Rebuttal to Krivit's Accusation that Andrea Rossi is a Fraudster

Rebuttal to Krivit's Accusation that Andrea Rossi is a Fraudster
LENR Expert, Steven Krivit, who traveled to Bologna in June, was not impressed with Andrea Rossi's E-Cat reactor technology, and has been highly critical ever since. He has now crossed a line to actually accusing Rossi of running an intentional scam. We don't buy it.
(See also our Oct. 28 coverage: 1 MW E-Cat Cold Fusion Device Test Successful)
Steven Krivit, right, arrived in Bologna on June 15, 2011 to interview Mr. Rossi (left) and to have a look to the E-Cat .

By Sterling D. Allan with Hank Mills
Pure Energy Systems News
Steven Krivit, who has operated a journal for years on Cold Fusion called "New Energy Times", published an scathing piece today called Noble Aspirations Are Not Enough in which he accuses Andrea Rossi, inventor of the cold fusion E-Cat, of running an intentional scam .

Scam? I think that is 99% improbable.

Part of that is because I am privy to some confidential information about an independent validation by a very credible institution that starts with an N .

I would not entirely rule out Steve's accusations of fraud; but I personally find that extremely unlikely. I give it a 1% probability just because I have fooled before by people I thought were genuine but who turned out to be scammers.

I have approached Rossi many times since January with emails I've received from people wanting to invest in his company, or buy units. Every time, he turns them away, saying "wait until after the 1 MW plant test." If he was running a scam, you would think he would have taken this money .

In his press conference in January, Rossi announced that he would be having a 1 MW plant ready for commercial production by October. He has been working feverishly toward that end, putting in 14-18 hour days continuously. I arrived early and am staying late here in Bologna so I could help him with some website content and business strategizing. He agreed to let me come early. But he was so busy by the time I arrived, that he didn't even have time for a meal together, or for me to bring a snack. "I only take 5 minutes for a sandwich," he said .

This is not the behavior of someone running a scam. He is behaving like a man with a mission, with a passion for his work .

Last June, Krivit travelled to Bologna to test Andrea Rossi's system, at Rossi's invite. Krivit was not impressed, and has been highly critical ever since .

Krivit's account of Rossi's telling him about his "ah ha moment" bothers me, but one possible explanation is that Rossi didn't understand the question. He has a hard time understanding spoken English, and he doesn't understand written English perfectly either. Another explanation is that Rossi is extremely guarded about the proprietary aspects of his technology. He doesn't tell anyone everything, and he's only told certain key recipes to a very few people. So in answering such a question, a lot of the hesitation would come from wondering how to describe it without revealing any proprietary information .

I don't have a problem with Rossi's experience with the Petrol Dragon. He was set up by the Italian Mafia because he wouldn't let them get involved in his company. They were behind all of that harassment he received, and from which he was exonerated. I would imagine there is something similar behind the gold trafficking situation as well .

I'm further bolstered by the sentiment I received from Rossi since meeting him in person here in Bologna. He was already friendly toward me by email and phone. A person at the event said that "he is very intuitive when he meets someone." I felt like Rossi liked me a lot more after meeting me, and was even fawning toward me as valued supporter of what he is trying to do for the benefit of humanity. That's what motivates me as well. Some of that favoritism can be seen toward the end of the 1-hour report and Q&A he did at the end of the day on Oct. 28. (Parts I and II of IV are now up at http://youtu.be/nc5K090SZFg and http://youtu.be/1UmoBoAcvxg. We'll be doing a separate story about that. )

No, Rossi is not an academic. He doesn't set up his tests in an academic way. That takes many months or even years. He's in a hurry. I like that about him. I don't have a problem with that in the least. It took four years of airplanes flying around before academics finally admitted they were wrong about man not being able to build flying craft .

Our civilization is on the brink of total meltdown. We need this technology to go to market now. Rossi is doing that. He should be applauded, not harassed .

Now that this first customer has signed off on this technology, and Rossi will be receiving funds, he can pay the half million needed for the University of Bologna and Uppsala University to begin doing their tests, which will take 2 years. I spoke with Associate Professor Loris Ferrari at length about the upcoming testing at the University of Bologna. He will be one of the five or six professors involved. The others are Doctors Levi, Bonetti, Campari, and Villa. The first year will be dedicated to addressing the "how", and the second year will cover the "why", seeking to wrap a good theory around the phenomenon. The first report won't be out for at least a year .

