If I repeat it enough, it will become true

or, alternatively, if they didn’t get it the first time, if I keep claiming I proved it, surely they will recognize The Truth and agree with me.

This is the apparent position of Asocoli65 on LENR Forum, who keeps beating the same drum he has apparently beaten since 2011. Here is the latest incarnation of his idea:

Ascoli65 wrote:

And, again, could you explain me, please, how his [Rossi’s] geniality could have induced some “credentialled academics” who teach Physics in a prestigious University to unintentionally write in the calorimetric report that the steam was “checked to be completely dry” by using a “HP474AC probe”, an instrument which is not suited at that scope, and, above all, which didn’t appear in any of the many photos or video frames available after the January 14, 2011 demo?

To Ascoli, this was a blatantly obvious smoking gun, and that nobody else picked up on this proof of … of what? He is hinting that this is so preposterous that there must be some other dark force operating.

What’s the basis for his claim? Continue reading “If I repeat it enough, it will become true”

Conversations: Simon Derricutt 4

Again, Simon Derricut. My comments in indented italics.


Abd – some useful updates, but unless I’d been checking I wouldn’t have known they were there. Maybe a note in the header that there’s an update could be helpful.

I will, in the future, add a comment noting any post updates, so that people following the blog may get a notification.

It should be possible to come to a consensus of what data is available and at least to some extent as to how trustworthy it is. There are however a lot of words to go through, and I’m not going to go through the blogs to weed out the real information from the flames and misinformation by now since it hardly seems worth the effort.

It is a huge amount of work to do. However, that is about the only way to convert those mountains of dreck into something useful. I also know that anyone who actually does this will learn a great deal. If it is, itself, condensed and published, it will also benefit others. (The way I do such work, it is often itself long and not focused, because it is raw research, initially. It is then more work to boil it down to essences.) Continue reading “Conversations: Simon Derricutt 4”

And now for something completely different. Links!

The discussion on LENR Forum that I covered yesterday fell into a series of Planet Rossi trolls doing what PR trolls do: repeat the same stuff over and over, hoping it will stick. Sometimes, eventually, that stuff stands because nobody bothers to answer it Yet Again. Victory! Proven! Nobody Could Answer! So, bored by this and the constant temptation to point out how Stupid it all is, I noticed mention by a concern troll of a Marianne Macy article that I had not read. And that led to more articles, some I had not noticed before, some that I had, and some that I read now with new understanding. Join me in a ride through Reality, it’s fun. Continue reading “And now for something completely different. Links!”

Dewey Weaver and the Temple of Doom

Okay, the title may be meaningless. So sue me.

Because the recent IH disclosures have revealed the contract between Industrial Heat and Dewey Weaver, there has been much blogviation over this. Aha! they proclaim. We knew it! He is Paid by Industrial Heat!

But that has been obvious for a long time, that Dewey was working for Industrial Heat — in addition to being an investor in it. This has nothing to do with whether information from Dewey can be trusted or not, other than the obvious necessary caution. It means that the man probably knows some things that the rest of us don’t know. Anyone who will take all statements from someone in Dewey’s position as Gospel Truth would be foolish. Dewey makes mistakes, among other things, and then much of what he has written is clearly not factual, but judgment. Judgment is conclusory in nature, and it’s not difficult to tell the difference between testimony from knowledge and the expression of conclusions, though sometimes circumstances may be confused. I.e., I might say that X is true, but the reality — and I’d say this if asked — could be that So-and-so told me X is true, and I trust So-and-so. That is why it must always be possible to cross-examine witnesses, to tease out fact from conclusions.

In a legal matter it is up to the judge and/or the jury to come to conclusions. Witnesses provide fact as grist for that mill, and judges and juries assess the probity of testimony and its implications, and attorneys may present arguments for this or that interpretation, advancing the interests of their clients.

This — and the other blogs — is not a court, a brilliant observation which has been made by many. We are the peanut gallery. However, some people who read these blogs might be makers somewhere, somewhen, somehow. We are interested in and discuss Rossi v. Darden because it’s there, or because we have some axe to grind, or some critical interest to protect. What I find hilarious, in particular, are those who say, “this is all useless to discuss, because the court will decide,” and who then argue strongly for some position, often in ways blatantly contrary to the evidence available, and full of contempt for other views.

What’s true is that almost none of this discussion will have any influence on the outcome of Rossi v. Darden, but it may help us understand it.

(It is possible that some of us may come across something that was overlooked by the attorneys. It can happen. )

Most of the issues are already laid out well enough to make predictions. Such predictions are not certainties. There may be a Wabbit. If we are so lucky as to see a Wabbit, our entire perspective on life can change. But we don’t expect to see one when we get up in the morning, do we?

So, Dewey Weaver is being discussed on LENR Forum, and Peter Gluck, who wrote he was going to abstain from comment on LF, didn’t. We are not surprised.

Eric Walker pointed to the Industrial Heat Memorandum of Law that provided so much information about Deep River Ventures, i.e., Dewey’s LLC … so I’m starting with this, a rock tossed in the river. Splashes? Ripples? How deep is the river? Continue reading “Dewey Weaver and the Temple of Doom”

Conversations: Pweet

Pweet posted a comment, and it brings up some issues worthy of a blog post. We seem to be establishing a Conversations series here, creating connections and understandings. This will, I expect, expand and will greatly expand when we have more users here with Author privileges. Eventually, we will have a governing structure that is not Abd Says, but here is where we start. Every real journey starts Here, not in some imaginary place.

Before I cover Pweet’s comment, some history. Googling the name, besides a lot of porn (I have no idea why, except that the porn pages have thousands of words at the bottom to trick Google into displaying them), I found what may have been my best post ever to LENR-Forum, put up shortly before I was banned, as a response to Pweet speaks and Gluck responds. As can be expected at my age, I had forgotten about it, though I did immediately recognize it.

