Talk:EmDrive

No Way! NO!

Sorry, this article is too condemning of the idea of the EM Drive. The article mentions sometimes anomalies are explained by new physics, and mention the precession of Mercury and Relativity. Then dismiss it being potential here completely. Many antirelativists like myself who know the controversial history of Relativity and why it is just math will tell you actually that did not even prove anything! We knew about the anomaly, and without proof Einstein made up the explanation. He never proved he was right, we knew about the precession. He just said it was caused by X without letting us find X by experiment or observation. The theory grew popular, even though it was as insane as Aether Theory that most antirelativists believe in. I'm not letting you get away with this. This article has been doctored by the ones who refuse to give up Conservation of Momentum. Unsourced the claim is most scientists disbelieve in the EM DRive. It has been confirmed several times by different people and the only problem is then with the experiment. New physics will be discovered from this, one way or another. But right now there is no proof it is not generating momentum. There is no proof the concept is wrong. And it may be the proof that Warp Drive is possible and I will have to give up my disregard for Relativity! That is just numbers! This is physical evidence! If Conservation is true it doesn't need your defense, and if not let it die! Scientists, referees...These are quoted as if they determine proof or insanity. The scientists are no more intelligent, better, or more accurate than anyone else. Science itself is not more accurate as a method of study! Because of the human element it runs off of, it actually is as bad as this article's biases!

Change it, or be unrealistic and dumb. Your call... 108.222.135.118 (talk) 21:30, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Bordering on WP:NOTFORUM and pretty silly: "But right now there is no proof it is not generating momentum." I think you are confusing the terms "proof" and "evidence". Or this gem: "The scientists are no more intelligent, better, or more accurate than anyone else. Science itself is not more accurate as a method of study!" - what alternative to science should we be citing in this article? —DIYeditor (talk) 22:02, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I vote for "unrealistic and dumb" if that is on the side of reliable sources and the scientific method. Spiel496 (talk) 22:06, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

You cannot prove that a concept cannot work. The burden of evidence is on those who claim it would work, and there is still no good evidence for that. So far everything we have are tiny thrust values, with some experiments quoting uncertainty values that are way too low (or quoting no uncertainty values at all) to make the measurements look significant. You might be interested in the articles Tests of general relativity and Tests of special relativity. It is so much more than the precession of Mercury. --mfb (talk) 23:41, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Yeah... I'd recommend that the IP has a read of WP:NPOV. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 04:21, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Alright, time to play ball. Do you know that the vaunted Second Law of Thermodynamics is not proven? It actually is a purely statistical concept that is not actually a repeatable law of fundamental physics, but instead can be broken. That isn't me talking, those are scientists. They are human beings like anyone else. This is idiotic. Burden of proof may fall on the shoulders of others, but suggesting that the device is just "noise" when verified multiple times without answer is inserting your own preconceptions on how the universe MUST work. And I'm sorry...Since when did the world run by science? It is a method of study, nothing more. Facts are irregardless of whether men with doctorates accept them or not. This wiki article is obtuse, aberrant, and heretical not for failing to follow and defend scientific establishment, but for unrealistically and stupidly enforcing the prior faith one has had in past answers. We do not define the universe, we learn it. Nothing shown by any part of EM drive has been attributed to just noise. I'm editing out these statements now. 2600:1700:BCE0:A230:49AD:964B:5606:567D (talk) 19:28, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh, and if you are really trying to counterargue in favor of relativity, like every good and well damned scientist, you are missing the point. Defending an idea is not what are duty is for. Defending truth as it can be understood. There is nothing to prove that this is just "noise". Nor is there anything to prove that this is in violation of conservation of momentum. This wiki documents everything, but I notice in two to three areas problems stick: Science, History, and Fiction. Fiction is lambasted in general, and unrealistically represented with statements like, "oh, shooting two guns is unrealistic because its a movie" being added unnecessarily to the content of the articles. Then with Science always an assertive tone is taken, as is normal in science, without stopping to realize this foolish fighting has happened a thousand times over or more. Whether quoting an atheistic scientist who of course says the theory of evolution is not in crisis, just missing links, using mutations that kill people, and still can't create a germ out of nonliving substances... With History...A lot of ignorance Wikipedia would have to get way too deep into to really get the real problem of the modern historian, worse than the scientist, whose own methods deny the records. That one is a strength and deeply evidenced study of mine in too many areas, so I myself don't worry about those articles.

But with Science why do the articles have to make the clearly partial statement of "Evolution is a hundred percent valid" and make a slim quote by an atheist as the excuse when the atheist is ignoring the Christian and saying they cannot be a scientist so we are, nah, nah, boo, boo...All while the Wiki is trying to merely document what happened in one historical event. If we cannot capture both sides and just are trying to make statements for ourselves we are stupid. This one is really, really, really obvious in terms of defying and blatantly mocking the experiments which do not agree with traditional views of the laws of nature. But the rule of science is you discard statements that disagree with experimental results, not hold on to lies. And many scientists agree this is more than just noise, they have duplicated it in more than a single lab, and is not a hoax. So now the fear is pure faith, philosophy, and trying to protect old theories, which leads others, including this article, to lash out at the proof itself. Maybe this does fail and we find a different answer one day, maybe not. But because history runs a gauntlet fraught with hoaxes and false alarms does not validate certain theories or laws above others to the point we unobjectively have the right to perpetuate them regardless and ignorant of evidencing obstructions in the way of the trained mantra we hold dear. That is my objective argument for the changes I am about to make. If you would like to list the examples of others who have counter evidence or beliefs contrary like mine does with relativity, then go ahead. That was the point. Also, take damned to mean condemned. I'm more literary that way.

