What is wrong with what Steorn is doing?

[drkitten]

So either Randi is claiming to predict the future re: Steorn's motives,

So?

I predict the future regarding people's motives on a routine basis. So do you. The people who don't do that are called 'psychopaths.'

And there's little that's 'standard' about his approach. Advertising for experts instead of identifying them first and then talking to the individuals identified?

 

[Mojo]

So either Randi is claiming to predict the future re: Steorn's motives, or he is very negative about peoples' right to ignore his skeptical organizations' challenge and proceed via more standard channels of science.

Advertising for a "jury" of 12 scientists is hardly the "standard channels of science".

 

[T'ai Chi]

What do challenges from the skeptical movement have to do with Science?

 

[Gr8wight]

So either Randi is claiming to predict the future re: Steorn's motives, or he is very negative about peoples' right to ignore his skeptical organizations' challenge and proceed via more standard channels of science.

Or both.

You're doing it again, Justin. You're being deliberately obtuse. Did you miss Horatius' comment, or just ignore it?

So far, everything they've allowed to be published has been characterized by not telling the world anything useful. If they really cared about getting a proper test, they'd publish the whole thing, no reservations, and allow any lab, anywhere, to do whatever tests they wanted to, and let the results fall where they may. If they're correct, the science will show that.

What Steorn is doing is not science, it is PR.

 

[Gr8wight]

What do challenges from the skeptical movement have to do with Science?

Nothing.

What does what Steorn is doing have to do with science?

Nothing.

What point does Justin have?

...?

 

[Mojo]

What do challenges from the skeptical movement have to do with Science?

What do challenges from the "skeptical movement" have to do with what may be wrong with what Steorn is doing?

 

[drkitten]

What do challenges from the skeptical movement have to do with Science?

Relatively little -- but more than what Steorn appears to be doing.

 

[Horatius]

Granted.

Semantics pose a problem in every language, Horatius, no doubt. (Try E-Prime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime for further reading http://time-binding.org/about/about-gs.htm or http://www.generalsemantics.org/about.htm )

If you'd please allow me some more nitpicking: "...confidence in the scientific validity of their results..." would satisfy me even more as a statement. Ivory tower, glass house, I know.

I very much guess though we sail the same waters, so no offense intended.

Hey, no problem. This is just one of those things that comes up when you try to discuss science in a casual setting. If we spent the time needed to define all our terms, we'd lose everyone's attention before we actually said anything of interest.

 

[T'ai Chi]

It looks like Steorn is asking for independent scientists (not biased skeptical organizations) to review their work.

A few people are just suggesting it is only PR.

So what does one have against independent scientists reviewing work instead of paying attenting to a challenge from the skeptical movement?

 

[Horatius]

What do challenges from the skeptical movement have to do with Science?

Not to disagree with the others who've said, "Nothing", I'd say such challenges are a good way for the non-science public to separate the wheat from the chaff. If a skeptic was to issue a challenge to a scientist who was promoting a breakthrough that, while seeming to violate our understanding of physics, was in fact a real breakthrough, he'd be able to meet the challenge and win.

It's the ones who have nothing and know they have nothing who would shy away from a challenge.

Consider two announced breakthoughs from a few years back: Cold Fusion, and High Temperature Superconductors. Both of them, if they were to be real, would involve serious changes to our understanding of some basic physics. Not as much change as "free energy", but certainly Nobel Prize level work.

CF went about their announcement is a manner very similar to Steorn - No formal publication, just press conferences will very little actual detail. HTSC published their work in traditional journals, with enough details that anyone with the right skills and a lab could try to reproduce their work.

Guess what? Cold Fusion was a bust. High Temperature Superconductors worked for anyone who tried it. In fact, in very short period of time, people were producing new results, new types of superconductors based on the inital work. That's how science works. If what they have is real, it'll work for anyone, not just them, and other labs will quite quickly start expanding on their new fields of understanding.

The fact that they're not willing to trust in the systems that have brought science so far, is pretty damning.

 

[Mojo]

So what does one have against independent scientists reviewing work...

Nothing. If they wanted to "proceed via more standard channels of science", the normal approach would be to write the thing up and get the work reviewed by independent scientists before publication. But this is not what Steorn have done.

