However, Shanahan’s CCS is an anomaly that has not been confirmed by anyone. He then ignores most of the rest of the evidence.

Slide 6 show]s] “Excess Power at SRI”. They seem to plot an excess power (very noisy) and a smoothed version that apparently uses the right Y-axis based on the figure legend across the top of the graph. Those plots show peak values of ~55 mW (guessing at the units, since they stated ‘Total Power = 214mW’), which is within the 1% CCS 1 sigma.

I don’t know what we are seeing there, the plot is not familiar to me. Many SRI reports do show this kind of noisy power plot. To understand this, I’d want to see the history of this cell and run. It’s simply not there. Whether Slide 6 made for an effective presentation would depend entirely on what was said about it. I’d rather not guess.

Their 8th slide shows more calorimetric results for laser triggered experiments. They plot energy and power on the same graph. Of note is at the start the output power slightly exceeds input power (i.e. positive small excess power signal) but it basically tracks the input power, which is a good indication that the calibration is off or there is something else going on (Storms’ first data set for Pt-Pt F&P cell work showed negative input power feedback due to ground loops). Later on, they get spiky output power when input power is constant. The spikes are about 190 mW peak values (~2.5 times the 1% CCS effect (or just a 2.5% CCS as found in Storms’ results)).

First, see Slide 2. This is a hydrogen control. This is what zero XP looks like, for a few hours. I’d really want to see much more to be thoroughly satisfied, but this is what they have. Hydrogen does not present this messy power output.

Slide 8 does not show more than two days of startup. The scale for this plot was not designed to show what may have been early excess power, but the accumulated energy has deviated early on. The plots of total input energy and total output energy are confusing; cold fusion researchers don’t seem to recognize the communication problem. However, the XP they are concerned with mostly shows up in the last days of this experiment. This is not impressive power, for sure, but it becomes more impressive when compared with the helium measurements.

So my point is that the apparent excess power/energy values shown in these slides could *easily* be a very small CCS. It seems important to me that the reality of these signals need to be determined and not just assumed to be real excess energy.

I don’t assume it’s real excess energy. It is a set of real measurements; unfortunately, we don’t have them. We have calculations done from them. It would be enough for the most important purposes that these measurements are handled consistently. “Very small” is Shanahan’s own view, not some reliable measure. 2.5% CCS hardly seems small to me, for something routinely observed to be much more stable.

Since I am looking at the Apicella, et al, slides – some other points:

In Slide 7, they state some conclusions which I find contradictory. In the first line they say: “(D/Pd > 0.9 in some cases also with less loading) have been observed at ENEA.” Then in the 2nd line they say: “We can conclude that high D loading is a necessary condition for excess of power production during loading of Pd with D.” But if one can get apparent excess power at <D/Pd=0.9, then it is incorrect to conclude that that is a requirement.

Yes, and this indicates poor editing. However, this is the reality: for a very long time, high loading was considered completely necessary. Experiments without that high loading normally did not show excess heat. The apparent contradiction goes away if we think that, say, 85% loading is high, and, historically, it used to be thought that anything above 70% loading was impossible. And that is why the early failed replications stopped loading at 70% or so, and why, now, we can look at those and see the failures as highly predictable.

However, there is recent work by Ed Storms that indicates that once conditions showing XP are set up, the loading may decline and XP may continue, quite a distance below those high numbers. This is unconfirmed, so far, but … it does make sense, given some of the odd events that have been reported, such as the original FP meltdown in about 1984.

Of course they don’t specifically say right there that >0.9 is the requirement, but in Slide 12 they do. These slides were presented in 2005, and today in 2017 the mantra is still “>0.9”. I disagree, it simply takes a little more work to get the effect when the Pd loading is <0.9.

I suggest not confusing initial conditions with what is necessary for a maintained effect.

In slide 10 they show some 4He results for laser-triggered experiments. I note that the indicated background level is ~0.55e16 and the strongest result is 1.05e16, i.e., less than 2X background.

