You’re way off, and you’re headed down a track that is obviously blazed by your emotions. You won’t even look at the scientific evidence because you’re all wrapped up in the appearance of a con artist. You simply cannot see past it. And that is not due to your logical reasoning, it is due to your emotions.
Here’s a classic example of how you’re leading with your emotions:
Let me guess—you would accept no evidence of Rossi’s con man personality short of a psychiatric examination which, even if done, we would not see because of privacy laws.
***This is a total distortion of how I view the situation, and you argue against that distortion. Such an approach is a classic fallacy — it’s called straw argumentation. Why would someone who’s “very much a logical person” demonstrate a logical fallacy in the very next paragraph? Because you ain’t nearly as logical as you perceive yourself.
Seriously? You should know by now that my skepticism of Rossi's claims is based completely in science. It is not up to me to prove that the non-scientist Rossi's claims of having achieved transmutation of elements in a way incompatible with the laws of physics; it is up to Rossi to show that he has. I've even discussed the nature of the easily obtained evidence that would support such a claim. And he has shown nothing yet.
As far as feelings go, when I see someone whose behavior patterns are objectively similar to those displayed by con artists in the past--that is, e.g., I can read that a past con artist always had some explanation as to why his "invention" could not be tested by an independent party, and Rossi also does not allow testing by an independent party--then it is safe to say that I have a feeling that Rossi will, in fact, engage in another behavior that is consistent with that of con men. I cannot have objective evidence of an action that will occur in the future.
That last sentence actually exists in a bit of a grey area. A few months ago, the claims were that this device was going to replace all known methods of power generation, and that power plant operators might as well start dismantling their plants, since they were about to be made obsolete. But now, the claim is only that the device is a heater, with power generation still in the future. So it does almost appear that Rossi is already engaged in the behavior of promising that the big breakthrough is just around the corner.