[deepspace]

> appeared to work with no solid theory behind it.

That, my friend is the very definition of Snake Oil.

> We don't get many discoveries like that

On the contrary, we get far more than our fair share of charlatans claiming physically impossible results. See also: Theranos, Energous, Fontus and a million other scam companies.

[walrus01]

It's not snake oil if you have a weird unexplained effect, and:

A) you're not trying to sell anything to anyone

B) you fully open source the design, specifications, schematics and your notes, and invite any interested third party to try to duplicate or debunk the effect.

C) you intentionally refrain from making hyperbolic claims about how revolutionary your thing is, before it's been duplicated. Maybe some clueless third parties engaged in hyperbole but not the original creators of the concept.

Science is working as intended.

[pfdietz]

It's snake oil if you, as an experimenter, has not absolutely ruled out what's the most likely (and mundane) explanation.

What's the saying? If a theoretician is right just once, he's a hero; if an experimentalist is wrong just once, he's a goat.

[ALittleLight]

Nobody was selling emdrives (to my knowledge). It was more of a "Hey, this is a weird effect" and an effort to explain it. That's less snake oil and more science. Most of the time there is some explanation that doesn't break your framework. Sometimes there's a breakthrough as you figure out the new thing. Sometimes you can't figure it out.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Shawyer absolutely was soliciting investment. Anyone with a basic physics education could see his proposed mechanism was utter nonsense, so it's hard to be charitable towards his rather hyperbolic marketing.

[andi999]

I disagree. This is the definition of progress in fundamental science. The difference between science and snake oil is what you do after your first signal. Do you try to find every possible way why it could be wrong and most importantly do you let other people try, then it is science, like the faster than light neutrinos come in mind as another example. Or do you start selling and let other people not test it. Well then its snake oil

[bpodgursky]

It's really unhealthy to call anything that doesn't fit into the known laws of physics or science "snake oil"

If the EmDrive team was trying to sell NFTs and sucker people into investing in their radical invention it would be snake oil. But instead they approached this very responsibly, saying "we don't understand why this works. help us figure it out."

That's science done right, and a lot of new science has moved forward by questioning and changing the known rules. Whether or not it happens here.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

You're apparently missing the origins of this whole thing. Shawyer has been soliciting investment for it since 2001, making very hyperbolic claims.

This was indeed snake oil from very the start. A couple of people at NASA EagleWorks got permission to use some of their time and facilities to investigate it as a personal project. They did an extremely lazy attempt to control for errors, published their result without review, and the hype exploded.

The whole saga is rather frustrating tbh. We knew what the definitive result was going to be 4 years ago. Getting some improved measurement technology is cool and all, but I don't think we had to go about it this way.

[deepspace]

I disagree. Something new that challenges areas of physics where our understanding is vague, like neutrino mass or dark matter - sure: feel free to explore new theories

Something that challenges something as solidly established as conservation of momentum: Snake oil.

[ckozlowski]

Newtonian motion was pretty well established for hundreds of years until general relativity transformed our understanding of gravity.

Things seem "established" until evidence comes along indicating it may not be. It doesn't always result in a reevaluation, but there's times it does.

This feels like one of those times where there's those in the establishment are yelling at others that their studies are a waste of time and that they shouldn't bother....and if that advice was followed, we'd be missing many of the breakthroughs in knowledge we have today. Of course there will be many times they're unsuccessful. That's why accepting a negative result is a lauded part of the scientific process. Without the bravery required in challenging convention, we would never make progress.

[bpodgursky]

I don't get why you are fixated on that term. They're literally not selling anything.

The whole point of the term "snake oil salesman" is that someone is getting defrauded, and a dishonest person is making a quick buck.

[kenneth]

On Energeous, the science is sound in theory. In practice I don't believe the company will be able to execute; but transmitting power over RF is something we've understood for a long time (since Edison first demonstrated the technology).

I'm an investor in a competitor: Reach Labs which has systems in production powering swarms of low power devices wirelessly. I've seen the technology work in person.

[walrus01]

What size and wattage load of devices?

[dleslie]

> That, my friend is the very definition of Snake Oil.

Is it? How does a bicycle work?

https://www.nature.com/news/the-bicycle-problem-that-nearly-...

