How Planet Rossi reads fact

This example poked me in the eye today. On LENR Forum, IH Fanboy, a strong supporter of Andrea Rossi and a critic of Industrial Heat, wrote this:

@Dewey,
Murray testified that Jed visited the Doral location with either you or JT Vaughn. (215-3, pages 122-123.) Do you agree with Murray? Was it with you?

Below this was the standard note:

anotherTroll likes this.

anotherTroll is a new user, appropriately named. LENR Forum is still figuring out how to handle trolls. They like free speech, but ….

Jed had said, many times as I recall, that he had visited the IH facility in North Carolina, but not the Doral plant in Florida. I was fascinated to see that Jed was even mentioned. So, of course, having the files, still working on annotating them, I looked this up.

The Murray deposition, pages 122-123. Rossi’s attorney’s asked about Jed Rothwell. Murray knew who he was. He did not say that Rothwell had visited Doral. Period. This was a misreading by IH Fanboy, eager to find some mud to toss at Rothwell and Weaver. That’s what trolls do.

An additional clue: Jed was coming from the north, on his way home to Atlanta. IH Fanboy might be geography-challenged. He should get out more. Florida is, literally, way out in left field.

 

 

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

See http://coldfusioncommunity.net/biography-abd-ul-rahman-lomax/

16 thoughts on “How Planet Rossi reads fact”

  1. A few comments further down IHFB picks up on this and finds the exact point where this is discussed. Of course, IHFB takes this as showing that there was in fact steam and not just hot water in the pipes, but a more likely explanation occurs to me that instead it’s a water-leak under the insulation and that of course at around 100°C this will show a plume of condensed water-vapour.

    As always this requires some care. Perhaps you don’t mean what you say here, but it is (in its implication) not right. Thus, with a temperature measured of around 104C it is very likely that there is some water vapour (and some visible condensed water droplets – what many would call steam). Because the temperature is so stable, either this is bogus or the stabilisation is got through phase change. I personally think the latter is more likely.

    However that means nothing. Rossi (and IHFB) seem to assume that the phase change must be 100%, or at least significant. There is no reason to suppose any significant phase change when compared with the high claimed (though from evidence very likely not real) flow rate. A COP of exactly 1 is easily compatible with both the claimed temperatures, some minimal phase chnage, and flowmeter over-reading. Or a number of other plausible scenarios.

    In blogland maybe the existence of steam in this system is seen as evidence for Rossi’s claims. It is not.

    It looks like IH should win the court-case and that they’ll be trying even low-probability experiments until they crack it, so we’ll get LENR commercially available at some point.

    If LENR exists as a real nuclear effect it would be surprising for it not to end up commercial. The fact that this has not yet happened is weak evidence against the premise. How you judge the whole set of evidence is a complex matter, and makes the distinction between those with different views here.

    It also looks like Rossi will retain followers and will try to get alternative backing, but I doubt if anyone with enough money will touch him now.

    Charismatic leaders keep cults alive with much dafter messages than Rossi’s. For me, Rossi’s message, and teh way he delivers it, seems the reverse of charismatic. But it is important not to assume that we are all the same – and anyway I’ve never met him personally.

    1. Tom – I may be assuming a bit too much here, but the absolute stability of the stated temperature (103.8 to 104.2°C) imples that either the gauge is misreading or that the pressure applied is fairly constant at 2 tenths of a bar or so (consistent with the head of water above it), but that the water is largely in liquid phase. It would maybe be useful to correlate the atmospheric pressure in Doral with the stated temperature measurements to see if higher barometric pressure corresponds to the days where a higher temperature was written down.

      As such I’d expect a leak to be of water, and the heat of the pipe would then produce the plume of fog described as “steam”.

      The data given is in any case suspect, and looks to me like they didn’t bother actually reading the meters before writing down the answer, maybe especially for the water-flowmeter.

      Separating Rossi’s socks from the real followers may be a little difficult, but I do see a fair number of English comments with Italian grammar. It seems likely though that Rossi in person is charismatic and that he’s intelligent, possibly up to genius level in some things. One of those things seems to be in convincing scientists to use methods of measurement that overestimate temperature instead of one they can rely on to give the right answer, and to ignore the anti-corroborative evidence. That even seems to have worked on IH for a while. If Rossi escapes this court-case with some money and his freedom, I suspect we’ll be seeing new varieties of feline LENR from him until there’s a commercial version from someone else. Then he’ll find some other project. There’s always someone who will fall for something that sounds too good to be true.