As usual with LENR Forum, what might be useful or cogent or thought-provoking is buried in the avalanche of dreck. There is no process for creating or measuring consensus, other than a crude upvote/downvote system that doesn’t sort posts, so to find anything of value takes massive work which mostly isn’t done. We could set up a rating system here that would allow finding the Best Posts on any forum, and that can be done with overall neutrality. However, that’s a suggestion from a chief, a tribal elder. Are there any Indians?

Looking for the original Ego Out posts, I came across one of the strong evidences that Rossi lies. So why not collect these? Rossi Lies.

Little by little, we go far. And for one of those massive Lomax diversions, see this page, which shows how blogs create rumors that are passed on as fact. I knew that aphorism from the Spanish, which he covers, but also from the Arabic, “shweya shweya.” Now, where were we?  Continue reading “Conversations: Pweet”

Conversations: Simon Derricutt 3

Simon again. Quoted in full, my comments in indented italics.

The only evidence that points to the 1MW having been produced is the ERV report, with the quantity of water turned to steam and the measured temperature of that steam. As has been noted many times, the data we’ve heard about doesn’t seem consistent with what might reasonably be expected as a set of real measurements, but it is nevertheless the data that exists.

It exists in a sense, yes. That is, there is a report, incompletely presented, just the data tables without explanatory material, and without attestation of any kind.  Continue reading “Conversations: Simon Derricutt 3”

Attracting flies with vinegar

For many years, I’ve tended to write reactively. This was powerful:: 

Powerful to a degree. What is more powerful is the deliberate creation of useful and/or attractive content. But still, I look around and take themes from what I see. And what is see is, often, Someone is Wrong on the Internet. My ontology tells me this is bullshit. I don’t even believe in Wrong. But, dammit! They are wrong, wrong, I tell you!

For two days I’ve been gathering a study of the posts of Dewey Weaver, and it’s taking a lot of time, for obvious reasons. The occasion was a repetition of old claims that Dewey is unreliable. Some of this is based on a claim that he is biased. Well, duh!!!

Of course he is biased, it would be absolutely amazing if he were not. But he is also knowledgeable, he is an IH insider, the only one we know about who is writing in the public forums. Dewey states a lot of opinion and judgment and what might be called bluster — though it might also be called knowledgeable prediction. I’ve been looking for fact, i.e., things that Dewey has written that are factual in nature, rather than judgmental. It is not difficult to discriminate. Bias can certainly appear in what facts — or alleged facts — one selects to mention, but it would be foolish to discard facts because they come from someone possibly biased, rather, the possible bias is simply another element in our process of filtering information. So has Dewey provided unreliable information? That is a question that can be answered, to a degree, with research.

That research, of course, distracts me from the All Important Latest Bullshit on the blogs. Then I look, and OMG! … yatta yatta. Continue reading “Attracting flies with vinegar”

Conversations: Simon Derricutt 2

Continuing the conversation:

(Abd comments in indented italics.)

Simon Derricutt wrote:

Abd – my memory runs a bit different than most, I think. When I was designing digital circuits I found I needed to know far more than my brain could actually hold, and of course the half-life of knowledge in electronics design was somewhere around 18 months then. I needed to have a lot of books (and later on CDs) open at the same time to be able to check on precise details of any particular component. I thus learnt to hold only the important points and an index in my head, and I really only needed to be able to find the information quickly. These days I tend to only note the important points and rely on a search to find the source data.

Of course. Especially as we age, holding a lot of information as readily accessible becomes more and more difficult. However, key concept: it is still there if it has been seen. Then intuition functions to bring up associations with it. It’s crucial to recognize the fuzziness of all this. Intuition provides indications based on that massive association engine, the human brain. Then we verify and confirm (or correct), and each time we do that, our “understanding” — a fuzzy concept, generally — becomes deeper.

As such, I noted the fact of the cloud-chamber experiment, and that it was stated at the time that the Nickel was the obvious source (tracks have one end on the Nickel) and that it decayed over a couple of hours. I will need to search for that source again. Krivit mentions it in your link, but not in the detail I remember. As you say, though, Piantelli did keep secrets – maybe in the hope of achieving a working system first. Since cloud-chambers were used initially as a quantitative test, some of the disclaimers seem a bit odd.

I cited the apparent original publication. In addition, as I mentioned, Krivit has it. There are two photos, showing two tracks, both originating in the nickel. The cloud chamber examination was two months after the experiment, so they would not have, in a short time, been able to see the decay you remember. I think others have assumed that the cloud chamber examination was prompt, so maybe you read this elsewhere. One of the problems in the field is a lack of clean-up. I worked on a Wikiversity resource where that could happen, but there has been, so far, little interest and participation. Posts on this blog can be cleaned up, but that is going to require wider participation. “Journalists” like Krivit are interested in the flash, not so much in building reliable resoruces; Krivit will sometimes add a note about an error, leaving what was based on it prominent and obvious (and in error) while the correction is obscure.

Maybe I’ve spent too much time reading comments on the blogs, but the general impression I get there at least is that something dramatic is needed to reverse the rejection.

Yes, that opinion is common. As to too much time, the harm is only if you believe what you read as accurate; even when the general sense is sound, the details are often off. I’ve often been accused of nit-picking, but if you’ve got nits, you’ve got lice. In an academic environment, courtesy would be to thank people for corrections! There has been a search for the dramatic for about 27 years. As my trainer would say, “How’s it workin’ for ya?”

Instead of accepting what we had, and then using ordinarily scientific techniques to study it, to characterize it, to create data that can be subjected to statistical analysis, etc., too many kept changing their protocols, looking for something better than what Nature was revealing. This created a vast pile of essentially anecdotal evidence.

