Hard to disagree with this part of your post. What set some people off is when probabilities are dismissed and statements of fact are thrown around.Enginerd wrote: <snip>
Sometimes it is helpful to consider probability. What we call scientific knowledge today is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty. Some of them are most unsure; some of them are nearly sure; but none is absolutely certain. We all take chances, we all operate based on probability. Some things, when the probability is weighed in the balance, seem much less likely to be true. Rossi claims to have invented the greatest thing since the invention of fire. Fine. That would be cool. Wake me when he provides indisputable evidence for his claim. Till then, we are dealing with a religious belief, and I'm not interested.
My POV is that if Rossi is proven to lie and contradict himself it does not necessarily follow (with the information publicly available) that his invention is a definite scam. Again we get into probabilities and attempt to predict the truth from behavior patterns. Is it likely that he is scamming -- it is easy to make a strong case for that, and every falsehood, obfuscation, and delays adds weight to that and makes the Rossi story far less interesting. Alternate explanations still exist. E.g. the guy is fooling himself; or, he has a limited and unexplained exothermic reaction; measurement errors. Even if the estimated probability for these alternate explanations are very low, it has not yet collapsed to zero. Once cannot make that leap without uncontroversial, hard evidence, of which we still lack. Thus one cannot factually say that his device = IS = fraudulent.
This is a pretty simple point and basic logic -- and what makes me amused with the energy that is put into attacking Kiteman's posts (and the inverse). Amazing there is such argument about a quibble.
As for the 50kg shielding, I personally am interested in that detail -- if only to fuel my own internal probability meter on Rossi's device.