Crawdaddy wrote: Bleating about Rossi being a crook is unproductive and is logically flawed, but very easy to do, it is a facile argument.
No, it's not logically flawed. Someone who is willing to purchase a phoney academic degree is not to be trusted, and Tom is right--there is not enough data about the experiment for Rossi to have credibility here. I agree that it's pretty impossible to grant 17kW output and think you can find that in spurious sources like heat from the room entering the calorimeter, but we don't actually have reason to believe the report to begin with, because Rossi is not trustworthy. If he wants people to believe his tests, he needs to provide the fantastic amount of missing data as well as some kind of checks as to why he ought to be trusted.
Try to keep in mind, that people don't generally believe the Rowan 50 kW BLP reactor results, despite they were open to public inspection for more than two years, and have dozens of professors and students as witnesses to the methodology. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Rossi hasn't even begun to provide that sort of evidence.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
Skipjack wrote:My biggest problem was that the output temperature during the Levi- test was basically room temperature. Without knowing the temperature in the environment, how much of that might have contributed to the heating of the water? I dont know. Nobody knows, because very little information has been published and/or critical measurements have not been made.
As a practicing research scientist who applies the scientific method in the design and manufacture of submicroscopic optoelectronic devices on a daily basis, I would like to point out the contrast between this statement and your previous post.
Your biggest concern, cited above, is not a valid objection to the 18hour test. In fact the temperature of the room could be 50C and the effect on the output temperature would not be altered significantly. A true scientist would convince themselves of the validity of their concerns before assigning relevance to something as trivial and unimportant as room temperature.
The only explanation consistent with the reported facts of the 18hour test is Levi actively engaging in fraud or legitimate ecat function.
The observation of 40C output water and the use of a flowmeter to measure the water is not consistent with honest error.
On the topic of science based inquiry.
A scientist seeking to add the the body of knowledge about the natural world must arm themselves with expert knowledge of the topic they are seeking to explore. It is not standard scientific practice for an expert who presents data to spoon feed a critic who is ignorant of the basic foundations of a topic. I suggest you read the literature available on cold fusion and convince yourself that you understand all aspects of the science before you impune the credibility of others based on arguments about the practice of science, not doing so is hypocritical in the extreme.
A practicing scientist has no obligation to explain any aspect of their experimental system to a non-scientist or even other scientists who refuse to educate themselves with the knowledge required to effectively critique a result.
See my post above.
And note that any practicing scientist worth his salt would reckon no experimental results can be trusted unless very carefully written up and subjected to scruitiny. Even more when the results appear to indicate some very unexpected new physical effect.
Lets just check Rossi vs the FTL neutrino group:
very careful checks before claim:
FTLN - yes, Rossi - no
Careful detailed writeup of all data:
FTLN - yes, Rosi - no
Authors themselves suspect there is some error:
FTLN - yes, Rossi - no
Begin to get the idea? Scientists expect errors, and spend a lot of time trying to eliminate them. If they expect anyone else to believe their results they provide very careful and complete writeup.
Rossi a scientist? Give me a break...
Last edited by tomclarke on Thu Feb 23, 2012 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ladajo wrote:I guess to be fair, NASA is not in contact since Rossi burned the bridge.
I'm not familiar. Have a source handy?
Just asking because NASA has invested significant time looking at BLP, WLT, etc. It's not as if they were like DOE and refusing to look at what pops up.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
You originally stated that your biggest problem with the test was the room temperature during the experiment.
Bad wording on my side. It should have read "one of the biggest problems". It is IMHO a problem when both input and output temperature are below room temperature. It could lead to all sorts of errors, e.g. a thermometer accidentially measuring air temperature instead of the temperature of the water.
while completely ignoring the fast flowing depths of cold fusion, which actually require some effort to understand.
The uhm what? Now it is a bad choice of words on your side I presume. There is nothing to understand about cold fusion, because so far there is no plausible theory about how cold fusion works. I posted a reference to someone punching quite a few holes into WL theory, so that one is probably out of the race too. Besides Rossi himself has claimed that it is not WL. He never presented his own theory so please enlighten me exactly what depths of cold fusion I should put effort into understanding!