As far as relativity, that was just the point. I understand relativity and actually write fiction and spend too much time preparing notes on scientists lying about the power of warp drive for six decades until unnecessary math came along to convince them that the simplicity of bending spacetime with high energy to move faster than light made so much sense Einstein practically said it himself in John Campbell's ear. Oh, yes. I get relativity and the fabric of spacetime is an easy concept to get too and why we have some of the coolest things in sci fi that most scientists hypocritically criticize when their theories also open up the room to have these ideas work. Even others have taken Relativity to new ideas, some defiant of Einstein, because its obvious there are a few holes and alternative chances with his model that allow to get away with things, like maybe time travel and I already mentioned warp speed. But upon simply looking at the basic premise and Why we have spacetime, I realized it was illogical and false, with no real data on the subject. No touch of spacetime, weak atomic "clocks" that only does what gravity, which we already had, told them to break down and become stupidly, evilly bad timepieces. Pure math. And not even derived from other established facts, but adding things like space + time, constant speed of light despite experiments to the contrary to the extreme, and interpretations to gracefully avoid a few violations here and there. A history fraught with those trying to hold on to Aether, which is how some peg people who don't like relativity to say they are fools, versus those who also hold onto relativity and state that even if wrong they are going to keep the idea around. Science as a history is dark and destructive, full of fighting and contention and the community at each other's throats or condemning the one fool who ends up proving them all wrong. There are biases. And my only point is this...We need to objectively present outside information without creating an internal memo that determines the winner in these contests, but rather states the points of views in all their differences, points, or counterpoints, even if we disagree. I defend fiction with relativity used rather than abused, because we lied about FTL capability just because fiction is not worth a cent to people to believe in. Because movies with black holes are wrong even if a scientist designed the black hole and there are a dozen or more iterations of theory for different black holes out there. But I don't believe in relativity myself nor use it, the more easily, as a writer myself. That is being objective, and wikipedia needs to for articles for religious, scientific, historical, and other such contents, without sounding patronizing or politically correct, but mainly maintaining a style which is useful and informative. And no debate, please. For real, it was just a point about objectivity. If you want to look at relativity, do so yourself. But don't just defend it because its "science". That practically means nothing in the scheme of things. Men make much of it, but it falls apart to suggest that science made the universe and everything in it, that Alexander Graham Bell got us phones because of science. He wasn't a scientist. It does not, a phone, exist because of science or the powerful will of scientists. It exists, period. Science is just observation, experiment, hypothesis, with the hopes of finding facts and a lot of failure and other clutter getting stuck in these kinds of issues right here. Wikipedia needs to be like the phone, and just exist as fact, and not conflate things by stating facts are science, when science merely searches for facts, and we have to admit then everyone is a mere searcher whomever we could quote as providing evidence for or against even one violation of conservation or the existence of thrust. And dang, I cannot personally acquiesce to my own desire to fix this article. With writing, personal research into too many areas, and...This article is a mess right now, way too biased, and the only reason some of you don't see it, is because you are probably like me, and don't believe in what others do. That is not the point. We need this fixed, for the sake of information. 2600:1700:BCE0:A230:49AD:964B:5606:567D (talk) 20:08, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

There must be a more concise way of expressing your objection. Spiel496 (talk) 19:56, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

There is a concise way, but if you're refusing to read the objection you've only proved his point. The point is that appeal to authority and appeal to majority is an informal logical fallacy. Wikipedia often uses a logical form similar to "Einstein claimed quantum mechanics is crap science, ergo quantum mechanics is crap science." (Reference). Today, even though we accept Einstein's authority to General and Special Relativity, we reject his authority that quantum mechanics is crap science.

One major point made above is that people can read an article, and come to their own beliefs that all the "facts" that the article presents are not "facts" but instead appeals to authority. I've read academic articles that Wikipedia quotes and have found that many don't even agree with the claims made by Wikipedia; outside of the abstract.

In short, I am claiming that wikipedians do not even read the sources that are referenced, sources are used as a justification for their original research in proving a belief and getting a point they want in the Wikipedia article. The argument that started this is clearly seen here [[1]]. The argument is well written, showing that our lack of understanding of what is going on is not an indication that what is going on is impossible... removed because it supported something that Arianewiki1 did not believe in. (The reference specifically talks about this point of view.)

To put simply, it is NOT Wikipedia's place to have a partisan point of view on what is "fact", nor even to blindly say "everyone/some-authority agrees this is fact, so it is fact", because that constitutes original research. Wikipedia has a long history of producing highly partisan pages where there is no explanation nor attempt to explain the opponent's beliefs in a way that does not mock the opponent.134.194.253.21 (talk) 15:09, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but we are not going to pretend that there is some debate about whether Santa Clause exists. I suggest that you try to find a website that does not have policies like our WP:V and WP:RS. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:18, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Scientific focus

As written, this article fails to adhere to Wikipedia's scientific focus principle. RF cavity thruster is pseudoscience and should be labeled as such, per Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science#Scientific_focus. Heptor _talk 22:03, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree, and we shouldn't let the first sentence read like this would be an actual working thing. At least some "disputed" or similar should appear there. --mfb (talk) 03:15, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Regarding this edit[2], there is nothing wrong with calling pseudoscience what it is, and removing a citation needed tag is completely unacceptable behavior. See [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], --Guy Macon (talk) 15:57, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect per WP:LABEL, WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, and WP:NOTPROMO. We can't label this subject as pseudoscience in Wikipedia's voice, and certainly not in the first sentence.- MrX 🖋 16:16, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

WP:LABEL states that pseudoscientific views "should be clearly described as such". Heptor _talk 22:41, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I think so long as they've been able to publish in scientific journals, it's probably not pseudoscience, just fringe science. It's a testable claim, and it's looking like it's mostly failing the tests. Until people make the claim that it's really truly working anyway, when it's been unequivocally disproven, and we preferably have secondary sources that show that, we shouldn't stick the pseudoscience label on it. It's not homeopathy or astrology- yet.GliderMaven (talk) 17:03, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

The wording "The majority opinion of physicists is that this impossible, as it would violate several basic principles of physics, specifically conservation of momentum and conservation of energy." violates WP:V and WP:OR. I would hope that anyone wanting to make these kinds of changes would discuss them on the talk page first, after reviewing previous discussions about how the lead is written.- MrX 🖋 19:05, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

At root, science is not a consensus of scientists, it's a consensus of what the experiments show. It doesn't matter whether it violates conservation of momentum and energy; that just incredibly raises the chances of it being wrong. But no, in the end it has to actually not work, and for people to continue to state it to be science to be pseudoscience.GliderMaven (talk) 20:33, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

• Sources please. Fringe? Yes. Pseudoscience? Not yet. Time and additional experiments will tell, but currently papers are still being published on this (which is an indication against pseudoscience). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:44, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

There are many sources that confirm that this device can't work per the third law of motion, see for example [12][13]. There are few things that are more mainstream scientific consensus than the third law of motion, are there? I mean, I understand that it would be awesome if humanity went to the stars in a cleverly shaped microwave oven :) But seriously? I find it rather peculiar that I am having this discussion with seemingly well-educateed fellow editors. Heptor _talk 21:01, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

There are many source that say it does work, or that it might work, or that it's unknown whether it will work. Some of those sources are also more current than the ones you cite. We're not here to examine the evidence and reach conclusions based on our personal knowledge of Newtonian physics. We have to adhere to what sources say. If sources disagree, then we need to represent each prominent viewpoint in proportion to their coverage in reliable sources.- MrX 🖋 21:23, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Come on, even the Daily Mail clearly states that it is against the laws of physics[14]. Heptor _talk 21:53, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

GliderMaven, sadly, quite a few pseudo-scientific disciples are able to publish in low-level scientific journals. Especially health-related pseudoscience is often published in China. Homeopathy even have their own journal, published by Elsevier. Such is the world we live in.. Heptor _talk 22:16, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

What do we learn? Peer review is just as good as the peers. --mfb (talk) 22:36, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

True. Discerning good science from nonsense is really difficult, next to impossible without a long experience, preferably with formal schooling. Heptor _talk 11:15, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

So, per discussion above, there don't seem to be an agreement to clearly label the topic of this article as pseudoscience per WP:LABEL and Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science#Scientific_focus. Is there support to write this article from the scientific point of view, stating that the design is not compatible with our current understanding of the laws of physics, as it would violate, among other things, the third law of motion? There don't seem to be a lack of sources for this statement, see e.g. the list provided by Guy Macon: [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], -- Heptor _talk 11:28, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Alright, I made more conservative changes to the article than originally proposed[24]:

1. Roger Shawyer said himself that this design is not a "reactionless drive". So it was very odd that it was described as such in the first sentence in the article
2. The sentence clause "It is a controversial proposed type of electromagnetic thruster with a microwave cavity" was rather confusing, so I simplified the drive description in the lead
3. "Skeptics have deemed" is poor writing style, not suited for an encyclopedia. I condensed it to "The design is controversial, as it would [...]"
4. Since it is controversial if the drive actually works, I changed the main description from " a type of [...] drive" to "a proposed design".