Are you happy with that kind of time frame (for requiring academic sign-off first before moving forward)? Maybe if we had all the time in the world. We don't .

Meanwhile, hopefully millions of customers will be served with product; and mainstream academia will have been shown to be behind the times once again. So if you are a customer or media rep who wants the academic nod before you will move on this, fine; wait two years. Meanwhile, there's an energy revolution starting, and I like being on the front end of things -- the bleeding edge -- not the tail .

In the future, when people are giving PowerPoint presentations about the failures of mainstream academia, I predict that Academia's excoriation of cold fusion for two decades will be seen as an even larger failure and oversight than their 4 year lag time on human flight .

And Steven Krivit -- one of the key go-to guys for cold fusion (he doesn't call it that) -- being a primary opponent, actually accusing Rossi of "fraud", will be another sad commentary on our day. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Krivit ends up being shown to be mind controlled in the least (10% probability), and possibly even knowingly on the payroll of vested interests (2% probability), with a mission to discredit Rossi. But we can't make that kind of accusation without evidence, and I don't know of any yet .

This much I can say. When I talked to Mat Lewans of NyTeknik and Robert Svensson of AP separately about Krivit's hit piece on October 28, which mentioned them in a negative light, they both shook their heads and said something about being misrepresented. I found them both to be plenty cautious and scientific in their thinking and approach. Lewans was running calculations even as Rossi was reading the report Friday night. (I show him doing that in the video footage I recorded.)

My personal experience through phone and email with Steven Krivit is that he is an extremely difficult person to get along with. Cantankerous. Doesn't even try to be friendly. That tells me that today's hit piece is most likely just a function of a bad personality acting out (85% probability). That leaves 1% probability that Krivit is actually right, and a margin of 2% for other scenarios. I could be wrong. I'm certainly human .

Commentary by Hank Mills
There is zero doubt in my mind that the E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) technology produces large amounts of excess energy via novel nuclear processes that can best be described by the term "cold fusion." For anyone to claim that Andrea Rossi is perpetuating a scam or hoax, is simply irrational at best, in my opinion. At worst, it indicates such individuals may have a specific agenda to try and falsely discredit the technology.

Over the past year, Andrea Rossi has performed around a dozen tests of the E-Cat, in which he allowed independent experts (scientists and engineers) to participate. All of these tests showed clear evidence of large amounts of excess energy. The tests that incorporated the E-Cat running in a self-sustaining mode utilizing near zero input (except the power used to operate the pumps, fans, and radio frequency generator?), especially make it clear that the technology can produce massive amounts of anomalous output, in the form of heat.

The case can be made that many of the tests of the E-Cat could have been performed in a better or more detailed way. By utilizing real-time electronic data collection to record all data from the instrumentation used, placing thermocouples in additional locations, the use of a "control" run, and taking certain other measures the results from many tests could have been much more precise. However, such precision and advanced methods of testing have not been required to prove the technology works as claimed. The massive amounts of heat produced by the E-Cat makes such precision testing unnecessary, even if such modern methods would have been extremely desirable.

Some of the evidence we have that the technology works as claims is simply irrefutable beyond measure. The recent test of the one megawatt plant showed operation in a self sustaining mode for five and a half hours. During this period of self sustaining operation, the temperature of the steam produced did not drop until the plant was shut down, and the test was ended. At times the temperature increased modestly. This would be impossible, unless a novel cold fusion reaction was indeed taking place -- producing huge amounts of excess energy. To be blunt, there is no way the reactor could have been producing hundreds of kilowatts of output in self sustain mode, unless something truly spectacular was taking place inside of it .

Of course some skeptics will scream that the huge amount of output produced is only due to the "thermal inertia" of the system. According to this ridiculous theory, the input energy originally supplied to the system is stored in the materials that compose the reactor, and is then released when the input energy is cut off (when the system goes into self-sustain). This is an insane argument, because the materials used to build the modules have too low of a specific heat (or heat storing capacity) to store that much energy. Also, it ignores the fact that a system cannot simply choose to store energy for a period of time (while transferring no heat to the water being pumped through the system), and then start releasing the stored heat ONLY when the input power is cut off.

Let's consider another important point. Any input power used -- along with the heat energy from nuclear reactions -- is continually being removed from the materials that compose the modules, from the moment the resistors are turned on. The stored energy the hardcore skeptics claim powers the system during self sustain mode, simply could not be there! Both because the materials used cannot store that much energy, and the input energy has continually been leaving the system as heat. Their false argument is not valid, unless they want to claim the law of thermodynamics is being broken!

