GIThruster wrote:That's a pretty silly argument when examined. The notion that half a dozen profs at Rowan are ready to throw away their careers by lying in their work, just because Rowan got a small grant from BLP, is obviously and stupidly wrong. I do remember it was tendered here, but it was an embarrassment at the time. Perhaps overseas, poorly funded universities would be willing to strong-arm their staff into such collusion, but here in the States the possible gain for each individual is too infinitesimally small, and the projected loss of career, fantastically huge and likely. It's just not a sensible argument. The only reason it got type time is that there are several people here so violently opposed to BLP, they're write just about anything to discredit them--even slander the staff at Rowan.
Certainly the Rowan issue was not settled by such a pathetic argument. Their entire apparatus was open for inspection the entire time it was assembled and operating--many months--with a standing invite for anyone who wanted to see what they were doing to do so.. They corresponded regularly with labs expert in calorimetry like EarthTech. Frauds and con artists don't do things like that.
There's no reasonable doubt the Rowan experiment demonstrated a source of heat that cannot be explained by normal chemical reactions. The question is whether they're explained by Widom-Larsen theory, hydrino theory or some as yet unidentified mechanism. On that, neither the profs at Rowan, nor I, have an opinion.
Just to knock the nail on the head. I think you have this the wrong way round.
When a reputable scientist comes up with a result which challenges a lot of accepted physics (as does this) it is not saying they are liars or cheats to disbelieve the results.
In fact the FTL neutrino team basically disbelieve their own results, even though they were done very carefully. And no-one else will believe them till they have been replicated.
Now what BLP have done is not comparable because the results are much less clear. The BLP people claim they can't see how to get that much heat out from chemistry, but rightly no-one will believe the results until there is significant high quality replication.
That is because honest and difficult to detect mistakes are a lot more common in science than experimental breakthroughs which upend physics.
Just to put this in LENR context. There are a LOT of claims of:
anomalous heat
transmutation (fewer)
high energy byproducts (fewer)
You might lump thyem all together and say they constitute replication.
But they don't, unless the
same phenomena under controlled conditions is replicatable. In this case it can be examined, further information gathered, etc. That is what happens with all breakthroughs.
If LENR exist, and the claimed positive results are really positive, finding thst should not so very difficult. You don't need high heat output, just say 10% excess over a long time period with good quality calorimetry.
The very variety of different claimed positives, given that none are definite,
and none which are definite can be replicated under careful experimental conditions, is negative. (what about the non-definite ones which are replicatable? One would reckon they can be tightened up, cross-checked, made definite. Would one not? Yet where is the systematic line of investigation tightening up on such a phenomena ruling out all other explanations?).
On this thread I never replied to the posts about Iwamura & Itoh's transmutation results.
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYobservatiob.pdf
I misread the paper initially not seeing the before and after superimposed graphs from the spectometry on sputtered ions.
So I apologise for dismissing this stuff in such cavalier fashion.
But, much as I would love it to be a real portent of something wonderful (since if LENR exists it could be optimised, and would at least provide an exciting new energy source), the evidence is strongly against.
I can understand why there are those here who find the body of LENR claims convincing, and WL theory just enough to remove doubts about Coulomb barrier.
And I can understand why those people would feel I am "strongly defended" against new ideas. LOL.
But I bet I read new ideas with more attention than most here. They fascinate me. It is just that WL theory does not "smell" right as a coherent theme to make sense of diverse inchoate phenomena. When you check the details for every phenomenon it predicts, there are more that it does not predict. And WL itself has big unplugged holes.
Which makes the hypothesis of experimental error and hopeful overinterpretation of results by a long way the most likely explanation for this stuff.
If, for example, the Defkalion claims were backed up by plausible independent tests, which let us face it would not seem dificult. that would change. But then we said the same about Rossi claims and Rossi tests, only to find that every Rossi test was implausible. Either there was phase change miscounting, or deltaT much too low with T below ambient, or output thermocouples sited on metal in thermal contact with the reactor...
The list goes on, and it is like a list of the ways in which LENR excess heat experiments can have false positive results. And the same false argument: "each of these tests may have holes but they are all different, so when you put it together there must be something" is applied.
So I very confidently predict the Defkalion tests will prove bust, but I can't say in which way, whether lack of independent trustable observers, or bad protocols, or whatever.
But there are now a good more many real people with money testing Pt/Ni/H/D systems for excess heat, so we will hear of any possible positive results.
We won't hear about the negatives...