Best wishes, Heptor (talk) 12:39, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Heptor, Guy Macon and others for the recent cleanup: the article is much better as a result.

The unqualified claims by the two inventors that this works, and that they have repeatedly shown it works, are classic pseudoscience. In addition to having no scientific explanation for the claim (just an unverified statement that they saw an effect, and believe it's possible), both inventors have repeatedly misled others about their results. They have never published, have hidden claimed breakthroughs behind veils of secrecy, and for 15y have claimed increasing performance targets while being unable to show any non-zero performance in public.

The studies by scientists from two respected institutions are not pseudoscience; they are real scientists studying the above claims -- and trying to come up with more scientific claims that could possibly explain how such a device might work, were that miraculously to be the case. A total of 1 article (White) has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. This alone doesn't make the topic less psuedo-; there are plenty of published articles by scientists studying pseudoscience. The fact that White found a slight effect that he couldn't rule out, did delay labeling this topic pseudoscience. But at some point soon we should revisit this. – SJ + 08:51, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Hello Sj, and thanks for reviewing the discussion and bringing additional arguments. I agree with what you wrote above. The claims that this contraption produces thrust are pseudoscientific, and the article could state it more clearly. We still have a significant improvement from how the article was before, when this concept was described as an actual thruster, and criticism was brushed off per "skeptics have deemed" [25]. Thanks, Heptor (talk) 18:10, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your opinion, but we use sources at Wikipedia. We also follow WP:NPOV.- MrX 🖋 18:26, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Alright, so it appears that unfortunately there is still no consensus for plainly stating that this concept is pseudoscience. Heptor (talk) 10:09, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense. There is an overwhelming consensus for plainly stating that this concept is pseudoscience. As always with pseudoscience, we have a few True Believers bitterly complaining about how unfair Wikipedia is. The nerve of those Wikipedia editors, reporting what is in the sources! How DARE they! It is interfering with our god-given right to defraud investors is what it is!!! --Guy Macon (talk) 18:28, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Where's this overwhelming consensus that you speak of?- MrX 🖋 18:44, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if it is overwhelming, but please count me in. --mfb (talk) 19:43, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Count you in for what?- MrX 🖋 20:22, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

For "this is pseudoscience" because I agree with that. --mfb (talk) 07:19, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

There is always an overwhelming consensus for things that are in reliable sources and against unsourced claims.

"In his paper on the EMDrive, McCulloch argued that photons have mass and that photon mass varies with time. The time-varying inertia allows the EMDrive to accelerate. The idea not only violates Newton's third law of motion, it violates special relativity, general relativity and Noether's theorem. Since these are each well tested theories that form the basis of countless other theories, their violation would completely overturn all of modern physics. It's no wonder most scientists have been aggressively skeptical of the idea."[26]

"A drive which does not expel propellant in order to produce a reaction force, but rather provides thrust from the electromagnetic field without any external interaction, is a reactionless drive. Such a closed system need not carry propellant and hence would be capable of always producing thrust, as long as it is powered, and would appear to violate the conservation of momentum and Newton's third law, leading many physicists to believe such thrusters to be impossible, labeling them as pseudoscience."[27]

"Although the EM Drive appeared to create thrust in these tests, there was no mass or particles of any kind expelled during the process. This is a violation of Newton's third law of motion, which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Action and reaction is a direct result of the conservation of momentum. The violation of such a basic law as the conservation of momentum would invalidate much of the basis for all of physics as we know it. Hence, many scientists and engineers feel the thrust measurements reported for the EM Drive are due to experimental error. Adding to this is the fact that those who believe the results are valid do not yet have an experimentally or a theoretically plausible proven physical explanation."[28]

"The EmDrive is a reactionless spacecraft drive proposed by Roger Shawyer in 1999. The key thing about it is that if it works, several extremely well-understood and tested principles of physics go completely out the window."[29]

"{Newton's] third law is known as the conservation of momentum, and is true not only in Newtonian mechanics, but in electromagnetism, General Relativity and all of quantum field theory. It's the one law that Newton came up with that still holds, with no exceptions, today.

But if the EMdrive is truly reactionless, then Newton is wrong. Also, Einstein is wrong, Maxwell is wrong and all of quantum physics is wrong. There's a fundamental symmetry that causes momentum conservation: translational symmetry. It means that if my system is over here, at a certain point in space, it should obey the same laws as if it's over there, at a different point in space. But if momentum conservation isn't truly fundamental, then translational symmetry cannot be a good symmetry of the Universe. In other words, there must be a preferred location, where the laws of physics are different in one location than others. The laws of physics, all of a sudden, depend on position.

It means that the fundamental principle of relativity is wrong. It means that if you're in an inertial reference frame, you can see an entire system's momentum change over time. Moreover, it means that observers in different reference frames will see violations of momentum conservation by different amounts. If you violate momentum conservation by different amounts, you violate energy conservation, too; energy is not only not conserved, it's not conserved by different amounts in different reference frames. The most sacred law of particle physics -- one that has been observed to apply to every system and every interaction set in history -- would be busted.

The problem isn't that these laws couldn't be overturned by experiment; of course they could. The problem is that physicists have performed so many experiments in so many different ways, so carefully and with such precision verifying them. These conservation laws have been confirmed for every gravitational, mechanical, electromagnetic and quantum interaction ever observed. And now, it's claimed that an engine, one that relies on nothing more than a simple electromagnetic power source, overthrows all of physics."[30]

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Which is why you should still be suspicious of the "emDrive," a theoretical propulsion system that supposedly could propel objects to near-relativistic speeds, despite this week's headlines touting the technology.... there are a few things you should know. Previous tests of emDrive haven't held up to scrutiny. And the NASA agency investigating the EmDrive, informally known as Eagleworks, is specifically devoted to investigation of fringe or far-future ideas such as the Alcubierre Drive, a futuristic warp drive that is both (marginally) technically possible and completely unfeasible due to bonkers energy demands. So just because you hear that NASA is intrigued by an idea, don't assume that it's going to work tomorrow... Responding to the claim that emDrive could produce thrust with a small amount of influence from microwaves, Corey Powell at Discover pointed out in August 2014 that the idea is riddled with holes. That write-up followed a slew of headlines declaring that NASA had verified the emDrive. The reality was closer to NASA engineer shrugging and saying "oh, that's neat."