Andrea Rossi knows the technology works, because he has built and tested hundreds, if not thousands of reactors. He has allowed third parties to make tests of his systems, that the general public is not aware of at this time. Although there may occasionally be technical problems with a test (such as resistors breaking or leaking gaskets), the years of experience he has accumulated and the results achieved prove the validity of the technology beyond any doubt.

- If the technology did not work, why would he have sold his stake in Leonardo Technologies Inc., properties in Italy, and eventually his home in Florida to finance his work.

- If the technology did not work, Defkalion and the very credible board of directors would not be so eager to renew their relationship with Rossi .

- If the technology did not work, Rossi's competitors (who are working on inferior versions of Ni-H cold fusion reactors that do not produce practical amounts of output) would be continually attacking him, writing obviously false articles about the technology, and trying to discredit him. It seems obvious to me, that they are extremely jealous of how much energy the E-Cat can produce .

- If the technology did not work, NASA would not be involved with nickel-hydrogen cold fusion research .

- If the technology did not work, his systems would not be able to be producing (for example in this most recent test) hundreds of kilowatts of output with almost zero input -- for several hours -- while cooling water is running through them! This is impossible .

The E-Cat technology is the real deal. No reasonable person who has been keeping up with the events of this year can say otherwise, unless they have an agenda. I will of course state that the technology is not perfect yet, and can use additional R and D. For example, Rossi cannot always control the reactions that are produced. In fact, in the most recent test, he had to REDUCE the output each module could produce, because the reactor core temperatures were getting too high! If he had run the modules at full throttle, even more energy would have been produced. The consequence might have been that the nickel powder could have melted in one or more reactors, and the modules could have been permanently "dead" afterwards -- until the reactor cores were replaced .

One idea that has been floated around by cynics is that Rossi is a fraudster trying to make money by lying about his technology. The simple truth is that scammers and con-artists spend other people's money, and don't touch their own. Rossi is the opposite, in that he has continually turned down proposed business deals and even donations, because he does not want to, "play with the bones of others." This latest test cost him a large amount of money to conduct, and to pay for it he had to sell his home. A con man would not be making such sacrifices .

I'm convinced the E-Cat technology is legitimate, and this recent test is absolute proof. I hope there will be more detailed information about the test released, because it will be very useful in determining exactly how much energy was produced. It would help those interested in the technology produce lots of fancy graphs and charts showing how much energy was produced. But it's really not necessary, because the information already revealed shows the output was huge, constant, and continued unceasingly for five and a half hours .

Cold fusion is here, and it's called the E-Cat.

P.S.: I have also noticed that one of Rossi's detractors has been pushing one particular theory for many years, the Widom Larsen theory. This theory tries to deny that a cold "fusion" process is taking place, by claiming that only beta decay is occurring. I have noticed this particular individual attacks those who criticizes Widom Larsen theory, and heaps praise on those who support it. I also noticed that his attacks on Rossi increased dramatically, not long after Rossi stated his technology has nothing to do with Widom Larsen theory. I think this shows an agenda, rather than brainwashing. [See our May 31 coverage about Widom-Larsen theory: Cold Fusion #1 Claims NASA Chief]

It seems to me, the whole push -- especially by certain individuals who are critical of Rossi -- to support Widom Larsen theory is a ploy by the so called, "powers that be" to put a better "spin" on the reality of cold fusion. If the general population of the world was to suddenly realize that due to a combination of extreme skepticism, arrogance, and greed a energy panacea was pushed to the side, there could be major political ramifications. Therefore, by pushing a theory that denies there is any "fusion" in "cold fusion", they can better control how the public reacts when the truth is revealed.

From their point of view, they would rather try to suppress and discredit a practical cold fusion technology like the E-Cat, and replace it with more primitive versions of the technology. By supporting those individuals who have produced results no where near what Rossi has, they can insure that the introduction of "not-fusion", will be slow, and controlled manner. Most importantly, the public will not be as likely to fully "wake up" about what *really* happened. They don't want the "mundanes" to know they are responsible for twenty years of environmental destruction, the current energy crisis, and massive human suffering -- which all could have been reduced if cold fusion technology had been taken seriously twenty years ago .

