Dear Florian,

What can we do to make you go away?

Science has been rewritten numerous times.
The most known examples are general relativity and quantum mechanics.
With GR, pretty much every single formula of Newtonian physics became obsolete and wrong overnight.
With QM, our whole perspective on a baryonic universe changed.

Scientific models and theories are invalidated and replaced as we come up with new explanations that better fit the observed. That is what science is. Static is the one thing it isn't.

Sorry, but no - you need to read the paper better, because you're jumping to conclusions that the paper does not support.
Rossi did not only provide the test cylinders. He provided the pumps, control boxes, cabling and pretty much everything except the meters.
Just like a stage magician provides everything except the eyes.

And much more telling, the test run and real run are not comparable because of one factor that was introduced in the real run - Rossi himself.
There are so many ways he could have turned on an electric power source while supervising the insertion and extraction with his fingers, and rigged it so this power drain would not show up on the meters.
Especially since he provided all the cabling and physically touching connections through which surplus power could be delivered without showing up on the meters.

The scientists here broke an obvious rule of measuring - when someone else delivers something to be measured, you have to do the measurement outside all the parts of the system that is delivered. Not inside, because that inserts the experiment into the chain of trust.

And it should be obvious, but you don't let outsiders be present during any part of the experiment. Especially not the person who provided the equipment, and absolutely not letting the person touch and control parts of the experiment. That's tainted as fuck.

That should ring a warning bell, because it makes it easier to conduct (no pun intended) electric trickery.

You have two cables, each with a power meter clamped on.
Each cable has three wires. Two form a closed circuit, and the power consumption shows up on the meter. The third forms a closed circuit with the third wire from the other cable. Neither meter shows this current.

Also, power can be supplied in other ways, like through the scaffolding, through inductance, and many other ways.

You need to measure the whole system, and not only the part you think is relevant. Unfortunately, but predictably, no such measurements were done,

On cabling supplied by the magician. They seem to have taken Rossi's word for (a) the cables only providing DC and (b) not having any third conductor with the closed loop only being through two different cables.

And they did not measure the power of the entire system, including all the surrounding equipment. Which is what you really want to do with any over-parity claims. Every bit has to be accounted for, not just what appears to be the power source.

Not true. Around 85% of the helium in the universe comes from the Big Bang, and only 15% has (so far, by our clock) been created by fusion. For elements heavier than lithium, it holds true[*], but the first three elements also coalesced directly from the baryon soup.

[*] For practical purposes. All elements and isotopes were produced directly during big bang, but for all but the first three, the ratio and amounts were so small that they can be disregarded. Not for Helium, though.

No, sleight of hand is well inside a magician's domain.
Rossi was present and operating the experiment both when the "fuel" was inserted and removed.

This is probably one of the oldest cons in the book. Alchemists "produced" gold from lead, and fooled princes and kings.

But we don't know what the electrical input is. Rossi sets the stage, not the scientists who "verify" it. As long as Rossi provides all the outside equipment and power to run the show, there's no assurance that he doesn't somehow feed power from the outside.

Why won't he let others set up the tests and location, and he only providing the power generator? The answer seems pretty obvious, but then again, there's a venture capitalist born every minute...

You're wrong here. If this were a viable method of creating energy, even if horribly expensive, it would have enormous scientific and economical ramifications.
It would be a viable energy source in situations where you need power without being able to use a nuclear power source, price be damned. A drone you don't have to refill for months? Space probes and landers that don't need solar panels or nuclear power plants? Emergency power sources for important servers?
There would be a ton of applications, not to say anything about rewriting science and opening up a lot of new doors.

But, unfortunately, it's looks lie the same old con in new and improved wrapping. The earlier demonstrations by Rossi were exposed as fake (like when the "fusion" produced apparently produced copper in the same ratio of isotopes as naturally occurring copper, and not what a fusion process would produce). So why should we think that this one isn't a scam, and that he's just adjusted the end product to better fit his model?

I wish we could check the money trail, and find out whether he has bought some very expensive copper and nickel isotopes that his reaction allegedly produce.
But I'm sure the believers would have an explanation for that too - any explanation except that they've been conned.

No, input cannot easily be monitored, unless someone trusted to be impartial can provide and set up the lines.
You can have two different power lines going to the device, with each of them in addition to the two normal wires also has a third. The hidden wire is [+] in one wire and [-] on the other. The meters you clamp on to each of the cables will show a low current, not detecting the real power source.
And Rossi needs multiple low-power cables, and won't let others provide the equipment.

Well, yes, that's exactly what it's like. The chain of custody is compromised, in that he does not allow the test to be set up in a 3rd party controlled environment, and doesn't allow them to replace any of the outside equipment that isn't part of the "trade secret" core.

If this was legit, Andrea Rossi could seal a unit, and send it to independent testing along with instructions for how to test it. It would be reproducible, and he would still keep his trade secrets. But he has refused this.

Except that it allegedly needs a very expensive isotope of nickel, which costs far more than the cost of the electricity produced. Thus he needs money!

To me and many others, it looks like a scam, all the same, from someone with a long history of selling fantastic claims.

I wasn't playing semantics games. i just immediately understood what the GP meant, unlike you.

(But he was also wrong - this is disregarding the two simultaneous cases we had last month in Atlanta. The score now is 4 confirmed cases, 3 of them imported cases, one death, which may rise to two. Plus the possible case in Boston, but at this point I think it's more likely to be a case of hysteria than Ebola.)

Why do you presume it was stored, and not provided through one of the various tubes connected to the device?

Why do you presume that the materials tested afterwards was the same as what was inserted?

This shouts "fraud" with capital F, R, A, U and D.
And that's before considering that Mr. Rossi has a history of fraud, and has spent several years in prison over previous frauds.

The device's main mode of operation is to extract money from gullible venture capitalists. The scientists are just useful tools here, not adept at spotting fraud, but used to work with people who may be wrong, not outright deceitful.

We had 0.
Then Mr Duncan arrived. We had 1.
Then Mr Duncan died. We had 0.
Then the nurse tested positive. We have 1.

We've never had more than one case. Unless the guy in Boston who went to renew his prescription and complained about muscle aches tuns out to test positive. In which case there are two cases.

In comparison, every year, between 3,000 (confirmed) and 49,000 (estimated) people in the US die from influenza.

I thought it was Advance Placement without a d. Because they are used to advance the student to be able to be placed in courses he or she doesn't have the formal prerequisites for - mostly entry level, and nothing advanced at all.

Of course, abbreviations can change their meaning over time (like RAID where the I initially stood for inexpensive, but now stands for independent, which they obviously aren't).