Yet another claim of a propellantless space drive

Colour me cynical, unless I see some verified data.

Far too many 'Emperors new clothes' projects going the rounds.

Being constipated may colour my view somewhat, not something the phantom project managers are guilty off anytime soon.
 
It is not a case of "a self-taught crackpot pseudo-scientist". The man and his team credentials seems to be rock-solid. Could such a strong team be entirely wrong ?
 
Archibald said:
It is not a case of "a self-taught crackpot pseudo-scientist". The man and his team credentials seems to be rock-solid. Could such a strong team be entirely wrong ?
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Well, Pons and Fleishman were also thought to be pretty solid scientists before the "cold fusion" debackle.
 
Um, when he flies a rotor-less mini-drone using this 'tech', be it free or tethered, I will cheer...

Yes, if it can lift against surface gravity, it should be able to go straight up off the bench.
If not, why not ??

Disclosure: Some years ago, I was thrown off a mildly fringe electronics forum for suggesting their resident over-zero 'inventor' replaced trying to infer gain from his complex system via a zoo of meters of sundry vintage by simply wiring a filament bulb into the circuit: Go for the glow !!
As you might expect from such deployment of Occam's Razor, outrage ensued...
 
Archibald said:
self-deception. It can happens to everyone, including the very best... typical human being bias / weakness.
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Yup. History is replete with respected experts who fell down the rabbit hole of their own ideas.

The most important thing a scientist can do is maintain objectivity while trying desperately hard to trash their own ideas. But if they desperately *want* their idea to be correct, this can be a problem. It doesn't require malfeasance on their part, just basic human nature.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Yup. History is replete with respected experts who fell down the rabbit hole of their own ideas.

The most important thing a scientist can do is maintain objectivity while trying desperately hard to trash their own ideas. But if they desperately *want* their idea to be correct, this can be a problem. It doesn't require malfeasance on their part, just basic human nature.
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I disagree, an objective scientist is so afraid of criticism that he never gets anything important done. Let him enjoy his professorship, his publications, and his sterile life.
 
Justo Miranda said:
I disagree, an objective scientist is so afraid of criticism that he never gets anything important done.
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Objective scientists - and engineers - are the *only* ones who get things done. Lack of objectivity is the opposite of good science.
 
Justo Miranda said:
Medications that must be taken for a lifetime, neither cure nor kill, only relieve the symptoms.:confused::confused:
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And those who operate from passion rather than scientific skepticism, top out at "quackery." Medicines that actually relieve symptoms are vastly superior to snake oils that kill. Medicines that actually cure require *deep* scientific rigor.

One of the most important precepts of the scientific method is the recognition that not only "I might be wrong," but "I very likely am wrong." Those who proceed from "Nah, I'm right, everyone else is wrong," are very, VERY rarely actually right.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik
 
There was a FTL communication claim a decade or so back--that was chalked up to not accounting for cable lengths as part of the apparatus.

A more forgivable mistake than some of these drive claims.

The wildest alternative scheme I might come up with would be to, say, dust off the old MARS ONE CREW MANUAL and see how current spacelift could build a methalox version of it.

Buran, my other passion, at least flew.
 
Orionblamblam said:
And those who operate from passion rather than scientific skepticism, top out at "quackery." Medicines that actually relieve symptoms are vastly superior to snake oils that kill. Medicines that actually cure require *deep* scientific rigor.

One of the most important precepts of the scientific method is the recognition that not only "I might be wrong," but "I very likely am wrong." Those who proceed from "Nah, I'm right, everyone else is wrong," are very, VERY rarely actually right.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik
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I have a cold that has been going on for three days now and barely allows me to work, I could use a little scientific rigor.
 
Justo Miranda said:
I have a cold that has been going on for three days now and barely allows me to work, I could use a little scientific rigor.
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Have yourself some aspirin and orange juice. You know, things that are only available to you thanks to technology made possible via scientific and engineering rigor.

Alternatively, listen to some overly excited yammering head yapping about how the cure to your illness is whatever elixir or Soooper Seekrit Device he's hawking. That's really the only alternative to objective science: magical thinking.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Have yourself some aspirin and orange juice. You know, things that are only available to you thanks to technology made possible via scientific and engineering rigor.

Alternatively, listen to some overly excited yammering head yapping about how the cure to your illness is whatever elixir or Soooper Seekrit Device he's hawking. That's really the only alternative to objective science: magical thinking.
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I appreciate your advice, but acetyl silicyl acid and vitamin C have never managed to beat the cold, I think I'll choose magical thinking.
 

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Justo Miranda said:
I appreciate your advice, but acetyl silicyl acid and vitamin C have never managed to beat the cold, I think I'll choose magical thinking.
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Magical thinking doesn't beat the cold either. However, basic medicines as discovered and refined by science can do better at letting you survive the experience with reduced misery.

