[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.

[grovulent]

>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)

Well kudos for updating your self-presentation on this matter. It's the example I thought that set which was the most concerning thing. As for your soul... well - establishing authenticity of an individual is hard enough in real life let alone on the internet. But I'm not all that interested in your soul anyway. You and god can sort that out later. :)

>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.

It doesn't go beyond the UR-FACT though. The UR-FACT is what prevents your patient explanations from being successful in changing people's minds, and helping them realise the nature of this mis-representation.

>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?

Well - I don't envy you the responsibility of having to overcome a fundamental constraint in human communicative ability. There is no solution to the UR-FACT... period. Even if we embark on a massive education campaign... institutional science is too big. There is simply too much to know. And therefore, on most scientific questions, EVERY individual is in the position of not being able to know for themselves if a given result is true or not. It just takes too much time.

Of course - you don't believe the UR-FACT, or you wouldn't express this responsibility, nor have any hope that you could ever meet it.

There is only one way you can to any degree meet this responsibility - and that is by expending the time in inducting new people into the institution of science. You can't bridge the gap to lay people - but you can convert a small number of them into professionals. As a professor you are in a privileged position to do that. If you are research only, and have no PhD students - get one. Pay for that time by staying off hacker news.

>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?

Well - this goes back to the UR-QUESTION. If engaging with the public has no chance to change their opinions because of the UR-FACT, and if the public ultimately determines scientific funding via democracy - how can we protect the authority of scientific institutions? The problem is that lots of you guys are taxpayer funded - so these lay people are your boss. And imagine showing up for work every day at a job where your boss barked commands at you that were literally impossible to fulfill? Yeah - that's your nightmare...

That's a problem universities are increasingly facing. Right now scientific institutions are reasonably insulated - but they are already starting to shut down liberal arts degrees like philosophy... but science won't stay insulated forever. Politics is getting increasingly polarised - and more and more extreme nutters from both the left and the right are getting closer to real power. When science outputs things they don't want to believe - you better believe they'll try to shut you down.

As a bulwark against barbarism, if you have any responsibility whatsoever - it is to protect yourself. And as you have admitted, naive attempts at engagement aren't getting you anywhere. So - why aren't you being more scientific about it? Find a better model of human communicative interaction and apply it.

>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.

Oh dear lord... now it's my turn to be frustrated. If the signalling hypothesis I suggested is correct - but implies a reality that is so abhorrent that you couldn't bear to live in it... then why would you be so upset about folks wanting to believe in the fantasy of em-drives? That's like being disappointed in a child for believing in Santa when you are unwilling to accept that unicorns might not exist.

Look - I'm not saying I know my hypothesis is correct. I don't. But you're hitting a brick wall by your own admission. So your model is likely wrong. Holy crap - your a scientist... run some damn science!

I really wonder why outside their specific domain of expertise - it's so common to see scientists throw all their training out the window. And trust me - I've met a LOT of scientists. This is common.

When I worked in university admin, I used to watch scientists come down to our office to send faxes... and many would just stand and stare at it doing nothing... and eventually - without trying anything - they would come and interrupt one of us admin folk and ask us for help. We didn't mind helping of course - but it always astonished me that all their training as scientists just flew out the window when faced with the simple task of sending a fax. Here is a bunch of people trained to run experiments, isolate variables and determine causality... the very bedrock of existence - and they can't find the self-confidence to just press a button on a machine to see what happens.

I kinda feel that way with you right now. You know your approach is not working. So do some research! Find an alternative. You don't have to accept mine - but if you take your responsibility seriously, then you DO have to find your own - and it has to get results...

Note - it has to serve as a better model for your own behaviour as well... you need an answer to the UR-QUESTION... why are you expending all this time speaking to lay people? You know that it doesn't achieve anything. But then you express this hope that somehow you're making a little bit of a difference - all the while feeling this frustration.

And as for the signalling idea, it aint so bad once you get used to it. I know - it'sis not particularly appealing. It's not what we want to believe about ourselves. But if that's what's stopping you from considering it - you're not so different from the people wanting to believe in em-drives afterall. (There are plenty of good scientific reasons to challenge it - mind you).

Anyway - I'm quite happy to admit that I'm at least partly expending all this energy in the hope that a Professor of Physics out there somewhere thinks I'm bright chap. But I'm cool with this... who doesn't want to be regarded well by bright people?