[Steuard]

Every time these EM Drive people release another unconvincing result, oodles of people enthusiastically jump onto their bandwagon. Those of us who are experts in the subject matter (tenured physics professor with PhD from UChicago, here) try to make it clear why there's nothing worth getting excited about (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9473209), and the crowd evidently doesn't care.

Let me be emphatically clear: if your mental model of the scientific community doesn't include "There exist a whole lot of crackpots out there", your mental model of science is wrong. The odds of bold new ideas being crackpottery are far greater than the odds that some unappreciated genius has upended the well-tested laws of physics. (Believe me. I get their emails.)

[dllthomas]

Even assuming we knew with perfect certainty (which may be a reasonable approximation but isn't actually the case) that the effect was due to experimental error, given that we yet cannot point to the error we may very well have useful things to learn about experimentation. Any tiny chance of upending well-established laws of physics is just a bonus.

[Steuard]

Can't we learn a lot of wonderfully useful things about experimental technique while studying phenomena that are more likely to be of interest in their own right?

Because in this case, the subject matter of the experiments is explicitly in contradiction with some very well confirmed physical principles, and well within the range of conditions where those prior tests have been done. (This isn't like quantum mechanics supplanting Newtonian physics at molecular scales, this is like someone designing a funny-shaped inclined plane and claiming that Newtonian physics might not apply because nobody has measured accelerations on that shape of ramp before.)

[dllthomas]

"this is like someone designing a funny-shaped inclined plane and claiming that Newtonian physics might not apply because nobody has measured accelerations on that shape of ramp before"

My understanding has it (and admittedly I've not been paying that close attention, precisely because it's not likely there's anything super exciting here) that the difference between that case and this is that it's not just a claim that understood laws "might not apply", but that we actually have experimental results that look funny. That is precisely the case when we're most likely to learn something. (Probably not something tremendously surprising - that's what "tremendously surprising" means :-P)

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Even this seems unlikely... while it would be great if we could learn to conduct better experiments or learn to recognize the flaws of bad experiments earlier, what's missing are instruments precise enough to determine the exact cause of the results here.

Am I wrong?

[dllthomas]

"[T]hings to learn about experimentation" probably sounded more fundamental than I'd meant it. Improvement of precision of instruments should probably fall in the category, as far as my reasoning above goes. It could certainly still be useful.

[quesera]

While that's all certainly true, NASA physicists are not all crackpots, and at least some of them are careful experimenters.

Newtonian mechanics was also extremely well-tested. Unexplained error is always interesting and sometimes exciting.

[eru]

Newtonian mechanics still holds for `normal' levels of energy. Relativity and Quantum mechanics only show up on the edges.

dzdt says that this device does NOT probe the edges---no high energies for example.

[TearsInTheRain]

The photoelectric effect which led to the discovery of Quantum mechanics is not at all high energy physics and could barely be called an edge case...

[rbanffy]

> dzdt says that this device does NOT probe the edges

A Cesium clock on board a 747 will slow down even though the 747 will not be flying at relativistic speeds. It's just that it's a clock good enough to show a very small difference.

They are measuring a very small, barely detectable, force.

[Cshelton]

I think this is a case where the physicists and engineers working on these experiments say one thing, but what gets delivered in the headlines and articles, including NASA's own marketing/journalism department, is completely off. It's just PR. People have been talking about successful experiments with perpetual motion for how long...

[snowwrestler]

What's wrong with enthusiasm?

It's bad when enthusiasm can be abused to defraud investors or customers. But that's not really what's happening here. The NASA guys are not trying to scam anyone, they're spending a bit of time and money to run some good-faith tests, just in case the universe can still surprise us.

I'm not saying the "emdrive" is likely to work--it's almost certainly not going to change physics. I'm just saying I can't see the harm in folks getting excited about the possibility. It's essentially hope--hope that we'll get to experience some of the amazing things we tell stories about, stories like Star Trek and other sci-fi.

[scott_s]

Steuard answered a very similar question the last time around: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9473914

[chojeen]

As an ex-doctoral student in astrophysics, I can confirm that there are a lot of crackpots out there. The most common claim was that heliocentricity was correct, if you can believe it.

[KMag]

They believe heliocentricity is correct as in they believe the orbital mechanics work out only if you pick Sol as your inertial reference? They don't believe you can pick an arbitrary inertial reference and get the physics to work out, a la general relativity?