One of the Shawyer's latest claims is that the EmDrive can create warp bubbles. He says the emDrive created a warp-like bubble in a NASA lab, bending space and time around it and enabling photons to go faster than the speed of light."[31] --Guy Macon (talk) 20:25, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Notably, the only sources that actually say that this invention is pseudoscience are blogs that come nowhere near meeting our reliable source standards. Nothing has changed from all of the previous discussions on this page in which hard core skeptics wanted to label this pseudoscience based on their own original research and grasping as really awful sources.- MrX 🖋 20:41, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

You appear to be unfamiliar with WP:PARITY: "Parity of sources may mean that certain fringe theories are only reliably and verifiably reported on, or criticized, in alternative venues from those that are typically considered reliable sources for scientific topics on Wikipedia." --Guy Macon (talk) 09:17, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Nothing in that guideline permits ignoring WP:V and WP:RS. This subject has been covered in actual reliable sources. Let's just stick with those. I also dispute that WP:PARITY has wide community consensus.- MrX 🖋 11:07, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Go ahead and dispute it all you like, but the statement "This page documents an English Wikipedia content guideline. It is a generally accepted standard..." still stands. Try posting an RfC to change it. I will make popcorn and watch as you get shot down in flames. --Guy Macon (talk)

There are plenty of WP:RS sources that confirm that this contraption doesn't produce thrust in any particular direction per well-established laws of physics. Its proponents nevertheless present scientifically-sounding explanations to its supposed operation. Even though not all sources explicitly call this theory pseudoscience, a wide range of well-established policies support describing the topic as pseudoscience in such cases. This includes WP:PSCI: "Pseudoscientific theories are presented by proponents as science, but characteristically fail to adhere to scientific standards and methods. [...] The pseudoscientific view should be clearly described as such". WP:LABEL makes a specific exception for pseudoscientific topics. Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science#Scientific_focus: "[Wikipedia's content on] quasi-scientific topics will primarily reflect current mainstream scientific consensus". WP:PARITY is established as a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, you can't just brush it off like you did, especially when its application agrees with other policies. Heptor (talk) 18:27, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Exactly right. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:24, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

No need for me to dispute it or have an RfC. There was no RfC to add that pretzel logic word salad to the guideline in the first place, so it can readily be ignored, or at least, discounted.- MrX 🖋 12:02, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

WP:OR includes making up your own mind that stuff is impossible, citing lack of imagination. Oh, to be clear, the magnetic interaction with cables is a really good debunk idea, sure. But until the rest of the world decrees it pseudoscience, the imagination will continue to wander, and we should use the same categorization as the sources. Wnt (talk) 23:25, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Roger Shawyer's MIEE

Since User:Heptor took the unusual step of questioning Roger Shawyer's qualification as a "British engineer", I found that Shawyer lists "C.Eng MIEE" after his name in his paper published online by New Scientist. I think one could reasonably surmise that someone who includes "C.Eng MIEE" after their name in a paper published by a major science magazine would be legit because of the legal action the that either the Engineering Council or the Institution of Electrical Engineers would take against someone fraudulently making such a claim. Indeed when I checked on what those organizations did to enforce it, legal action & fines seemed to be the primary actions.

However, I have found that finding a directory for MIEE or C.Eng is a fruitless task. When I emailed membership@theiet.org to ask how to verify the membership, the response from the Membership Services Advisor was:

“ I can find an individual with that name on our system that is currently a member. If you are able to provide either a date of birth or membership number I would be able to confirm this for you.
Unfortunately, without a copy of signed consent, I wouldn’t be able to give out further information regarding the membership. ”

Given the IET's keeping confidentiality for its members, I think it impossible to further verify an MIEE designation. Given the the potential possible fines & legal action for anyone fraudulently claiming to be an MIEE, I think we can take Roger Shawyer at his word as we do any other person who says they are an MIEE.

Peaceray (talk) 16:26, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

New conference note by Tajmar et al

The SpaceDrive Project - First Results on EMDrive and Mach-Effect Thrusters. One of the results: Interactions between insufficiently shielded cables and the magnetic field of Earth can lead to thrust values similar to the claimed thrust values. --mfb (talk) 07:39, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Interesting explanation indeed. Heptor (talk) 10:21, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

"When they turned on the system but dampened the power going to the actual drive so essentially no microwaves were bouncing around, the EmDrive still managed to produce thrust—something it should not have done if it works the way the NASA team claims."

"The researchers have tentatively concluded that the effect they measured is the result of Earth’s magnetic field interacting with power cables in the chamber, a result that other experts agree with." Source: National Geographic

-Guy Macon (talk) 22:52, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Should the EmDrive be labeled as Pseudoscience?

Should the RF resonant cavity thruster (commonly called the EmDrive in the popular press) be labeled as Pseudoscience? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:23, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

• Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Survey

• Support as proposer. The RF resonant cavity thruster and all claims by its inventors are classic pseudoscience. They claim that the drive provides a substantial amount of thrust and they claim that they have demonstrated this, but nobody can conform or replicate their results. They have never published, are very secretive about the details, and for over fifteen years have made claims of larger and larger thrusts while being unable to show any thrust at all in any public demonstration.

The studies by NASA Eagleworks and the team of Chinese researchers are examples of legitimate scientists testing the pseudoscientific claims and finding a slight effect of unknown cause. There may be some unknown physical effect in play, and this is probably worth investigating, but that doesn't change the fact that the RF resonant cavity thruster and all claims by its inventors are classic pseudoscience. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:23, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. First, bear in mind that the article is not about the Emdrive trademark/product, but about RF resonant cavity thrusters of any provenance. Wikipedia widely maintains this bureaucratic distinction rather doggedly - just today, to find out the density of Styrofoam, I had to go to "expanded polystyrene". Thus, we should consider all RF thruster tests, not just Emdrive's. Then, I say, go to the references. Are those citations to the Discovery Institute, or are they citations to Popular Science and New Scientist and even Nature? Well, there's your answer. Wrong science is not pseudoscience, it's just wrong. If it's wrong. For something impossible there sure are a lot of speculations how it could work. Wnt (talk) 23:13, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support - no science, just claims of sciencing-stuff-going-on-here. Classic pseudo-science, if not outright fraud then clearly self-delusional claptrap. "It could work if Newton's Third Law is junk" is not science, it's wishful thinking. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:03, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

• No mention of fraud in the article. Heaviside glow (talk) 19:54, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

• I don't think Orangemike suggests that it should be described as fraud in the article. However, if this Shawyer person indeed has an engineering background as some claim, then his claims about this device are almost certainly made in bad faith in order to defraud investors. Heptor (talk) 21:04, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

