Are there any heuristics for distinguishing a rumored (but not real) scientific discovery from a discovery that seems implausible but will later turn out to be true? If i’m a remote, non-expert observer and the specialists disagree about the test results, are there any clues i can look for that hint at whether the discovery is real or not?
This is inspired by, but more general than, the current EM / microwave propulsion controversy.
An example of a discovery that later turns out to be real would be nuclear fission, which the theoretical physics community found implausible at the time.
If you are not an expert, but can distinguish at least some collection of trustworthy experts, then I think you’re best off tracking them—even if this means you’re occasionally wrong about e.g. the ability to harness the power of the atom. If you have trouble distinguishing experts from fakers in this field, then I guess you have to resort to the outside view of “things like this have been claimed before and have turned out mostly right so far, so I’ll believe it,” etc.
Credentials like having a PhD are reasonably good ways of “distinguishing experts from fakers” quickly, if not always accurately. (Watch out for Type II errors)
Look at the credentials of the person with the novel claim. If an engineer is making a claim about particle physics, it is less likely to be true than if a particle physicist is making a claim about particle physics.
Usually it is possible to find the author’s PhD online somewhere. If they are an academic, their university usually lists a small bio, which mentions their current field of study along with their masters/PhD subfield.
Of course, no one is sticking their neck out for the EM drive, so there’s not a prominent advocate to look up. Obviously this isn’t perfect. If it were 1905, Einstein’s career would have consisted of work at a patent office. He would have just been awarded a PhD, but have almost no experience in academia. He would have only published a few papers, although 1 was in a prestigious journal. His groundbreaking work on the photoelectric effect would look plausible, but hardly certain from such a new graduate, especially given how radical the claims were.
Ask yourself: what if this were true? What other implications would the underlying phenomenon have?
Often times, especially with regard to physical phenomenon, you can find predictions that would be true somewhere in the universe for which there already exists experimental evidence. Maybe there is some theory about quantum gravity that is supposed to explain dark matter, dark energy, and produce some weird microwave propulsion tech. Well ask youself: if this were true, what would it say about neutron stars, black hole collisions, etc.? This rules out most forms of crackpot theory.
I agree, need a model that works when the experts in a field all flat out say “its highly unlikely”.
EmDrive is tough, but you could literally build it yourself.
What is really hard is when Mitsubishi found transmutation of elements when studying the nickel fusion made infamous by Rossi.
and now, all the way back to Fleiscmann/Pons
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency; or DTRA, issued a report entitled Investigation of Nano-Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter.
“The Pd/D co-deposition process has been shown to provide a reproducible means of manufacturing Pd-D nano-alloys that induce low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs),” the report states. Pd stands for palladium, a metal widely used in some LENR processes.
I ended up all the way back to a different table of elements to account for it, which was fun and cool.
I have the same trouble in astrogeology and planetary science. All those folks have the same answers, because they have all memorized the same things, from the same teachers, who wrote all the class texts. Self reinforcement isn’t helping science with actual truths.
The idea that it might move by exerting force on an unobserved set of particles is new to me. Intriguing …
If that were true then it almost makes me wonder whether one should learn from Marie Curie’s death and suspect the EM drive to have strange side effects, like the then-unknown radiation of her time.
some homework. at first they believed that the EM was quantum tunneling out, but that has been revoked.
Microwave cavity design work has been going on for a while, to use water as steam thrusters for attitude control.
I mean, you can literally build an EmDrive yourself, but you definitely can’t measure the tiny thrust yourself. You still need to trust the experts there, no?
Why care about excess heat, if you can have excess metal… in the tons...
C.R. Narayanaswamy has decided to go public with extraordinary data observed between 1985 and 1999 since the company at which the observations were made, Silcal Metallurgic Ltd., has since ceased trading. He is interested to see if any other Ferro Silicon alloy manufacturers have observed similar anomalies.
In the submitted abstract he says:
“The author had been observing puzzling anomalous excess metal yields in the range of 200 Kg to 400 Kg right from 1985 onwards.”
“During a eleven week period in early 1995, the furnace was operated at a rating of about 8.75 MVA with corresponding daily power consumption of around 1,68,000 kWh per day, sustaining an average daily production of 24.75 tons of Ferro-Silicon alloy of 73.8 − 74% Si content. The typical daily consumption of raw materials during this period was (a) Quartz 32.955 tons; after accounting for its purity of 98.73%, and the chemical composition of Quartz (Si02) the Silicon metal component in the input works out to 15.379 tons. (b) Daily iron consumption was 5.1 tons. Thus the total weight of daily input of Si and Fe was 20.479 tons. However throughout the 11 week period the average daily production of Fe-Si alloy was 24.75 tons, indicating a daily “excess metal” production of 4.25 tons. The product alloy was found to consistently contain 73.8% to 74.1 % of Silicon. A corresponding reduction of the quantum of C02 released to the atmosphere was also noted.”
Are there any heuristics for distinguishing a rumored (but not real) scientific discovery from a discovery that seems implausible but will later turn out to be true? If i’m a remote, non-expert observer and the specialists disagree about the test results, are there any clues i can look for that hint at whether the discovery is real or not?
