At 05:09 PM 2/24/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
The assertion that "a determined con artist" can do this or that
strikes me as inadequate. A con artist is not a magician capable of
changing the laws of physics or magically influencing instruments.
Uh, Jed, a con artist is indeed a magician, that is, someone skilled
at the art of producing illusion.
Unless you can suggest a specific technique that such a con artist
might employ, I think this assertion cannot be tested or falsified.
That's correct. It's not a scientific theory. It's a prudent and
practical understanding.
The possibility of a con only cuts so far, but those who have assets
and who don't beware of cons often lose those assets.
As I said before, I do not know of any instance in this history of
science in what a con man managed too fool competent scientists for
weeks at a time, especially in such a fundamentally simple experiment.
I know that magicians can fool people quite thoroughly. Yes, they
control access.
People say that such things have happened. Skeptics insist that
they happen all the time. But I do not know of any specific
instances. All of the con-man over unity machines I have heard of
or seen personally did not fool me for 5 minutes, and would not
fool an scientist allowed to test them with his own instruments,
and poke around inside the way Levi did.
No. Not safe against a sophisticated con.
Unless you can suggest a specific method I do not think this
assertion is meaningful. There is nothing sophisticated about flow
calorimetry on this scale. It is incredibly simple, and
first-principle. J. P. Joule conducted experiments on this scale
with a river and waterfall during his honeymoon.
Hey, send Rossi a check, for all I care. (I don't think he's asking
for money, though he seems to be complaining about his expenses ....)
This is *not* a charge that Rossi is being deceptive.
I realize that.
I am merely pointing out that the possibility exists, and, I must
note, con artists sometimes have accomplices.
If you are saying that Levi is an accomplice then I fully agree --
this could easily be a scam in that case. I discount that likelihood
for the reasons given by Levi in interview linked above.
Prudence and caution, that's all I'm suggesting. What's the rush to
judgment? Either way?
So an involved scientist might have been duped, or might have been paid.
Duped how? Unless you can come up with a method this is like saying
"there may be an undetected error." That statement is true of every
experiment ever conducted since Newton. Every experiment conducted
in the last 500 years might have involved someone duping someone
else, with fake instruments or bogus results published to attract
attention. That is highly unlikely but conceivable. It is a useless
hypothesis since you cannot disprove it.
Every individual experiment might have been deception. It's the
combination, the multiple independent confirmations, that rule this
out routinely.
This points out that an "independent replication" by someone
connected with Rossi, by itself, can leave behind some suspicion,
or maybe even one replication by someone apparently not connected.
That is true, but the suspicion it leaves behind is more of an
emotional issue than a rational one that can be rigorously proved or
refuted. It resembles what I pointed out earlier: that higher power
gives more confidence in the results, and a 10 W experiment seems
better than a 0.5 W one. There is no technical reason for that, yet
for most people higher power seems more convincing.
The higher power does tend to rule out lesser explanations than
fraud. Smaller power production might more easily be the result of
some artifact, that's all. The emotional impact is also not to be neglected.
This is being demonstrated outside of normal scientific protocols.
There is a reason for those protocols. I'm also aware that Rossi has
his reasons, which may be legitmate, to keep this secret. But the
consequence of the secrecy is increased skepticism and suspicion.
That's sim;ly natural.
