I’ve been writing on-line since the 1980s, on the W.E.L.L., where I was a moderator. I was excited about the possibilities of computer conferencing, where a complete record existed (normally) of the entire conversation. I had extensive group discussion experience and had noticed that people would argue about what happened previously, who had said what, and what it meant. So, here, it would be possible to resolve disputes based on fact. Or would it?
In fact, it wasn’t, far too often. So one user was flaming another. Who started it, who was first to stray outside the bounds of civility. (Later, I came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter, what matter was moving forward, but this was then ….) If there was a raging conflict, and I went back to the records and detailed what was in them, linking to them, many participants would assume that if I did that, I must be on one “side” or the other, and I would become a target from the “other side”? Does fact have sides? No, but people do, and people will assume that someone asserting an alleged fact is supporting some set of conclusions, and has picked the fact in order to “prove” their conclusions.
And that can be true.
But it also can be misleading, sometimes people do care about what actually happened, and want to know, and will research it. Sometimes, then, they come to conclusions, developing opinions rooted in what they found, and then …. they are accused of bias in their review of fact. It used to be a major source of frustration to me. I was called a “cold fusion believer” on Wikipedia, but I was a Wikipedian first and supporter of Wikipedia policy … which was routinely being violated by administrators attacking users who tried to improve the Cold fusion article. When I compiled evidence, using my skills as a *neutral researcher*, and when that evidence showed a problem with an administrator, I was accused of cherry-picking when, in fact, I had shown *every* action in the record, and the comments that the supporters of that administrator thought were my negative comments were actually the administrator’s own edit summaries. In that particular case, sanity prevailed, or so it seemed. In fact, the faction involved hardened their position and began to more effectively coordinate their actions, using their power with less regard for policy, not more.
So, on LENR-Forum, a flame war started over the matter of an alleged steam temperature of “100.1 C.” There were some pointers put up to origins of the debate or argument (or false representations, according to some accusations), but a cursory look at them did not support the conclusions being drawn. Aha! My cup of tea! A debate where it may be possible to find, with some research, what actually happened! As I begin this, I don’t know. I have some ideas, because I know some of the people involved, but I don’t have actual fact, supported with evidence so that anyone can verify it.
The recent (or even current) debate showed up with this post:
It was Dewey’s original insinuation that the heat of the steam was 100.1 C that brought me into active participation on this forum. The 100.1 C value was being publicly disputed by Rossi. Here is the original Dewey/IH Fanboy exchange:
“Insinuation” is a loaded word. First of all, what is important about 100.1 C? What is usually in question is steam quality. If there is steam containing “fog,” or tiny water droplets, it must be not far above the boiling point at the pressure, and the boiling point is very sensitive to pressure. Once upon a time, the Centigrade temperature scale was based on the boiling point of water at 1 standard atmosphere. That is no longer true, and the boiling point at one atmosphere is 99.9839 °C (Wikipedia). Did Dewey “insinuate” what IHFB claims? What exactly did he say? IHFB points to:
Rossi: “Steam Was Superheated” in 1MW Plant Test
that was a post of his, but it quoted Dewey. By the way, there are generators of FUD on the fora that don’t provide any links. IHFB, right or wrong, does do the work to provide some links, and that deserves appreciation in itself.
Dewey Weaver had written, in the post immediately before:
Yep – Fanboyz in overdrive. Where does all the determination and energy come from? Is it an obsession or a mental Tibetan knot? Such a sight to behold but no matter what, it is another important leg in the study of the true “Rossi Effect” when all is said and done. I haven’t decided when to send out another nugget. 100.1C has been very effective and appeasr to have kilometers of legs left in the approach.
Dewey, it must be remembered, is an IH investor and consultant who has, from his accounts, seen personal damage from Rossi behavior. He is not a careful documenter of fact, he tends toward sound bites and quick claims, and, again we must remember, he is an insider and commonly has knowledge that the rest of those participating don’t have. The issue here is whether or not he deliberately created misleading data. He was here celebrating something that seemed positive to him from discussing “100.1 C.” This doesn’t tell us where he got it. However, from my memory of 2011, without checking, the number was there from Rossi demonstrations.