[JoeTwelvePack]

Perhaps your mental model of `the regular folks community` is wrong?

Let me try to explain why I, a regular schmoe who knows nothing about physics, reads these articles (and frequently, the comments) every time a new round comes out. This is how this story looks to me in the news as someone who has no association with NASA, etc.

1) Some nutter comes up with a theory of "mystic orgone drive" or something and explains how it works and demonstrates that if he hooks his widget up to the mains, it pulls.

2) A bunch of other people are like "lol idiote" and do the same thing with their own copies of his widget and are like "wtf..it is pushing..."

3) Somehow, NASA decides to investigate the mystic orgone drive. Because they are NASA and not a bunch of morans, they do a couple things differently from everyone else: - They are very very careful to try to eliminate sources of error such as breezes from experimenter tinfoil hats, etc. and they document this experimental rig very carefully. - They run the experiment backwards as well as forewards. Why not see if there's a dose response curve? Why not see if hooking the negative cable to the positive terminal produces backwards mystic orgone drive or whatever? - They build a version of the device very similar to the original mystic orgone spec, except they put different runes on it or something that are incompatible with mystic orgones.

The results of this are (1) still pushing (2) hooking it up backwards makes it push backwards (3) the mystic orgone runes do nothing; that is to say the non-mystic version works just as well, so the mystic orgone priest's explanation of the device is wrong.

I just don't see how this is not interesting to you, as scientist. Science, especially physics, is about building mathematical machines that can predict the future: if you do this and this, this will happen. Classical mechanics is probably the second-most rigorously tested and understood of the mathematical future prediction machines of all time. Here, you have a bunch of very careful, expert men and women hooking up the mystic orgone drive to the mains power, and it pushes! But the prediction says it should NOT push, at least not nearly this much! How is that not interesting?!

I would think this would seem to a physics professor to be the essence of science, and exactly what ordinary people would and should get excited about. It's very difficult for regular people to understand that its surprising that at three giga electron volts the tau lepton did not decay into any of the known lucky charms marshmallows or whatever, DESPITE what Cereal Supersymmetry predicts.

It's very easy to understand that putting a pair of empty jiffypop tins in a vacuum and powering them should not lead to them trying to bend their handles. It's very easy to understand that if anyone would be capable of checking this carefully, it's NASA.

So if NASA does this and they don't know why they are detecting measurable jiffypop handle bend many orders of magnitude higher than predicted, how do you not click on that article? How do you not think that's interesting?

[JadeNB]

This was a wonderful post. If I may be permitted a TL;DR (although it's almost a shame not to read your extended analogy): although no scientist wants to engage with crackpots him- or herself, everyone should want to see what happens when a scientist does engage (scientifically) with crackpots.

[scott_s]

An explanation for why it's not interesting: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/despite-headlin...

[snowwrestler]

This post, and the many others like it, simply repeat the experimental shortcomings and potential sources of error that the NASA staff themselves point out in their communications.

It's sort of like science blogspam--repeating what someone else already said, but injecting more emotion into it to attract pageviews.

[scott_s]

Normal media does not stress these experimental shortcomings, nor note that the measured effect has decreased. I consider it basic scientific skepticism.

[ChrisArgyle]

My thesis advisor had a saying about crackpot physicists: The easiest way to get noticed is to say that Newton is wrong, Einstein is wrong.

[JoeAltmaier]

Also every other biography - Jefferson was human, Washington was just a man, MLK was a regular guy...

[Alex3917]

> if your mental model of the scientific community doesn't include "There exist a whole lot of crackpots out there", your mental model of science is wrong.

Do you think this is a failure of your industry? E.g. there don't seem to be a lot of crackpots that go into plumbing or whatever. What is it about physics where it's apparently failing to provide most of the people in the field with adequate training?

[Cerium]

What about magnetic water cleaners?

Anything crackpot is an attempt to usurp the way things are with the way people want them to be. Free energy, electric thrusters, magnetic health bracelets, one weird trick for clean teeth... these all apply to other professions but since they obviously don't work it is up to the physicist to ignore? explain?

Physics is the belief in sanity in our confusing mess of a work. It is often an appeal to something simpler. What's the difference between a crackpot and a physicist? Physicists do science and get repeatable results.

