[VLM]

I may be misreading, but isn't the "real story" that they ran essentially the "gravity probe B" experiment on the ground and generated data despite all the noise sources and interference and all that on the ground?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope#London_moment

Its pretty impressive technologically to pull that off. Don't have to worry about seismic noise when you're on a space satellite, for example.

[ejr]

But this is what concerns me as well. Yes, the effect is significantly - several orders of magnitude - greater than what the theory predicted, however there's no reassurance that it's outside local noise in the lab. "Gravity probe B" was extraordinarily sensitive and safely outside local noise.

I suppose the next step in testing this effect would really be to try it in space.