Mr. Rossi, I admire you!

Yes, I do! You have accomplished something quite remarkable. For many years now you have presented various versions of "the" E-Cat and argued along different and contradictory lines. But none of this bothers your followers. Somehow you have this rare ability to make people forgive you even if you outright admit that you have cheated the people that you worked together with. Here is a screenshot and the cut-and-paste quote from your recent statements published under the heading "Rossi Responds to Swedish Professors Critical of E-Cat Report" on e-catworld.com and in your own "Journal of Nuclear Physics" (sic!):

"AS THESE SCIENTISTS CORRECTLY SAY, I SUPPLIED THOSE SAMPLES, IN 2011 (TO PROF. SVEN KULLANDER), AND I GAVE A SAMPLE FROM WHICH THE COMPONENTS, THAT AT THOSE TIMES WERE NOT DISCLOSABLE, HAD BEEN EXTRACTED, BECAUSE NOT YET PATENTED. I CLEARLY WARNED PROF. KULLANDER OF THAT. SO WE ALL KNEW THAT TOSE ANALYSIS COULD NOT BE TAKEN AS COMPLETE, BUT JUST AS A FIRST APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM. THE COPPER FOUND WAS PROBABLY AN IMPURITY AND I MADE CLEAR THIS SUSPECT OF MINE . IN THAT CASE THE SAMPLE HAD NOT BEEN WITHDRAWN FROM A REACTOR BY A THIRD PARTY AND I HAVE NO DIFFICULTY TO SAY, AS I DID WHEN I DELIVERED IT, THAT I HAD TAKEN OFF FROM IT THE PARTS THAT I WANTED NOT TO DISCLOSE.

ANDREA ROSSI"

The remarkable thing is that there is no outcry of indignation among the E-Cat believers. People forgive you and keep believing in you and "the" E-Cat. They even keep inventing more or less far-fetched excuses on your behalf. This must be due to the fact that the E-Cat has become a religion!^[1]

For let's be precise: you claim that Sven Kullander^[2] had been "warned" about the manipulated sample. If that were true, why would anyone do any kind of analysis on the "fuel/ash"? Where is any statement of Sven Kullander or Hanno Essén or Mats Lewan that they were aware of this? No scientist would accept these conditions (i.e., analyzing a manipulated sample) without clearly stating that the sample is not "the real thing"! I sure would like to hear from Hanno Essén, Bo Höistad, and/or Mats Lewan if they actually knew about the manipulation and for some reason kept this important piece of information for themselves or if your statement has taken them by surprise!

Mats Lewan writes in his book with the very true title "An impossible invention":

"During his Uppsala sojourn Rossi left two small bottles of the fuel powder used in the E-Cat—one with unused fuel and the other with powder that Rossi said had run in the device for months. Later Kullander had measurements made on the powder, indicating that Rossi’s theory was wrong."

Mats Lewan. An Impossible Invention (Kindle Locations 1707-1709).

Nowhere can I find any mention that Sven was aware of the "incompleteness" of the sample. And of course we can no longer ask him to confirm or deny. What we have, though, is some emails from him and the previous report from Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet. The report makes no mention of any "warning" that the sample is incomplete. Sven wrote to Göran Ericsson on December 22, 2012:

Hej Göran

Bifogar rapporten från Naturhistoriska som gjordes under våren.
I den framgår klart att nickel inte är med i någon kärnreaktion.

Hsn Sven

[Translation: Hi Göran // Enclose the report from Naturhistoriska which was done this spring. // It clearly says that nickel is not involved in any nuclear reaction. // Grtngs Sven]

If Kullander had known about your claimed "warning", he would have understood the importance of conveying this information to his collaborators. Certainly he would also have pointed this out in his email and it would have been mentioned in both the report and elsewhere on the internet where the results were discussed at length.
 
Also the people from Ralon and KTH that studied the manipulated sample - and clearly showed that the copper could not have been produced from nickel in a nuclear transmutation process in the E-Cat (of that time) - make no mention of any manipulation. Instead, they, e.g., write:

"Prover som erhölls från Sven Kullander i december har analyserats. Proverna bestod av två flaskor med ca 1 gram i varje flaska. Ena flaska kallas ”NY” och innehöll det nickel pulver som Rossi använde i reaktorn, taget innan någon aktivitet har skett. Den andra flaskan kallas ”GAMMAL” och det innehöll pulver som använts i en av Rossis reaktorer i ca 6 månader. Denna flaska innehöll också ca 1 gram pulver."