Skipjack wrote: It is IMHO a problem when both input and output temperature are below room temperature. It could lead to all sorts of errors, e.g. a thermometer accidentially measuring air temperature instead of the temperature of the water.
This is why experiments like this always include what are known as "controls" or ways to verify the test instrumentation is working properly. For instance, in the case of the Rowan BLP reactor, the calorimeter included an electrical heat source that could be measured quite easily, so they could look at the % accuracy of the calorimeter without running the BLP reactor. Their calorimeter tested out more than 99.9% accurate, so there's little cause to wonder about spurious heat sources entering the system. I've yet to see any data about how Rossi did something like this.
17 kW is such a LARGE claim, that it's difficult for me to envision its source being spurious, but surely when Rossi did this testing, he was aware of what Rowan had published on their calorimetry, so it's therefore not reasonable to conclude he failed to include a control. The real question is, where are the details of Rossi's experiment?
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
Skipjack wrote: It is IMHO a problem when both input and output temperature are below room temperature. It could lead to all sorts of errors, e.g. a thermometer accidentially measuring air temperature instead of the temperature of the water.
This is why experiments like this always include what are known as "controls" or ways to verify the test instrumentation is working properly. For instance, in the case of the Rowan BLP reactor, the calorimeter included an electrical heat source that could be measured quite easily, so they could look at the % accuracy of the calorimeter without running the BLP reactor. Their calorimeter tested out more than 99.9% accurate, so there's little cause to wonder about spurious heat sources entering the system. I've yet to see any data about how Rossi did something like this.
17 kW is such a LARGE claim, that it's difficult for me to envision its source being spurious, but surely when Rossi did this testing, he was aware of what Rowan had published on their calorimetry, so it's therefore not reasonable to conclude he failed to include a control. The real question is, where are the details of Rossi's experiment?
I think, actually, it is not reasonable to assume that Rossi behaves reasonably. Such behaviour would be most uncharacteristic!
ladajo wrote:I guess to be fair, NASA is not in contact since Rossi burned the bridge.
I'm not familiar. Have a source handy?
Just asking because NASA has invested significant time looking at BLP, WLT, etc. It's not as if they were like DOE and refusing to look at what pops up.
The failed "test" and "demo" visit.
Yes they looked into what he has, and gave it some thought, at least a couple of individuals did. They met with him. He made, in context, an outrageous money request ($150million) for them to pay him in order to test the Ecat.
After that. I do not think 'NASA' has talked to him in any official capacity. Although, he certainly did name drop for a while about the Big Important US Entity he was partnering with that begins with an "N" leading into those days, and the fateful Pomp and Cicumstance meeting at Marshall.
Rossi reminds me of a Boston area used car salesman. Even the Italian name fits. Oh well. I guess we all get he is out of his mind. Now we watch DGT to see if Rossi actually has something against all odds.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
...that with say 7C outlet and 20C room temp you can get108C read on sensor providing sensor thermal conductivity to ambient is about 1/3 of thermal conductivity to water flow.
...that with say 7C outlet and 20C room temp you can get108C read on sensor providing sensor thermal conductivity to ambient is about 1/3 of thermal conductivity to water flow.
Love to see how you calculated that....
Are you going to answer my bet on page 229?
10.8 not 108.
40-7 = 33C rise ~ 130kW (these numbers from report, I gave link above).
=> 3.8C rise = 15kW
That assumes constant heat capacity of water stream.
This is why experiments like this always include what are known as "controls" or ways to verify the test instrumentation is working properly.
Exactly! What were Levi's controls during his 18 hour experiment? We dont know! Did he have any at all? We dont know! At least there was nothing in the reoports that I have seen.
Crawdaddy wrote: Bleating about Rossi being a crook is unproductive and is logically flawed, but very easy to do, it is a facile argument.