[Zardoz84]

There is some effects of a strong magnetic field on a current of water over aragonite and other calcium minerals, on a way that make less probable to a pipe get obstructed. However, this requires :

- a strong magnetic field in some special configuration. - a water current flow, like you can find on a pipe.

These "magnetic water cleaners" that are only a mug with a magnet, don't match these two requisites. Ie, are a fraud.

[scott_s]

Most crackpots aren't in the field. The problem is that woking in physics requires an enormous amount of training, but some people are convinced they can contribute without that training.

[Tloewald]

Have you talked to a lot of plumbers?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The crackpots that go into plumbing exist... it's just that they're not crackpots about plumbing. They still email the other guy about discovering zero point energy and space aliens and whatnot.

The crackpots about plumbing, call the plumber crackpots to fix their plumbing obviously.

I've been trying to find a good barber for years now, last one I went to was a borderline schizophrenic. Off his meds, not on them, don't know. Didn't stop him from cutting hair. Being a crackpot doesn't stop someone from being able to snake a drain or fix pipes.

> What is it about physics where it's apparently failing to provide most of the people in the field with adequate training?

The same thing that's wrong with all fields... the people who go into that field do so because of enthusiasm for it. Not because they're competent at it.

Enthusiasm for physics probably starts when some kid grows up watching Star Trek and whatnot.

[DanBC]

> E.g. there don't seem to be a lot of crackpots that go into plumbing or whatever.

There are plenty of reality TV shows about crackpot plumbers - either idiot DIYers who don't know what they're doing and who ruin a home or cowboy rogue builders who con their customers and provide substandard work.

[JadeNB]

> either idiot DIYers who don't know what they're doing and who ruin a home or cowboy rogue builders who con their customers and provide substandard work.

The idiot DIYer may be a crackpot, but the rogue builder isn't. A crackpot is someone who has no expertise, but (crucially) believes that he or she does (or at least that he or she has made a discovery in a domain believed to belong to experts); a con man is not a crackpot.

[grovulent]

Crackpots get jobs at NASA apparently. See point 3).

[Steuard]

Yes, and I really don't understand it. Every dollar spent on these folks is a dollar that could more usefully be spent supporting, say, searches for life on Europa, or laying groundwork for asteroid mining, or improving exoplanet searches, or heck, mapping Earth's surface composition to find Mayan ruins.

I've seen theories about why NASA continues to fund such a patently baseless project. (As I noted in my earlier linked comment, the project's own FAQ answer that tries to explain why their drive doesn't violate conservation of momentum essentially says that it does violate conservation of momentum.) I don't know which ones are right, or whether it's a good idea, but I'm frustrated about the credibility that NASA continues to lend to them.

[grovulent]

I wasn't going to give your reply further consideration than what I gave... It doesn't deserve more. But I really feel something needs to be said here - given that you are in a position of power, and imo - setting an appalling example.

Since we're citing experience - let me give you some of mine. I have been in academia for many years as both a PhD student and an administrator. I have worked in many different departments - with many different types of academics. I have studied under them, I have sat in their committee meetings, I have gotten drunk with them.

The majority of them are just decent folk. Sure, there were some weirdos, some lazy... and plenty whose research is questionable.

But I would say with supreme confidence that exactly 0 of these people deserved to be called a "crackpot"... i.e. deserving of the implication of being totally divorced from reality.

But there was a significant minority (20% approx) that I would quite happily describe as arrogant, status obsessed assholes, who would sooner shove their own colleagues under a bus than acknowledge the SLIGHTEST value in what they were doing.

So no - my mental model of science does not include large numbers of crackpots. And I will rejoinder if your mental model doesn't include large numbers of arrogant, status obsessed assholes, then YOUR mental model of science is wrong.

I will further retort, that if you are going around calling significant numbers of your peers "crackpots", then you need to seriously consider that you might be one of those assholes I just described. And if this is something you really can't bring yourself to do - I would advise a more general maxim as a matter of simple pragmatic, self preservation:

Stop whining about what's in your neighbour's bowl. It just doesn't play well.

[scott_s]

I believe Steuard means people not a part of academia. These "crackpots" are typically people who do not have formal training in physics or related fields. Yet, they are convinced that "Einstein is wrong", and they will contacts academic physicists, such as Steuard, explaining their theories.