  2. There’s an interesting point on LF that can be read a couple of ways. Shane D. brings up Stokes’ evidence at https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/4745-rossi-vs-darden-developments-part-2/?postID=53160#post53160 which says that Stokes saw a steam leak in the pipes. A few comments further down IHFB picks up on this and finds the exact point where this is discussed. Of course, IHFB takes this as showing that there was in fact steam and not just hot water in the pipes, but a more likely explanation occurs to me that instead it’s a water-leak under the insulation and that of course at around 100°C this will show a plume of condensed water-vapour. Steam is of course invisible except for the optical distortions looking through it (why live steam is so dangerous), and what most people call steam is the foggy condensed water that is below 100°C. A lot can hang on using a word wrongly (and I also use the word “steam” wrongly at times in non-technical discussions since a lot of people will misunderstand the correct terms). We know Rossi’s joints to have a history of being leaky, so a leaky joint does seem to be the more-likely explanation here, and that Stokes saw a plume of condensed vapour.

    I’d also have liked it if Rossi had a real technology and could prove it. I still think there’s a good chance that someone will find a viable method for Ni/H soon, and that me356 and Suha may already have done that and it just needs verification. As far as I can see, though, Rossi has seen what is the current “best guess” of the community and the current buzz-words (such as sigma 5 which really doesn’t apply at all, but has become a Planet Rossi touchstone) and applied them to the situation. The community has some good ideas, and though Rossi didn’t apply them well-enough to succeed it’s possible that others have done (for example Suha producing his Nickel by hard-plating so that it’s pre-loaded and embrittled) and the results may be real.

    It’s hard to make a balance for Rossi’s contribution of LENR. I feel that overall he’s delayed it by putting out false data and making the field even more disreputable, but there’s also an argument that his apparent success has produced a larger number of people actually running experiments and thus improved the chances of somebody finding the Grail. I think we’ll need the vantage-point of quite a few more years to be able to see which way the balance goes. It looks like IH should win the court-case and that they’ll be trying even low-probability experiments until they crack it, so we’ll get LENR commercially available at some point. It also looks like Rossi will retain followers and will try to get alternative backing, but I doubt if anyone with enough money will touch him now.

  3. Yes, I agree with that Simon. The amount of material now released is extraordinary so I suppose we have to thank Rossi’s trigger-happy mentality for insight into a complex relationship that ordinarily would never have seen the light of day. Not that this does Rossi any good…

    1. I’d have preferred, strongly, to be wrong about my suspicions from 2011 and later. The value of a working technology would be far too great to be worried about the quirkiness of an inventor. I’d love for NiH to work, and maybe it will. Contrary to common claims from Gluck, nobody is saying NiH should not be investigated. However, what is quite clear is that the Rossi example cannot be used to prove anything. With many believing that Rossi’s work was valid, and trying to replicate it, some file-drawer effect and confirmation bias could creep in.

  4. I’ve just spent a lot of time reading Joe Murray’s deposition (02115.03_Exhibit_C.pdf) and, whereas he’s before been portrayed as a peripheral figure in the conversation on LF, it turns out he’s really highly skilled. I suppose that’s why Tom Darden hired him. Whereas I looked at the heat purportedly going into the locked room at Doral and figured there was no way people would survive in there, he did the thermal modelling and calculated the temperatures given the available ventilation. A lot of information given away in that deposition should probably not have been published, though it does reveal the work that happened in the background to try to get Rossi’s IP to actually work. A few times in his deposition Murray states that if there was a 1% chance that Rossi’s work was real then they should chase it.

    Another fascinating sink for my time today was 0214.23_Exhibit_23.pdf which is the IH 18-month business plan. Again, that shouldn’t have been published but it does show they are really intending to get LENR to work through backing a lot of inventors, even if they aren’t majority shareholders in those projects. They seem to have identified all the publicly-known people and to be getting involved.

    Tom’s question was whether IH were whiter than white here. Probably not in one way, in that they intend to corner the market and get in on the ground floor, and thus make a lot of profit. In another way, they intend to reduce the cost of power for most of the world whilst making that profit, and they are putting a lot of skilled people in and backing the people who have the ideas, which means it’s a win-win situation. Any big advance has the same sort of grey areas, in that someone is going to make a lot of money from it, but if we all gain at the same time then getting annoyed at the big money involved seems more jealousy than anything else. It’s easy to get annoyed at big business, but most of the time it’s more of a benefit to us than a loss.

    The more I read, the more competence I find in the IH people. If Rossi’s techniques did result in a real reaction, I think they’d have found it.

  5. I have to agree with Sam here. IHFB is not a troll on this issue. He has an extreme bias, seeing conspiracies and bending facts as needed to support his predilection. As blog opinion goes, now that Rossi’s duplicity is so clearly revealed, IHFB’s message of “hey – wait a minute – let us not rush to judgement” sounds balanced (even though it is not).

