Cutting Through the Fog Surrounding the Rossi/IH Dispute (Josh G)

The following post has been submitted by Josh G

With all confusion and back-and-forth over the Rossi-Industrial Heat imbroglio, it’s hard to cut through the thick layer of fog. I’m going to try to do it by zeroing in on some key questions regarding IH’s behavior:

A poster on Mats Lewan’s An Impossible Invention site known as nckhawk (though to be a Tom Darden business associate and IH investor named Dewey Weaver) has stated that when IH says they have “worked for over three years to substantiate the results claimed by Mr. Rossi from the E-Cat technology – all without success,” it means they have never, not even once, been able to get the E-Cat to produce excess heat.

Here is an excerpt from a nckhawk post on Mats Lewans’ blog: “It was only after replications attempts failed to produce ANY results that the doubts began to creep in. IH didn’t want a 1MW reactor but Rossi insisted. IH offered substantial sums of money for Rossi to produce 10 watts and/or 100 watts of excess power from a single characterized and verified reactor as an alternative to the insanity of the 1MW test.”

(see: https://animpossibleinvention.com/2016/04/20/lets-join-forces-to-bring-out-the-truth-on-rossi-ih-affair/#comment-5016)

In another comment on the same thread, Jed Rothwell writes: “The word “substantiate” is a little unclear, but they told me it means the thing did not work. There was no significant excess heat.” But since they were talking about 3 years of efforts, this implies that they were never able to observe significant excess heat from any version of the e-cat, not just the 1MW plant.

In that case, the following questions demand an answer:

1. They spent a good deal of manpower and money on R&D to develop and produce a new iteration of the e-cat, which they sent to Lugano for testing. If they had never gotten Rossi’s older version of e-cat to work, why invest a dime in R&D and manufacturing a new version?

2. If they never got an e-cat to work, why on Earth would they agree to give Rossi the go-ahead on the 1MW test? Apparently he insisted, so maybe they couldn’t stop him. But why would they willingly spend a dime of their own money to pay for (at least) 2 technicians, as well as 1/2 the costs of the ERV plus who knows what other expenses? If Darden thought the e-cat didn’t work, his willingness to go along with the test AND fork over money for it shows very poor business acumen and a shocking carelessness with his investors’ money.

3. If they caught Penon and Rossi early on trying to engage in fraud by switching flowmeters (as Weaver has alleged in the same thread on Mats’ blog), then why on Earth would IH continue a test (which they were paying for half of + personnel + who knows what else) when they had just caught Rossi and Penon red-handed trying to commit fraud?!? That doesn’t sound like due diligence to me! It makes Darden look like an easy mark. As George Bush the Younger once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … you can’t get fooled again!”

4. If they never got the e-cat to work, then they also had no reason to believe the 1MW plant worked or that the test would be successful. But according to Rossi (and apparently he can document this for the court), IH had Woodford and the Chinese and who knows who else visit the 1MW plant as part of their effort to raise investment capital. We don’t know at this point if the reason they invested in IH is because of the e-cat (though Woodford capital says they spent 2 1/2 years on due diligence, so we assume that was the primary reason they were investing, since that was IH’s first investment). If true, this means that although Darden had no reason to think the e-cat worked, he went about raising money for it anyway on the pretense that it did work. That sounds borderline fraudulent to me.

5. If they have no reason to think the e-cat works, then why file a patent on the e-cat claiming to get a COP of 11? Did they just make that number up? Pull it out of a hat? Lawyers are expensive and filing patents costs a lot of money. Why would they pay all that money to file several patents if the technology is bunk?

I just don’t see any logical explanation for any of IH’s actions, other than that they do think the technology works. They might not be able to get it to work as well as they want it to, or as well as Rossi can, and so they may have withheld the final payment until Rossi gives away all his secrets. (Hermano Tobia has some interesting things to say in this regard in that same thread on Mats’ blog). But for IH to say it never worked is simply illogical and absurd, unless we are to believe that they are incompetent businessmen who have tried to defraud their investors and flush their money down the drain. I simply don’t see how they can have it both ways.

Josh G