Investigating the Investigator: ethics, disclosure, and the Ziroth–Donut Lab story

Investigation and Analysis of Ziroth's claims by Private Investigator who is also a Donut investor and longtime friend of Marko.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/investigating-investigator-ethics-disclosure-zirothdonut-1dz0f/?trackingId=swCzMg6m8ES6NP%2BNpRSypQ%3D%3D

An interesting perspective, including this spot-on analysis on one of the weaknesses of Ziroth's weak inferences about the chemistry:

Ryan's Inference Is Not Proof

On the science I will stay in my lane. The core of his case is that the cell's charge and discharge signature looks like a high-nickel lithium-ion cell, and he states this with, in his words, "extremely high certainty." But a behavioural match on a graph is not a chemical analysis. Donut's own published material describes a cell engineered to emulate lithium-ion electrical behaviour so it can drop straight into systems already built for lithium. If that is the design goal, then a lithium-like curve is exactly what you would expect to measure. It is a feature, by design, and it cannot by itself tell you what is inside the cell. And this is not my own spin on the design. Donut Lab's co-founder and CTO, Ville Piippo, set this out directly in a discussion with Ricky Roy of the Two Bit da Vinci channel, explaining how the Donut solid-state pack is engineered as a drop-in replacement that emulates the behaviour of legacy lithium-ion packs.

If emulating a lithium-ion signature is part of the design, then a lithium-like curve is not the smoking gun it has been presented as, and it is striking how little that design rationale features in Ziroth's account. No public teardown, electron microscopy or elemental assay has been performed. I am not claiming the battery is everything it was said to be. I do not know, and I am honest about that. My point is narrower, and I think harder to dodge, Ryan is essentially communicating that: "it behaves like lithium, therefore it is lithium, therefore they lied" is an inference chain, and it was sold to a large audience as proof.

This is not hypothetical. Earlier in the series Ryan had to correct his own analysis after other engineers pointed out that he had compared two different kinds of curve, which he accepted was bad practice, and he re-ran it. To his credit, he fixed it in public. But it shows the pattern the format produces: publish first, with confidence, on the schedule attention demands; correct later, under pressure. That is survivable for a creator. It is not survivable for the company and the named individuals who absorb the damage in the meantime.