Miles went beyond that (and so did McKubre and SRI). There is a lost performative in much of the thinking of the cold fusion community: convincing to whom? Once there was the idea of a vast rejection cascade, the mass of “mainstream scientists,” who must be convinced, a paradox was set up: a rejection cascade means that a general consensus has formed of bogosity, and such a consensus requires truly extraordinary evidence to overturn, and “extraordinary evidence” has been misunderstood to mean some specific demonstration that simply can’t be explained any other way than by a nuclear reaction. Yet such demonstrations have existed for many years. The vast majority of them are not reliable, i.e., there is no specific protocol to follow that will generate the effect, that is both convincing and easily replicable. If it is not easy to replicate, and with the expectation of bogosity, who will bother?

Absolutely, a reliable high-heat experiment that could be reduced to a reliable kit, if it is inexpensive, would manage the revolution. Got one? You mention the Nanor and a possible price of $30,000. If that is a fair price, this thing is far, far too expensive for something reported to generate a few milliwatts. Few would buy it, if any, but IH might — and, in fact, I would not be surprised to find out that they have already arranged independent testing. They are working with Hagelstein and the connection between Hagelstein and Swartz is close enough that Hagelstein would not talk with me, because Swartz. He did not explain, but it was obvious.

If a “believer” buys such a kit, tries it, and confirms heat, what then? The report would not be trusted, unless it was very unusual for a cold fusion report, and could be confirmed without buying another device. But if the kit comes with an NDA, this is useless (though a prohibition against dismantling it could be acceptable, if the heat levels are high enough).

This is the bottom line: Plan A does not require public support, it basically asks us to do nothing until the Home Depot product appears, or the like, a true, available, commercial product. So great. I can enjoy the weather or whatever, politics, how about carbohydrates in human diet?

Relying on Plan A is disempowering! It more or less assumes that nothing can be done, but someone (Rossi? Who?) will save us. If what Fleischmann thought was correct, i.e., that it would take a Manhattan-scale project to commercialize cold fusion, we might be waiting a long time. Who is going to invest billions without a solid science foundation?

Pointing out how accurately P+F could measure heat flows, or the correlation in Miles, just leaves the sceptics still sceptical.

Again, by being fuzzy about whom we would seek to convince, we leave ourselves up the creek without a paddle. First of all, if we care about science, we must be skeptics. It’s essential to the method. Secondly, it is not necessary to try to change the minds of skeptics. Behind this is an idea that they are wrong, and if you believe someone is wrong, you will almost certainly have damaged access to them. What can be done is to ask skeptics to review evidence, to suggest experimental tests, to help design good work. Some of us have many years of study of the field. When we see a skeptical objection, we may rush to correct errors. Far more powerful is the Socratic method, i.e., bring evidence before the skeptic, asking for review.

Most of the well-known skeptics cannot handle this. And trying to convince them is mostly a waste of time; what they write can be useful in exposing the array of proposed artifacts or errors. The goal of convincing skeptics leaves us out of the equation. Rather, we would properly be constantly looking to prove ourselves wrong. If we fail, maybe some skeptic can help us! I’ve been reviewing some old discussions, where Thomas Clarke was very active. To me, he appears to be a genuine skeptic, not a pseudoskeptic. We need more people like him…

It is not necessary to convince the mainstream. What is necessary is to convince editors at a mainstream publication that a foundational paper is worth publishing. That’s a specific group of people. While it is possible to create political pressure, that is not where to start, because any attempt to try to force someone to abandon their prejudices will create back-pressure, resistance. It is necessary to convince, for a given project, a single funding source, and such exist that are not attached to cold fusion being bogus.

What I saw, within a couple of years of beginning my study of LENR, is that there was little effort going into foundational science, and heat/helium was occasionally mentioned, often without the critical correlation information. The Miles work is apparently reliable. Without requiring a reliable heat-generating protocol, it is only necessary to have some heat, enough for significance, and then the ratio can be estimated.

This was most missed: Huizenga recognized the importance of Miles. Instead of imagining Huizenga with fangs, that demon who attempted to destroy cold fusion, we needed to underscore what he had done. By that time, the early 1990s, the rejection cascade was entrenched. But why wasn’t there more follow-up to Miles. I certainly don’t have the whole story, but much of it was politics, and specifically a strategic decision made by Pons and Fleischmann. For starters, the helium results they had seemed to negate their theory of a bulk reaction. The appearance is that they torpedoed the Morrey collaboration that could have established cold fusion, firmly, by 1990. Why? The only reliable result (the ratio of heat to heluim) in the field was largely ignored, and was still being ignored when I recognized it from reading Storms. I began conversations with him, and he agreed to write a paper on it.

He submitted the paper to Naturwissenschaften, and they came back and said that they would prefer a review of the field. He then wrote his 2010 review. I think it was a mistake (though easily understandable). A focused paper on heat/helium would have been far more powerful; instead that clear message was diluted by a mass of details, and the same thing had happened in the 2004 U.S. DoE review. Hagelstein et al through everything and the kitchen sink at the panel, apparently assuming that the weight of the papers — it was huge — would cause all skeptical objection to collapse, but the crucial information was buried in all that detail. Most of it was targeted to there being “something nuclear.”

And people still argue that way. It’s fuzzy and unconvincing, except for someone who undertakes seriously independent study, and to do this objectively probably takes years.

But my Current Science paper often elicits positive responses from skeptics. Essentially, they agree that this is worth further investigation, and that is a huge breakthrough! It only takes a few to expand understanding of LENR.

The cold fusion community is very poorly organized. Suppose some graduate student’s thesis is rejected because it related to cold fusion. This actually happened (in 1990?). How quickly would we have pickets on-site? Is there a community consensus about the most important necessary investigations? Short Answer: No.

(But there is a relatively broad agreement that the heat/helium work is worth doing. To be sure, when I first started chatting up this idea, there was objection, basically on the level of “we already know this so it is a waste of time.” However, it was not — and is not — necessary to convince everyone. In the end, it is the funding source that must be convinced. Do we have professional fund-raisers involved? Not until Industrial Heat, AFAIK!)

