What is wrong with what Steorn is doing?

[Foolmewunz]

What he/she (Grimoire) said!

Blight, this isn't a nifty new device that's going to save Mrs. Murdock a few minutes in the kitchen, making cute little radish curls. This is the device that will make the combustion engine, batteries, hydro plants, and every other known form of energy production... Obsolete! Yet they're approaching it like a product launch for Tickle Me Elmo, or the Pet Rock.

The new slogan is going to be..... "Steorn, Saving Mankind One Subscription at a Time"?

Their claim of an OU device, pegged at 285% output is thus far just a claim. The original group of "reputable scientists" who purportedly saw that version have not published anything, and their names haven't even been revealed. Since that was prior to the August press releases and advert, that's a long time to keep something like this under wraps. And the new panel was picked more than two months ago, yet only starting to work this month.... But they announce nothing since December 1, other than:
"Contracts Signed With Panel" (no names, no credentials)
"Steorn to Exhibit at Art Gallery"
"Steorn Announces How To Get It to Market"
Where are the credentials of the first group of scientists (under NDA) or the final blue ribbon panel (under contract), where is the documentation for the test that provided the output at 285%?

In fact, if I understand some of the science guys over on the brainiac threads, one of the hardest things about OU is measuring the output versus input. If my limited understanding of the discussions is correct, it's evidently easier to measure output, but difficult on the input side. Thus, saying you have X or Y percent OU is not reliable. Admittedly, one would think that this would be quibbling when you're talking about 285%... I believe the usual discussion is whether you're getting insignificant (as in "costs more to produce than it's value") increases of 1 or 1.5 or 2 per cent.

 

[Mojo]

Dublin, 11th January 2007: Steorn, the Irish technology development company, has today announced that its free energy technology will be made widely available to the development community immediately after the independent scientific validation process that is currently underway.

It looks as if they're planning to launch the product regardless of what verdict the "jury" comes up with. In view of this, the whole "validation process" looks like a waste of time and money.

Surely it would be best if Steorn were to hold off judgement until actual facts are in, as T'ai Chi said.

 

[BillyJoe]

Surely it would be best if Steorn were to hold off judgement until actual facts are in, as T'ai Chi said.

Ouch!

 

[Grimoire]

What he/she (Grimoire) said!

He.

It looks as if they're planning to launch the product regardless of what verdict the "jury" comes up with. In view of this, the whole "validation process" looks like a waste of time and money.

Whose time and money? From my point of view it did exactly what they wanted it to do: convinced a small number of people that they really do have a OU device. Their validation process is PR, pure and simple...

 

[hdeasy]

Steorn look like they are different to the others - they mean business - and now they have shaved their heads for Czernobyl children. Can't be all bad. A real company and the Jury has been sitting since Jan 1. Dig it!

 

[NoZed Avenger]

What I think people are overlooking, is that even if they choose scientists they believe are not critical (for example, ones not members of the organized skeptical movement), they will make their findings available freely to all, from what it sounds like.

From what it sounds like?

Would that be you "claiming to predict the future re: Steorn's motives" ?

 

[Grimoire]

Steorn look like they are different to the others - they mean business - and now they have shaved their heads for Czernobyl children. Can't be all bad. A real company and the Jury has been sitting since Jan 1. Dig it!

Could you perhaps elaborate? I'm not sure what shaving ones head has to do with the discussion at hand.

 

[Horatius]

... but it shows a level of transparency you wouldn't quite expect from fraudsters, so if you're dealing with frauds (on the PR side), they're on a much higher level than previously witnessed in this field.

What's interesting to me is the money they are spending. The full page ad in the economist is expensive, we're not talking small change here. The money they spent on patents is also quite big, their office/lab sizes are big and they have let people walk through them and see the equipment (without seeing how it works of course, but just the size/hardware they've saw is no small change).

Steorn look like they are different to the others - they mean business - and now they have shaved their heads for Czernobyl children. Can't be all bad. A real company and the Jury has been sitting since Jan 1. Dig it!

And here we see exactly why some scams just continue, unabated, for so long. Someone new comes along, with a new twist on the old scam, and there's always going to be someone who'll bite, because, "Hey! It can't a scam, because they're doing/saying something slightly different! Why can't you keep an open mind?"

Some play the religious/patriot angle, like Dennis Lee, others claim they're being suppressed by the Government/Big Oil, or any of dozens of other claims, but in the end, it all comes down to nothing. The only thing that ever gets accomplished is the fleecing of investors.

But no matter how often it goes down like this, there's always someone new to believe them when they say, Pretty Soon Now!

 

[Foolmewunz]

I just made one of my sojourns over to their forum, and it's degenerated into a catchall conspiracy forum. The "believers" in their OU device are relegated to repeating their old speculations, and Steorn's releasing nothing new for them to play with, so the whack-jobs are moving into the neighborhood.*

They get the same troll-types we get, but they seem to relish them and take 'em far too seriously. The thread on the tired old Disclosure Project is about seven pages of "Oh, wow!", with four or five debunkers.

*Or the whack-jobs have always been there, but they're now rising to prominence awaiting the great awakening.

 

[Blight]

I have yet to see them soliciting funds. If anything they mentioned they will be picking the tab for their "jury".

So for now, I'm keeping an open mind. I'm never going to invest my own money in such ventures, but it's interesting to see if something will come out of it.

If by the end of 2007 nothing really changes or new promises of things to come will appear with no real technology behind it, then I think we will have our answer.

