I'm a retired person and I used to work in meteorology, developing measuring equipment and software. I live in northern Germany. For ten years I also lived in Italy and I know the language very well, especially the scientific Italian.

I heard about the Rossi story in January. I was interested and somehow open-minded. But after about three minutes of reading, I had the impression that the story was somehow different as it was told by Rossi and company. I didn't see any nuclear reactions there and I didn't see the many kilowatts of excess heat they claimed. The longer the story has continued, the more obvious it became for me. I would not exclude a couple of Watts of adsorption or absorption energy or effects like that.

To understand this story, it is crucial to understand the mentality of Italians and to understand the underlying psychology. We need a neutral James Randi to sort this out. Notice that the Italian newspaper and RAI News TV called Rossi a "magician."

Let's look at the players.

Andrea Rossi has a degree in philosophy and claims to be engineer. He still claims to hold a degree granted by an American paper mill. Rossi would face a fine of at least $2,000 over here in Germany if he called himself and engineer in public.

As a businessman he was unlucky. The story of his Omar-Petroldragon scandal is well-known, see the Italian Wikipedia and many Italian newspaper articles. Rossi claims to be unlucky because other people betrayed him; the state changed laws after he started his business, and so on. This is his defense position. RAI News TV has a different story to tell. They say that still, as of today, court trials are pending and the Italian taxpayers have had to pay millions of Euro to clean up Rossi's old factories where he accumulated waste oil in large tanks. Rossi went to the U.S. where he bought an apartment in Miami Beach. Then he claimed he was developing breakthrough Seebeck-effect transducers but they never worked. He received money from U.S. taxpayers for that.

Rossi is now on a mission: he wants to show the world that he was and still is right. He has no feeling for real scientific discussions, he doesn't care about generally accepted laws in physics, statistics or details. He sees only his project; details are not important. Critics are not critics in his lexicon, but rather, enemies, snakes or insects. Whoever is not with him is his enemy. He is smart, knows how to impress or distract people, and he is, when he wants to be, a kind and gentlemanly Italian signore. Rossi is someone you can understand by understanding his psychological structure and by knowing his past.

Sergio Focardi is completely different. I like him. He could be my father. I studied medicine and I have the impression that he is ill. A tragic situation for a person; he is a convinced cold-fusionist who had to face the problem of not being accepted by the majority of mainstream Italian physicists. He is part of a kind of hidden network of cold fusionists with ties to the University of Bologna. He is also on a mission, perhaps the last mission in his life. His mission is to show: "Yes — we, Piantelli and I, we were right, we made cold fusion!" Focardi is not someone ready to betray the public like Rossi. Focardi is so convinced of the reality of low-energy nuclear reactions yet so limited in his options at this time of his life that he would collaborate with almost anybody who would support him. On his mission, he forgets to cite reliable sources, he is often confused, and he makes contradictory comments. Focardi respects Rossi despite the fact that Rossi uses him. Lets hope Focardi will survive this opera.

Giuseppe Levi? I don't know how important his role is in this. But he has a severe problem: the same problem that the University of Bologna has. He risks his career and the University risks its reputation. It is the oldest university of the world. Levi made several written faulty statements, and always in favor of Rossi. At the beginning, in January, he presented himself as a neutral/skeptical person. As a scientist, he could have easily found the sources of the errors, corrected them and explained why he committed the errors. But he reacts as an angry man. The reason is because he is in a trap, he cannot return, its too late. Already in January he could see the problems, but he closed his eyes to them. He has a friendship with blogger Daniele Passerini that goes back to childhood but he and Passerini never disclosed this. I never heard about it before you uncovered that a couple of days ago. I have been reading many Italian blogs almost every day. Passerini says he disclosed his relationship with Levi several times in the past. Boaahh - as they say in Italian, I don't know about that. [Ed: Passerini did, disclose it, but very indirectly.]

Rossi, Levi, Passerini, Mats Lewan of Ny Teknik and an Italian journalist named Maurizio Melis form a communication network. Melis runs a small private radio show and calls himself "Mr. Kilowatt".

Rossi, Focardi and Levi form the trio you defined.