I'd like to offer a modest proposal: namely, that we all forget Rossi and focus on how to move the field of LENR forward, either to a definitive demonstration that it has potential we should pursue with greater resources, or to a recognition that there's no "there" there, and that we should look elsewhere for solutions to humanity's energy needs.
Let me try to support this proposal. First, the part about "forget Rossi": I think Rossi has been an enormous time/talent sink with no benefit to the LENR field. Arguably, he's set the field back quite a lot. Look back at the posts here at Vortex and consider how much time and effort has been spent by a bunch of smart people in trying to figure out what Rossi has or doesn't have. Wet steam, dry steam. What about that thermocouple/pump/contract with U of B/whatever? Generator on or off during the run? etc., etc, with no end in sight. I believe it's been wasted effort. Rossi provides very little information that can be independently confirmed. Thus, we fill in the blanks according to our predispositions - those who very much want to believe he has something wonderful find ways to rationalize his conduct to harmonize with his claims. Those who require independent confirmation of extraordinary claims dismiss him out of hand. I don't know what Rossi has. Given the dearth of confirmable information he's provided, I *can't* know what he has. Believing he's made a breakthrough would require taking him at his word, which is an exercise of faith that I can't justify in light of his conduct. But dismissing the entire field of LENR because of Rossi's claims isn't consistent with what seem to me to be glimmerings of phenomena we ought to be investigating with both vigor and detachment. So I'm dumping Rossi. Figuring out the truth of the man's activities seems rather too close to our ancestors' use of divination to predict their future - attempts to make information-starved decisions that devolve to futile exercises in misplaced faith and colossal wastes of time and talent. If he has something, it will eventually surface in unambiguous form. Meanwhile, life is short, and I have better ways to allocate my time. I'm reading no more stories about Rossi and will spend no further time considering or discussing his claims. I've decided to adopt a "tough love"attitude to those who work in LENR. I'm grateful for their work, and I'll be glad to review their results. But in exchange for giving my time and intelligence to review their work, the work has to be worth looking at. The experiments have to be fully described. Claims made have to be supported with data. The work has to be replicable, and eventually replicated, by independent investigators. I will ignore investigators who omit data or play coy in any way for supposed commercial reasons. I recognize there are valid business reasons for secrecy. But because secrecy so easily masks self-delusion or fraud, and so inhibits exposure of honest errors, I won't pay attention to those who offer results without making themselves available for full disclosure. Not worth my time, nor, may I suggest, yours. Second, I think the field of LENR lacks the credibility to have a fair chance at demonstrating its potential or lack thereof. My (admittedly limited) impression of the field is that it's a collection of interesting, suggestive, but nondefinitive results which, taken as a whole, aren't yet convincing to people who can spend serious money to figure out what's going on, or whether there's anything going on at all. For example, I've read Arata's results and hoped for an independent lab replicate and extend them. I keep looking for more about Brian Ahern's replication of Arata's work, but I don't see any publications. I read about SPARAW's CR-39 neutron detection results and the criticisms thereof. I've reviewed Piantelli's publications, and many others'. Lots of effort, all of it thusfar falling short of providing definitive, in-your-face proof that LENR merits serious resources. Whatever your assessment of the work to date, I think you'd agree that the field isn't exactly storming forward at the moment. It's starved of resources and seems riven by destructive partisan squabbles. The questions that I think should be discussed here on Vortex and elsewhere are: what are the critical experiments that need to be done to elevate LENR's credibility to something that merits real resources? By that, I mean motivating government and/or industry to put several hundred million dollars per year into at least ten years of investigation by first-rate workers with good facilities and with no axe to grind about the results. How should those experiments be done, in detail? Who should do them first, and who should replicate them later? Who might fund this work, why should they fund it, and what's the nature of the program that will convince resource allocaters to take a chance on LENR? When we have answers to these questions, we have a good chance of doing work that will tell us all whether LENR is a real path to follow, or just another bump in a long road. Thanks for reading.
