Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
As I wrote from the beginning on this, there is no limit to human ingenuity, > so "fraud" cannot be ruled out except by the normal process: truly > independent examination and probably replication. There is another way to rule out fraud. You can allow experts examine the machine closely and look for the physical equipment needed to commit fraud, such as hidden wires and pipes. Rossi has done this. There is only a vanishingly small chance that a fraud might somehow be concealed in the 1 liter cell, and the experts will soon look inside of that, as well. Once they have done that, fraud will be eliminated as decisively as it would be if this were independently replicated 200 times. There is no limit to human ingenuity but there are sharp limits to the laws of physics and methods of adding energy to this system. It is simple, and the performance of it has been well understood for nearly 200 years. Fraud cannot be accomplished except by some physical means, and all such means are easily defined and checked for with this system (although not with other systems). You talk as if fraud is something magical that Rossi could accomplished by some means not known to science. The whole point of fraud is that it is something an experienced scientist or engineer will spot instantly the moment he sees the physical mechanism (the wires or hidden fuel). If Rossi can make this machine produce massive amounts of energy by some mechanism not known to science, that means it is not fraud -- by definition. Or, if he has only managed to make the machine fool conventional flow calorimetry, that is almost as miraculous. No one can do that. Levi, Essen et al. are convinced the machine is real because they understand that there are only a few limited ways to fake a reaction of this nature, and they are certain they have checked all such ways. I wasn't there, so that leaves me all-but-certain. I can't imagine a professional scientist so stupid he does not take elementary precautions such as feeling the hose or checking the performance of the thermocouples. Levi he said he spent weeks calibrating. I have spent weeks calibrating various experiments myself, and I am certain I would have discovered every proposed fraud I have seen discussed, here and elsewhere. I would have discovered these things in the first 5 minutes. Despite assertions here about how easily a scientist or a thermocouple might be fooled by sleight-of-hand techniques, no such techniques exist and there are no examples in the history of science when this was done. the examples that have been given were of tests or demonstrations actually performed by hand, not by machines. If Abd thinks that fraud is a serious possibility, I believe he has made a positive assertion and it requires that he propose a method of committing fraud and a means of falsifying his proposed method as well. In other words, a way of proving that his proposed method could not have happened, such as looking for wires or computing how much energy 1 L of fuel can produce. Arguments without any supporting evidence or a plausible real-world explanation or mechanism are not scientific. Declaring out of the blue that there must be a factor of 1000 error or a factor of 5 error in flow calorimetry, without showing which of the parameters it applies to and how it might apply to them is not a scientific assertion. It is meaningless. It is like saying "I am sure that all experimental proof of special relativity must be wrong by a factor of 1000 and just because I say so that proves it's true." - Jed