I'll take cold hard skepticism that gets you halfway there to erratic passion that send you backwards, any day.
 
Nothing generates retractions like all things medical.

Back in the 90's-early 2000's, any quack/crank not allowed to even so much as sniff the then-art-bedecked cover of JAMA could always make it inside THE LANCET, which at least had the table of contents on the cover as even JAMA does now.

(Was the issue with bionics the one with the Jasper Johns? Or Dore'?)

I drove my late father to many check-ups late in his life, and the glass over an art print served as a mirror.

The doc asked about my Dad's insurance (railroad retirement).

The clerk told him--and so help me--this is the truth with my hand up---I saw him rub his hands together.

Chicken Soup and a hot toddie for me...all drinking lots of (non-alcoholic) liquids does is reload the snot.
 
"Yup. History is replete with respected experts who fell down the rabbit hole of their own ideas."

Classic UK engineering example remains Prof. Laithwaite, of linear-motor fame, later haplessly enthralled by the behaviour of big fly-wheels and gyroscopes. He really, really thought he'd stumbled upon contra-gravitic route. Disgrace and medical retirement ensued...

IIRC, there's a Nobel Prize winner who later 'got a bee in his bonnet' about mega-vitamins preventing Cancer. Also, that Doc who went from Hero to sub-zero over the MMR combined vaccine. His anti-triple-vaxx efforts have now spawned global out-breaks of all three so-preventable lurgies...

'Wooden Spoon' perhaps due for Razer's N95 anti-COVID masks...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...-cent-made-selling-bogus-n95-grade-rgb-masks/
 
Nik said:
"Yup. History is replete with respected experts who fell down the rabbit hole of their own ideas."

Classic UK engineering example remains Prof. Laithwaite, of linear-motor fame, later haplessly enthralled by the behaviour of big fly-wheels and gyroscopes. He really, really thought he'd stumbled upon contra-gravitic route. Disgrace and medical retirement ensued...

IIRC, there's a Nobel Prize winner who later 'got a bee in his bonnet' about mega-vitamins preventing Cancer. Also, that Doc who went from Hero to sub-zero over the MMR combined vaccine. His anti-triple-vaxx efforts have now spawned global out-breaks of all three so-preventable lurgies...

'Wooden Spoon' perhaps due for Razer's N95 anti-COVID masks...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...-cent-made-selling-bogus-n95-grade-rgb-masks/
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Sometimes scientists get stuck in a problem and have no choice but to use their creativity to imagine concepts that justify their theories, although they call it theoretical physics that sounds better.

In 1869 Dmitri Mendeleev had the 'inspiration' of creating a farsighted version of the periodic table of elements leaving gaps for some elements still unknown but of predictable properties. He was lucky and when they were discovered, between 1874 and 1886, he became a hero.

In 1930 Wolfgang Pauli 'invented' a particle called Neutrino as a desperate remedy to explain an incomprehensible phenomenon named Beta disintegration, knowing that perhaps its existence could never be experimentally proven. But he got lucky and the Neutrino was officially discovered in 1956.

In 1984 a physicist of the Berkeley University named Richard Mueller imagined the existence of Nemesis, a dark star orbiting at 16,000,000,000 kilometers around the Sun, to explain certain orbital alterations experienced by Uranus and Neptune. But so far, he has not had any luck.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, science became stuck again because the established paradigm of the Standard Model of Particle Physics was unable to explain the Dark Matter, the Dark Energy, the Gravitational Quantum State, and the Cosmological Constant phenomena. The theoretical physicists have been formulating models on the String Theory that are impossible to demonstrate because this would require amounts of energy that exceed the available technology.

Science or faith?

In 2018 Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, published the book ‘Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray’. Sabine argues that the theoretical physicists have lost the North. We have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades. Paucity of major advances in fundamental physics is partly due to an overemphasis on aesthetic criteria such as symmetry and mathematical beauty, in the face of their inability to overcome the new challenges posed to science.

In 1453, while the Turks shelled the walls of Constantinople with 1,054 mm heavy artillery, Byzantine theologians were debating the sex of angels instead of defending the fortress. They ended badly.
 
"We have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades."

Given how the much anticipated 'Super Symmetry' has utterly evaded detection at eg CERN, and 'String Theory' remains mired in a multiplicity of potential parameters --Though apparently but a tithe of previous decades-- the next break-through may come via 'Teleparallel Gravity'.

