At 01:36 PM 6/17/2011, Roarty, Francis X wrote:
OK, Everyone appears to be angry at Krivit
I'm not angry with Krivit. At least not about this!
but to be fair to the guy his line of questioning did seem to get back directly to the point where we left it on Vortex - My recollection was that we decided the steam measurement was an unreliable calculation but that the experiment with only a 5 degree increase in water temperature proved there was real thermal gain.
Right. Problem is, that test was only witnessed by two people: Levi and Rossi. Is the full data available?
Was this difference between mass and volumetric methods of measuring steam energy already resolved? Levi and Rossi are reacting like this was already abundantly clear but I really don't recall this issue as ever have been put to bed. Did I miss something?
The quality of steam issue has not been put to bed. Mass vs. volume could be just a semantic issue, I don't recall any measurements of the volume of steam, what I've seen was a measurement, for the steam-producing experiments, of the volume of water (read "mass") allegedly boiled. Measuring steam volume could be done, but I've not heard of any attempt.
Krivit's line of questioning was an obvious one, he'd have been derelict in his duty if he hadn't pursued this. Whether or not he pursued it with tact is another question. I don't know. Krivit has, in the past, had a way of what might be called "unnecessary roughness," he gets personally embroiled in conflict, which is not good for a reporter, my opinion. Whether or not that is relevant here is unclear.
I'll say that Levi, were he reacting only to the blog, was heavily over-reacting. The blog wasn't offensive, the most it had was some expressed personal questioning of whether or not Levi understood Krivit's point. Someone who is going to take offense at that probably is not suited for talking about controversial issues!
So perhaps Levi isn't skilled, either. So what else is new? "Scientist lacks certain personal skills." Think a newspaper would consider that a Big Story?
Might be kind of like, "Dog Bites Man."