• The National Geographic article cited below says that scientists are testing this. Nothing about pseudo.- MrX 🖋 02:11, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose - Verifiability is a core policy, and so it the prohibition on original research, which is exactly what is being proposed here. The vast majority of reliable sources simply do not state that this concept is pseudoscience. Wnt is exactly right.- MrX 🖋 02:11, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - The Neutral Point of View means that Wikipedia does not decide whether or not a topic is pseudo-scientific. Instead it reports that reputable secondary sources claim that the topic is pseudo-scientific. And that other reputable secondary sources do not make such claims. -- Derek Ross | Talk 02:40, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Exactly. It's not up to us to label it as pseudoscience. It's under investigation, but it's clear from the article content that mainstream science not only thinks it will not work, but that it is impossible for it to work. If and when reliable sources decide to call this pseudoscience then we can use the term. Meters (talk) 02:52, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose since this is treated seriously by scientists. It is very likely to be falsified, and then be in yet another category. if after it is thoroughly debunked then people hang on and believe it, then it would be pseudoscience, but it is not yet at that point. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:53, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support - I don't see the serious scientists treating this seriously. --mfb (talk) 04:09, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Qualified support: "Should the [subject of this article] be labelled X" is wholly insufficient and problematic way to frame an inquiry in any RfC, imo, and the present example shows just why something more specific is called for. "Pseudoscience" is used at least once in the article already (correctly in my analysis), and I presume that the current discussion is not about whether to maintain that use, since it is clearly attributed and relevant to that context. So are we talking about a mention in the lead? If so, of what nature? Are we talking about a category listing? Specifics are important here or you drastically reduce the chances of a firm consensus understanding emerging, which is the entire point of an RfC. So the best I can do is offer conditional support; there are plenty of contexts where I can see WP:DUE weight established here (between the one explicit use in a WP:Reliable source and the other many profound doubts expressed in others) for an explicit reference to pseudoscience. Does such a description belong in the lead? Eh, it's a close call, but maybe not. A lot of serious labs, engineers and experimental physicists thought enough of this idea to build prototypes, even if some were for the express purpose of debunking rather than verifying the concept. That means they at least recognized is as something falsifiable, which is a key distinguishing element between science and most pseudoscience. Anyway, I don't want to get out into the weeds of my own original research on this: the point is, I definitely feel the current use of the term (which is not in Wikipedia's statement-of-fact voice but rather attributed to a reliable source) is without a question appropriate. A broader description in the lead or a pervasive tremd throughout the article? Probably that does not meet the WP:WEIGHT burden; in any event, the article does a good job already of making clear that this concept would violate basic physical laws and is almost certainly a theoretic impossibility.

And that's the more important thing: describing the inconsistencies in a way that is accessible and useful to the reader; using the exact handle "pseudoscience" is less important than that. The hope is that readers typically can read between the lines and infer from the descriptions of the concept (while availing themselves of our referenced/linked articles to fill in the gaps in their own knowledge) that the concept is nonsense. As a pragmatic matter, I look at the situation this way: ultimately the reader either has progressed in their level of understanding of the physical universe such that they understand the need for consistent physical laws which operate without predictably (when cross effects of these laws are taken into account) in any hypothetical--or said individual is not yet at that place. If the former, then the descriptions of the EmDrive (and like models) being inconsistent with some well established physical laws will already impart the knowledge that the general concept is flimsy. If the latter, then the use of "pseudoscience" for that variety of reader is merely talismanic; they are only understanding that the concept is faulty because we have used a label which is strongly recognizable/prejudicial enough that they take away the general idea that this device is unlikely to become a reality, but we haven't really succeeded in educating them deeply on the topic if that that's the case, and that's a rather shallow amount of information to impart. So when we are talking to that reader we have to be extra careful not to impute labels to topic which are not found directly and abundantly in the sources, because that reader has no ability to appreciate the nuances at play and might walk away from the descriptor "pseudoscience" thinking that this is equivalent science to homeopathy or "quantum healing" or some such. Considering the balance of value added between the aggregate readers and the state of the available sourcing, I can see the argument for not including the label in the lead. But to excise any reference to pseudoscience from the article would be a much bigger issue, and a mistake. Snow ^{let's rap} 05:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

One vague National Geographic news claim "with many physicists relegating the EmDrive to the world of pseudoscience" is not a very strong basis for using the term "pseudoscience". What's many? Five? 50? 500? 5000? And who are these physicists? Are they crackpots or are they eminent scientists? We don't know, because the article makes no mention of how many or who the opposing physicists are. That's simply lousy writing by National Geographic. In Wikipedia terms, it's unsourced WP:WEASEL wording. In fact, the only physicists mentioned by name are those who support the theory.. Meters (talk) 10:39, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

You may wish to refamiliarize yourself with WP:WEASEL, because the wording of that section of WP:WTW explicitly states that we caution against such statements when they are presented as objective fact in Wikipedia's own voice, but it is not our place to judge the quality of work or the veracity of opinions or statements found in WP:reliable sources (which would be a blatant exercise in WP:original research). In fact, while everybody knows that subsection by its wikilink shorthand, the actual header is "unsupported attributions", and the language makes it explicitly clear that we apply the weasel word analysis only to our own objective statements of fact, not to attributed statements--and certainly not in an analysis of the sources themselves (again, original research in its purest form): "[V]iews that are properly attributed to a reliable source may use similar expressions, if they accurately represent the opinions of the source. Reliable sources may analyze and interpret..." (emphasis in original). That said, I agree that one source is not a gold standard, which is why I support this narrow inclusion of one attributed statement directed towards a specific point and not something broader, stamped across the article. Snow ^{let's rap} 12:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

And you may wish to reread what I wrote. Sorry for the misunderstanding, but I did not call Wikipedia repeating what National Geographic wrote WP:Weasel. I said that the unsupported claim in National Geographic was not was not a very strong basis for using the term "pseudoscience". It's lousy reporting by National Geographic. Any statement along the lines of "many so-and-sos think such and such" with nothign to back up the statement is the reporting media's equivalent of Wikipedia's Weasel. Meters (talk) 22:52, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough, but it's still not appropriate for us as Wikipedia editors to engage in an independent analysis of the science and whether a WP:reliable source "got it right" with regard to particular statements. That's just not within our remit under our project's policies, and remains an exercise in WP:original research, whether the editor's act of personal evaluation is being justified under WP:weasel or not. Snow ^{let's rap} 19:35, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I've wasted enough time on this. I have made no "independent analysis of the science" here and I have not suggested that anyone else do so either. I have an opinion about he likelihood that this is not valid science, but my opinion is not germane to this discussion and so I have not given that opinion..Again, I'm not calling this Weasel wording on Wikipedia. I was just making the point that it is lazy, poor journalism by the source, and is certainly not justification for Wikipedia labelling this entire topic as "pseudoscience", which is what this survey is asking about. Based on that single source the most I would support is something along the lines of "National Geographic states ' blah blah' ", definitely no a blanket statement in Wikipedia's voice that this is pseudoscience... Meters (talk) 02:09, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

