[Stoves] Independent review of WBT -- Cecil's comment ....

Ranyee Chiang rchiang at cleancookstoves.org
Mon Feb 23 08:55:35 CST 2015


Dear Cecil, Paul, and all,

I have heard the issue of independent review of testing methods quite often.  It's important to start by defining what we mean by independent - typically someone who is outside of the clean cooking sector.  There are three challenges that we have faced with this option.  First, people who are outside the sector are not familiar with the particular challenges that make stove and fuel testing so difficult.  Second, someone outside the sector does not have the funding or time to do an evaluation.  If someone inside the sector funds non-sector experts to evaluate or develop methodology, that will lead to perceptions the evaluation is not "independent", whether or not the funding source influences the non-sector expert.  And lastly, any testing methodology developed/evaluated/approved by a non-sector expert may not have the support of experts in the sector, which means that the methodology will not be adopted and may actually contribute to the lack of harmony.

We absolutely do want the input of non-sector experts, while also minimizing these challenges.  The ISO process has been used successfully to address these exact challenges in other sectors.  The ISO working groups bring together sector experts - so we benefit from their vast experience and bring different perspectives together.  The working groups also also bring in non-sector experts, who can bring their related expertise with a fresh perspective.  Because it is a consensus process, even though it may take longer, we aiming for better product in the end.  The same way that we involve the actual users in the design of a stove, we want to involve the users of testing methods in the design of the methods - so we are also aiming for a product that the testing community will use.  The ISO process also ensures that we have broad international participation, especially from the countries where these stoves and fuels are used. 

Working groups are now active in developing the content of harmonized methods documents, with sector and non-sector experts already having identified significant areas of agreement.  Hopefully this conversation is a reminder to all working group experts that there is a great urgency and value to our work and to quickly resolve remaining issues.  For your recommendations of non-sector experts, they are welcome to join the ISO working groups - http://cleancookstoves.org/technology-and-fuels/standards/how-to-participate.html.  

Best regards,
Ranyee

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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 22:40:37 -0600
From: Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu>
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
	<stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: [Stoves] Independent review of WBT -- Cecil's comment ....
	was e: Examples of results
Message-ID: <54E6BAC5.6000607 at ilstu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"

Stovers,

Because of a processing delay, many of you might not have read Cecil 
Cook's excellent comments about fixing the difficulties of the WBT and 
related problems.   I recommend that you read it (below).

Cecil makes many good points and makes a suggestion for resolution.   
But I want to stimulate the discussion with an alternative consideration.

1.  The "collective body" of persons / experts / enthusiasts that is 
discussing the revisions of the WBT procedures seems to be hung up with 
distinct camps or points of view.  In that regard, I agree with Cecil 
that some new approach is needed.   And soon.

2.  Cecil proposes that an independent review be conducted and (I might 
be incorrect) that the reviewer would essentially make the final 
decision (based on substantial inputs by all who are interested).

3.  An alternative (just a suggestion) would be that the independent 
(and neutral) reviewer would be in charge of the leading the 
discussions, intending to get people to agree.   That is, that none of 
the current participants in the discussions be placed in charge of 
leading the efforts for resolution, keeping the discussions objective, 
impersonal, and scientific.  Somewhat of an arbitrator or moderator, but 
not trying for a compromise. Trying for the best science.

The reason for suggesting the moderator/arbitrator is in hopes that 
within our Stove Community we could reach some semblance of agreement, 
instead of letting an outside reviewer make the final decision.   If the 
split continues after the moderation effort, the decision making could 
then be turned over to the reviewer who would then essentially act as 
judge and jury.

I think that use of an independent moderator/arbitrator would be faster 
and cost much less money.

I remain flexible about how the solution could be accomplished. But I 
and many others want some serious progress about this soon, not waiting 
on and on and on as meeting yield very little progress.