    Jed himself has clear views in this matter and even though I agree with his views 100%* I’d say he is biased, because he overstates facts when stating his views, and gives as evidence for certainty something that is in fact only indicative.

    I know Abd that you realise this about Jed.

    Now, I’d also say that IHFB is dishonest in how he twists fact, whereas Jed is honest in his clear overstatements. But that is a narrow judgement to make. It amounts to saying:
    (1) I agree with Jed, not IHFB
    (2) IHFB is more sophisticated in how he presents his arguments, and therefore a tougher opponent.

    * Just for Abd. When I say 100% in fact I agree with Jed around 90%, on this issue, and around 10% on a number of other issues. And I remain somewhat unclear about IH’s motives – whiter than white? Probably not. But overall, any coherent picture I can paint makes them on the side of the angels here.

    1. I agree with most of this, THH.

      However, trolling is a discussion behavior, not a position on an issue. So “not a troll on this issue” shows a misunderstanding. There is a whole ontology behind this, and if I explain all that, my comments expand almost without limit.

      Let me attempt to be brief: In the example given, IHFB saw what appeared to him to be a discrepancy between what had been written by Jed and Dewey Weaver, and the testimony of Murray. Someone noticing this apparent discrepancy can point it out without trolling. A troll will attempt to create an impossible position: someone is lying, and the question then becomes who is lying. The “fact” cited by the troll would be a legitimate issue. A full examination would also need to compare sourced evidence.

      (I notice hardly anyone on LF citing specific pdf pages, but only document numbers, and without a URL. So finding a reference is quite a bit of work for someone who doesn’t know about the Docket page here. If they find the Googledrive archive, they still have work to find that file, considerable work if it’s not the latest file and even that is obscure for many. The GDrive archive apparently does not allow direct links. There are still some on ECW citing the pages on thenewfire, an even worse mess….)

      Jed had stated, long ago, that he never visited the Doral facility. We had a specific list of Doral visitors in a deposition response that was already visible. Jed wasn’t there. There was no claim that Jed had visited, just claims that he was somehow in the pocket of IH. But Jed had acknowledged visiting the North Carolina IH facility.

      It is not the noting of the discrepancy caused by IHFB’s careless reading of the Murray deposition that was trolling. It was the “who is lying, you or Murray” manner of raising it. IHFB did later acknowledge his error, though not realizing the depth and cause of his error. His interpretation actually made no sense. What is it that leads us into confident interpretations that make no sense? In a word — two, actually — confirmation bias. Here, confirmation of “someone associated with or supporting IH is lying.”

      IHFB is not a “pure troll.” Rather, he is, as stated, highly biased, quick to interpret fact toward his bias, and this same trait will affect his emotional state. I do assume sincerity. Pure trolls may directly lie.

      We also see “concern trolling” on LF. As well, Dewey Weaver might be called a “concern troll” in some ways. So could I. It is an aspect of maturity to move beyond worry about labels, to caring about realities. Concern trolling is not “bad,” and might be sincere. But it is still concern trolling, which is generally an ineffective communication device, if the goal is to communicate with the “target.” It can become grandstanding. If I express concern about you, but not as a genuine caring about you, but rather as an effort (real or apparent) to make you look bad to others, that could be concern trolling.

      Dewey’s email to Hoistad could be called concern trolling, but I don’t think that would be legitimate. It only looks like concern trolling when made public, and he did not make it public, Levi and Rossi did make it public, pursuing their own agendas, and Hoistad did, indirectly, by a possibly naive forwarding of the message to Levi. I do think Hoistad has shot himself in the foot with this.

      He will not again be trusted, by a major source of funding in the field, and by others influenced by them. My impression of the Swedes has become that they are face-palm naive. If Hoistad did not want to become involved in the lawsuit, his behavior showed a complete misunderstanding of the situation. He made himself involved by unnecessarily forwarding that email to Levi, this was not necessary for any scientific purpose. The source of the critique was not scientifically relevant. If he needed to discuss it with Levi, he did not have to forward the mail.

      The naive relationship with Levi may be related to the seriously defective Lugano approach. What has come out is just how central Levi was to the Lugano test. This was not some equal collaboration, this was massively directed by Levi, with Rossi there the whole time. This is not how Lugano was presented, so the Lugano test becomes an example of deception without actually lying.