Source: FrigidFlamma

Full Disclosure:
I am seeking a business relationship with Andrea Rossi. My trip was sponsored by Farlie Paynter of Canada, as well as by Mike Spitzauer, CEO of Green Power Inc (GPI), the Waste-to-Diesel Fuel company in Pasco, Washington.

That’s very different from building your technology, demonstrating the technology (however much one wants to denigrate the elegance of the demonstration), and then, after giving a customer the independent opportunity to test the technology (however much one wants to claim they know better than the customer how the technology should have been tested and evaluated), licenses the technology to the customer for them to physically take back to their own place of business and put through its paces.

Who is the customer? We only have Rossi's claim that there is a customer.

I have real trouble with the idea that if this were a real "pre-sale approval" type demonstration for a real company that wished to keep it a secret, that they would make it public. It would be far more practical and reasonable to keep it secret until they were willing to go public.

However, if the purpose was to plant the idea among potential marks that this was "legitimate", then it makes perfect sense.

There are plenty of people who believe that Rossi is legitimate and that we are on the brink of a revolution comparable to the industrial revolution. I'm just not one of them. If some company starts selling "Mr. Fusion" in the near future, then that will prove my speculation wrong.

However, if there are throngs of people willing to give Rossi money to get on his "secret" waiting list (why not have a secret waiting list; everything else about it is secret), then I would say his efforts over the last year will pay off, whether he's legitimate or not. According to Kevmo (in an earlier post), Rossi has a five-year backlog of orders for the E-Cat. That's a lot of potential chumps.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not following the case so closely (at least not yet) that I'd venture an opinion either way. It's just that, simply looking at the case, say, from a lawyer's point of view, I see neither motive, nor the "mechanism" for a scam at this point.

Therefore, it interests me that so many seem willing to rush headlong (from my reading of the "evidence") into calling this a hoax and a scam.

Sure, it may be. But I don't see the telltale marks of that at the moment; in fact, quite the opposite.

It seems to me, from my limited reading, that the demonstration had two purposes: (1) to license the technology to a company that was going to work on developing it or perhaps coming up with applications for it, and (2) through the licensing process, to obtain funds to finance privately the two-year academic study at the Universities of Bologna and Uppsala (Sweden) into, explicitly, "how" and "why" Rossi's catalyst works.

So, to the extent Rossi is also pursuing public academic research into his process, I could see that it would be helpful for it to be public. In fact, I could see the universities "suggesting" that consistent with the counter-needs of the company to remain secretive. This would bolster their research project considerably and may even attract other favorable attention.

However, if the purpose was to plant the idea among potential marks that this was "legitimate", then it makes perfect sense.

I guess.

But SO many people would have to be in on this. At some point the argument is the same as OJ's: that the entire LAPD and the forensic labs and the neighbors and so on were in a conspiracy to frame him for the murder of his wife and her friend.

I seriously doubt the universities in question would agree to engage in a deliberately faked research project. That's not to say they might not find flaws in the technology, even ones that a fatal to eventual commercialization. But it's doubtful they'd be complicit in outright fraud.

There are plenty of people who believe that Rossi is legitimate and that we are on the brink of a revolution comparable to the industrial revolution. I'm just not one of them.

Nothing wrong with being skeptical. I'd just be more inclined to agree with you if you had a basic science rationale or if I could see the hallmarks of a scam. I just don't at this point.

I mean: Rossi could be wrong in the end. But that doesn't automatically make this whole thing a scam.

Too many logical leaps here for me, sorry.

Even if it's true that there's a waiting list or a backlog of orders "for the E-Cat," you've identified the catch right there.

Of course there would be many, many people (and, I would think, governments) who would like to be first in line to get this technology IF and when it is actually commercialized and deployed.

This is no different than people lining up or going on waiting lists to get the next iPAD or whatever. They may or may not have confidence that the technology will pan out the way it's being hyped, but the important thing is that NO ONE CAN FORCE THEM TO BUY IT.

They are signing up for the opportunity to get it first, if and when it becomes a consumer product. SO WHAT? It still has to be satisfactory to them before they buy it. And it still has to meet some inherent and explicit standards before it can be categorized as a salable item.

If Steve Jobs had advertised that he'd come up with an iPAD that allowed users to engage in time travel, there might be some people who got on a waiting list for it, thinking, well, you know he just might pull that off and, if he does, cool, I'll be first in line.