Paul

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype: paultlud      Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.com

On 2/16/2015 3:18 PM, Cecil Cook wrote:
>
> Dear Stovers,
>
> Not sure what has caused time to skip beat here.  I just wrote and 
> lost a very clever response to the present thread of discussion on the 
> multiple short comings of the WBT which remarked the following:
>
> (1.)Science - even stove science - grows by fits and starts;
>
> (2.)science learns more from recognizing that *big mistakes* have 
> inadvertently been made that it does from research that confirms well 
> established scientific paradigms (see Karl Popper?s Logic of 
> Scientific Discovery for the usefulness of scientific failure)
>
>
> (3.)in science - even the science of biomass stoves - progress comes 
> from the
>
> retransmission of falsehood (falsification) by deductive chains of 
> logic from the failed predictions back to the falsification of 
> theories, metrics, and models because they generated mistaken 
> predictions about stove performance (or such matters as planetary 
> motion, climate warming and weirding, the effect of GMO 's on human 
> and animal health, race as a construct and its effect on IQ, and the 
> Lamarkian notion that acquired characteristics can be inherited, etc.)
>
> (4.)we are fortunate that people like Ianto Evans, Larry Winiarski, 
> Dean Still, Peter Scott, Nordica, Sam, and probably many others I do 
> not know took the bull by the horns and bravely originated a 
> preliminary set of principles for designing improved biomass burning 
> stoves and also cobbled together a series of provisional efficiency 
> and emission tests.
>
> These were the original Aprovecho stove pioneers who also founded the 
> Rocket Stove movement which mercifully improved upon the earlier 
> Lorena stove experiment that constructed thousands of high mass 
> clay/sand ?masonry? stoves which were soon discovered to be much less 
> efficient than a well operated 3 stone fire. This group of appropriate 
> technology oriented, back to the land hippies gradually became more 
> technical and began to refine and apply the VITA WBT to measure and 
> compare the efficiency of different kinds of simple biomass stoves.
>
> They put together a set of specifications and principles for 
> designing, building and optimizing the Rocket Stove which became the 
> prototype in the mind of the Aprovecho movement for all improved 
> cookstoves anywhere in the world.
>
> Finally, the Aprovecho-niks and communards were joined by university 
> based engineers, physicists, chemists, and atmospheric scientists from 
> UC Berkeley, and a wide spectrum of university based scientists and 
> private sector professionals associated with the annual Ethos conference.
>
> This professional and hands on US based network has been busy over the 
> past 15 years attempting to clearly specify metrics that measure the 
> technological performance of biomass stoves. It has also pioneered the 
> design and instrumentation of stove testing centers and the 
> specification of observational protocols that correctly 
> ?opertionalize? these metrics. From the beginning, the main purpose 
> was to discover simple tests that empirically assess the efficiency 
> and emission performance of improved biomass stoves and also to make 
> quantitative comparisons between improved stoves.
>
> The rejection or lukewarm reception of many ? perhaps most - improved 
> stoves in many countries of the developing world over the years has 
> forced European, American, Indian, African, Latin American, and 
> Chinese designers and makers of improved stoves to gradually expand 
> their horizons to investigate the roles played by all the other major 
> factors, interests, and constituencies which significantly influence 
> over the acceptance or rejection of new biomass stoves including: (i.) 
> funding agents like USAID, the World Bank, and GIZ, (ii.) standard 
> setting agencies like EPA and the WHO, (iii.) large scale industrial 
> and village scale craft manufacturers, (iv.) the controllers of access 
> to gathered or commercialized fuels from the nearby environments, and 
> (v.) the socio-economic, cultural, and human factors involved in the 
> institutionalization of  one or more dominant stove technologies and 
> products in a particular market segment; these human factors are 
> ultimately the most important determinants of user acceptance or 
> rejection of improved stoves. The acceptance or rejection depends on 
> the perceptions of the utility of a new stove within the household 
> economy where the stove has multiple functions to perform: cooking the 
> food eaten by the family, heating its home, earning income by 
> providing heat to power home industry, purifying water, drying crops, 
> providing light, and creating a social and spiritual center around 
> which family life revolves.
>
> Speaking as a science challenged social anthropologist I think that 
> several things need to be acknowledged about the 
> Aprovecho/Berkeley/Ethos (ABE) alliance.
>
> (1.)It has done a good job of promoting the Rocket Stove design around 
> the world.
>
> (2.)On the down side, its efforts to demystify the design of improved 
> stoves and empower village and craft fabricators of simple low cost 
> stoves, the ABE Alliance appears to have conflated improved stoves in 
> general with the basic Rocket Stove.
>
> (3.)This conflation of Rocket stoves with biomass stoves in general 