Helium is very energetic. So sue God.

I find that to be ‘working in the noise’, and I require much more replication to be convinced this plot shows anything of value. There’s also no way to evaluate if these signals come from leaks or not.

Leaks would be unlikely to match an otherwise irrelevant and minor excess heat calculation. That is a “way to evaluate.” If Shanahan isn’t convinced, I’m not offended. He has a right to not be convinced. However, how much funding should be allocated to convincing him? What has happened is that the heat/helium evidence was considered by those who fund research to merit replication with increased precision, the classic way to test “pathological science.”

Much weaker evidence was seen by Huizenga in 1994 to be astonishing. So Shanahan’s assessment of that nothing “of value” has been shown is itself without value, worthless, exaggerated polemic, a broken record that he’s stuck playing out, maybe for the rest of his life. Ah, what a dismal prospect!

Slide 11 shows results from the SRI “M4” experiment. I’ve noted elsewhere that I have looked at the calorimetry of this run, and determined that it could well be affected by a CCS. However, there is some *very* fancy data workup going on here, and I require a full explanation of that to be able to evaluate the data’s validity. I asked McK twice for that info and never got it. The He values plotted here never exceed the usual outside air value of 5.22 ppm, and there is no report of what the 4He concentration was in the lab at the time the experiments were run, so we can’t honestly reject leaks once again.

What did Kirk ask? The data in that slide presentation is skimpy. The full report is as shown in my paper. The chart shown is not the original calculation; apparently McKubre found an error in the headspace volume and recalculated. (Which drove Krivit bonkers.) I still consider this work more or less seat of the pants and approximate. I have far higher expectations of Texas Tech and ENEA this time around. I’m hoping they use more of the Miles approach, but Shananan’s ascription of his CCS hypothesis to SRI flow calorimetry is problematic.

If he can convince THH that this is worth taking further, I’ll support that. But, bottom line, the heat/helium data almost totally demolishes Kirk’s argument. It becomes very, very unlikely that bogus heat and bogus helium data would match as well as has been observed, as often as has been observed.

Their 4th slide shows excess power from the Energetics lab that uses the “Superwave” on the input, and they don’t explain the calorimetric method. The excess is about 2.5W on an input of 4W. This clearly needs to be explained further, and the accuracy and precision clearly established, especially when the “Superwave” is being used. Ditto on the 5th slide, which is another Energetics lab results slide showing even greater apparent excess power.

The Superwave work was later replicated by SRI and ENEA, with extensive experimental series; this was published in the ACS LENR Sourcebook, 2008. I haven’t heard much about Superwave lately. The ET work went to the University of Missouri, the SKINR lab there.

None of the scientific approaches, so far, show promise for commercial power generation. Cold fusion at this point is a scientific curiosity. However, sufficient potential is there to justify exactly what both U.S. DoE reviews recommended: further research to address fundamental questions. Originally, it was thought that neutron radiation was important, it is now know that this was a complete red herring. Helium is the identified ash, there really isn’t another candidate with serious support. So measuring helium does become a method of verifying the heat, if that is considered necessary. Because measuring helium is difficult and can be expensive, finding other correlated measures would be of high value for the research.

Aiming at “convincing skeptics” is an obsolete concept that can backfire. Nailing down what is known is of high value, increasing predictability and clarity..

What’s real? Not this, not this.

… is an ancient heuristic.

And if it is a mystery, kill it immediately!

On LENR Forum, Wyttenbach wrote — wandering far off topic, hence moved to the misnamed “Playground,” or do we imagine a garbage dump is a great place to play? —

kirkshanahan : The net is full of unbelievable stories. Even if you would live 1000 years you could only read some of them.

Well, that’s true. It’s unclear, though, how it relates to Shanahan’s post; that unclarity is typical for Wytte. I imagine him commenting in a bar, soused.

People like ABD are still part of “the 28 years wasted to explain LENR” story, because he only knows old stuff. Latest since the Lipinski experiments, we need not to know about Storms, Hagelstein, Mizuno, Takashi etc.. models, because it is now obvious how LENR works.

