On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The Elforsk web page announcement is better than a signed statement, in > my opinion. So was EPRI's statement. A conclusion issued by an organization > carries more weight than statement signed by one EE. > > Along the same lines, when the CEO of National Instruments gave a 20 > minute video recorded presentation about cold fusion in front of thousands > of employees, that was a bigger commitment and more convincing that brief > statement from a corporate executive that "yes, we have consulted with > Rossi and others." Anyone who still claims the NI has no interest in cold > fusion is nuts. > > Nothing against Elforsk or NI, but is there a recent example of a revolution in science that was adopted first by instrument makers and energy companies. And interest from NI is not surprising; it's a potential market. > Also, no EE here or anywhere else has presented a serious description of > how this might be fraud. > And no physicist here or anywhere else has presented a serious description of how this might be a nuclear reaction. But that doesn't stop you from believing it is. > Diagrams showing hidden wires and claims that you can add a circuit to an > electronic device that magically makes 900 W of electricity look like 300 W > are not serious. > The simple fact is that the measurements made and reported are woefully inadequate to exclude deception. > > Cude has waved his hands and said there might be a method of deception > that he has not thought of yet. As I have often pointed out, such > assertions cannot be tested or falsified. > Of course they can be falsified. (Popper would turn over in his grave if he heard you.) Many better methods have been described to exclude fraud. If you cut the wires to the ecat and it kept producing heat, that would falsify it. If you used a finite source of energy instead of an infinite one, it would be falsified. Have skeptics wire the ecat and put a scope right on the ecat connections, or at least the power to the box. Use the output to generate electricity and close the loop and then run the ecat far from any power lines -- falsified. Replace fossil fuels with ecats, and it's falsified So it's falsifiable. If it weren't falsifiable, it could never become practical. Now, in experiments behind closed doors, revealed only written reports, you could neither prove it's faked nor that it's real. Either way would require trust, and while important in science, no theory can depend on it. So the ordinary way to falsify a deception theory, is the way theories are tested all the time. Make ecats generally available to *any* qualified scientists for testing. Just the ecat, and the box if Rossi insists. And send along a thug to prevent tampering. Then let the scientists do all the wiring independently and the testing completely independently. If CERN, MIT, LANL and SRI all come back with the same results consistent with Rossi's claims, deception is as falsified as any theory could be. Of course Rossi won't ever let that happen, but that doesn't change the fact that it's falsifiable. Now, tell us how the theory that it's a nuclear reaction is falsifiable. Because if it's not, then it's not science. > There might be an error in Ohm's law we have not yet discovered, but until > you specify what that error actually is, you have no basis for arguing that > law may be wrong. > > Right, but you see the difference. There is no secret involved, and no artificial constraints. Anyone on the planet can test Ohm's law, and the results are reproducible. If Ohm's law only worked on one material for which only one person had the recipe, and he restricted access to testing it, suspicion would be justified. Except there's not a lot of money in it.