The reason that Thermacore didn’t repeat their test was that they were not certain whether there was a chance of a fission-type explosion, and I presume Brian Ahern will run his test at a sufficient distance, just in case it isn’t a benign meltdown. You are right in some ways that it won’t help, but if it works it will change the atmosphere from a refusal to believe to an acceptance that there is a real effect.

There is a good chance that it will work. I predict that, unless other aspects of the context change, it will change only one aspect of LENR community opinion: the reputation of NiH will go up. It will have no impact, in itself, on mainstream opinion, unless there is far more there than a single meltdown (i.e., exact replication!). If there is major heat, then a Miles-class study might identify the ash. If Storms is correct, the major ash would be deuterium, tricky to measure, but with a lot of heat, it could be done.

Ideally, if Ahern cannot confirm LENR with the Thermacore experiment, perhaps he can identify artifact. That would be quite useful, and too little work of this kind has been done. We must stop thinking of “negative replications” as bad. The data is golden, it is only premature conclusions which create problems.

It may make possible the years of work then needed to explore the parameter space. This, I think, is the value of an “impressive” demonstration at this moment. I think “dramatic” may be a better description. I thus think Brian’s experiment is actually useful at this time, though earlier on it may have backfired by giving Rossi a peg to hang his story on.

It’s speculative, Simon. It’s Brian’s time to spend, and possibly his money. To progress, it is not necessary to convince everyone. Key, for me, is prioritizing what will then loosen up funding and support. A search for Massive Heat could be very, very expensive, much more expensive than fundamental research. However, the same group as is doing heat/helium also has a planned program with exploding wires, prior work having shown an ability to quickly test materials for LENR in this way. Color me skeptical, but … they do know what they are doing!

You are right that I’m hoping for something to convince scientists that there is something real to be investigated, and that thus there will be more tolerance of those that do investigate and less rejection of results that are against current theory. Back in 2011, when I was not convinced by Rossi, I spent around 3 months reading lenr-canr.org (thanks, Jed!) and ended up considering that the effect itself was real and worth investigation.

Most who engage in that long-term study come to that conclusion. Consider that half the 2004 U.S. DoE panel considered that the evidence for an anomalous heat effect was conclusive. Conclusive. That’s a big word! And that panel was unanimous in recommending research on fundamental issues. So, that being 13 years ago, what happened? Bottom line: we did not hire APCO. We sat around like victims, bemoaning that nobody would listen to us. Many of the old-timers are wallowing in despair. It’s embarrassing! My message has been, hey, guys, you won! How about starting to behave as if you did?

How about the generosity of victors?

Rossi’s control-system was crazy.

Well, depends on the purpose, doesn’t it? Given the massive appearance of at least some kind of fraud, his control system worked for him. It made no sense for a commercial system, but we don’t know exactly how the 1 MW plant control system worked. It had the potential of controlling cooling, which is what would be needed. I would imagine, as well, thermal plugs that would open at overtemperature to overcool, rapidly, a reactor, in case the normal control failed. The reactors have to have an insulating space, to allow the reactor temperature to be higher than the coolant temperature. A thermal plug could flood that space, it might destroy the reactor, maybe, but better than an explosion.

Boilers are dangerous, as Jed has been pointing out. A 1 MW plant would be very, very dangerous, making one without having years of experience, bad idea. Rossi’s whole 1 MW plan was grandiose, and obviously so. It was not good business, at all. Unless the goal were fraud!

Mitch Swartz did run LENR 101 courses at MIT, and demonstrated the system running. Yes, it was proprietary and he wanted to make money from solving it, but in the course of that he’s also produced students who believe LENR is real because they’ve seen it, and thus there’s a better chance of one of them getting a good theory that is crazy enough to be true. That’s the advantage of the newly-minted physicists where they haven’t been told something is impossible.

I’ve heard Mitchell speak. He is quite different from, say, McKubre, or Hagelstein, for that matter. Both are cautious. Swartz is flamboyant and dramatic, he has a story about how horrible the U.S. Patent Office is. The actual history deviates a bit from how he tells it. It is not clear what the audience was for those courses, many came from outside. Someone who “believes LENR is real because they’ve seen it,” though, is, from those demonstrations, inadequately cautions and would be unable to handle community pressure, because, as McKubre has said, watching excess heat is like watching paint dry. At the level of heat involved with those demonstrations, there really is almost nothing to see, and then one must trust the analysis of the demonstrator.

It is not difficult to overcome the “impossible” meme. The simplest way is to ask what it is that is impossible. Imaginary conversation, using Nate Hoffman’s Old Metallurgist and Young Scientist:

OM: You say that cold fusion is impossible. What does that mean?

YS: Fusion at room temperature is impossible!

OM: Why?

YS: The coulomb barrier.

OM: The coulomb barrier must be overcome for the nuclei to get close enough to fuse. Is that it?

YS: Yes. To get close enough, an incoming nucleus must have enough energy to climb that barrier.

OM: Yes. Easy to understand. Now, what about muon-catalyzed fusion?

[Watch as eyes betray internal confusion, unless they have extensive experience with this process.]

YS: That’s not the same! There are no muons present!

OM: How do you know?

YS: Well, they would have been reported!

OM: Yes, I’d think so. But you just said LENR was impossible at low temperatures! Was that accurate?

YS: Obviously I had forgotten about muon-catalyzed fusion.

OM: Okay, we are now talking about possibilities, not realities as such. It is possible that there is some form of catalysis other than with muons?

YS: I can’t imagine it.

OM: Right! However, can you say that it is impossible?

If, at this point, they insist that something unknown is impossible, see if there is something else useful to talk about, because they are absolutely nailed to a pseudoscientific claim, unverifiable. Humiliating them by rubbing their nose in it will not make any friends. However, many scientists at this point would acknowledge possibility, but might still assert improbability, with a fairly good argument:

YS: If this existed, we would have seen evidence for it already.