Wytte always seems to think he knows what escapes everyone else. The “new stuff.” He’s a bit like Axil, but more obtuse, less focused. Takahashi, presumably. My work — for the last eight years, not 28 — is not to “explain LENR.” I don’t care about the explanation, I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime (though it’s not impossible), what I care about with LENR is what I care about everywhere: reality. What we can observe, far less “theory” and “explanation,” which can be very useful, but which also can lock us into frozen modes of thought.

Now, Lipinski. WTF? Okay, United Gravity Corporation. See this old LF thread. Bottom line, this is not “LENR.” It is hot fusion, explicitly from the patents. (Though sometimes “cold fusion” is used to describe plasma fusion with tunnelling; this isn’t related to the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect.)

As to the UG web site, if I look at more “new energy” web sites with photographs of unobtainable “generators” being used to power cars and homes, I may need help cleaning up the mess.

Thus, “Krik”, have some fun and avoid any debate about a ton of old, stinking fish.

Carp.

Bdw: Lipinski(s) measured “tons” of He…

Wytte gives no link. However, the patent is about alleged proton-lithium fusion, generating “helium ion” byproducts. Alpha particles. On the face of it, if the fusion occurs, from Li-7, it would generate 8Be, which would immediately fission to two alphas, i.e., the product would be helium plus energy.

Moved from this thread with a long name. Eric

Eric, Alan, and Barty are starting to get more pro-active in removing topic dilution. So then maryyugo popped in:

[Quote about ABD from above post by Wytte]

Abd still thinks that dowsing is useful in detecting explosives! he should volunteer to clear a minefield using a dowsing rod to prove his contention.

George has no idea how I think. He’s never understood the discussions. Dowsing — like many other techniques — almost certain functions, to the extent it functions, as indicators for subtle movements of brain activity. Most attempts to test this “double blind” fail for obvious reasons: brain activity requires consciousness and double-blind tests remove the cues that might be useful for the operation of what is generally called “intuition.” The real question, with “explosives,” is not what Hody thinks. The Sniffex — what George has in mind — was a scam. The real question is not if it “actually” detects explosives, but if using it increases detection success. This could entirely depend on the skill and experience of the user, who would be the real detector.

Personally, to clear a mine field, I’d want something much more reliable. Unreliable, however, is not the equivalent of “useless.” I’d prefer an actual dowsing rod, if forced to cross a mine field, not the faux pretend electronics of the Sniffex. And “clearing” a mind field, as Hody suggests, there is no way I’d volunteer for that.

Real life is not a double-blind test, except for some who have their eyes fixed shut, like George Hody.

Meanwhile, all LENR claims are from the “usual suspects”. Let us know when someone can produce a nice, clean ten watts from a reactor, without input power, verified by a credible independent agency like a government lab or renown test lab, for a few months without external power or fresh fuel. Hell, I’d settle for one watt properly measured and truly autonomous.

He’s been saying this for years, keeps repeating it. Who cares what this faux “maryyugo” thinks or would “settle for”? 10 watts? By a credible independent agency or renowned test lab? Okay, how about SRI and ENEA. But for a few months?

This is not the state of the art, and creating and observing an effect, and maintaining it, long-term, are quite different. It is possible it could be done, given enough funding, but would add very little to the science of LENR. This is not where I am recommending research go; rather, before such “demonstrations” could be worth the effort, much more is likely to be needed, as to developed knowledge and techniques.

There are experimental approaches I am considering that would test already-observed effects with input power reduced to zero. In most LENR experiments, “input power” is used to maintain experimental temperature. For practical reasons, this makes the experiment easier. That, however, can be shifted so that environmental temperature maintenance is separated from experimental input power. We do not include in the input power of an experiment the heating of the room in which the experiment is located. This principle does not change if the “room” temperature is raised.