What IHFB quoted did not show the substance of his claim. It was a discussion about discussion, and not the primary claim. I will be looking for that. Continuing with IHFB:
Jed backed up Dewey’s 100.1 C value, and claimed it was from Rossi: Here
Again, LHFB cites himself, citing Jed. Not good practice, though adequate. It can cover up cherry-picking. Better to quote and cite source, and indicate if something material is omitted.
Jed had written:
P.S. Are you claiming that Rossi is lying when he stated to Mats Lewan that the steam in the 1-year test was superheated?
As far as I know the fluid was ~100.1 deg C. I doubt it was steam. I think it was hot water, because I do not see how the pressure could be only 1 atm in this configuration.
Many of the things Rossi told Lewan were lies. Rossi is not a reliable source of information. If he tells me it is raining, I will go outside and look before I believe it.
“Superheated steam” was a common Rossi claim, generally accompanied by inadequate evidence that also ignored the possibility of overflow water. There can be steam above water, with the steam being hotter; equalization by phase change only occurs rapidly with the small droplets of fog. It takes time for heat to penetrate and evaporate a mass of water. Again, I remember 100.1 C from 2011 discussions, and this could easily have become mixed up in Jed’s mind, but did it?
To know if steam is superheated, one must know the temperature and pressure accurately. It is, in fact, quite difficult to measure steam quality, entirely aside from the issue of overflow water. Rossi’s friend used a humidity meter, and Kullander and Essen, the Swedish professors who observed some early Rossi tests, failed to realize that humidity meters cannot measure steam quality. They only measure the vapor phase, not the liquid phase.
LENR Calender challenged Jed on the 100.1 C claim: Here
He also called Jed part of the “IH spin team.”
After much prodding by me and others, Jed eventually said it was 103 C. Here
Yes, Jed checked his computer and the figure was 103 C. But why did Jed have a figure of 100.1 C in his head?
Now we see that the measured values show a minimum of 103 C. I never remember Jed stating that the 103 C value that he eventually retreated to was a minimum.
Jed had a small segment of data. He did not “retreat,” that is all hostile framing. He acknowledged an error of memory. In all this we should realize that measuring temperature with high precision is not simple. I looked at the Omega specifications and, without going deeply into it, an error of 0.5 C could easily exist, and it could be four times that or more.
This is quite disturbing. Dewey pushed the 100.1 C story and boasted that it was “very effective” and appeared to have “kilometers of legs left in the approach.” Jed backed the claim, at least for awhile. It went straight to the heart of whether there was excess heat or not in the 1MW one year test. All the while, Rossi was publicly stating that the 100.1 C claim was inaccurate. As it turns out, Rossi was telling the truth. There is nary a mention of 100.1 C in the measured data.
The problem is that what Dewey meant by “effective” could simply be in stirring and stimulating discussion. Again, the source discussions have not been cited yet, so this is IHFB bringing up an old dispute.
Dewey is now claiming that “all data in the ERV annex is completely manufactured by Rossi.” Here
He did say that, confronting some naive belief.
Take this to the extreme: the letters and numbers used were Rossi’s inventions. No, that is not what he means. Dewey is using hyperbole, that is not a “factual statement,” i.e., it could be informative, or not. It is really saying what many have said: data provided by Rossi cannot be trusted. However, this data came from, probably, Penon. But where did Penon get the data? Remember, he wasn’t there. for most of the time. Now, there is this explanation possible: The computer system designed by Fabiani recorded data for Penon. But Rossi was there 24/7. He could easily have manipulated measurements, in many ways. I do not take Dewey’s statement as anything other than a warning against trusting data depending on Rossi’s probity.
I suppose that is what one would have to pivot to in order to maintain consistency. And it is a possibility. From the evidence that has been disclosed so far, we know that Rossi is capable of, shall we say, creating mirages. Nevertheless, it doesn’t explain where the original 100.1 C degree claim finds its support in the data.
It is obviously not supported in the Annex data, but Dewey, in the recent comment, was not referring to “100.1 C,” but to the whole mess.
So my question to Dewey now is: where did the 100.1 C claim originate? Do you have access to some other set of data that hasn’t been “completely manufactured by Rossi”?
We will see what develops in the discussion, and look for other references. 100.1 C is a red herring. This will start by identifying Dewey’s original comments, if they can be found.