> has unfortunately led to emission and efficiency metrics and testing 
> procedures which perhaps unintentionally advantage the Rocket Stove 
> and disadvantage all other types of stoves (e.g., the specification of 
> 1 inch square pieces of oven dried spruce or pine as the test fuel 
> that must be expertly fed into any stove being tested). The reliance 
> on metrics and test protocols which favour some stoves and 
> disadvantage other stoves does not lead to stable or valid comparisons 
> of the efficiency and emission performances of different types of 
> stoves or even the same kind of stoves.
>
> (4.)The leadership role assumed by the Aprovecho/Berkeley/Ethos 
> Alliance in the US State Dept funded and EPA supported Global Alliance 
> for Clean Cookstoves and the GACC?s adoption of the WBT metrics, 
> protocols and instrumentation has complicated an already complex 
> predicament. Because personal and institutional reputations are at 
> risk, it is becoming increasingly difficult to radically change the 
> WBT metrics, test protocols, and instruments without creating winners 
> and losers. The GACC and big political players are in danger of 
> exposure for prematurely funding big implementation programs without 
> first settling the science of small biomass stove testing.
>
> (5.)Here is my proposal for salvaging the present ugly situation of 
> stove scientists behaving badly in public: let all the stove 
> scientists and stove testers who think they know how to test the 
> efficiency and emissions of small cooking and heating stoves agree on 
> an independent standard developing and setting organization like TUV 
> Rheinland-USA (www.*tuv*.com/en/usa/home.jsp 
> <http://www.tuv.com/en/usa/home.jsp>) or some other respected science 
> testing establishment in the world and ask them to review all the 
> different metrics, testing protocols, equipment/instrumentation on 
> offer. The GACC probably has the funds needed to pay for such a 
> comprehensive review. It can invite all the stove scientists and 
> testers with skin in the game to form themselves into a small advisory 
> body whose job is to ensure that no interested party or parties 
> captures or dominates the review of existing test protocols and 
> metrics. That means the proposed advisory group will have to consult 
> openly about the rules that will govern the consultative, 
> re-conciliatory and global culture and science creating process they 
> will go through together.
>
> (6.)I understand that the ISO process and the IWA?s are attempting to 
> do what I am proposing we ask TUV Rheinland or another comparable 
> science testing institution to do on behalf of the presently 
> dysfunctional small stove community around the planet. Here is my 
> contention: the ISO was and is premature because the small stove 
> community is too divided by conflicting research styles and programs 
> prioritizing the stove operator, family health, employment creation, 
> environmental stability, energy sustainability, and decentralization 
> and appropriate technology.  The suggested involvement of TUV 
> Rheinland USA is to help a grumpy, preoccupied, and stressed out 
> international stove community to speed up its integration around 
> second generation metrics, stove testing protocols, lab procedures, 
> and possibly even field tests.
>
> My interest here is to allow all stove scientists and hands-on stove 
> innovators to give their testimony about:
>
> (i.)what specific aspects of stove performance need to be observed, 
> reduced to metrics,  quantified and compared,
>
> (ii.)what testing protocols, methodologies, equipment, and
>
> (iii.)what field observations are required to predict both stove 
> performance and probable  stove use in particular target communities?
>
> In that way the Independent third party agency reviewing the WBT, the 
> testimony of the partisans of particular approaches to testing and 
> specific metrics, will get the benefit of all the years of good work 
> done by stove scientists, manufacturers, trainers, vendors, lab 
> testers, back yard innovators, etc. around the world.
>
> If we simply continue the low intensity stove testing wars fought at 
> the World Bank, USAID, EPA, UC Berkeley, several national labs, the 
> GACC, and in most of the different countries where stove testing is 
> under development we will continue to develop backwards. It is not 
> fair to our partners in the developing world because we are sewing 
> confusion and conflict among our partisans and our enemies. My 
> goodness such conduct is not professional, even in post modern North 
> America and Europe where nowadays it?s difficult to find a flesh and 
> blood human being to talk to in the midst of cyber anarchy and inward 
> facing crowds.
>
> And let us not forget dear Rumi, a Sufi poet who wrote in the 13^th 
> century:
>
> Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing,
> there is a field. I'll meet you there.
>
> When the soul lies down in that grass,
> the world is too full to talk about.
> Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.
>
> Ask Rumi to help us find our way out of this mess we are creating. And 
> do not forget what Walt Kelly?s philosophical opossum - Pogo - who 
> lived in the Okefenokee swamp in my part of south Georgia as known to 
> say when politics got out of hand:
>
> ?We have met the enemy and he is us? or even better: ?we are defeated 
> by insurmountable opportunities?.
>
> In search and service,
>
> CECook
>
>





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