Poor Journalism by Physorg on Rossi Story

On Nov. 8, Lisa Zyga published a story on Andrea Rossi and his claim of an “energy catalyzer” on Physorg.

Lisa wrote in her article, “Meanwhile, other journalists have been criticizing each other’s coverage for being too accepting or too harsh of Rossi’s claims.”

Not wanting to exclude Lisa, I posted the following comments:

Lisa,

Some journalists – including yourself – are being careless about how they are reporting this story and in doing so, are inadvertently contributing to this grand scam. The most obvious evidence for the scam is the exit velocity I showed on videotape and Rossi’s claim five minutes later that he had just shown me proof of kilowatts of heat. Please read my Report #3, there is no ambiguity about this matter unless you suggest that Rossi intended to deceive me.

Correction [to your article]: The experiment did not take place at the University of Bologna. The first media outlet to report that was Fox News. Perhaps Fox is not the best source?

The experiment took place at a virtually empty commercial suite that Rossi has been using to demonstrate his device since December.

Another example of how some journalists have helped to perpetuate potentially false information is your text “Impressed with these results, the unknown US customer accepted delivery.”

There is no evidence for the existence of any customer. But your readers may not know this. They assume that you have based this statement on facts. And that is a disservice to the public and it is poor journalism.

[Lisa responded to me in a private e-mail. I then responded to her in second public comment.]

Thanks for your e-mail. So you got some information from the MSNBC site either as well or instead of the Fox site. Fine. But where did Natalie Wolchover of MSNBC get her information from? Or the incorrect information that Rossi is a physicist? She didn’t go to Bologna. She has never done any firsthand reporting on the subject. Wolchover’s story appeared one day after the Fox story. Fox got their story from Sterling Allen. Do you see the problem with how you and Wolchover are doing journalism?

I don’t care if you come off optimistic or pessimistic. That’s not my point. You didn’t get some of your facts correct, but that is secondary. The primary issue is that you omitted to report that your crucial “facts” on this story originate from what *Rossi says* rather than any kind of journalistic process which would normally include identifying sources and/or your attempts to perform any fact-checking. You owe your readers better than this.

You cannot call Rossi a fraud and neither can I because we will never know Rossi’s true intentions and we will never be able to prove a negative. But we can identify whether the facts he presents are consistent with the physical laws of the universe. I and two dozen contributors have done this in Report 3. Rossi’s claims are inconsistent with the scientific evidence he has attempted to sell to the public, not for its money, but for their support to help him advertise his claim.

[I posted a third comment.]

There are at least three reasons [why] this story got its legs. The first is because Rossi is a master at appealing to people. He adorns his fans with praise but makes (e)catcalls at his critics. Very early on, when I knew less, he told me, “You help me now, I will help you forever.”

A second thing Rossi had going for him is that he was able to capitalize on the dreams and hopes of good people who have good intentions for a better world. They are frustrated with the lack of viable options for clean energy and by domination from the petrocacy. Some of the cold fusion believers, who can’t seem to understand the difference between the strong force and the weak force also fit into this category. They have been waiting a long time for big news that is real. Waiting for their cold fusion messiah. My experience in telling them that Rossi is not it has been like telling children that Santa Claus is not real.

A third thing Rossi had going for him is the atrocious journalism done by Mats Lewan; turning a blind eye to lack of control experiments, [a blind eye ] to perpetually overly-complicated experiments, [a blind eye ] to the lack of steam exit velocity and volume, [a blind eye ] to Rossi’s hand on the controls when it shouldn’t have been, writing Rossi’s reports for him and then writing news stories based on his own technical reports, writing scientific-sounding news stories about Levi’s 18-hour test without a single piece of documented evidence. Mats is an experienced journalist. He should have known better.

As the POC@NASA Marshall told me, he had a difficult time believing Rossi, but Rossi’s claim was so big and so bold that he couldn’t believe that Rossi would have the audacity to run a scam of this magnitude.

Lisa, try to find any credible data that supports Rossi’s claim. Trace it to source and identify source. It’s all about the data. Not belief. Not fantasy. What can you do for your readers?

[Response from Lisa:]

As for finding credible data, the lack of it is what makes writing about this issue so difficult! It does seem like most if not all of the content comes from Rossi with no verification; however, most scientists whose work I cover would be appalled to say something even slightly misleading. They are obsessive about getting every detail correct. In contrast, covering Rossi’s device doesn’t even seem like science reporting. I’m not used to [redacted] (maybe political journalists could handle this better!). If there’s another update to this saga, I hope it does involve some credible data, but you’re right, now I don’t know of any truly credible sources. Wouldn’t it be nice if a team of mainstream scientists could dissect this and write a real paper? Or has critiquing science in such detail become the journalist’s job now? Anyway, thanks for your information on Rossi, which I will keep in mind.

[Response to Lisa:]

Lisa,

Your statement “most scientists whose work I cover would be appalled to say something even slightly misleading”is absolutely crucial.

You assume that scientists or people making scientific-sounding claims maitain such a level of ethical behavior. This is what I expect and hope too. And this assumption makes some unsuspecting journalists easy prey for sources who operate under different ethics.

Talk about ” slightly misleading” — just look at Rossi’s own statements for the best example.  In his 2010 self-published paper, he claimed an energy gain of 213 times. Yet, in January 2011, Rossi downgraded the claim to a 30 times energy gain. In April, he downgraded his claim again, to 6 times.

You wrote “Wouldn’t it be nice if a team of mainstream scientists could dissect this and write a real paper? Or has critiquing science in such detail become the journalist’s job now?”

That would be nice, but it will never happen. No mainstream science journalist will even waste their time on this (and for good reason,) though some mainstream technology journalists will and have.

I’m putting the question back to you: Using this case as an example, what can you do to help elevate the quality, or at least the awareness of quality science journalism?