And at that point, one takes them through the existing evidence. If they start wanting to see proof, tell them that proof is for fanatics, that science runs on the preponderance of the evidence, and begins when we start to actually look at evidence rather than simply shoving ideas and beliefs around.

Mills is not claiming LENR because his theory says it isn’t, and if LENR is shown to happen then his patents are only worth the paper they are written on. I think that some of his measurements (maybe a lot of them) are probably good but that the explanation is not right. I suspect he’s got part of the puzzle.

Frankly, I have only expectation from having watched Mills for years, and I know that such expectations can be different from reality. I’m not considering investing in BLP, so I don’t have any need to know at all. I know that LENR is real, heat/helium nails it, as to any reasonable preponderance of the evidence. So research into a reality is useful, regardless of whatever happens with Mills and hydrino theory.

One of the hazards of coming to accept the reality of LENR in the face of what appears as scientific consensus is that we become, then, more vulnerable to unreasonable acceptance of other wild claims. However, this is the thing about apparent consensus. It is usually right, or at least partially right. We tend to focus on the exceptions, which certainly exist. However, social mechanisms do not need to always be right, it is enough if they, overall, increase survival efficiency. Then we have faculties for dealing with exceptions, but most people are not trained in them. It can take training!

I’m maybe not the best person in persuasion, since I just present what I think is true and why. As such, when I’m explaining something against what they believe, it requires them to think about things. Maybe that’s why my Free Work idea has languished for a while….

Ya think? Simon, there is a whole ontology and body of practice for dealing with transformation. Your idea is reasonably common among smart people, smart but untrained. It is disempowering, as you may realize.

If you present what you think is true, your presentation will be, frankly, half-assed. The first step is not our expression of “truth,” because that’s a fantasy, not reality. The first step is listening! In my training, convincing someone of something is actually rejected as a goal. One of my program leaders called it “slimy.” The goal is to present opportunities for a person to make a choice, hopefully an informed choice. Believing that we know what is right for others (“the truth”) is arrogant! However, you do have your experience to share, as it may be appropriate, and you will know far better what is appropriate if you have “listened with loud ears.” 

Open doors and widows [sic]? A nice mind-picture.

Thanks. Words can do that. Widows also open, but in a different way.

AFAIK we still don’t have an exact solution for a 3-body gravitational problem except in cases of 3-way symmetry. There are now so many quasi-particles around that a solution for solid-state has to be a numerical approximation, and maybe even then we don’t have enough variables tagged.

Bottom line, and it’s quite simple: what we don’t know is huge. In the training, a circle is drawn, the “circle of all knowledge.” Then there is a small wedge drawn, a pie slice. “What we know that we know.” And then another slice, next to it, “What we know that we don’t know.” And then the rest of the circle (most of it) is labelled with DKDK. What we don’t know that we don’t know, and it is then said that this is where transformation comes from.

Then the training proceeds to demonstrate this, in many ways, and in extended training, it is not uncommon to see what would appear as miracles, unreasonable results arise anyway, etc. At no point is one asked to “believe in” anything. That is not how it works.

“The point is not at all to convince the person that cold fusion is actually happening, only perhaps that (1) it is not impossible, (2) there is evidence for it, (3) the idea is testable, and (4) tests are under way, fully funded.”
That’s a good plan.

Thanks. I thought so, and so did others, who encouraged me.

At the time, I noted the LR115 but I think you also had CR39 available if required. Long time ago, so I said CR39 now as the better-known sensor material that I could remember. Still, I couldn’t see the point of replicating the experiment myself just to be able to say I’d done it.

Nobody has replicated the SPAWAR neutron findings, so there is another purpose. I only have a little CR-39, quite old, that was given to me. It requires development at higher temperatures with more concentrated NaOH, it’s more dangerous. Yes, it’s better known, but LR-115 tracks are crystal clear, because a full track is clear, bright, against a red background. It’s a thin detector layer, much more precise, and then stacking is possible. I’ve thought about experimenting with the basic CR-39 material to make my own detector layers and perhaps color them. Again, this is something that could be done at home. Basically the material can be dissolved, I think it is in MEK, and then that can be evaporated. One would simply want good ventilation, MEK fumes are not safe.

One advantage of CR-39 is apparently a broader detection range for particle energies. LR-115 has a narrower range. (If a particle’s energy is higher, the energy deposited per unit length goes down, until high energy particles leave no track. In my images of alpha tracks, they are a long cone, and the fat end is where the particle was almost stopped.)

For Rossi’s systems to self-loop, there would need to be a heat-to-electricity conversion in order to supply the high-grade heat needed. A Sterling engine would do this better than a steam engine. The claimed COP was big-enough to do this. Controlled (and rapid) cooling would be needed as well, but nothing too difficult to design.

There is a much easier way for self-loop, that does not require electrical conversion, if it is acceptable to have powered start-up, and that is taking the fuel into self-sustain, but controlled cooling above self-sustain temperature, but below the point of damage. I.e., if the reactor is below self-sustain temperature, cooling is off, the reactor is heated to start, presumably electrically, though gas-fired would certainly be possible. As it reaches self-sustain temperature, and passes it, no more heating should be needed, input power would go to zero (except for control systems, of course, and those should not use much power, it is only imagining that it’s needed to heat the reactor that leads to much higher power needs).

The Rossi claim that he needs to keep the reactor temperature low, because of the risk of runaway, indicates that there is a self-sustain temperature that Rossi is staying short of. With good insulation, heat generated remains and increases the reactor temperature. Obviously, if cooling remains constant, at self-sustain, the reactor would run away, because control through heating would be lost at this temperature. So, obviously, one needs tightly controlled cooling. I thought of an array of mirrors that would reflect heat back at the reactor, but that could be rotated to let heat through. However, pressurized water cooling could be simple. At any time the cooling can be increased to take the reactor below self-sustain and it would shut down. If necessary, the water could be — with suitable venting! — brought into contact with the reactor chamber itself, very rapidly cooling it through flash boiling.

