Kall fusion – VI

Ny Teknik ha concesso il diritto di replica a Ulrika Björkstén, criticata sul sito della rivista (e diffamata sul blog di Mats Lewan). With a little help from Google translate, link miei:

Ulrika Björkstén, science editor in chief of the Swedish Radio, responds to the criticism of last week’s opinion piece. Swedish researchers said the Science Radio program on Andrea Rossi and his energy catalyst was not serious.

“Cold fusion is contrary to scientific knowledge”
Published June 10, 2014
REPLIK.  Why anyone should give Andrea Rossi’s credibility in the form of scientific reports is a mystery. His projects show clear warning flags, writes Ulrika Björkstén, science editor in chief of the Swedish Radio.
Whether Andrea Rossi’s energy catalyzer is a scam is of course impossible to know. It is basically a scientific impossibility to prove that an effect does not exist. And yes, it is science’s duty to have an open and inquisitive mind. Sometimes entirely new and unexpected mechanisms that revolutionize our ideas are discovered.
Universities and their researchers have a special status in our society. Through tax revenues, institutions and individuals manage and develop our collective knowledge bank. We pay taxes for training of researchers, university infrastructure and liberal teaching hours.
There is every reason in a democracy to protect the universities’ and their researchers’ unique position. But this specificity also implies obligations. We have a right to expect a scientific approach from university-based operators. Whose expertise do we need, and rely on, more than the university researchers’ own?
Ny Teknik calls our examination shallow. We have spoken to a wide range of sources in Italy – judges, lawyers, technical experts and people affected by Rossi’s previous activities. We also gave Andrea Rossi himself the opportunity to comment, but he declined.
As for Andrea Rossi’s alleged invention, our review found four clear warning flags. Together they show that the scientists who devote themselves to help him test his machine do not take their scientific responsibility seriously:

• He has no formal training in the relevant fields.
• His energy catalyzer is claimed to work through some form of cold fusion, LENR, or whatever one chooses to call it. It is a reaction which in this case is contrary to previous scientific knowledge and an area that has a long history of alleged breakthroughs that could not be confirmed.
• He has a criminal record related to an earlier alleged invention in the field of energy.
• He refuses to let anyone look into the secret drawer and examine what’s really happening there.

Andrea Rossi’s former prison sentence is of course not in itself a reason to distrust him forever. But it is a very relevant piece of the puzzle, along with the other three points above, especially since the trials were linked to a business with many parallels to his actions regarding the alleged energy catalyzer.
Several studies also provide strong evidence that Andrea Rossi’s claims are not true, including the isotopic analysis carried out at the Natural History Museum (according to which no nuclear reaction involving nickel has occurred) and the measurements made by the SP Technical Research Institute, during a visit to Bologna (no excess energy was measured).
The reasons to give Andrea Rossi’s credibility in the form of scientific reports, however, are a mystery.
Ulrika Björkstén, Science Editor in Chief, Swedish Radio (1)

 ***

(1) Usual insults and fallacies apart, commenters believe that journalists rely on their own knowledge. Well, they are right, some journalists do: Mats Lewan, for instance, when he tested the Hyperion reactor himself and took part in a scam his hosts were already aware of.

Dr. Björkstén is too nice. She didn’t remind her readers that in their “Opinion” for Ny Teknik, the five Swedish scientists wrote:

Incidentally, the programs incorporate a variety of factual errors that reinforces the impression of a lack of seriousness, concerning Rossi as a person as well as the field of study LENR (cold fusion).

The only factual error they accuse the programme of concerns a conflict between Rossi and the Swedes during the failed test of April 2012 in Uppsala. But that fact is reported by Mats Lewan in An impossible invention, chapter 17:

Then another problem arose: Rossi would not accept the sensors the measure group wanted to use for temperature measurement but wanted to use the kind he himself had used—thermocouples—though the measurement group’s semiconductor-based sensors were very precise and calibrated against a special, precious reference thermometer that Roland Pettersson stored in the department’s safe.
    “I was a bit geek in calibration and over the years I had accumulated special reference weights, reference thermometers and even references to humidity in the safe, and now some of these came in handy,” Roland Pettersson told me. Rossi was not convinced and a conflict arose at the Svedberg Laboratory. Both Roland Pettersson and Sven Kullander had to go there and try to pour oil on the troubled water and eventually the problem was resolved by going to Stockholm and acquiring the type of sensors that Rossi wanted, to complement the proposed sensors.

Whose “factual errors” and “lack of seriousness”, gentlemen?