Duncan’s Promotion of Rossi: A Tremendous Disservice

On Dec. 3, the Columbia (MO) Tribune published a story about Rob Duncan, vice chancellor of research at the University of Missouri, and his efforts to pitch cold fusion to the federal government.

Today, the Tribune published a letter I submitted in response to that story.

Open Column: ‘Professor Rossi’ can’t back up his claims
Columbia Daily Tribune
Friday, December 9, 2011

I would like to comment on the Dec. 3 story “MU research chief wants ‘cold fusion’ puzzle solved.” I agree with Professor Robert Duncan on the importance of the scientific method and, furthermore, scientific protocol. Duncan’s suggestion that Andrea Rossi has “empirical results,” however, concerns me. Nobody has seen or tested any Rossi device outside of Rossi’s garage, let alone done so independently. No visiting scientists have been allowed to properly measure and inspect Rossi’s device.

I interviewed Andrea Rossi in Bologna, Italy, on June 15. I had to explain to him the term “control experiment.” Rossi is fluent in English. Once he understood, he said he used “many metals” for a control. Rossi and his colleague Sergio Focardi said they had submitted their paper to multiple scientific journals but that all had rejected the paper unfairly. In fact, they did not submit their paper to any journal, only to arXiv. Rossi published the paper on his blog instead. On camera, Rossi demonstrated to me how his machine worked, a video of which can be found online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-8QdVwY98E.

By all accounts, the visual evidence was grossly inconsistent with his claim. The list goes on. “Professor Rossi,” as Duncan calls him, has no affiliation with any university. He has a degree in philosophy and a degree in chemical engineering from what CBS calls a “diploma mill.” Anybody involved in the LENR field who condones or, worse, promotes Rossi’s unscientific behavior and claim does himself and the LENR field a tremendous disservice.