      I am not posting extensively on the new documents yet. It took me two days just to get them all uploaded and annotated. It will take me much more time to become familiar with them. As I was annotating them, I found all kinds of “striking tidbits.” At one point, I stopped annotating the IH exhibits, and annotated the Rossi exhibits, because I became aware of my own reactions, and I wanted to give Rossi better “first visibility” — to me. (And in some cases, my occurring was, “He thinks this makes them look bad? It makes him look worse!”)

      I commented on one issue, only, one where the reality, originally controversial, has become utterly clear, such that even IHFB has acknowledged it is over: the “customer” was a sock puppet of Rossi. That IHFB acknowledges it distinguishes him from a pure troll, who will, unless abandoning the position entirely — and trolling is really about relationships with people and not issues — never admit error, but will keep attempting to find a vulnerability in others, to upset them, to push them off-balance, to create intemperate responses that might make them look bad. Pure trolls are almost always anonymous. They have no concern for their own reputation. (But, of course, being or attempting to be anonymous does not a troll make. It is just a common characteristic.)

      In the end, “troll” is a judgment, and a complex one. It’s a personal impression, for the most part, though it may be, to some degree or other, evidence-based. Learning to distinguish between “occurrings” and fact was a major part of my training. It’s not difficult, but often not developed as a habit. It’s crucial for anyone who seeks to engage in transformational work. Occurrings are neither right nor wrong, they are only empowering or disempowering (and that is also a kind of occurring). However, they are major objects in the social landscape, and they have obvious impacts on how we process information, especially if undistinguished.

  6. Hi Abd
    I don’t know how you decide
    who is a troll?
    You could look at fanboy as
    a troll for Rossi but the same
    could be said that Jed is a troll
    for I.H.
    Or they could have simple taken the
    positions they have on there
    own.
    As for Dewey he does have to
    reply to comments but he
    tends to overdue it and gets
    carried away sometimes.
    Interesting Dewey was asked
    to refrain from comments by
    assume I.H. Lawyers but does
    not.

    Regards
    Sam

    1. People are not “trolls for” something. Trolling is not about opinion. I suggest looking up the word. Here, I’ll make it easy. You may notice the mention of troll on the page above. Three times, actually. There were two people suggested as trolls, though there is a reference to a recent comment by an LF moderator. It’s quite a problem. Trolling does not generally improve the quality of discussion, it is not about facts, though a troll will use fact, or, commonly, misleading facts or even outrageous claims with no basis. In this case one troll is the user “anotherTroll.” Lucky guess, eh? And the other was IH Fanboy, who has a trolling name, I suspect, and who was playing “gotcha,” i.e., he thought he had caught Jed Rothwell in a lie. But he had radically misread the Murray deposition.

      Simply making a mistake would not be trolling. Disagreement is not trolling (at least ordinary disagreement is not).

      You have ideas in your mind, Sam, that do not match reality. Now, maybe it is just a little sloppiness. This isn’t an academic paper. But Dewey did not say what you reported. And if Dewey is not a mindless slave of IH, doesn’t that whack the conspiracy theory upside the head? He and Darden are long-time friends, apparently. I don’t order my friends around.

      1. This is what Dewey said.

        Dewey Weaver Mar 10th 2017
        Replied to the thread Rossi vs. Darden developments – Part 2.
        I’ve been asked to tone it down on the blogs for a little while so Rossi wins that skirmish but I’ll leave you with this – find the Rossi SP posting from Feb 21 on JONP where, out of the blue, it gets posted that the Lugano reactor was made of…

        He was asked to tone it down
        for a little while by someone.
        He was back on Lenr forum
        the next day.Like I said he
        had to comment and reply
        to comments and was right
        in coming back on Lenr forum.

        1. Notice, Sam: what you cite now and what you wrote before don’t match. What he wrote did not prohibit commenting, and only referred to “a little while.” Check out “concern troll,” and reflect on it.

          1. Dewey Weaver
            Professional
            4 minutes ago
            New
            Planet Rossi doesn’t realize that Rossi’s lawyers have all of my emails as part of discovery production and that the privilege order covers IP emails. Planet Rossi’s attempts to assemble some type of footing and impeach others in all this mess are sad, silly yet are highly entertaining. How are they able to ignore the blatant deceptions by Rossi which Planet Earth can now see. And always remember – the dry powder in reserves for trial is staggering.

            Regarding the hot seat – Rossi and his lawyers already had their chance and it did not go very well for them. It was a great pleasure looking Rossi in the eye on numerous occasions and calling him a defacto liar in my deposition. I hope this fiasco ends before trial but really do look forward to testifying at trial if called. Bring it!

            Abd
            I wish they could have
            avoided the Courts.
            But the only chance for
            Dewey and company
            and Rossi and company
            and us to find out what
            really happened.

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