[grovulent]

Steuard was directly talking about "the scientific community" and employees of NASA.

[Steuard]

I've been a lot more impatient this go-around than I've generally tried to be in previous incarnations of this topic. It just gets frustrating. It feels like I've tried patient education, over and over, and it falls on deaf ears. Clearly the blunt approach goes over even more poorly, and I've known that, too, but I'm running out of ideas for things to try.

I do not consider any significant number of people who are actively engaged with mainstream science to be crackpots, so you needn't worry on that score. (Goodness knows that with my specialty, I'm living in a glass house on that one.) So (as was my point earlier) I have no idea why NASA is continuing to lend their funding and their credibility to what is to my eye a clear crackpot project. My whole point is that this case is an exception to my usual expectation that (at least) scientific work that receives mainstream support deserves at least the benefit of the doubt. (The crackpots I'm talking about are usually very much on the fringe of mainstream conversation, with only tenuous connections to any sort of active, mainstream lab or university or research group. But their ideas still occasionally go a bit viral among non-expert physics enthusiasts. I'd much rather see that wonderful enthusiasm directed in support of halfway viable ideas, even if it means acknowledging that our sci-fi dreams are farther away than we wish they were.)

So maybe I'll ask you for advice. Set aside this specific case, if you'd like, and consider a hypothetical situation where a fundamentally flawed idea for some reason gets a lot of press and generates a lot of public excitement. You're an expert in the subject, and you recognize fundamental flaws in the idea. You see other experts whom you respect reaching the same conclusion (and none on the other side, expressing support). How would you recommend communicating that to non-experts?

(As previously linked, here's what I tried last time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9473209 You can see today all the good it did. I'd really love to know how to communicate this sort of thing successfully.)

[saosebastiao]

I think the explanation is pretty simple.

There is a (very likely) crackpot idea floating around that has gotten a lot of press. This crackpot idea, if it is what is claimed, would have immense value in NASA's primary field of operations and expertise. And this idea has gone through a couple rounds of experimentation where thrust has been measured, but is likely experimental error.

Here is the important part: NASA is investigating this because they are being pressured to investigate this. And they have succeeded in proving the existence of a few sources of experimental error. But not all of them, because there is still some measurement of thrust. And as long as the testing is relatively cheap and the pressure to validate is relatively strong, they will continue to test it. It is entirely likely that not a single physicist at NASA believes this thing works, but they are still getting paid to prove their intuitions as correct.

And I don't buy that testing this is a waste of money. It has already done some good: they've been able to identify and control for sources of measurement error of thrust at the near zero bounded end of thrust magnitude. That experience and capability is still valuable in designing and testing new ion thrusters.

[sanderjd]

> It is entirely likely that not a single physicist at NASA believes this thing works, but they are still getting paid to prove their intuitions as correct.

This, to me, is a key point. I'd rather some of my tax money go toward proving scientific stuff than a lot of the rest of what it goes toward. Maybe there are other scientific pursuits that are more worthy, but an imperfect prioritization of the importance of funding science doesn't seem like it should rate very high on the outrage-o-meter.

[PopeOfNope]

Read Rhetoric by Aristotle. You're using what he calls Dialectic (facts and figures) to convince people. Most people either don't care about facts and figures or can't understand them. You need to make appeals to emotion, or rhetoric. As for how to effectively communicate in Rhetoric, if I knew that I'd be far more popular than I currently am. :) Maybe ask tptacek for some pointers?

Something else to keep in mind: speaking from a place of authority might help as well. On this matter, you have a serious disadvantage. An anonymous person on the internet will never be able to convince most people that NASA is wrong about space. Unless you're literally a rocket science and can prove you're an expert in the field, most people will believe NASA because they trust NASA.

[grovulent]

Well - I'm struggling to understand what your beliefs about the scientific community actually are. You very clearly stated - in no uncertain terms - that the scientific community had significant numbers of crackpots... You're now backing away from this claim... and are now stating that this em-drive situation is just an isolated anomaly from an institutional point of view and that your real frustration is with the untrained public that won't listen to what you say.

Okay - I'm happy to roll whatever direction you're rolling - so long as we signpost the forks in the road clearly along the way. We're no longer talking about professional, institutional crack-pottery - we are talking about the untrained public. Signposted.

