At 10:34 AM 1/2/2013, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <<mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com>a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
Jed, it's entirely up to you the credibility you assign to those reports.
The people seem credible but you never know. As I said, I am not the
police. I have not run background checks.
That does not inspire confidence. Not about background checks, but
the implication about how well you know them.
I'm not talking about proof. Only about something stronger than
conjecture, or, on the other hand, believing that a person who has
frequently made claims that turned out to be inaccurate or
misleading, who does have a history of exaggerated claims (as with
his thermoelectric generator), is telling the full truth.
An entrepreneur actually has no legal obgliation to tell the truth,
except under narrow conditions. A scientist has a *professional*
obligation to tell the truth, but even that is fudged sometimes,
sometimes results are not disclosed for a while, for various reasons.
But part of being a scientist is participating in the human knowledge
project, and that requires caution about what a scientist says, at
least when "on the record." When a scientist lies, falsifies data, or
even fails to disclose material conditions, it is treated as a
serious offense, and, if proven, that scientist's career is toast.
And that's very proper.
By the same token, to impugn a scientist as to their probity is a
highly uncivil act, and properly requires proof. How Pons and
Fleischmann -- and others -- were treated was atrocious. There is no
oblitation to agree with the conclusions of a scientist, but to claim
that their work is incompetent, again without proof, is outside of
norms, by far. Errors may be criticized, that's expected and even obligatory.
Yes, scientists deviate from this, and that's where science can get
lost in the shuffle.
However, with entrepreneurs, lying about results might be simply
smart. Under some conditions, yes, lying to, say, investors, is
illegal. But just lying to the public, no.
So, legally, Rossi can say pretty much what he wants to say,
deceptive or misleading or true. What he says to investors,
particularly in writing, could be another matter. My guess, however,
he's got himself very well protected. Unless the investors do "due
diligence," they might lose their shirts. After all, they might be
trusting him just as you trust them, for to them, he "seems credible."
Kullander and Essen were taken in. Whether or not there was really
generation of heat, in what they witnessed, is debatable. But the
proof of it, that they accepted, was clearly defective. That shows
that even people considered expert can be fooled. (This is a point
that I recall making in early 2011.) But were they expert? Actually,
on calorimetry, no. They acknowledged that. They were outside their
expertise, but still issued statements and judgments.
So suppose some businessmen, investors, saw that same demonstration
as Kullander and Essen?
Now, you've implied more than that, that they tested a device
extensively in their own facility, independently. If that's so, the
chance of error goes way down, but does not totally disappear.
Nevertheless, Jed, I'm sure you understand why we cannot rely on
this, nor should you.
It would be wonderful if Rossi really does have something, and DGT
and Brillouin. The basic error that many of us make, though, is that
we want to know *now*, so we rush ahead to try to figure it all out,
pouring over incomplete, fragmented, and sometimes even deceptive information.
What do we actually gain by this, though?
If we are inclined to test nickel hydrogen reactions, great! There
are many hints that something is happening there, going way back. An
*ounce* of actual investigation is worth many pounds of abstract speculation.
It does not matter how credible these reports are if Rossi never
gets around to selling anything. He seems to be stuck in a classic
development loop where the next version is so wonderful no version
ever makes it to the market. In software this would be the "Duke
Nuke'em" trap. The Doble steam-powered automobile and many other
brilliant innovations failed because of this.
That could be lunacy or a brilliant excuse.
My grandfather Sundel Doniger was an inventor. He never would have
made a dime if his brother-in-law Uncle Danny had not periodically
told him: "Stop developing it. Stop improving it! Ship the product!!!"
Been there, done that.
I advised him and the people financing him to concentrate on
developing IP instead of building megawatt reactors. They ignored me.
The story told here by Jed is plausible. In a way, though, it's a
variation on the "he's crazy" story. I.e., he's not crazy as he
appears, he's pretending to be crazy. But, Jed, that's actually a
form of crazy.
I don't think so. Patterson had the same strategy but he wasn't crazy.
Well, you can make the semantic point that someone with a crazy
stragegy isn't necessarily crazy. At some point, though, we need to
notice how many times this strategy has failed! It might even work
sometimes, but it's a very bad sign.
Ed Storms thinks that Rossi is incapable of developing good IP so he
has no choice but to pursue the go-for-broke development strategy.
Ed suspects Rossi does not understand the reaction well enough to
write a valid patent. I wouldn't know.
You don't have to understand something to write a patent, but if you
don't, the patent may be incomplete. I.e., you know that if you put A
and B together, you get C. So you can patent putting A and B together
to make C, if it's an innovation. However, what about putting D and A
together? If you don't understand the AB reaction, you might not
cover that. And if A and D reaction is superior, your patent may be worthless.
It's pretty clear to me that Rossi should not have announced until he
actually had a reliable device ready to sell. Even if it was a
primitive device. Or even if it was unreliable, but small and very
cheap. (And *adequately reliable* so that you could at least
demonstrate that sometimes it works.) For strongest exploitation of
his design, though, it would probably need to have a mass
application, perhaps for heating water, a very valuable application,
and widespread, but not requiring high COP, if the device is cheap.
The story is that Rossi announced at the wish of his friend Focardi.
That's touching, but ... what if it cost him a billion dollars? It
might have cost him much more than that! If Rossi had marketed an
investigational device, perhaps by this year, Focardi would have seen
what would have satisfied him, I'm sure.
So, Jed, what do we say about someone who follows a crazy strategy? Sane?
If a bad business strategy is a sign of insanity, everyone in the
dot-com boom and most of Wall Street would crazy. Come to think of
it . . . maybe they are. Credit swaps, derivatives and other "fiscal
weapons of mass destruction" as Warren Buffett calls them are crazy.
You are catching my drift. Bad business strategy is crazy! This is
different from simple error, sometimes outcomes cannot be predicted,
and sometimes business is a crap shoot. Sane strategy would mean
balancing the odds, success isn't necessarily certain. But ... a
strategy that is essentially a house of cards?