A) Feel free to stop "wasting your time" at any point; you're the one who responded to my comment--with an incorrect reading of policy as I see it. B) Once again, it doesn't matter whether you are trying to say that WP:WEASEL applies to the analysis of statements inside a WP:Reliable source or not; I assure you, I took you at your word the first time you said that was not the point you were trying to make. But it is nevertheless WP:original research to decide a source is not valid for a given purpose because it didn't meet your standard of the burden of proof for the way it chooses to describe the topic. C) If you review the comment you first replied to above, you will find that I also support, based on the WP:WEIGHT of that one source, only a clearly attributed and narrowly-focused statement--and that I don't support a blanket statement (in Wikipedia's voice) that this is psuedoscience as a purely objective matter, any more than you do. In fact, not only did I say as much explicitly and at length in that post, that distinction was the crux of my own !vote. So at the end of the day, it doesn't seem our perspectives are that far apart, at least as regards how the cite should look, if included. Snow ^{let's rap} 02:40, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Just because it's unlikely to pan out doesn't make it pseudo-science on its own. I agree that this will almost certainly turn out to be a false hypothesis, but we're not voting on whether or not we think it will work. At least some Non-crackpots seem to have deemed this a long-shot worth treating seriously. This is more of a Cold Fusion situation. ApLundell (talk) 05:35, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose The scientific consensus is settling on this, and very soon that consensus will likely be that the theories have been falsified, but to blanketly call it PS right now seems a bit premature and jumping the gun. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 11:48, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support. The situation here is the same as with most other pseudoscientific theories from Homeopathy to the Loch Ness Monster. A few publications in seemingly legitimate fora here and there are quite common because the proponents of the theories are working hard to make it happen. Debunking these theories doesn't usually warrant peer-reviewed publications: in our case it's a simple application of the Newton's Laws of Motion, it's on the level of a high school report, not a journal article. That's why we have WP:PARITY. There is nothing special about this article compared to other topics covered by WP:PSCI. Heptor (talk) 12:59, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose A hypothesis that is thoroughly tested and fails is very different from something that can be considered pseudoscience. Rap Chart Mike (talk) 14:38, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

It's not pseudo because it failed, it's pseudo because it is inconsistent with science as it is currently understood.Heptor (talk) 15:07, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

The final arbiter in science is the experiment though. Just because it violates conservation of momentum and energy doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong, although it looks pretty bad, but if it fails the experiments, then, after it's published, and generally agreed that's what's happened, then it's wrong, and not science. Anyone that then continues to act as if it's science, that's pseudoscience. We're roughly at the stage where the results of good experiments are coming in and it's looking very bad. GliderMaven (talk) 16:34, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

That's WP:OR, GliderMaven. The problem is that there is no justification for the believe that the EM drive should produce thrust any more than it should cause cancer or make it rain. If EM drive goes then any ridiculous claim is science until proven otherwise. Heptor (talk) 20:51, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Not at all. Note that some of the experiments show a small amount of thrust. All I'm saying is that until we get a secondary source that analyses the primary sources and shows (as I strongly believe) that there is no thrust, Wikipedia cannot go further than the published science. GliderMaven (talk) 21:18, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

And don't you agree that most scientists also strongly believe that there can be no thrust here? That's why you'll likely never get any secondary source that makes the analysis you ask for. It would take a lot of work to make it. Scientists can't be expected to investigate every ridiculous claim that there is out there. That's why we have WP:parity. Heptor (talk) 21:43, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Most scientists didn't think that the OPERA experiment proved that neutrinos were superluminal either, but it wasn't until the results were explained that the matter was settled. You actually want the article to include OR, not me. GliderMaven (talk) 23:27, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense. The OPERA researchers never claimed that they had proven that something moves faster than the speed of light. They reported the results of an experiment that appeared to observe muon neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light and concluded that they did something wrong but they didn't know what. Just the opposite of the RF resonant cavity thruster people, who have fraudulently claimed that the violation of the laws of physics is real. See OPERA experiment#Time-of-flight measurements and Faster-than-light neutrino anomaly. Your example clearly shows the difference between scientists and pseudoscientists. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:48, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose It's still science right now. As long as people are still doing experiments and getting them published in reasonably high-impact journals, it's part of science. GliderMaven (talk) 15:03, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, for now It's not a settled matter yet as far as I can tell. Just because an hypothesis is likely to be falsified doesn't make it automatically pseudoscience. Simonm223 (talk) 16:47, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose: a falsifiable hypothesis to explain a repeatable observation (i.e. that these devices seem to produce thrust) is not pseudoscience just because it goes against existing principles, even if those principles are well-accepted cornerstones of modern science. One might object to calling these devices "thrusters" until most of the much-more-likely hypotheses have been ruled out, but this is the name many sources give them. It only becomes pseudoscience once people keep adhering to the hypothesis after it's been thoroughly debunked. --Link ^(t•c•m) 07:00, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

  But Sir Link, if what you say goes then anything goes. What's there to stop me from saying that clicking my heels sometimes causes rain? I can come up with a bogus explanation if you want, possibly based on chaos theory with some quantum thrown in. Point being, there is no scientific reason to think that the EM drive should cause thrust any more than it should cause cancer or make people fall in love. It's pseudo, even if not all sources explicitly call it that. Heptor (talk) 20:36, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Alright, maybe I should have said "an unexpected repeatable observation" -- your example of rain is something we have a pretty good understanding of, and it doesn't require heel-clicking. In the cavity thruster case, however, anomalous thrust is observed, and not yet explained, which makes it a topic of scientific interest. Also, the "sometimes" in your example is unquantified and not comparable to the case at hand: if rain (thrust) always ensued immediately after you clicked your heels (turned on the cavity thruster), then yes, your chaos theory model would be within the realm of science. It could most likely be debunked pretty easily, but then there would still be the unexplained observation that it always rains after you click your heels. And if you want to leave the "sometimes", if you came up with a mathematically sound model based on established chaos theory and quantum mechanics, that predicted a large (i.e. measurable and discernible from noise) probability of rain being caused by clicking your heels, it would also, in my opinion, be fringe science rather than pseudoscience. --Link ^(t•c•m) 06:56, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

• Support. The claims are extraordinary, and the evidence is pretty clear that the "demonstrations" are fraudulent. Guy (Help!) 11:01, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

• No mention of fraud in the article. Heaviside glow (talk) 19:54, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

• Support. The concept, even including the fact that it challenges known physical laws, has been in public view for well over a decade. It continues to attract research interest but in all this time testing has produced an embarassing (to its promoters) paucity of verifiable results and a considerable number of hypotheses from mainstream science that explain why apparent tiny "false positive" thrusts can be due to experimental error. Classing the concept as Pseudoscience is the mainstream accepted view today that Wikipedia should reflect. Opposers please understand that IF IT HAPPENS TOMORROW that a proof of RF resonant cavity thrust is published in peer-reviewed reliable sources then Wikipedia is uniquely capable of reporting that surprising information within minutes. The same would apply to revolutionary discoveries that force recharacterization of any of this List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. But in none of these cases should Wikipedia attempt, or be congratulated for, foresight. Where it is apparent that the majority of scientists reject outright, reject after testing or ignore the RF resonant cavity thrust hypothesis then WP:NOTCRYSTALBALL policy supports classing it as pseudoscience in the light of best present knowledge. DroneB (talk) 16:50, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
• Almost Support, but... My problem is that, while I regard most of this matter as about as likely as perpetual motion, and the regard the efficiency of propulsion with reaction mass of zero rest mass as probably hopelessly too inefficient to be of interest if it can be done at all, I am not at all comfortable with the term Pseudoscience in this connection. It is not as though no one is doing investigation or falsification etc. Compare the articles on items such as cold fusion and polywater; wouldn't "fringe science" or "pathological science" or some other term that I have missed, be more appropriate? The rest of the text does cover the poverty of the prospects. I do reckon that fully and explicitly covering the implausibility of positive results and the theoretical basis for scepticism are unconditionally necessary. JonRichfield (talk) 06:38, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