 

[T'ai Chi]

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.

So even if the scientists aren't members of the organized skeptical movement, it doesn't matter, as the results (ie. what is really important, not sidetracks on issues about personalities) will be made available for all to critique.

 

[Horatius]

It looks like Steorn is asking for independent scientists (not biased skeptical organizations) to review their work.

Here's the thing - real independent scientists are skeptical, regardless of their membership in any particular organizations. They have to be, in order to avoid the very common problems of self-delusion that permeates every aspect of human life.

When a scientist sees something that he can't explain, he first has to ask himself, "Have I really considered all the possible causes of this effect?" It's far to easy to just jump to the conclusion that you're seeing a new effect, or a desired result because that's the whole point of research. Any time you see somethng new, you've got to step back and re-consider everything.

I had just this problem myself when I was working on my Master's degree. I thought I had a good signal in my experiments, but then I had to throw out about 6 months work, when I realized that the signals were correlated with the control signals that controlled my apparatus - they had nothing to do with the physics. I had to totally re-design my system to account for that. It's frustrating, but that's what you have to do in science.

 

[drkitten]

It looks like Steorn is asking for independent scientists (not biased skeptical organizations) to review their work.

No, it doesn't.

So what does one have against independent scientists reviewing work instead of paying attenting to a challenge from the skeptical movement?

There's no evidence to suggest that the involved scientists will be "independent."

In fact, I question whether the reviewers will really be "scientists."

 

[drkitten]

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.

Actually, that's exactly what it doesn't sound like.

Re-read:

For the moment, our focus is to secure a jury of 12 scientists to independently validate our technology, which was the purpose of our advertisement in the Economist.

We will release further information on the technology, following completion of the validation process.

It says they will release "further information." Nowhere does it say that they will release all the results of analysis, nor that it will be released freely.

They could -- and probably will -collect a hundred reports and the "release" the two that support their findings. Possibly with significant post-editing.

So even if the scientists aren't members of the organized skeptical movement, it doesn't matter, as the results (ie. what is really important, not sidetracks on issues about personalities) will be made available for all to critique.

If the results really will be made available for all to critique, I will of course withdraw my criticism. But I don't believe it will happen, any more than I believe that Tony Blair will declare war on the United States next Monday.

If that's "predicting the future," so be it.

 

[Horatius]

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.

What Happens After Validation?

The jury’s analysis will be published on the company's website where everyone can register to receive the results.

So, they won't be publishing the results in an independent journal, but on their own website. For someone who is so keen on "independent" scientists, you're pretty casual about accepting claims from a company that has shown nothing but a desire to exert complete control over the whole process. They chose the experts, they control access to the technology, they publish the results - why exactly should we trust them to do any of this in a honest manner? What have they done to show they can be trusted?

 

[T'ai Chi]

Only time will tell.

Better to reserve negative comments and insinuations until the facts are in.

 

[drkitten]

Only time will tell.

Better to reserve negative comments and insinuations

... as well as credulist criticisms of well-justified suspicions ...

until the facts are in.

Goose:Sauce::Gander:?

 

[Horatius]

Only time will tell.

Better to reserve negative comments and insinuations until the facts are in.

Yes, ultimately only time will tell. Maybe someday one of these guys will actually be right, and will usher in a new day of plenty for all.

But.....

Let's look at the record, shall we?

They're engaing in exactly the same hide-and-seek peek-a-boo games that every other con artist who's ever claimed free energy from magnets has engaged in. If they really were the ones to have done it, after decades of charlatans claiming exactly the same thing, why wouldn't they act in some way as to distinguish themselves from the con artists?

If they really have something, why the games? If it's real, it will just work. No need for fancy "juries" and "validation plans" and what not. Just show it, already! They say they've been doing this for several years now. Why can't they just show it to us?

Maybe, just maybe, because they're just the latest con artists? How many cons do we have to sit through before we can rightly insist on more proof from the next claimant before we take them seriously?

 

[T'ai Chi]

How is directly stating what they are interested in, and what they will do, "evasive manuevering"?

One might not approve (of ignoring challenging from a few in the biased skeptical movement), but it is not being evasive, it is being pretty direct.