I won't abstract away from this particular example just yet - as there is a clear point of dis-analogy between your hypothetical and this em-drive case... in this case there is a prestigious institution backing this research. It is impossible for non-trained people to make an independent assessment of the cost vs benefits of this research. So it's entirely reasonable for them to be interested and excited when they see such an institution running experiments on what otherwise seems like a moonshot.

Even if other institutional voices like yours are arguing against it - in such cases - it's still quite reasonable for a layperson to shrug and say - well, I see the institutional powers that be disagreeing, but the outcome would be so cool if it turns out to be correct. So meh - let's give it a shot.

And I contend that this is an entirely reasonable response of the layperson in this SPECIFIC case. If it turns out to be the case that this was an egregious waste of money, then the public shouldn't be blamed. And if it is also true that this is an isolated case of institutional failure (as you now seem to believe) - i.e. something which was not a result of systemic flaws in the institution of science - then it's just one of those things... a fuck-up that couldn't be helped because you can't control everything in complex science, and giant institutions.

So in THIS case - just chill. It's not a big deal.

Turning to your hypothetical case - which seems to assume that there is no institutional disagreement whatsoever... well that's a different story. Here your frustration with the public is understandable... although I would tend to diagnose that you have a bad habit of taking it out of your colleagues and the public in cases like the em-drive one where they probably don't deserve it. I probably shouldn't have been so hard on you for that - I'm certainly guilty in the past of having been less than generous to my opponents.

So in the interest of all round good mental health - since this is likely the TRUE source of the frustration... perhaps it's worthwhile thinking it over a little bit for both if respective sanities.

Here is what I believe to be the UR-FACT of public/scientific(academic) interaction.

UR-FACT: It is IMPOSSIBLE to communicate modern science to lay people - unless they go through a significant number of the same hoops required to become a scientist.

Let me qualify this. You can communicate its results, models and data in various high level, poetic and metaphorical language. But you cannot communicate it in such a way so as to enable a layperson to examine a particular result and make an independent and accurate judgement as to whether or not that result is true or not... unless you start from scratch and properly induct that person into the institution of science.

I'm not going to argue at length for the UR-FACT unless you challenge me on it. It's prima-facie true.

Let's now evaluate your frustration in light of the UR-FACT. You mention that you are getting frustrated because you have tried "patient explanation", but people still don't agree with you. Well - given the UR-FACT, it's clear that patient explanation was never going to get you anywhere.

So here's a question you need to be asking yourself VERY SERIOUSLY. I'm going to call this question the UR-QUESTION of public/scientific(academic) interaction.

UR-QUESTION: If the public is in general incapable of any genuine understanding of scientific practice as per the UR-FACT, why do scientists (like yourself) take the time out to give ANY sort of explanation at all?

I can't overstate the importance of this question... because if it turns out that there is NO value to this process of engagement between science and the general public, then this has very broad and extreme implications for human progress and its political organisation. If the progress that science makes possible must be protected and if we can't protect this progress through engagement with a democratic polity - then the democratic nature of that polity will have to be eradicated, and the institution of science defended through force.

This would be a nightmarish scenario - so until we are really SURE that engagement has NO value, we had better start coming up with some good models of what the value of that engagement might be, and start applying those models in practice so that we can realise whatever value is there.

But what possible value is there in engagement with the public if it's not to produce understanding?

Here's one possible hypothesis I think is worth considering. Public engagement derives its value not from any understanding it produces, but in the signalling act between scientist and layman.

What do I mean by "signalling act" - well it's a long story. It derives from the concept of signalling in evolutionary biology - which has since been applied to behavioural economics and other domains. The gist is - people employ signals to covertly convey information to other humans about things like status, tribal loyalty, mate fitness and reliability - stuff that was basic to survival back in the day. So we drive fast cars to signal status... we buy expensive rings to signal mate reliability.. etc.

So what is going on then between scientist and layman when they get into arguments about funding priorities in science? If it isn't about actually exchanging understanding, then what explains the behaviour? Why would humans have evolved to waste THAT much time on such a waste of time? The signalling hypothesis suggests that what is going on is a status game between scientist the layperson. The scientist demands to be agreed with - i.e. requests a signal of his/her status, and when the layperson refuses to give that agreement, it is taken by the scientist that their status is being challenged.

