I wrote: 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. . . . >
If it turns out Levi is really, really stupid then I can imagine some ways Rossi could commit a fraud. For example, if Levi shows up and Rossi gives him the power meter, thermocouples and other equipment and insists he use that equipment only, not his own, it would be easy to fool him. Or, as I said, when the outlet temperature registers 40°C if Levi did not have the sense to check the outlet hose to see if it is hot, he might be fooled. It is even possible that an innocent thermocouple malfunction could produce spurious data in that instance. An experienced person would know how to spot this sort of thing and eliminate it. Thermocouples are very reliable, in any case. I will grant, I have met a few university professors who were as dumb as a bag of hammers, and might have made mistakes on this scale. I do not get the impression that Levi et al. are stupid. On the contrary, based on their reports they seem to know exactly what they are doing -- better than I would know. But as I said, I wasn't there, I do not have a video or a multipage detailed report describing every action they took. So I cannot be as certain of the results as they themselves are. This "stupid professor" hypothesis can only be ruled out by having dozens of professors examine the machine or better yet replicate it from scratch. But replication is not quite as essential as it is for small devices. This is quite a lot like watching the Wright brothers fly in 1908. People who understood the problems of aviation, such as Bleriot and Archdecon, instantly saw that this was controlled fight, not a circus trick like a man shot out of a cannon, or a machine hanging from hidden wires. By the way, I have said repeatedly that I could spot a fake in 5 minutes. I am not boasting at how wonderfully skilled I am at spotting fakes. That is not the point. Anyone reading these messages could probably spot a fake as easily as I could. As I said, this ability in inherent to what a flow calorimeter is, and what it does, and what its purpose is. It is a machine designed to be easily understood. The function is designed to be transparent. It resembles a middle-school laboratory demonstration of a machine such as a lever, balance weight scale, a worm-gear, or a bimetallic strip that bends in response to heat. To be exact, it is designed to eliminate all inputs and outputs but one, and the way it accomplishes this is to make it supremely simple. There are calorimeter types such as the Seebeck which accomplish this goal of isolating inputs and outputs not with inherent simplicity, but with high performance, high tech electronic components. It would easy for Rossi to set up a fake demonstration with a Seebeck calorimeter, as long as it was his calorimeter, and not one that belongs to U. Bologna and remains under Levi's control. You can compare a flow calorimeter to a balance weight scale. Such scales have been in use since ancient times. They have utterly transparent operation. No expert can fool one. No expert could have fooled one used in Edo Japan in the marketplace, or in ancient Egypt. A Seebeck is comparable to an electronic weight scale, with hidden, black-box components and programming. An expert could fool one of these by replacing parts or reprogramming. - Jed