In what substantive way is this different from cold fusion? The cold fusion "inventors" claimed a large energy output, there were efforts to replicate their results, the efforts came up with essentially zero energy preoduced (plus or minus a tiny amount; no measurements is 100% accurate). There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur. The cavity thruster "inventors" claim a large thrust, there were efforts to replicate their results, the efforts came up with essentially zero thrust (plus or minus a tiny amount; no measurements is 100% accurate). There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow an RF resonant cavity thruster to produce thrust. The cold fusion people have one advantage; cold fusion, if it exists, does not violate the basic laws of physics. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:28, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I actually like that suggestion of "fringe science" and I think if it, or other reasonable middle-ground solutions, had been considered before the RfC, they might have had a chance of being adopted by the local consensus of editors working on the article. The problem is, now that the RfC is well under way and trending towards omitting the "psuedoscience" label, I suspect that those editors who have !voted for the proposal that is likely to win the consensus will (as a combination of both fair principle and commitment bias) reject other "similar sounding" labels as an attempt to thwart or devalue the consensus. Which is a shame, because I think that suggestion has some merit and strikes a good balance between the competing concerns which have some of us on or near the fence on this one. Snow ^{let's rap} 19:42, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

• OPPOSE - not seeing WP:V to support that WP:LABEL. It looks mostly like rumor and speculation, not something called pseudo science in coverage phys.org or denounced by scientific bodies. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:52, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Still waiting for WP:V from WP:RS labeling this as pseudoscience. Until then, to label it as pseudoscience is WP:OR & WP:POV. Peaceray (talk) 06:24, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. The idea of an RFCT is contradicted by (most people's understanding of) current scientific theory; and all experiments done so far have found that RFCT drives don't work. But the supporters of RFCT are doing real science, and trying design and build a working RFCT drive. It's not like they're trying to sell RFCT vehicles, with claims that they work supported by unconvincing scientific papers. Maproom (talk) 07:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, the topic is the subject of legitimate scientific inquiry, attempting to explain a discrepancy. Heaviside glow (talk) 19:54, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support. THAT NASA WARP DRIVE? YEAH, IT'S STILL POPPYCOCK and many other similar mainsteam judgements - Of course, somebody may wikilawyer that poppycock is not the same as pseudoscience.... Staszek Lem (talk) 19:49, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

@Staszek Lem: Perhaps you could cite something from a study or a review or survey of the scientific literature rather than what is essentially an opinion piece that more or less implores us to disregard all empirical results because it just cannot be true. Peaceray (talk) 20:40, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, this is a opinion of a no-bullshit person I trusted. You know, this is how science works: something is really-really just simply cannot be true no matter whatsoever. Unless solidly proven otherwise. Please google the phrase about extraordinary claims. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:29, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

There are sources that confirm that it violates the laws of physics and that it doesn't work, and there are a few sources that explicitly call it pseudoscience. See e.g. Guy Macon's summary in the section below. Heptor (talk) 20:56, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

The cited quotes that I have read from below more or less say "It doesn't really work because it cannot work because it violates the laws of physics." Sorry, I am heavily influenced by what I learned in statistics & in evaluating psychological studies. It's all about empiricism. If one repeatedly fails to replicate an experiment, then it calls the first experiment(s) into question. If it sometimes works & sometimes not, then one needs to delve into what is causing the difference. If experiments reliably produce the same results under the same conditions & it does not agree with theory or laws, then maybe it is time to reshape the world view. Reliable empiricism should reshape theory & laws, not the other way around. Peaceray (talk) 21:33, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

That's the whole point -- it violates the laws of physics. Wikipedia is written from the current scientific consensus, and the laws of physics are a very integral part of this consensus. Per WP:FRINGELEVEL, "Wikipedia is also not a crystal ball: While currently accepted scientific paradigms may later be rejected, and hypotheses previously held to be controversial or incorrect sometimes become accepted by the scientific community (e.g., plate tectonics), it is not the place of Wikipedia to venture such projections." All knowledge is to some degree uncertain, including scientific knowledge. So it may indeed turn out that this device produce thrust, perhaps even in the direction proposed by its "inventor". This is not the current scientific consensus however. Heptor (talk) 23:15, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Are you telling me that we are rejecting the scientific method here? "Scientific Laws record what happens." A Scientific Law "describes what phenomena happens." If one has a phenomena that is repeatable & the scientific law fails to describe it, one must determine either how the observed phenomena is really something else that is occurring, or why it somehow fits the law, or one needs to adjust the law accordingly. To reject empirical results out of hand & not apply scientific rigor is the real pseudoscience. Peaceray (talk) 20:11, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

The scientific method is outside of the purview of Wikipedia. Wikipedia merely reports on what the secondary literature says about a topic. Nobody has put forward anything in this discussion that says that there is anything wrong with Wikipedia's treatment of the topic. Nobody has provided a source saying that there is fraud, or deliberate attempts to mislead. Heaviside glow (talk) 20:54, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Peaceray, as Heaviside glow mentions, applying the scientific method is outside our scope. So if I may be allowed a brief transgression against WP:NOTAFORUM, the reason why sources call RFCD pseudoscience, and, indeed, bullshit, is about how the experiments are normally constructed. While scientific experiments are often designed to test a specific established law of nature or a hypothesis for a new law of nature, they are not doing that with RFCD. They just constructed something random and expect it to produce thrust for no discernible reason. The way they hype the experiment and solicit investor funds suggests that the motivation for this experiment is something else then science. There are additional issues, including that the methodology is not published so that others can attempt to replicate it, claims that it works when nobody is watching combined with failures to work when demonstrated in public, with fifteen years of unverified claims of increasing thrust. To be clear, nobody suggests suggests to write that it's fraud in the article since there are no reliable sources for that, but we are allowed to make our own opinions. Heptor (talk) 06:52, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

A lot of people who don't take pseudoscience seriously have shown an interest in it. If this was just the normal crackpot, perpetual motion, free energy stuff then NASA and others would not have wasted their time testing it. Dowsers, astrologers and wombat magnetisers can hammer on the door all day. They don't get out of bed for that tosh. Clearly, they saw something worthy of evaluation here. Of course, the fact that it doesn't seem to work is not exactly unexpected but serious people have thought it worth making sure. They must have thought that there was an open question, even if it only had the slimmest of chances of confounding expectations.