Basically, if the fuel exists that would behave as needed, engineering a self-powered reactor should not be difficult. The problems are with reliability of the reaction itself. If there is a fuel that would work, for how long would it work? For “proof” purposes, it needs to work long enough to generate enough energy to be well beyond the possibility of chemistry. That is not necessary for science, though it would obviously be desirable.

For IH, once I understood that they didn’t necessarily believe Rossi but were instead forcing him to reveal what he had, their strategy made sense.

Right. What they did was allow the possibility of it being real. If they had “believed” that it was fraud, 

IIRC, Miles’ experiment took around a year to do. As such, I didn’t really expect it to be replicated even with the prospect of better accuracy since there has been a lot of thinking since.

Well, the difficult thing is getting the reaction to happen at all. The actual heat/helium measurements were not so time-consuming. I don’t expect exact replication of Miles, as such. Miles has already been confirmed in a more general sense, i.e., electrolytic PdD. Remarkably, a Miles outlier, his PdCe cathode, shows that there may be unknown sensitivities. I hope that PdCe is eventually tried and that, if anodic etching does not release helium expected from the heat, that the cell is thoroughly analyzed. However, I would not suggest any altered cathodes for initial work. The point is to build up data that can be correlated across many samples. Exactly what they do will depend on the methods and equipment available. Miles had a sampling protocol, samples were sent off blind. 

For Larsen, W-L theory predicts things that aren’t seen in the experiments, with neutron-activation being the big problem.

It’s nice to know there are some grad-students on the job. It has seemed that for the most part the experiments are by old people who thus can’t be sacked for having heretical ideas. Plan B looks pretty good. We may not see the flowering of it in our lifetime, but there’s always the chance of a lucky breakthrough from one of those grad-students who has an inspired guess and is allowed to test it out, since the field is real science.

I would not advise that, frankly. However, this would be between the grad student and their advisor. The grad student’s career is on the line. I wouldn’t want to base that on a guess. On the other hand, if there is valuable information that would be gained by testing the guess, maybe. By the way, searching for the Grand Artifact imagined to be behind cold fusion reports could be valuable work.

Discussions like this are good at exposing what I don’t know. Useful but a bit public. As far as possible, though, I don’t base my opinions on belief but on data, so if I find out new data my opinions may change. Alternatively, finding out that what I thought was good data may not be (as in Piantelli’s cloud-chamber) can also change opinion. That’s maybe the benefit of that post-it wall, in that such variations in how sure we are about some data can be graded and moved around as needed.

Simon is welcome to write me privately. The Piantelli cloud-chamber data is interesting but simply not conclusive.

Conversations: Simon Derricutt

This comment by Simon Derricutt is worth review in detail. So, below, my comments are in indented italics.


In reply to Abd ulRahman Lomax.

Abd – I suspect the Journal of Scientific Consensus exists as Wikipedia. Generally, Wikipedia is pretty good at stating what is generally-agreed, and where there’s disagreement there will be a lot of editing going on as the factions try to get their view to be the one that’s visible.

Ah, favorite topic! We then cover many issues. Continue reading “Conversations: Simon Derricutt”

LENR Forum messcellany

But first, an interesting post from a newbie:

WMartin wrote:

[from the point of view of a pipefitter, something is off about “the pictures of the conex holding the ecat”].

Yes. And Rossi vigorously excluded people with experience from his demonstrations, this was all obvious by the end of 2011. “Conex” is a shipping box, it would refer to the storage containers used by Rossi for the 1 MW plant. Martin did not point to the photos. However, his comment is devastating. Something is way off about the “1 MW Plant,” this is merely one more piece of junk on the pile.

Now, to the mess. Ascoli65 brought up some old stuff. The apparent theme is that Rossi is a tool of nefarious forces. Continue reading “LENR Forum messcellany”

If our knowledge expands, is that “backpedalling”?

A remarkable post on LENR Forum — and posts like this are part of the reason that most scientists stay away.

IH Fanboy wrote:

[17 alleged examples of Dewey or Jed “misinformation.”] Here, I look at them, having known for a long time the tactic of presenting “overwhelming evidence” that vanishes when examined. Is that happening here?

Conclusion: IH Fanboy was creating noise, personally attacking Dewey and Jed, in a highly misleading way, with the effect of distracting from new information from Dewey about the lawsuit.

Continue reading “If our knowledge expands, is that “backpedalling”?”

Living in a fog

Planet Rossi is enshrouded in fog. Some of the fog may be deliberately produced, of the nature of FUD; however, much of it is simply wishful thinking that interprets evidence in certain ways, and is not even aware of the interpretation, it imagines it is declaring fact.

The Request for Hearing filed by Rossi on Tuesday is seeking a Protective Order. The Motion is extremely brief. The title:

NOTICE OF HEARING (add-ons – to be heard if time permits) 

And then the text is in a box, unusual as well:

Plaintiffs’ Motion for Protective Order As to the Depositions of J.M. Products, Inc., United States Quantum Leap, LLC, Fulvio Fabiani, and The Boeing Company

There is no clue what this is about. There are, as discussed, two kinds of Protective Order. The one that there is a stipulation about is about protecting disclosed information, already disclosed. This may be different, this may be attempting to prevent information from being disclosed, and, if so, it does make sense that this would not be described in public, more than it has been.

On E-Cat World, Frank Acland posted:

I believe this is the first time I have heard mention of Boeing in connection with Rossi, and Boeing has not been brought up in the court case until now. The only possible connection that I can think of is that Rossi has said in the past that he had been doing some kind of research involving a jet engine, and there was some kind of connection with an aerospace company — but as usual he was pretty vague about it all.