Status was important back in the day. Those at the bottom of the tribe status-wise faired poorly. So we evolved psychological mechanisms to motivate us to seek status. That frustration you feel when you "patient explanations" didn't work? That's negative affect that your brain evolved to make you feel miserable at your perceived loss of status.

So if this hypothesis is true - and it is just a hypothesis (google "costly signalling theory" and go nuts). What advice would it suggest in terms of managing relations between scientific institutions and the public?

Well - I think it would suggest that you as Scientist should do better to control your own signalling behaviours driving you to seek recognition of your status and start thinking about what the public's own signalling behaviours imply they need and want - what will placate them?

And what they want - is the same thing you want. Status. So just give it to them. It's the EASIEST thing in the world. Rather than hitting them over the head with your technical, long winded "patient" explanations - that ring in their brains as nothing more as another status play by the know-it-all scientist... instead, praise their passion, tell them that you scientists are indeed working on every conceivable angle - really show that you are engaging with their suggestions - no matter how crack-potty they may actually be. And maybe at the end of your comment just throw in something like: "but of course we need to be really cautious, because of concerns x,y,z..." - so that your comment has a little educational value as well.

And if this means blowing a few million here or there on some dumb projects so the public feels like the things it cares about are being looked at - then it's probably worth the cost - insofar as we interpret that as a signalling act that conveys the idea that they do have status, they are part of the process... etc.. I'm sure that with practice - we could get the costs of these faux labs/experiments down to a minimum, while getting maximum signalling yield out of them.

But doing what your doing - self-deceptively going about on forums with your so called "patient explanations" as if you don't actually care about your status being ignored, when you clearly do, given how you erupted to accuse not just the public, but the whole institution of science of being guilty of crack-pottery - this behaviour is incredibly harmful when you view it from the point of view of the status signalling that is in play.

This is my advice to you OH PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS! Take it or leave it. :)

[Steuard]

Thanks for writing this. There's a lot to think about here, but just for starters, your very first paragraph finally helped me to understand what failure of clarity on my part led to the hostility that we've been going back and forth with this whole time. So in the interest of improving that clarity, let me try to rephrase my original comment about crackpots to do a better job of conveying what I intended:

----- If your mental model of "the set of people who publicly discuss science" doesn't include "There exist a whole lot of crackpots out there", your mental model of scientific discourse in our society is wrong. The odds of radical new ideas being crackpottery are far greater than the odds that some unappreciated genius has upended the well-tested laws of physics. -----

I'm not sure whether it was carelessness or generosity that led me to use the term "the scientific community" in a way that included those working at (or beyond) the far fringe of respectability. On reflection, I think that I've done them that courtesy before; I'm often careful to specify a label like "mainstream" when I intend a more narrow definition of "the mainstream scientific community". My comment "Believe me. I get their emails." was very much meant to refer to the non-mainstream theories that folks out there seem to regularly send to active physicists in any related field (not as a backhanded slap at the handful of professional peers and colleagues who occasionally write to me). So from my perspective, I haven't made any shifts in intended meaning over the course of this conversation that would merit your signposts, but I can definitely see how my words could have given the other impression. (And now you get to judge whether I'm piling lies upon lies in a scramble to retract a broad insult to my peers, or whether I've been expressing a consistent belief system this whole time. Darned if I know any way to make that judgement easy for you.)

As for your broader points: One of the things that troubles me in the discourse between professional scientists and the public is that it's painfully common for us to wind up disappointing the very people who are the most fervent supporters of what we do. This is no doubt a reflection of your UR-FACT. A scientist who gets gleefully excited about an unexpected discovery or a strikingly elegant theoretical model is still constantly aware of the tentative nature of science: her enthusiasm is a measure of how rare even the possibility of transformative progress can be. But when that enthusiasm spills over to the public at large (by whatever channels), most listeners don't have the training and experience to recognize just how tentative the underlying idea inevitably still is. So when, nine times out of ten, the early promise of the discovery either fizzles or gets mired in technical details with no clear end in sight, the science enthusiasts in the public wind up feeling betrayed. (Even mundane things like the seemingly constant flip-flopping of nutrition warnings is a part of this.)