IIRC, Einstein (!!) toyed with the concept, but lacked the math to do it justice. Recent developments have revived notion, got it as far as several half-baked and sadly-incompatible variants. As I understand it, the math says EM phenomena twist space/time one way, and gravity another. They're kin, just dramatically different solutions to shared equations...
But, as yet, not the least hint of how to access this claimed kinship.
No extant analogy to Faraday's clever coils, or Hertz' resonant spark-gaps
Nor Watt watching his nan's kettle-lid dance as it boiled.
Not even Hero of Alexander's steam-spun toy, two millennia earlier...
 
Justo Miranda said:
Sometimes scientists get stuck in a problem and have no choice but to use their creativity to imagine concepts that justify their theories, although they call it theoretical physics that sounds better.
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All cases you named were cases when scientists hit the deficiences and problems of existing theories, and, frustrated by the inability of existing theories to explain observed facts, tried "something creative". They weren't inventing new theories for the sake of new theories; they invented new teories because problems with existing ones were obvious. The way was: phenomenon observed - existing theory repeatedly failed to explain it satisfactory - scientists started to seek alternatives.
 
Justo Miranda said:
Medications that must be taken for a lifetime, neither cure nor kill, only relieve the symptoms.:confused::confused:
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Well, ask someone with severe ulcerative colitis or extensive psoriasis if they are better off with the new medications taken for a lifetime. It was a long hard struggle to understand the immune system and how to devise medications redirect it effectively. I was there for it.
 
Dilandu said:
All cases you named were cases when scientists hit the deficiences and problems of existing theories, and, frustrated by the inability of existing theories to explain observed facts, tried "something creative". They weren't inventing new theories for the sake of new theories; they invented new teories because problems with existing ones were obvious. The way was: phenomenon observed - existing theory repeatedly failed to explain it satisfactory - scientists started to seek alternatives.
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These are cases of scientists who dare to risk their reputations, I fear that it is an extinct race. To appreciate the difference with today's scientists, you only have to look at what happens in universities.
 
TJDougherty01 said:
Well, ask someone with severe ulcerative colitis or extensive psoriasis if they are better off with the new medications taken for a lifetime. It was a long hard struggle to understand the immune system and how to devise medications redirect it effectively. I was there for it.
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Both opinions are true. Some companies that manufacture drugs have become monsters that make billions a year. Why would they hurt their profits by definitively solving the diseases that cause them? They relieve pain and other discomfort but prefer to keep customers as long as possible. Can you imagine the losses that a simple cold vaccine would cause them?
 
Nik said:
"Yup. History is replete with respected experts who fell down the rabbit hole of their own ideas."

Classic UK engineering example remains Prof. Laithwaite, of linear-motor fame, later haplessly enthralled by the behaviour of big fly-wheels and gyroscopes. He really, really thought he'd stumbled upon contra-gravitic route. Disgrace and medical retirement ensued...

IIRC, there's a Nobel Prize winner who later 'got a bee in his bonnet' about mega-vitamins preventing Cancer. Also, that Doc who went from Hero to sub-zero over the MMR combined vaccine. His anti-triple-vaxx efforts have now spawned global out-breaks of all three so-preventable lurgies...

'Wooden Spoon' perhaps due for Razer's N95 anti-COVID masks...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...-cent-made-selling-bogus-n95-grade-rgb-masks/
Click to expand...

And don't start me on that colossal prick with the name of Didier Raoult...
 
Justo Miranda said:
These are cases of scientists who dare to risk their reputations, I fear that it is an extinct race.
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You "risk your reputation" by going against "scientific dogma." Lots of scientists used to do that. But here's the thing: over time, scientific dogma has become more and more entrenched not because scientists are hidebound, but because years, decades, generations of testing have shown that that dogma is almost certainly correct. A century ago a scientist could go against the scientific dogma of evolution with his own ideas and *not* be a crank, but today the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that any scientist who's *actually* a scientist will look at it and not be able to come up with a competing hypothesis that's not patently silly.

A scientist who's not head deep up his own ass will not challenge dogma that they know full well is almost certainly correct unless they have a mountain of evidence backing their competing notion.
 
Orionblamblam said:
You "risk your reputation" by going against "scientific dogma." Lots of scientists used to do that. But here's the thing: over time, scientific dogma has become more and more entrenched not because scientists are hidebound, but because years, decades, generations of testing have shown that that dogma is almost certainly correct. A century ago a scientist could go against the scientific dogma of evolution with his own ideas and *not* be a crank, but today the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that any scientist who's *actually* a scientist will look at it and not be able to come up with a competing hypothesis that's not patently silly.

A scientist who's not head deep up his own ass will not challenge dogma that they know full well is almost certainly correct unless they have a mountain of evidence backing their competing notion.
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Scientific dogma has changed many times since philosophers believed that the earth was the center of the universe....and it will change again.
 

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