It sounds like whatever the depositions here are, that Rossi’s team is seeking a protective order, which means they don’t want the information in the depositions to be made public. So we might not find out what Boeing’s involvement might be. But it’s interesting to see them mentioned.

This was reasonable speculation.

Ged wrote:

We know Rossi was investigating the use of the QuarkX output for jet engines. Boeing most likely would have just consulted Rossi on what output, tolerance, and other design conditions would be necessary to work with different jet engine designs, and seen the data regarding all that. Maybe they even went as far as doing simulations. This would explain why Boeing is appearing on the Leonardo’s third parties’ side of the table.

What I notice is “Leonardo’s third parties’ side of the table.” There is no indication of Boeing being on “Rossi’s side.” Rossi previously opposed subpoenas for uninvolved parties (ie., his bank, and the telephone service provider).

 barty wrote:

According to Dewey Weaver (investor in IH and good friend of Thomas Darden) Boeing was testing the E-Cat together with IH: (LENR Forum link).

Well done, barty. Straight information, clearly attributed, including the affiliation of Dewey. How this was taken:

Ged wrote:

This is the first we have heard of this… Dewey is also extremely biased (monetarily and personally! Can’t get more biased than that) and has already heavily and intentionally mislead with statements about this case many times before, as we have seen as more data is released (as well as used absurd ignorance/hyperbol like the place melting and the heat being visible from space).

That’s a personal attack without evidence. “…. heavily and intentionally mislead.” I have never seen an example of that. Dewey is not a careful witness, writing like a scientist. He is, as stated, a friend of Darden and an investor — and a consultant for Industrial Heat. This is not any secret, and it’s obvious. Dewey has strong opinions. However, this would be a simple fact, the relationship of IH and Boeing. (The place melting would be hyperbole; it merely would get too hot for human habitation, if a megawatt were being dissipated in that warehouse without heat handling equipment, so … what was “misleading” about a little hyperbole, easily recognized as such or at least marginal? Some stuff might have melted, in fact, with a megawatt. Don’t carry a chocolate bar into the place! I don’t recall seeing that statement, but Dewey wrote quite a lot on Mats’ blog and elsewhere. “Visible from space” is quite possible, for a megawatt dissipated in a warehouse. Depends on what one was looking with, of course, but that much heat should be visible in the IR from a satellite, and, in fact, it is quite possible that IH purchased such images instead of hiring a helicopter, which is what I’d thought they might have done. If Dewey said “visible from space,” I’d certainly consider it possible! It makes sense, but not to someone who will knee-jerk reject anything from such a biased source.

In short, I don’t believe him or anyone till we get more actual information.

There is no basis for considering it a lie. It’s testimony, “information.” Sure, one may want to see corroboration, but if we consider the side Ged is arguing on, the constant flow of disinformation from Rossi, with a series of clear lies, exposed by uncontroverted evidence, and this comment about Dewey stands out in its full ridiculousness. Sure. Wait and see … but meanwhile, what is stronger, baseless speculations or actual testimony from someone likely to know?

Could be Boeing just made or leased some important piece of equipment and that is the extent of their involvement, or gave some consulting not directly related to the E-cat (like consulting on how to build a jet engine), and much less than actually testing one. Considering they are showing up on Rossi’s side and not being brought out by IH, that also is suggestive (could be they are the ones behind JMP in that case, that is how baseless we can speculate with such meager info on this surprise appearance).

One could speculate endlessly, it is always possible. However, none of these are at all reasonable in the sense of being substantially likely. Further, Rossi has actually commented on this, and this more or less nails it.

It’s hilarious: his attorneys have told him over and over, he claims, not to comment on the case, but …. he does.


    • Darius

      Dr Rossi, Now there comes a new claim that Boeing tested the Ecat for/with IH, and it did not work for them, were you present during this demonstration?

    • Andrea Rossi

      Darius:
      I never knew of this demo and I do not know with which apparatus it has been done. I apprehended of it during the litigation. The replications and tests I have been informed of from September 2013 through February 2016 are the ones on the base of which Cherokee Fund Partners-IH have collected 250 millions in UK and China. No further comment.
      Warm Regards,
      A.


Now, Rossi lies, so we cannot assume this is true. However, take it straight: Rossi did not know of the relationship with Boeing “until the litigation.” This matches Dewey’s story, this was between IH and Boeing. Then, of course, Rossi introduces his meme about $250 million from UK and China, which has, so far, no support. He continues the drumbeat about Cherokee being involved, when it has been Industrial Heat from the beginning. Yes, Darden got entree by being Cherokee principals, but Cherokee would have no business investing in Rossi. This was something Darden and Vaughn wanted to do, personally — and obviously.

Now, this is fascinating: If Rossi doesn’t know anything about the testing (probably not “demo”)  — and I would expect IH to have arranged fully independent testing, with Rossi not present, very much with Rossi not present! — then why a Protective Order motion?

This was last-minute, tacked into today’s hearing. If there is a difficult issue, I’d expect a temporary Order while they argue it.

One thing is clear from the Rossi comment, assuming he is not lying. This was not about Rossi and Boeing collaborating in some way. All that speculation was just typical Planet Rossi, as Dewey pointed out on LENR Forum:

Dewey wrote:

Bob – they’ll continue to create alternate realities as long as they possibly can. Fake news is real news on Planet Rossi.


Update, February 10, 2017:

“Darius” asked again.


Darius
February 9, 2017 at 1:34 PM
Dr Rossi, According to the source on LENRForum, IH did in fact present a ecat to Boeing and that it did not work. That would seem highly unusal that the priciple engineer was not part of such an important presentation?

Andrea Rossi
February 9, 2017 at 6:45 PM
Darius:
No comment.


Rossi deletes spam and other garbage. It’s clear that, at the very least, he approves what he wants to be seen. Most observers seem to have concluded that many posts on JONP are sock puppets, i.e., Rossi himself.