If two years later Jobs says "okay, here's the time travel iPAD" and it turns out it's a Timex watch with a MP3 player in it, is he really going to be able to rip off a bunch of people with that? Is he really going to be able to enrich himself off that scam? Are people on his waiting list just going to go, "oh, okay, Steve, whatever you say, here's my money?"

Nope.

If two years later Jobs says "okay, here's the time travel iPAD" and it turns out it's a Timex watch with a MP3 player in it, is he really going to be able to rip off a bunch of people with that? Is he really going to be able to enrich himself off that scam? Are people on his waiting list just going to go, "oh, okay, Steve, whatever you say, here's my money?"

If people don't shell out the money until a working device is delivered, then there's no room for fraud.

But I seriously doubt that getting on the waiting list is free. Generally, you get your marks to pay up front (maybe even paying extra to get to the front of that 5-year waiting list), then you skip town.

BTW, Rossi is now offering to sell E-Cat devices to anyone who wants one:

http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=516&cpage=6#comment-107295

So, presumably we'll know soon. Either people start getting working E-Cat devices or Rossi collects lots of deposits (after all the hype he created over the last eleven months), and then disappears to some country without an extradition treaty with Italy.

It still feels like a scam to me, but maybe I'll be eating crow soon. :-)

Andrea Rossi October 31st, 2011 at 9:01 AM Dear Manik Sahai: We have started the manufacturing of 1 MW plants. Who wants to buy them whatever its Nation, can contact us at: info@leonardocorp1996.com Warm Regards, A.R.

Looks to me like an offer to talk about sales arrangements, not an offer of sale.

When you contact that email address, it may be you simply end up talking over your interest in purchasing, costs, financing, import/export issues, shipping issues, and, most importantly, DELIVERY DATE (i.e., when the plants will be actually ready for sale, which would have to include the fact that they had met whatever regulations/laws apply in terms of safety, non-false advertising, etc.).

At this point, even if Rossi is a con-man, buyers are very different from investors -- and if they don't proceed accordingly, the law isn't very kind to them anyway. It's caveat emptor all the way, especially with something as controversial as this.

So, in my book, it'd be really hard to argue that any buyer could be scammed here except by outright, actionable fraud (Rossi doesn't even try to deliver a product that even begins to do what he says the e-Cat does.) And then, really, they are not scammed; they are simply defrauded.

That's different -- maybe not in practical result to the consumer, but as to whether or not the technology was viable, or potentially viable, in the first place.

Things do seem to be moving fast, eh.

BTW.

Don't want to put my full thinking on this on the internet (just old-fashioned that way, I guess). But I do think that maybe there is a method to the “madness” of trying to get this technology disseminated as widely as possible, as soon as possible.

I mean: other than pure profit motive (which, Lord knows, there's nothing wrong with that, either).

Look. If, for example, a government or a large corporation actually capable of (1) maintaining this process as a secret (of course, we know that won't be the case because of the university research that's supposed to occur, but bear with me here), and (2) mass producing this technology got hold of it in the very beginning, before any one else, um . . .

not to put too fine a point on it, but might not that entity be able to rule the world?

Would this be any different than if a government or some other powerful entity was able to take control of the world's oil supply?

I don't think so.

Sure, the world could still run on oil. But if e-Cat works the way Rossi says, and has the potential for commercialization and even major power plant applications that have been talked about, how valuable is oil going to be?

Not very.

EXCEPT, it would be very valuable, in fact critical, to any country that was shut out of the e-Cat technology (by the possessor thereof).

So if e-Cat were controlled by an oligarchy (that could wipe out competing LENR technology), and that oligarchy allowed only certain countries or entities to use it, then everybody else, still paying by the barrell, would not only be under crushing competition with countries paying almost nothing for all their energy, the countries still needing oil might be even more susceptible to predatory pricing by the remaining oil-producing nations.

There are many scenarios here that one could posit about how the world might be “ruled” if e-Cat were able to be strictly controlled by an oligarchy who could “allow” others to use it at will — or not.

So, Ludlum novel aside, if LENR is real, it's probably a good thing that this thing goes big and wide as soon as possible. :)

I look at this whole thing not as a lawyer, but as a scientist.

