It’s been a lot of fun to follow Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat scam over the past five years.
Before Rossi, I had not been following cold fusion controversy for that many years though. The academic world pretty much forgot about it since the disaster devised by Fleischmann and Pons. At that time I was working for national radiation security in Finland and was very exited of possibility of cold fusion, as were many others. Until it became clear that nobody could actually replicate what F&P claimed, so my interest vanished.
The interest was revived by one Italian “businessman” Andrea Rossi. I was amazed that Sven Kullander and Hanno Essén, two Swedish physicists, actually believed Rossi had something.
So I started following Rossi and occasionally wrote down my thoughts in my blog (in Finnish).
http://kauas.asentopaikka.fi/2011/04/07/kylmafuusio-totta-taivaan-mannaan-makaronimaasta/
At one point, I got a comment from one AlainCo. I asked him not to comment my Finnish blog in English, because it would not serve any purpose; he clearly did not understand what I wrote (In Finnish) but did choose to comment anyway.
I admit that I was a bit offended by his aggressive mission to evangelize LENR, so you might want to thank him for waking me up to bug the cold fusion community.
I know many people are offended by my commentary around the Internet and I cannot blame them. Though I think many people wrongly take critique against their views personally, I have not always been following good manners when writing what I think. That remains my shame only.
Now, I do not know if there is anything behind LENR/Cold fusion, maybe there is. But I am pretty sure it is nothing usable to energy production. Please do not ask me to investigate “evidence”, I have investigated and found nothing but scattered claims, wishful thinking, sloppy tinkering and downright lunacy.
Cold fusion seems to be similar to paranormal: there is only anecdotal evidence without repeatability. I fear many cold fusion researchers are not recognizing their failure to observe objectively. None of us can do that, we are human.
What comes to Andrea Rossi, no one sane should have any doubt:: His endeavor is a classical fraud. And if he has something real, he has done a formidable job in making it look like absolute bullshit.
But he probably knows exactly what he is doing; he knows many won’t be able to see behind his smoke and mirrors and sleigh of hand.
Actually, I believe Rossi may weasel his way out of this and even get some more money [1]. Also, He will probably become a messiah for his believers, taking his great secret to his grave.
Who knows, its a weird world.
Some of the original Rossi fans like AlainCo and Jed Rothwell seem to see the light now, which is somewhat amazing [2].
Others are building they personal neverlands and turning into complete maniacs, like Torkel Nyberg of the Sifferkoll [3]. His writings have lately resembled nothing but musings of a madman. If Torkel is honest and actually believes what he writes, I feel sorry for him. But then, given the fact that Internet is full of false prophets, collateral damage is inevitable.
However, the most enigmatic person for me is Mats Lewan. He has recently closed the comments on his site and seems to be completely assimilated by the E-Cat cult by now [4].