I don't know how to fix this. As you say, it may be truly impossible, though I'd like to think that better early and ongoing education about the process and nature of science could help a little. But I think that's what is behind my attempts to dial back the enthusiasm I see for this EM Drive work. What they're claiming is something that so many of us long to be true! (I certainly wish it were, both for the thrill of the new physics to explore and for its impact on the future of humanity.) But this isn't even a case where justified scientific enthusiasm has wound up being oversold to the public: the science here is just wrong, and the people directly involved in the work (or at least in publicizing it: http://emdrive.com/faq.html) seem to not even know the science well enough to recognize that it's wrong (or if you were inclined toward conspiracies, they could be knowingly obfuscating its flaws with technobabble). It's a case where it's all but certain that a big chunk of the enthusiastic public is getting set up for a fall. This goes beyond the challenges of your UR-FACT: something is clearly wrong in how this piece of science is being communicated to the public.

And at that point, if I as an expert see someone selling snake oil (regardless of whether they believe in it themselves), don't I have some sort of obligation to warn people not to buy into their so-appealing patter? The human cost here is clearly far less than the "vaccines cause autism" scam turned out to be, but they feel fundamentally similar to me. (As do the "bomb detectors" purchased at great cost by various government agencies in Iraq, as do the "magnetized water" devices that get sold to insufficiently skeptical farmers, as do...) Again, maybe you're right and the cost in this case is a drop in the bucket of legitimate research, but isn't one big purpose for society in training and supporting experts to ensure that there's someone around who can police this sort of thing? (And, more philosophically, isn't a big part of society's purpose in supporting experts the hope that we'll help to uncover and disseminate fragments of Truth, whatever that may mean?)

Clearly, we (and especially I, it seems) do a pretty poor job of it, if so, as illustrated today by the perennial popularity of this story. I really don't know how I or we can do better (clearly today's angle hasn't gone over as well as the last one did). Maybe it's all some sort of status-driven signalling, as you suggest, and my chatter about the public good is just so much self-deception. There may be value to the recommendation that you've made on that basis. But I'm not sure that I could live my life (or any life) with that framework as my premise.

[rwallace]

Because taking a small fraction of the total budget and throwing it at a bunch of wacky longshot research projects is how you find the occasional important thing you would otherwise have missed.

I'm not saying I think they've really got a reactionless drive here. They probably haven't. I'm saying if you fund a hundred of these things, ninety-nine of them will fizzle but the other one might find something interesting you didn't expect, that could far more than pay for the other ninety-nine.

[Steuard]

But why spend that money on a project that we already know is almost certainly wrong? Surely there are bold, crazy ideas out there worth exploring that aren't in violation of well-tested physical principles! Fund a hundred of those.

[techdragon]

Because science is built on evidence. All the chalk on blackboards didn't prove Einstein was right, experiment after experiment over the decades did.

We built the LHC, we're building ITER, we built the Kaminokade neutrino detector, we build things because we're human and desire to "know" things. For some of us, the chalk on blackboard version isn't enough for us to feel we know it yet.

[Steuard]

But this isn't some new, untested regime: this is an ordinary metal cavity with some sort of resonant electromagnetic wave inside. There's nothing about it that I can see that would lead me to expect results here that would so fundamentally contradict the countless experiments that have been performed on similar systems over many decades. If the folks doing this work had some compelling (or even just plausible) mechanism to suggest why this system ought to be radically different, that would be one thing, but I've seen no indication that they do: it's just a metal tube and some EM waves.

This isn't some grand battle pitting hidebound theorists unwilling to imagine flaws in their sacred equations against bold experimentalists seeking to test those models against the real world for the first time. This is a fundamental incompatibility between the best-tested mathematical models in human history (QED agrees with experimental tests to 11 digits of precision, and both sides of that agreement represent stunningly careful work) and a marginal signal from a fairly complicated system with a whole range of possible sources of systematic error.

So why do so many people seem so willing to throw out those decades of heroic experimental work in this case? (I honestly don't understand it. You're clearly passionate about the value of experimental evidence: why does the hard-won evidence that we already have carry so little weight?)

[criddell]

And every dollar spent looking for life on Europa could be spent on preserving endangered life on this planet.

The device has intrigued many of your more curious colleagues. You never know what can be learned by solving this particular puzzle. The solution might be in the field of physics, science journalism, or maybe psychology. Either way, knowing more is better.