Rossi claims to have come up with something that, speaking from a strictly scientific point of view, is highly unlikely. Fusion reactions typically take place under very high temperatures, which are needed to overcome what are called the “Coulomb force”. This is the force that causes two particles of the same charge to repel each other. The closer those two particles get, the stronger that Coulomb force becomes. As I recall from my physical chemistry class that I took eons ago, that force becomes almost infinite within an atomic radius. So, to overcome that force requires a HUGE amount of energy.

The basic premise of the “LENR”, or low energy nuclear reaction, is that nickel (atomic number 28) somehow soaks up hydrogen (atomic number 1) like a sponge, then—somehow—the nuclei fuse to become copper (atomic number 29). As I already said, to fuse the nuclei in this manner would require a HUGE amount of energy.

If Rossi has, indeed, managed to find a way to do this process without the enormous input of heat (millions of degrees) that one typically needs for fusion reactions, then it should be a simple enough matter to show, stoichiometrically, that this reaction had taken place. One merely needs to demonstrate that precise quantities of starting materials (nickel and hydrogen) entered the system, and that a precise quantity of copper and leftover starting materials resulted. As far as I know, this has not been done. Rossi provided (to someone, I forget who) a powder that he claimed came from his device, which contained nickel, copper, and iron (the presence of the latter unexplained; atomic number of iron is 26). But, if this is real, why can’t Rossi provide the device for independent testing by people having the analytical tools necessary for thorough analysis of starting and ending materials? That he has not done this stinks to high heaven.

A logical, not empirical, criticism is that, if attaining fusion at low temperatures were so easy, we’d see fusion happening spontaneously on earth all the time. A lightning strike could set off the reaction. We don’t see that.

Another criticism is that Rossi does not have a degree in, apparently, anything. He claims to have a degree from a university, but does not specify whether it is a bachelor, master, or PhD—and his claimed major is not actually listed at the university’s website. The engineering degree he claims to have is from Kensington, a mail-order degree mill in California that (I believe) is no longer operating. That begs a rather important question—given the hands-on nature of coursework in engineering, how did Rossi do his course work? Did the university ship him the project material, then he shipped back the finished projects for grading? (I’ve never seen a science curriculum that could lend itself to correspondance courses.) I don’t believe for a moment that someone with no science background at all developed a highly technical process through haphazard tinkering in his garage.

One other skepticism that I have is that Rossi supposedly came up with this process independently. While it is not impossible to do scientific research independently, it’s highly unlikely. Research equipment is expensive, and research takes time. Working independently, as we are supposed to believe Rossi has done, how did he manage to afford to buy all that equipment and not only have sufficient funds to live on, but to buy the house (which he’s now supposedly sold for funds)? If this guy does, indeed, have a day job that supports this lifestyle, that detail has never been mentioned.

There is also the fact of the lack of publication in any bona fide journal. Typically, the basic details of the scientific discovery are published before commercial products incorporating the discovery are developed. To get around the fact that established peer-reviewed journals wouldn’t publish his “findings”, he established his own internet journal. Being a scientist, I find the fact that he couldn’t convince experienced scientists (articles submitted to journals are typically reviewed by people who are experts in the field) that he had something worthwhile quite telling.

And last, I’ll just point out that Rossi’s behavior and statements concerning this eCat make my “spider sense tingle.” His claims are too grandiose. Plus, he has a history of past fraud. He supposedly developed a technique to make fuel oil from waste; what he managed to do was to take somewhat toxic waste and make very toxic waste.

I’m sorry this is so long; I see a lot of red flags here, which necessitate a rather lengthy description. And I’m not sure I even explained all of my reservations about this “technology.”

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. A few comments, questions and observations:

But, if this is real, why can’t Rossi provide the device for independent testing by people having the analytical tools necessary for thorough analysis of starting and ending materials?

Apart from what I, as a lay person, would describe as "good manners" in the science world, why would Rossi want to do this? IOW, if he can move forward with bringing his device to market (the ultimate testing ground, IMO) without this, why not?

I realize you are going to say "no, that violates the laws of physics," but what if the revolutionary is truly happening and this technology is IN FACT "violating" the supposed laws of physics -- why would the inventor of such technology, who clearly doesn't understand it all himself at this point, subject his process at this point to those who, by definition, would be rigidly applying the presumed laws of physics?

It doesn't appear to me that Rossi's process has been easily observed or easily accomplished. A counter logical criticism is that, since cold fusion is not a necessary function in nature (so far as we know), and would in fact be destructive (so far as we know), then nature has built-in (natural) obstacles to spontaneous or uncontrolled LENR, just as it does with nuclear fission.