And again, if this is a scam, it's one of the biggest and well thought out scams ever pulled, just the capital investment that went into it is beyond anything we've seen in a while.

 

[BillyJoe]

So for now, I'm keeping an open mind.

I think a pin hole in the occipital bone would be adequate.

 

[Horatius]

I have yet to see them soliciting funds. If anything they mentioned they will be picking the tab for their "jury".

Give it time. Since they pretty much completely control the entire "jury" process, they'll eventually come out with some sort of "endorsement", and then the money pitch will come.

And again, if this is a scam, it's one of the biggest and well thought out scams ever pulled, just the capital investment that went into it is beyond anything we've seen in a while.

What really is the capital investment? Is it really that far our of line with previous scammers? Did you read the link to Dennis Lee's scam I posted?

On September 23 1996, 3 other engineers and I went to hear him speak for 5 hours at the Philly Core States Center (it cost him somewhere around $100,000 to put on that show).

There's the old rule that you've got to spend money to make money. Dennis Lee has been doing it for quite some time, putting on shows that seem way to expensive and elaborate to be a scam....but they are. The up-front money is just the cost of doing business, if you don't want to look like a scammer.

 

[Blight]

Horatius:
I'm sure that Dennis Lee did the math and figured that he could easily recoup his "investment" as he had enough people reeled-in already to fill the center.

The thing with stoern is that no one ever heard of them and they put up quite a bit of money up front (which is something most scammers would tend to avoid). Not to mention all the patent application costs (which I read somewhere that were over $1m in costs).

So once again, either there's some truth to this, or they are running one of the best scams to surface in quite a while. We're talking global scale here.

In either case, it's interesting to watch and see how it evolves.

 

[BillyJoe]

...so anyway, blight, is it a pinhole or a wide gaping hole?

 

[Horatius]

Horatius:
I'm sure that Dennis Lee did the math and figured that he could easily recoup his "investment" as he had enough people reeled-in already to fill the center.

The thing with stoern is that no one ever heard of them and they put up quite a bit of money up front (which is something most scammers would tend to avoid). Not to mention all the patent application costs (which I read somewhere that were over $1m in costs).

So once again, either there's some truth to this, or they are running one of the best scams to surface in quite a while. We're talking global scale here.

In either case, it's interesting to watch and see how it evolves.

And Steorn couldn't have done the same math? And Dennis Lee wasn't an unknown when he first started this scam?

As for the cost of their patent applications, so far I've only found evidence for two such applications, despite the fact that they claim to have developed this technology several years back. So far the only source for there being more applications is Steorn themselves. In additon, several of the things they've said about their process of applying for patents don't ring true to those of us who work in the patent field.

I'm entirely willing to be proven wrong, but so far, they haven't done anything that looks any different than the previous scammers. It's all just "Bigger and Better!", which is what you'd expect from the evolution of a scam like this.

 

[baron]

We are currently preparing for Phase 1. We will soon finalise arrangements with the registered scientists and engineers and announce our timeline for implementation of Phase 1.

How long has this garbage been going on now? And this is all we get ~

We are preparing to start the beginning of finalising arrangements to start the planning for the timeline... blah blah blah

Almost there then.

 

[Foolmewunz]

How long has this garbage been going on now? And this is all we get ~

We are preparing to start the beginning of finalising arrangements to start the planning for the timeline... blah blah blah

Almost there then.

Any day, now......

 

[T'ai Chi]

How long has this garbage been going on now? And this is all we get ~

We are preparing to start the beginning of finalising arrangements to start the planning for the timeline... blah blah blah

I'm not sure, but last time I checked they were not catering to your whims, nor did research become a thing to do quickly.

 

[volatile]

I'm not sure, but last time I checked they were not catering to your whims, nor did research become a thing to do quickly.

Research? Steorn are doing research now?

 

[Foolmewunz]

Well, they've researched how to redesign a website and kill a forum. Their new site now has nifty things like a product name.... It will be called.... Drumroll, please........

Orbo

They are also announcing tantalizing bits, like that there will be a developer's forum, which doesn't appear to be open yet, and which I'm going to assume will not include previous forumites, since they mention it will be limited to 200 "developers" - assumably people who will take out a license and actually test their technology.

The most interesting statement to skeptics will be the one on the following page:

http://www.steorn.com/orbo/technology/

Technical Specifications
Detailed technical specifications will be made available at the end of Quarter 1, 2007.

So, in five weeks we can toss this onto the Math and Science board! I'm sure there are some folks on the MIT boards and over at JPL who'd probably like a crack at the tech details, too. I'd think that if they publish truly detailed technical specs, they might have trouble with one of their other statements (bolding mine):

Our Claim
Orbo produces free, clean and constant energy - that is our claim. By free we mean that the energy produced is done so without recourse to external source. By clean we that during operation the technology produces no emissions. By constant we mean that with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely.

The sum of these claims for our Orbo technology is a violation of the principle of conservation of energy, perhaps the most fundamental of scientific principles. The principle of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, it can only change form.

Because of the revolutionary nature of our claim, not only to the world of science but to the world in general, Steorn issued a challenge to the scientific community in August 2006 to test our technology and report their findings. The process of validation that has resulted from this challenge is currently underway, with results expect by the end of 2007.

If they publish the detailed technical specs by the end of Q1/07 (coincidentally April 1), I'm going to imagine that there will be some serious maths being done in a number of places and we should have a nice brouhaha going by about the 5th of April, now that they directly state that they're contradicting CoE.