[Steuard]

> The device has intrigued many of your more curious colleagues.

It really hasn't. Every single time that I've seen a colleague (or a colleague of a colleague) comment on this research, they've been talking about either specific flaws in the experimental setup, specific flaws in its theoretical basis, or general concerns about unfounded ideas getting broad attention.

Spending dollars looking for life on Europa and spending dollars on preserving endangered life on Earth are both fantastic goals, with some reasonable hope of a positive impact on humanity in one way or another. I have not yet thought of a way in which spending dollars on this EM Drive idea has any upside like that. (Surely we can learn about science journalism and humans' psychological reactions to science news just as well by studying how people react to exciting stories about actual, mainstream science!)

[Zardoz84]

Or we can stop wasting money on military and using on preserving endangered life on this planet or simply to produce enough food so no body would be hungry again.

I prefer cut money to military...

[criddell]

I was trying to make the point that it's silly to argue "the money could be better spent on..." because there's no end or correct answer. You're response demonstrates that.

I certainly don't think we should cut funding to basic research. I'm happy that some very smart people are looking closely at this device because I do think there's something to be learned here even if it isn't in the field of physics.

[techdragon]

I wish to buy the magnificently high horse you have arrived on good sir, so that I may place it in a museum of equine curiosity.

Seriously though. The level of time and funding these guys get to work on this is, to use a colloquial saying "pissing into the wind". Think of it like NASA giving them 20% time or something like that.

More importantly these experiment have seriously important implications to at least one 'modern' physics theory worked on by serious scientists. Experimentally proving this device definitely doesn't work at all, ever in any way, is evidence useful to the continued work people are doing in quantum field theory.

Your intense derision is unwarranted and saddened me. These are serious scientists and their work is as valid as any as long as they continue to conduct themselves by the scientific method. NASA isn't all about robot space probes and sending astronauts up to ineffectually float in low earth orbit. This is the NASA that works on advances in aeronautics through X plane projects, on propulsion through ion drive research. I'm honestly surprised they aren't researching it more vigorously, which I take as an indication of how cautious they are being that this work does not waste the valuable resources of NASA on something that could still just be ruling out yet another crackpot and writing a few extra quantum field theory papers.

[Zardoz84]

Check this : http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2004017...

[dzdt]

The "Institute for Scientific Research" that did that study is a big pork-barrel project with exactly zero reputation for quality. I would bet that if you dig, the only reason NASA was associated to the research you link was congresional earmark requiring it.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/washington/08earmarks.html

[Edit: dug a little more]

"Examples of such earmarking, which have prevented NASA from allocating funding to programs that it considered to be most critical, include $15.5 million for the Institute for Scientific Research, in Fairmont, West Virginia"

Source: http://caib1.nasa.gov/events/public_hearings/20030514/transc...

[henryl]

Amen. Steuard's arrogant tone is incredibly insufferable.

[scott_s]

You read arrogance. I read exasperation at trying to explain the fundamentals of his field to lay-people.

[fixermark]

I wonder how many professors who are exasperated about trying to explain fundamentals of their field to lay-people have considered that maybe "professor" isn't the best line of work for them to be in.

[AnimalMuppet]

There's a difference between lay-people who listen, and try to learn, and ask questions to try to learn, and lay-people who say "No, you're wrong, your whole field is wrong, I'm the one with the truth, let me explain it to you."

A professor who doesn't welcome the former is in the wrong line of work. A professor who doesn't welcome the latter is a reasonable human being who gets tired of wasting time.

[baldfat]

Released by NASA. I still as a non-scientist see this as something big. If NASA is saying there is thrust than there is thrust correct? Or is it just "impossible" so it means an error in testing instantly? Did you look at the results?

(Fishing for more details)

[jlmorton]

It's not NASA, the organization, that has released a vetted, reviewed technical paper about this. This article is based on the casual communications of a NASA scientist, who works for EagleWorks, and has been communicating with a community of interested persons via the NasaSpaceFlights.com forums.

Indeed, NASA is annoyed with the continued press from this, and has prohibited any press releases from being released without proper NASA vetting.

The clickbaity online media, however, is more than willing to take a forum posting by a "NASA scientist" as NASA proper.

I have nothing but respect for the work being done by EagleWorks and Paul March, but this is not a NASA communication.