Another criticism is that Rossi does not have a degree in, apparently, anything

Personally, this doesn't bother me in the least. I think we've all known people who become passionate about a subject and can teach themselves to understand the subject at a very high level.

Moreover, I see this as much more of a creative process, than an academic/intellectual problem. If LENR is possible, it seems to me it goes without saying that it's rather likely it would be discovered by someone who is quite outside the scientific mainstream, either in training or experience or personality or all three!

Also, if LENR is possible, I don't think it would ever be discovered apart from a sort of luck -- the luck that one makes for oneself, sometimes just by being extremely quirky and a nonlinear thinker.

I don’t believe for a moment that someone with no science background at all developed a highly technical process through haphazard tinkering in his garage.

Well, I'm not quite going that far, either! However, I would guess that it would be more on the accidental side by an unconventional actor than not.

Research equipment is expensive, and research takes time.

But does anyone really know what type of "research" Rossi pursued to, allegedly, create a LENR device? Since no one knows the catalyst/process, it seems to me one cannot speculate one way or the other on how much traditional research and traditional equipment and funding it took.

Being a scientist, I find the fact that he couldn’t convince experienced scientists (articles submitted to journals are typically reviewed by people who are experts in the field) that he had something worthwhile quite telling.

Generally, I agree with this point. That said, hasn't Rossi said, essentially, he knows the catalyst/process works, but he has yet to understand exactly "how" and "why" (hence the university research projects)?

I could see how he would be able to write a publishable article if he only has observations, not explanations or even theories.

Moreover, one could argue, this is another example of how any discovery that somehow called into question scientific orthodoxy would be treated.

And last, I’ll just point out that Rossi’s behavior and statements concerning this eCat make my “spider sense tingle

I respect a person's gut instincts and I don't find skepticism uncalled for here. I know nothing about the man. That said, except for one thing, I don't see a basis for conclusively rejecting this technology as a fraud at this point.

The one thing that would give me pause is your first point. Basically that LENR is more or less "impossible" because of Coulomb Force or a similar theoretical obstacle.

Now, admittedly, you said LENR was "highly unlikely," and that is not the same thing as "impossible." But I think what most people mean by "highly unlikely" is, well, "impossible!"

I just don't think those two concepts should be conflated when it comes to something such as this. And it seems to me that's the crux of most of the "it's a fraud" objections: that, at bottom, cold fusion is impossible. That's really the only objection that can't be brushed off.

But is it . . . impossible?

So, he’s been successfully conned before, but this time it’s different.
***Hey, you know how to argue without using classical fallacies. That’s unusual for someone from your perspective.

A link to any exonerating evidence would be nice. Rossi’s convictions and prison time are waved away with the author “imagining” that there must be exonerating evidence, although he apparently doesn’t know of any.
***In other words, imagining the evidence is an argument from silence. A classic fallacy.

So, we’re supposed to ignore Rossi’s well-documented personality problems, but it’s OK to use the author’s claim of Krivit having personality issues as an attack against him.
***I really don’t care about Rossi’s personality. I care about his data.

So says Rossi. We don’t have any actual evidence of this. All we have is Rossi’s claim, and his claim that his “secret company” was satisfied with the test.
***There were others there, like the author of this article. This is the first time I’ve caught you in a distortion. That’s unusual to find someone who can actually stick to the facts to a reasonable extent — until now, but I’ve lowered my standards for pathological skeptics.

So says Rossi. He claims to have heated his factory for six months on a single “fueling”, but he hasn’t been able (or willing) to publicly demonstrate the system working for more than a few hours.
***His customer seemed satisfied.

I would be fascinated to know who theses “very credible” board of directors actually are.
***Unfortunately, here you have slipped into an invalid argument from silence. Produce evidence for or against their credibility.

And, of course, the Mafia would never interfere with someone who might be muscling in on their business (which is not cold fusion research).
***Straw argument. The mafia had moved in on waste management, a more-or-less acknowledged fact on the ground. Rossi’s business was in the way.

I am seeking a business relationship with Andrea Rossi.
***This is probably Sterling Alan’s way of saying “full disclosure”. I would love to be in a business relationship myself with Rossi. I would try my best to discover ways this could be a scam, and I would also love to be involved with such a tremendously disruptive technology if it’s real. I’ve looked enough into the forensics to think that it is similar to what the author says, 99% chance it’s real.

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