No, it's not logically flawed. Someone who is willing to purchase a phoney academic degree is not to be trusted, and Tom is right--there is not enough data about the experiment for Rossi to have credibility here. I agree that it's pretty impossible to grant 17kW output and think you can find that in spurious sources like heat from the room entering the calorimeter, but we don't actually have reason to believe the report to begin with, because Rossi is not trustworthy. If he wants people to believe his tests, he needs to provide the fantastic amount of missing data as well as some kind of checks as to why he ought to be trusted.
Try to keep in mind, that people don't generally believe the Rowan 50 kW BLP reactor results, despite they were open to public inspection for more than two years, and have dozens of professors and students as witnesses to the methodology. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Rossi hasn't even begun to provide that sort of evidence.
Basing an argument that the e-cat is flawed on Rossi's lack of credibility is logically flawed because so many credible people with direct experience have validated the technology. In order for the Rossi is a crook argument to be anything more than a straw man argument, one must also believe that all the credible scientists and business people who have observed and invested in the technology are not only more naive than a child but also incredibly incompetent. As the list of those who stand behind the technology grows, the Rossi is a crook argument becomes absurd. How many people can this mastermind deceive before his crime is discovered? He must be the greatest criminal in recorded history to have deceived the engineers at defkalion into inviting seven groups of independent investigators to evaluate their version of the e-cat. How many people who make their living evaluating experimental data can Rossi dupe?
Don't bother mentioning James Randi type magicians tricks. The Rossi device is consistent with existing peer reviewed literature in the nickel hydrogen cold fusion area and the available data is consistent with a functioning device. It would require a great effort and extensive experience just to build a fake device that could output anything that resembled the existing data without being obvious to even a semi-qualified examiner.
This is why experiments like this always include what are known as "controls" or ways to verify the test instrumentation is working properly.
Exactly! What were Levi's controls during his 18 hour experiment? We dont know! Did he have any at all? We dont know! At least there was nothing in the reoports that I have seen.
Likewise, you really do want those error bars. A real experimental setup ought to be used repeatedly, in order to generate a standard deviation, which in and of itself, can be telling about what you're seeing. If the deviation is particularly high, you know you have some loose variables. You want to do these repetitions with BOTH the control and the supposed test article. Deviation in the control tells you either about the instrumentation, or the control source, or both. Deviation in the test article only when compared to deviation in the control, tells you about loose variables in the test article, such as nano-structural distinctions. If you obviously have a heat source orders of magnitude beyond what can be explained by spurious sources, you can then go on to explore things like test item nano-construction. Why Rossi wouldn't be so invested in order to refine his reactor is beyond me.
Last edited by GIThruster on Thu Feb 23, 2012 9:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
This is why experiments like this always include what are known as "controls" or ways to verify the test instrumentation is working properly.
Exactly! What were Levi's controls during his 18 hour experiment? We dont know! Did he have any at all? We dont know! At least there was nothing in the reoports that I have seen.
Unless there was fraud in the experiment, the resistive heating of the reactor prior to the onset of cold fusion roughly calibrates the device. This is a trivial observation, anyone who spent any time thinking about it wouldn't even bother to mention it.
Basing an argument that the e-cat is flawed on Rossi's lack of credibility is logically flawed because so many credible people with direct experience have validated the technology. In order for the Rossi is a crook argument to be anything more than a straw man argument, one must also believe that all the credible scientists and business people who have observed and invested in the technology are not only more naive than a child but also incredibly incompetent. As the list of those who stand behind the technology grows, the Rossi is a crook argument becomes absurd. How many people can this mastermind deceive before his crime is discovered? He must be the greatest criminal in recorded history to have deceived the engineers at defkalion into inviting seven groups of independent investigators to evaluate their version of the e-cat. How many people who make their living evaluating experimental data can Rossi dupe?
Name the credible people that have verified his claim. I can on one hand, on one finger, Levi. If you say Essen and Kullander, you're mistaken, they didn't verify, they simply said it was interesting, followed by admitting to observational errors made on their part.
Name the business people that have invested in his technology. I can't.