It is necessary to distinguish between theories and theorems in this kind of situation. Non-trival theories (such as the axioms of various physical theories) have an infinite set of provable theorems that are not obvious -- including those that exclude possibilities. Mathematicians spend their lifetimes exploring even a small number of these theorems in the form of proof. Conjectures -- proposed theorems -- are what the "skeptics" are trafficking in when they make arguments like yours that the absence of a conjecture implies the absence of something that would be predicted by theory. Your strongest point is that there seems to be some statistical success in relying on this implication, but all you can really argue is that some discount factor should be applied to obtain the expected value of the investigation. However, "skeptics" never do this. They don't look at the value of the potential source of energy and then apply a rationally derived discount factor to discover whether, for instance, it is legitimate to destroy a grad student's career for attempting to do his thesis on a replication of Nathan Lewis's negative cold fusion experiment that was the basis for the APS deep-sixing cold fusion a mere 5 weeks after the March 1989 press conference. Or, worse, the editor of Nature rejecting the recommendation of his own peer-reviewers to accept Oriani's experimental replication of the P&F effect less than a year after the March 1989 press conference -- rejecting on the grounds that "it violated theory".

Erratum: "Wein's approximation is accurate at higher wavelengths" should be "Wein's approximation is accurate at higher frequencies"

I did not bring up emissivity for a reason:

The camera's physics directly measure power impinging on the sensors. On the way through the thermal calibration emissivity introduces bias in one direction and on the way through the power calibration it is inverted so it cancels out. There is a residual error that must be quantified in that, although (contrary to your statement about "visible light") the Optris IR camera is, well, IR, in order to obtain a full-spectrum integration of power the software must fit to Plank's curve and this apparently makes the grey body assumption (which is that emissivity doesn't vary with wavelength), which, as you point out, doesn't hold in reality. I've never seen any "skeptic" attempt to quantify this error, which rationality dictates be done. Moreover, they haven't even attempted to argue the sign of the error, let alone whether it is conceivably significant given that at the wavelengths below IR where the errors are most likely to occur (as Wein's approximation is accurate at higher wavelengths), the energies are lower not only in magnitude but in frequency.

I'd really like to see some genuine skepticism. I have my own reasons for skepticism but to put myself in the same class as those who refuse to do arithmetic is an insult to my intelligence.

The fourth root of 10 is 1.77 -- now try to keep in mind that I've just removed from consideration the high sensitivity to error introduced by the Stefan Boltzmann equation and we're dealing solely with the direct proportionality of Wien's displacement law: So you're positing that the IR camera's calibration for figure 3 was plausibly 77% off.

Ethan Sh*t-For-Brains Siegel declares that if there is no known theory for producing heat in excess of that which can be accounted for by chemical means, that we're dealing either with a hoax or with a particular class of nuclear reactions.

For such SFBs Theory rules over Experiment.

Clue: If the Enlightenment has anything at all to offer, it is that Experiment rules over Theory.

The question isn't whether nuclear products are present.

The question is whether heat beyond that explicable by chemical means is present. If so, we can go ahead and posit a hoax or we can posit that we Just Don't Know what the physical mechanism is for producing the heat but Whatever It Is It Sure Is Interesting. In the latter position, we call this the beginning of scientific research.

For a clue exactly how clueless Mr. SFB is, one can look at Figure 3 of the paper and, using physics 101 application of the Stefan Boltzmann law, calculate the power output during the thermal excursion to be 10kW for 1kW input.

With that kind of power gain, the niceties Mr. SFB posits as essential measurements just don't matter to the importance. Its either a hoax or its a revolution that should receive more resources and attention than middle east politics and American Idol combined.

You'll have to see if you can locate a glimpse of the sky in this video of the world in which H-1b fraud is rampant.

The color of sky in my world is the same color it is in the world where H-1b fraud is so routine it is considered legitimate.

If H-1b visas are being requested for level 1 support jobs, the FBI should investigate the requesting companies for fraud.

Anything can evolve to be a symbiont as long as it is vertically transmitted rather than horizontally transmitted.

Vertical transmission means you close off the borders to transmission and only transmit from parent to child.

The pseudo-skeptics have long-ago lost the peer-reviewed independently published discourse and have been completely reliant on the media and political echo-chamber. The significance of this is now outside of academic discourse entirely and threatens the stability of the echo-chamber.

That's a joke, son.

Do the hive-"people" really believe they will be able to keep the pro-freedom folks from seceding, taking with them an amount of land value commensurate with their population? After all, not only does the Declaration of Independence defend the moral principle, but the whole point of the abolition of slavery was to subdue those who thought they had a right to keep others from leaving them.

Clearly, the kind of people voting for disarming The People are not the kind of people who originated the United States in any meaningful way. Perhaps their perspective is that the Nation of Settlers was barbaric compared to the subsequent Nation of Immigrants and therefore Civilizing the Barbarians is necessary, as it was during first millennium in northern Europe. You know. The cultivars got out into the wilderness of the New World and went feral. "Smething must be done."

Well, how about Reservations?

Its always a good idea to have the slot machines make a lot of noise when they pay off.