As far as I know, the description in PESN is accurate. This is shaping up to be an important test. It may not be definitive, but it will probably be better than the previous tests done by Rossi and Levi.
Josephson wrote: "It has only cosmetic value if distinguished non-experts are observers." I told that to Rossi several times, and so did Josephson and others. Without an expert it will be somewhat cosmetic, but if the test is conducted as planned, I think it will be pretty good even if only non-experts attend. Especially if they run the machine for hours with no input, as planned. Rossi is unpredictable and it is hard to say whether things will really be done as announced. I believe that Rossi sincerely wants to convince people his device is real. I do not think there is the slightest chance he has illustrated fake device to Krivit or to anyone else. I also think he is not very good at doing tests. The previous tests have been flawed, and unconvincing. For example, even though they used a flowmeter during the 18-hour test in February 2011, they neglected to tell anyone what kind of flowmeter it was, and what it registered in instantaneous and cumulative readings. This is sloppy. It is unprofessional. Based on all that I know about Rossi, and what he has written in his blog and told me, I do not think these shortcomings have been deliberate. This is not Rossi's secret plan to make himself look bad, to fend off the competition with mental jujitsu. This is what it appears to be: sloppy work. These are people who do not bother to write down what sort of flowmeter they use, and who did not bother to keep a log and write down the flowmeter readings every 10 minutes. If you want people to believe your results you should write a properly formatted report listing the make and model of every instrument. I told Rossi that, verbatim, recently. I hope he & the others will do that this time. I think Rossi is not good at doing tests & experiments. Neither is Arata, yet Arata is indisputably a Class A genius. He is one of the most important and prolific discoverers of the 20th century, in league with Edison. So the ability to do good tests is not necessarily a reliable criterion to judge how smart someone is, or whether a claim is valid. People here should be careful not to judge Rossi by his personality or his ability to do tests and write papers. We tend to assume that very smart people are capable of a wide range of things and especially good at communicating. Many of them are. People such as Storms, Boss, Miles and McKubre are not only superb scientists, they also write excellent papers, and they give crystal clear presentations. Pam Boss in particular is a pleasure to hear. She gets right to the point and tells you everything you need to know, making even complicated results understandable. They were trained to do that, perhaps more rigorously than young scientists are today. It is a shame that Rossi does not communicate well, and that his thought processes and work habits more closely resemble those of an artist or sculptor than a research scientist. That's a shame, but that is who he is. That is the kind of person he is. Some great inventive geniuses in the past were similar. To reject him because he does not fit the pattern of a typical skilled scientist would be throwing away the baby with the bathwater. - Jed