Operating temperature may be maintained with high insulation, using controlled cooling if there is any XP. This is not done in early stages of testing, because it is complex and the only reason to do it could be to satisfy pseudoskeptics, who won’t be satisfied anyway. Scientifically, this is utterly unnecessary effort.

However, maintaining constant temperature is something that is often not done in LENR experiments, and temperature is allowed to rise with XP or claimed XP. This leads to interpretive difficulties. What Storms has reported, recently, is the maintenance of XP when electrolytic current was shut down, but the system was maintained at constant temperature. This is actually consistent with prior work and is technically “heat after death,” showing that, while high loading is well-associated with the onset of the FP Heat Effect, it may not be necessary for the continuance of it. That all deserves deeper exploration.

The reality of LENR, at this point, does not depend on the kind of as-yet-unobtainable results Hody demands. It is well-established by the heat/helium correlation, creating a default understanding that the heat is the result of the conversion of deuterium to helium, and work to verify or disconfirm with increased precision is under way.

(This is in addition to and distinct from the massive circumstantial evidence so often pointed out by Jed Rothwell. All that is important, but not as probative as direct and confirmed and replicable experimental evidence.)

Hody is a classic pseudoskeptic, rejecting definitively whatever he does not understand.

Who is Lipinski? (linkie pls) Not only is it not obvious how LENR works, it is far from properly demonstrated that LENR *does* work.

In addition to being a pseudoskeptic, Hody is lazy. This was easy to find. On one point I’ll agree with George: it is not obvious how LENR works, beyond a default “explanation” that is summary in nature: the FP Heat Effect works by converting deuterium to helium, mechanism unknown. It’s a mystery.

Generally, pseudoskeptics hate mysteries, they will seek to kill them on sight.


I did a little more reading on Lipinski and United Gravity. They misrepresent what they are doing. There is a chart at their web site, under “Our Approach.”

Unified Gravity Hot Fusion Cold Fusion
Fuel Hydrogen and Lithium Deuterium and tritium Heavy water (D2O), hydrogen, and heavy elements
Fusion creation Alternating negative and positive voltage applied to proton-lithium plasma Magnetic pulsing or laser heating D2O electrolysis and other combination techniques
Temperature Room temperature 100 million °C Room temperature
Containment Reaction chamber Magnetic bottle Various
Size 2 cubic feet Truck-size Various
Radioactivity (Byproducts) None (Helium ions) Strong (Neutrons) Strong (Neutrons)
  1. p-Li fusion does not take place at “room temperature.” First of all, they are working with a plasma. While an attenuated plasma is possible at low temperature, if the pressure is low, cold fusion takes place in condensed matter (and is apparently, contrary to what they say, aneutronic, and the product might be helium ions, like they claim for their own process). What are the product energies?
  2. Start off with the reactor energies. It appears to be about 225 eV. While this is far below the energy at which normal proton-lithium fusion rates will be high, it is not “room temperature.” I’m not 100% sure about the conversion of electron volts to temperature, it appears to be about 2.6 million degrees K.

However, this doesn’t mean that their approach is wrong, and it might be, if valid, much better than the d-t reaction used for ordinary hot fusion approaches. It might not be radiation-free, they claim to detect 5.6 and 8 MeV particles coming out. While those might ordinarily be absorbed, they will also cause secondary reactions that could create residual radioactivity. Depending on construction, this could be relatively harmless or dangerous.

But is it valid? The web site doesn’t inspire me, with its breathless predictions. I found no clue of published independent confirmation. At this point, it’s a secret commercial claim, not worth very much. It’s not LENR, as we understand it. The reaction is one of hot fusion, even if it is happening at a relatively low-energy resonance.

The apparent claim of new physics is also not inspiring, if not accompanied by clear experimental evidence. Presumably investors will be shown evidence under NDA, but watch out. Any investor considering this should do serious diligence, obtaining expert advice, the best, about the experimental evidence. Forget about theory (unless it is clearly making verified quantitative predictions). What do they actually have?