7 ms·

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

Steuard 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - scott_s 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      Steuard was directly talking about "the scientific community" and employees of NASA.
  - Steuard 11y ago
    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 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.)
- henryl 11y ago
  Amen. Steuard's arrogant tone is incredibly insufferable.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    You read arrogance. I read exasperation at trying to explain the fundamentals of his field to lay-people.
    - fixermark 11y ago
      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 11y ago
        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.
- criddell 11y ago
  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.
  - Zardoz84 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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.
  - Steuard 11y ago
    > 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 11y ago
  Check this : http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040171929.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2004017...
  - dzdt 11y ago
    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 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/transcript.html http://caib1.nasa.gov/events/public_hearings/20030514/transc...
- rwallace 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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 11y ago
        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?)
- techdragon 11y ago
  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.

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 11y ago
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.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- scott_s 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    Steuard was directly talking about "the scientific community" and employees of NASA.
- Steuard 11y ago
  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 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.)
henryl 11y ago
Amen. Steuard's arrogant tone is incredibly insufferable.
- scott_s 11y ago
  You read arrogance. I read exasperation at trying to explain the fundamentals of his field to lay-people.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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.
criddell 11y ago
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.
- Zardoz84 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
- Steuard 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
Check this : http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040171929.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2004017...
- dzdt 11y ago
  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 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/transcript.html http://caib1.nasa.gov/events/public_hearings/20030514/transc...
rwallace 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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?)
techdragon 11y ago
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.