Here, he makes an argument that would be typical for Rossi. How could one expect the ecat to work without Rossi being present? An easy answer: of course not, since it never has worked without Rossi Grease.

If Dewey is correct, IH asked Rossi to assist with their work to verify the technology, and Rossi refused, being too busy with the “test under way.” What Dewey has claimed now is that they asked or allowed Boeing to do their own verification. This would not be a “presentation.” Presentations are what Rossi has done for years. He’s put on a show, a “demonstration.” But what everyone sane wanted, and a real commercial effort would absolutely need, would be devices that can be made and work according to clear instructions (such as a Patent!), not with Rossi Grease.

This is so obvious that it’s a complete wonder that Rossi supporters manage to show their faces from time to time. MrSelfSustain just changed his user name on LENR Forum to THEDEBATEISUSELESS, and then dropped a LANCB message.

Rossi Motion for Protective Order

135.0_Notice_of_hearing Rossi motion for Protective Order re 3rd P defendants’ depositions. (Hearing scheduled Thursday February 9, 2017)

Plaintiffs’ Motion for Protective Order As to the Depositions of J.M. Products, Inc., United States Quantum Leap, LLC, Fulvio Fabiani, and The Boeing Company

This strikes me as quite unusual. There is a Protective Order Agreement in place. It allows a disclosing party to label disclosures (and depositions) as Protected, which are then governed by special rules. Normally, it is the disclosing party that designates material as protected. However, there is a provision that allows any party to designate material as protected. However, this motion might not be about that kind of Protective Order. It is possible that this is an attempt to prevent certain questions from being asked in depositions. An example was produced on ECW of a case where a shareholder in a plaintiff company — not a party to the dispute — was to be deposed by defendant action, and the court agreed with the plaintiff that this was way overboard intrusive, probably a fishing expedition. But we don’t know, and some people are inventing interpretations not supported by any evidence so far. Continue reading “Rossi Motion for Protective Order”

Get out of the new road if you can’t lend a hand

Among many other things, I was a folksinger, and strong in my repertoire was The Times They Are A-Changin’. The words are worth reviewing.

Yesterday, I published Age, the New Age, Believers, and Peter Gluck. It was a series of observations about LENR-Forum and the interaction there of Dewey Weaver and Peter Gluck. Dewey was frank with Peter, and Peter didn’t like it one bit. I was also frank with Peter, here, and ditto.

We are both aging, as are others, and there are some who hate being reminded of it, especially as age begins to affect how we relate to others. None of this should be any surprise. None of us get out of this place alive.


The aging of LENR scientists, and the effects of that, is a no-touch issue, and because of that, nothing is done, it being believed, apparently, that aging is like race, nothing can be done about it, so bringing it up is terminally rude. But plenty can be done, often. I have not been willing to give up. Not surprisingly, this post stirred up a shitstorm on LF. All of this reveals community dysfunction (and a few hints of function). Instead of starting a new post, I will document the response on LF: Get out of the new road. The original post, so far unedited:


Continue reading “Get out of the new road if you can’t lend a hand”

Breakdowns create breakthroughs

On LENR Forum, Rigel wrote:

Mods, a humble request. Let these words stand. Let us clean up our own mess. Strong people have strong opinions. Please

This was after some extensive flame warring and mutual recriminations, of which a small part was discussed yesterday on And now for something completely different.

Bob then did something rare enough to be remarkable. He admitted error, here and on LF.

IH Fanboy responded:

I must say, Abd is one of a kind. Looks like we have recursive forums. Perhaps someone should start a new one that critiques Abd’s, and so on, and so forth.

Thanks, IHFB. Continue reading “Breakdowns create breakthroughs”

And now for something completely different

or same old, same old. Academic discussion has a basic rule: quotations should be attributed and accurate. If paraphrasing is used, quotation marks should not be used to imply exact quotations. If words are omitted, they should be shown by ellipsis. I attempt to follow these rules, and here we see an example of what happens when one does not.

Here, there was a quotation error that was then surprisingly persistent, but eventually, the author recognized his error and corrected it, see the Update.

Continue reading “And now for something completely different”

Age, the New Age, Believers, and Peter Gluck

After the new software version was installed on LENR Forum, the number of comments per page was increased to 30. This, of course broke all incoming links to comments as paged (sometimes done when there was a series of comments of interest at some point). More about this below. In my last post, I wrote about Planet Rossi; some users protesting about being identified with Planet Rossi are objecting to it as rude. However, this is a classic case of calling a spade a spade, i.e., pointing out the obvious. “Planet Rossi” does not mean, in itself, “collection of idiots.” However, there appears to be a high density of those willing to continue expressing preposterous positions, as if they were perfectly reasonable, while objecting to others pointing this out.

Here, Peter Gluck writes in response to Dewey Weaver. This is a long-term blogger on LENR arguing with someone who has actually supported LENR research with his own money, time, and effort. I find it of interest to review. Peter is, of course, welcome to comment, even though he normally rejects detailed, evidenced comments as being too long.

Continue reading “Age, the New Age, Believers, and Peter Gluck”

Planets and world-views

I think that Dewey Weaver coined the term “Planet Rossi.” He was referring to Rossi fans, and the implication is that these have some sort of common world-view. I picked it up, because it’s a convenient and relatively non-judgmental way of referring to an obvious constellation of opinions, beliefs, memes, often traceable to Rossi Says.

Planet MrSelfSustain
IH Fanboy

Continue reading “Planets and world-views”

OMG! An *actual* conversation based on knowledge!

I saw a great post by Alain Coetmeur on lenr-forum. I looked back a little and found cogent comments from Eric Walker and H.G., but the conversation sprouted like the lotus, in muck from Axil, a Reliable Source of strong opinion using snow-blower scientific word salad. Continue reading “OMG! An *actual* conversation based on knowledge!”