It was then “insinuated” that Dewey was a liar, without Dewey’s original alleged lie having been shown:
This is quite disturbing. Dewey pushed the 100.1 C story and boasted that it was “very effective” and appeared to have “kilometers of legs left in the approach.” Jed backed the claim, at least for awhile….
Dewey is now claiming that “all data in the ERV annex is completely manufactured by Rossi.”
I wondered how long before someone brought this up. Fact is, 100.1C doesn’t appear anywhere in the “ERV” report. Does this mean Dewey is a liar?
Well, it could mean that Dewey made a mistake, but we still don’t have the original alleged claim.
IHFB’s last question is answered:
IHFB – I don’t remember where I got the 100.1C from but recall that is was from a batch of Rossi’s fake data.
IHFB attempts to rub it in. “Are you sure … [it] wasn’t a made up number by you?”
The difference between 100.1 and 103 deg C is immaterial. Either neither number would indicate liquid water, because there has to be some back pressure.
I do not recall where 100.1 deg C came from, but I did see it somewhere, and no doubt Dewey saw it there as wall. Perhaps it was in the document imaged above?
You are focusing on what is probably a trivial mistake made by Dewey. You accuse him of making up a number which is so close to the actual number, it makes no difference to the analysis! That’s nuts. Why would anyone make up a number for no reason? What would be the point?
I agree with Jed in some ways. Jed does tend to make what I would call overstatements. First of all, 100.1 C has an apparent precision that could be misleading, if it was used. If it was used in any sort of proper way, it would have been qualified. To measure temperature with that precision is not easy. Secondly, the Final Report data shows an artifact of how it was collected. Temperatures are quantized, not continuous, and the precision appears to be roughly +/- 0.5 degree C. This could explain, by the way, the long runs of the same temperature, it may have been varying within the digitization error. This was apparently coarse digitization. I ran into that planning to run my own experiments, the limit was not in the temperature measurement device itself, it was analog, but in the analog to digital converter I was using (a LabJack).
I also recall 100.1 C, and am also not clear where I saw it. It was probably over five years ago, and referring to early Rossi demonstrations or tests.
Paradigmnoia found a photo of Rossi calculating using 100.1 C.
What is pitiful is that you presumably knew what the data was, and pushed the 100.1 C value to the community instead. Whether you made up the value or not is irrelevant.
Still no citation of the “pushing.” We also do not know what Dewey knew back in May or June of 2016, so the “presumption” is an assumption, unless based on evidence.
Googling “100.1” plus “steam” on lenr-forum, I come up with some hits. The earliest is this from May 23, 2016. Not by Dewey, but quotes Rossi about the “clown.” Which would probably be a reference to Dewey. Not on lenr-forum, perhaps ECW. So ….
May 22, 2016, “100.1” is reported as what is being claimed as the 1 MW plant output temperature have been “posting on the forums.” rossi attributes this to “the clowns.” (There is only one person reasonably called an “IH person,” and that is Dewey Weaver, and he explicitly denies speaking for IH.) Rossi has accused me and others of being paid to attack him….
Google comes up with few mentions of “100.1” “on the forums.”
I finally found it.
Dewey Weaver wrote: (May 4, 2016, on lenr-forum).
100.1C.
That was it, a post with zero words, just a number and symbol. Yes, he did get a lot of mileage with this! (Starting with a downvote from Randombit0, the likely Rossi sock or certainly meat puppet on lenr-forum). Apparently the value 100.1C is disliked. But we have that photo of Rossi having written it. Dewey did not claim that this was the 1 MW E-cat output temperature.
If Dewey “pushed this” as claimed, I could not find it. Perhaps someone can, and I can edit this.
By the way, one of the things I notice reading through old discussions is how so many nutty ideas, plain and simple errors, and possible lies, just sit there. Mistakes are not corrected, even after they become blatant. The main reason I was offended at being banned on lenr-forum, even though I did not want to post there — and had declared that — was that I can’t correct errors in my voluminous posts there. Here, I am, every day, finding typos or larger errors and correcting them….
Finishing up, I found more:
Thomas – the outlet temp was 100.1C for every day the test was running. Rossi forgot to adjust his cut and paste data for the days that he claims his system was down for maintenance or inspection. I’m telling you this is some kind of special machine.
The meaning is unclear. He is not talking about actual temperature, but a reported temperature, and this is not clearly a reference to the “ERV Report.”