[pilsetnieks]

According to science, a bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly. /s

A bicycle isn't some unknown mystery of the universe, the very article you linked lays it out pretty clearly. A bicycle's stability is a function of its mass distribution, geometry and the gyroscopic effect. Their exact relation depends on the bicycle and since there is no one standard SI unit of a bicycle in the Bureau international des poids et mesures, there is no apparent equation. The "nearly broke mathematics" in the title is just pure clickbait.

[ncmncm]

I have found I can teach kids to ride a bike in (literally) seconds, just by not lying to them about how it works.

"Use the handlebars to stay up. Lean to turn." Just like that, and they're off. (I am absolutely not exaggerating.)

(And, no, gyroscope effect has nothing to do with it.)

They get the idea to twitch the handlebars the opposite way, to lean, all by themselves. Most never notice they are doing it.

[wruza]

That’s because leaning is such a bad term to describe what happens! Even when I learned to ride bikes, it felt so strange that “you have to lean left/right”, cause I understood somehow that I’m a much more massive object and the center of masses is around my butt at best. So leaning doesn’t change much in mass/geometry/momentum configuration. You may shift a bike under you with your arms, but this is limited to their lengths.

What really happens is that you always fall either to the left or to the right. If you fall in a desired turn direction, you turn a little. If not, you turn even more than is required to support a normal turn, so that your bike moves below you to the point that now your mass part is to the other side of it, and now you fall in the other, initially desired direction. Then you quickly turn at where you need. With practice all this movement reduces to centimeters and very smooth curves at all joints.

You move and (importantly) rotate your bike under yourself. It has nothing to do with leaning, because it’s the road/front tire that make a difference in a balance, not your flanks. Leaning helps to not fall off the seat when you cycle, but not in turns.

It’s clearly a trainer’s delusion to me (that thing when your trainer explains things that do not actually work/exist but you translate or ignore these terms showing respect to a good man).

[ncmncm]

Yet, in fact you and the bicycle are physically leaning throughout any turn. I.e., you are at an angle off vertical with your center of mass distinctly not directly above the line between the points where the tires contact the ground.

Normally the plane of the bike, normal to the axles, cuts right through your center of mass.

Starting a turn by leaning is not usual for experienced bikers, but certainly works. For a beginner, staying upright while going more or less straight is what they need to work out first, but that invariably involves some spontaneous turns, so both are practiced.

What a century of children have been told is to steer with the handlebars, which is a reliable recipe for spills.

[rcxdude]

Given sufficient evidence, there's no need to have a solid theory of operation for a given claim. That said, if it contradicts known laws of physics that evidence had better be damn good.

[Igelau]

and yet, SSRIs

[andbberger]

you because there's no systemic understanding of SSRIs work? But you could say the same for most drugs. Most of the pharma industry is just targeting a specific protein without regard for how it fits into the system as a whole

[ncmncm]

If there is anything thoroughly Snake Oil in modern currency, it's Tokamak Fusion.

"Give us enough billions, we'll have one working in 2050. Or 2060, or someday. It won't produce any power, oh no, of course not. But give us ten times more money after 2050 (or 2060) and by 2100, or 2140, or anyway someday maybe, we will have a prototype power station for you.

"Sure, it will cost a hundred times as much for each kW-hr as whatever you will be using by then—and the plant will destroy itself after only two years—but it will be fusion power. And that will be so cool!"

Tokamak fusion is mainly a jobs program for hot-neutron physicists, to maintain a population ready to draw on for weapons work, but is also a massive boondoggle providing a steady flow of corruption money to well-connected pockets. (Hot-neutron physicists are not getting the $billions.) Every cent spent on Tokamak fusion is stolen from actually practical work.

So don't talk to me about snake-oil until after you kill Tokamak.

[xupybd]

Out of interest is there another more promising controlled fusion option?

[pfdietz]

Not really. Fusion has inherent generic engineering problems, particularly DT fusion, that are independent of the details of plasma confinement.

[ncmncm]

I am interested in Field-Reversed Configuration, although it seems more practical for driving spacecraft.

Anything aneutronic that works will be infinitely better than Tokamak. If it doesn't have to work, you are back in Tokamak territory.