[My translation: "Samples obtained from Sven Kullander in December have been analyzed. The samples consisted of two bottles containing about 1 gram each. One bottle is labeled “NEW” and contained the nickel powder that Rossi used in the reactor, obtained before usage. The other bottle is labeled “OLD” and it contained the powder that was used in one of Rossis reactors for about 6 months. This bottle also contained about 1 gram of powder."]

Curt Edström and Jan-Erik Nowacki, "Analys av två typer av nickelpulver", Ralon and KTH, 2013-01-17.

This is all. No mention is made that they, or Sven Kullander, knew that the analyzed and discussed sample has been manipulated.

Anyway: if what you state is true, i.e., that you removed (!) something from the sample but it actually was in the "reactor" I am even more baffled. It would mean that we had a different kind of nuclear reaction than we have now? No change in the isotopic composition then but a lot of change now? I mean, you cannot get back to natural isotopic composition by removing (!) something from the sample?

All this leaves only one conclusion: you were playing tricks then (trying to give the impression that copper was produced) and you are playing tricks now (trying to have people believe all nickel somehow converted into Ni-62). 

Your statement about the 2011 sample simply is an after-the-fact construction desperately trying to save you from the mistake of going from one extreme (no isotopic change in Ni and Cu but claims of nuclear reaction) to another, contradictory extreme (complete isotopic change in nickel to consist of only Ni-62 without any (!) other of the well-known nuclear reactions and without inducing any radioactivity).^[3,4,5]

And the funny and very interesting thing is that this desperate try to justify and explain away all contradictions seems to work with your followers! They accept your claim that you need to do all this to protect your "patent". And you simply make good use of the fact that people want to believe in miracles. So you get away with it. Again. Well played! This is pure genius and I admire you!

Warm regards,

  Stephan Pomp

P.S.: Some earlier posts on the subject concerning Swedish media and their treatment of the subject are found here (SVT) and here (P1) and a comment related to the P1 reports is given here (all in Swedish).

Appendix:
Regarding the copper in the 2011 sample, Lewan writes:

"What was particularly controversial was the scientific content—a theory that the device produced energy via the fusion of hydrogen and nickel nuclei. The result of such a nuclear reaction would be copper, of which Focardi and Rossi had found traces in the fuel powder after use."
Mats Lewan. An Impossible Invention (Kindle Locations 1303-1305).

and

"As in the Fleischmann and Pons experiment, in Rossi’s device initial phenomena brought to mind fusion, including the discovery of copper in the nickel powder used as fuel. In this case, it could be the nucleus of nickel that had reacted with the nucleus of hydrogen, consisting of a single proton, which then formed a new nucleus, copper, because copper has one proton more than nickel—a fusion reaction that in itself would release energy if it occurred. But analysis of the used nickel shows that the copper was simply a contamination powder from another source."
Mats Lewan. An Impossible Invention (Kindle Locations 5113-5116). 

Footnotes:
[1] Maybe this explains why the Cat has so many lives?
[2] As I mentioned in this blog post (in Swedish) - reporting from a talk Sven Kullander gave on Novermber 9, 2011 - Sven seemed to have no doubt that the "fuel/ash" was the real thing. And I remember having been very critical about this blind trust and believe (as the blog post documents).
[3] It should be pointed out here that I have full confidence in the different analyses of the isotopic compositions etc of the "fuel" and the "ash" that have been performed by various labs. These analyses were really independent!
[4] I have a suggestion for further improvement of the reported results in the next round (yes, I am pretty sure there will be a next round with a new report calling for more tests and money from, e.g., Elforsk ...): change the isotopic composition a little less dramatic and make sure that there is some residual radioactivity in the "ash".^[4] Then it will be harder for us critics to claim that we know your game.
[5] Both you and many others have pointed out that it was the team of researchers that have taken out the ash. Maybe so and maybe all researchers are really doing their best to find out about the mystery of "the" E-Cat. But who put the sample in? Was there only one sample inside? Or was the sample that was removed by the researchers only one that the researchers believed was the same that first showed natural isotopic composition in Li and Ni?