This is inspired by, but more general than, the current EM / microwave propulsion controversy.
An example of a discovery that later turns out to be real would be nuclear fission, which the theoretical physics community found implausible at the time.
If you are not an expert, but can distinguish at least some collection of trustworthy experts, then I think you’re best off tracking them—even if this means you’re occasionally wrong about e.g. the ability to harness the power of the atom. If you have trouble distinguishing experts from fakers in this field, then I guess you have to resort to the outside view of “things like this have been claimed before and have turned out mostly right so far, so I’ll believe it,” etc.
Credentials like having a PhD are reasonably good ways of “distinguishing experts from fakers” quickly, if not always accurately. (Watch out for Type II errors)
Look at the credentials of the person with the novel claim. If an engineer is making a claim about particle physics, it is less likely to be true than if a particle physicist is making a claim about particle physics.
Usually it is possible to find the author’s PhD online somewhere. If they are an academic, their university usually lists a small bio, which mentions their current field of study along with their masters/PhD subfield.
Of course, no one is sticking their neck out for the EM drive, so there’s not a prominent advocate to look up. Obviously this isn’t perfect. If it were 1905, Einstein’s career would have consisted of work at a patent office. He would have just been awarded a PhD, but have almost no experience in academia. He would have only published a few papers, although 1 was in a prestigious journal. His groundbreaking work on the photoelectric effect would look plausible, but hardly certain from such a new graduate, especially given how radical the claims were.
Ask yourself: what if this were true? What other implications would the underlying phenomenon have?
Often times, especially with regard to physical phenomenon, you can find predictions that would be true somewhere in the universe for which there already exists experimental evidence. Maybe there is some theory about quantum gravity that is supposed to explain dark matter, dark energy, and produce some weird microwave propulsion tech. Well ask youself: if this were true, what would it say about neutron stars, black hole collisions, etc.? This rules out most forms of crackpot theory.
I agree, need a model that works when the experts in a field all flat out say “its highly unlikely”.
EmDrive is tough, but you could literally build it yourself.
What is really hard is when Mitsubishi found transmutation of elements when studying the nickel fusion made infamous by Rossi.
and now, all the way back to Fleiscmann/Pons
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency; or DTRA, issued a report entitled Investigation of Nano-Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter.
“The Pd/D co-deposition process has been shown to provide a reproducible means of manufacturing Pd-D nano-alloys that induce low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs),” the report states. Pd stands for palladium, a metal widely used in some LENR processes.
I ended up all the way back to a different table of elements to account for it, which was fun and cool.
http://perfectperiodictable.com/
http://perfectperiodictable.com/novelty.html
I have the same trouble in astrogeology and planetary science. All those folks have the same answers, because they have all memorized the same things, from the same teachers, who wrote all the class texts. Self reinforcement isn’t helping science with actual truths.
and what he is using as an example above
http://www.sciencealert.com/leaked-nasa-paper-shows-the-impossible-em-drive-really-does-work
The idea that it might move by exerting force on an unobserved set of particles is new to me. Intriguing …
If that were true then it almost makes me wonder whether one should learn from Marie Curie’s death and suspect the EM drive to have strange side effects, like the then-unknown radiation of her time.
some homework. at first they believed that the EM was quantum tunneling out, but that has been revoked. Microwave cavity design work has been going on for a while, to use water as steam thrusters for attitude control.
http://emdrive.com/faq.html
http://emdrive.com/theory.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster
I mean, you can literally build an EmDrive yourself, but you definitely can’t measure the tiny thrust yourself. You still need to trust the experts there, no?
and more weirdness
“Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project October 2 ·
Why care about excess heat, if you can have excess metal… in the tons...
C.R. Narayanaswamy has decided to go public with extraordinary data observed between 1985 and 1999 since the company at which the observations were made, Silcal Metallurgic Ltd., has since ceased trading. He is interested to see if any other Ferro Silicon alloy manufacturers have observed similar anomalies.
In the submitted abstract he says:
“The author had been observing puzzling anomalous excess metal yields in the range of 200 Kg to 400 Kg right from 1985 onwards.”
“During a eleven week period in early 1995, the furnace was operated at a rating of about 8.75 MVA with corresponding daily power consumption of around 1,68,000 kWh per day, sustaining an average daily production of 24.75 tons of Ferro-Silicon alloy of 73.8 − 74% Si content. The typical daily consumption of raw materials during this period was (a) Quartz 32.955 tons; after accounting for its purity of 98.73%, and the chemical composition of Quartz (Si02) the Silicon metal component in the input works out to 15.379 tons. (b) Daily iron consumption was 5.1 tons. Thus the total weight of daily input of Si and Fe was 20.479 tons. However throughout the 11 week period the average daily production of Fe-Si alloy was 24.75 tons, indicating a daily “excess metal” production of 4.25 tons. The product alloy was found to consistently contain 73.8% to 74.1 % of Silicon. A corresponding reduction of the quantum of C02 released to the atmosphere was also noted.”