So, should we call it "pseudoscience"? Do we have good sources calling it "pseudoscience"? We should let the sources decide. I'm not sure if this was 100% guaranteed pseudoscience from the outset but my expectation is that continued belief in it after all the poor test results is increasingly likely to be pseudoscientific. That said, a quick glance at the search links has not resolved it for me. --DanielRigal (talk) 23:20, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

User:DanielRigal an factual correction (sidenote since you were just being silly with wombat magnetiser,) but I believe wombats are already lightly paramagnetic i.e. repelled microscopically by magnetic fields. You can go to youtube and see the super magnet vs mouse demonstration. Should be careful ... reality is often weirder than fiction. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:46, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Keeping in mind that most peer-reviewed scientists ignore pseudoscience (See WP:Parity:

• "Previous reports about the engine have been met with heaping doses of skepticism, with many physicists relegating the EmDrive to the world of pseudoscience... The trouble is, the EmDrive violates Newton’s third law" --National Geographic
• "Although the EM Drive appeared to create thrust in these tests, there was no mass or particles of any kind expelled during the process. This is a violation of Newton's third law of motion, which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Action and reaction is a direct result of the conservation of momentum. The violation of such a basic law as the conservation of momentum would invalidate much of the basis for all of physics as we know it." --engineering professor Brice Cassenti, an expert in advanced propulsion systems
• "The story of 'NASA’s impossible space engine' has roared back to life, prompted by an updated report on NasaSpaceflight.com. But the sad truth is that not much has really changed since my original investigation. The space engine still violates known laws of physics. The evidence that it works is still marginal, based on the limited information that the NASA Eagleworks team has reported. Those findings have not been submitted to peer review, so there is no way to evaluate them independently. And NasaSpaceflight.com is not in any way a NASA outlet. The official NASA statement: 'This is a small effort that has not yet shown any tangible results.' " --Discover Magazine
• "The makers of the drive claim that it produces thrust without propellant. Physicists say that such a thing would violate the law of conservation of momentum. Devices that claim to break a well-established law of physics have a terrible track record. The device is alleged to work by bouncing microwaves back and forth within its chamber. There is a subtle asymmetry to this, bouncing harder in one direction than the other, which produces thrust. The problem with this, of course, is that the thrust is not balanced by anything, you get net momentum in one direction without an equal and opposite momentum in the other. Newton is displeased" --Neurologica Blog

If [A] it violates the laws of physics, and [B] the inventors cannot show any thrust in a public demonstration, then it is pseudoscience. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:50, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect. That is not a definition of pseudoscience. National Geographic doesn't call this pseudoscience either, but it does happen to mention that "... scientists at NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratories have been building and testing just such a thing. Called an EmDrive, the physics-defying contraption ostensibly produces thrust simply by bouncing microwaves around inside a closed, cone-shaped cavity, no fuel required.".- MrX 🖋 02:02, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

User:Guy Macon - this is what one would instead call a demonstration of WP:OR. There are after all other forms of propellentless drive such as solar sails or a beam push, Electromagnetic catapult, or a Gravity assist. (Gravity assist is usually referring to magnifying the effect of a microthrust in orbital mechanics but I suppose one could do it mechanically somewhat like someone on a swing.) In this case, it may well be and unexpected EM effects, or undetected exhaust, maybe just uneven heating, or a simple measurement error ... but the question is still being examined while people speculate or throw rumors about.

• I don't intend to vote as I'm not familiar enough with the topic, but would only like to answer to then NASA and others would not have wasted their time testing it: well the US gov did invest in things like remote viewing in the past. —PaleoNeonate – 08:26, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I was not suggesting that the dignity we credit to NASA, and other governmental scientific bodies, is a property of governments as a whole. If NASA fell in with the wombat magnetisers then that would be a shock and a pity. If some other parts of a government did then that would merely be a pity. ;-) --DanielRigal (talk) 17:58, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not particularly concerned with the dignity of NASA but I do think we should be cautious with how we throw around the pseudoscience label. Legitimate scientists doing legitimate science do make wrong turns occasionally, and when the research involves novel propulsion technology it's not unusual for there to be a bit too much secrecy. This doesn't mean it's pseudoscience, yet. I'd suggest we treat this as it presents: an un-verified hypothesis. In a few years, if it turns out to all be hogwash but somebody is still quixotically defending it we can always go back and add the pseudoscience label at that point.Simonm223 (talk) 12:48, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Guy's final line here is a worrying redefinition of pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience describes a broken process, not simply a surprising idea that hasn't been publicly proven. ApLundell (talk) 22:12, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

This is a broken process, not a "surprising idea that hasn't been publicly proven". Violates the laws of physics? Check. Methodology not published so that others can attempt to replicate? Check. Claims that it works when nobody is watching combined with failure to work when demonstrated in public? Check. Fifteen years of claims of larger and larger thrust? Check. Multiple reliable sources describe it as "pseudoscience", "junk science", "physics-defying", and "bullshit"? Check. Inventors acitely advertising for investors? Check. If this isn't pseudoscience then neither is the dean drive or perpetual motion. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:29, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, this experiment was a "RF resonant cavity thruster test" and it was done by a real group of university scientists and it was not pseudoscience. It came up with an unexpected thrust. Is it magnetism acting on the cable? Quite possibly. But whatever it is, it is science. The group attempting this experiment does not deserve to be likened to astrologers; they tried doing something real. There's nothing unscientific about trying to prove violations of the rules of physics do or don't happen. This is not fundamentally different from the people who wanted to test if G was decreasing (which was suggested based on far flimsier evidence, I mean seriously, ancient spacecraft in unknown space!) Wnt (talk) 20:35, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Have not "real scientists" investigated the Dean Drive, Cold Fusion, Accupunture, and other examples of pseudoscience? You seem to be implying that it is only pseudoscience if nobody tries to replicate the results. And the tiny effect that was found, while worth investigating, completely failed to replicate the large thrust that the inventors have fraudulently claimed. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:34, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

nope, Cold Fusion is a hypothetical, and embarrassing false alarm... not pseudoscience. This also may be just failed concept — not pseudoscience - and WP:ONUS requires RS. To put such a vague pejorative should take substantial amount of actual RS saying the exact word “pseudoscience” in a serious way. Not ‘bad’ science or ‘failed’ concept — those are entirely different animals. Markbassett (talk) 06:03, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Note that cold fusion is tagged "pathological science" as a category, but not "pseudoscience". I am not very happy with that category either (note that that includes red rain in Kerala, an article that actually includes a micrograph of the red microorganism responsible). I should note reactionless drive is already filed there - a purely technical resolution here would be to make a new Category:reactionless drive and put this page in it. But I should note that reactionless drives include things like the Alcubierre drive, which oddly is not typically denigrated this way despite never having been built and requiring negative mass to build. Any of these would still be better than the current Category:Pseudophysics somebody put this article in, I think, though still jumping the gun. Wnt (talk) 14:45, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

That's because the Alcubierre drive, as a physical model, does not violate any physical laws as we presently know them in a per se manner, like the model for the emDrive explicitly proposes to do. There's a world of difference difference between A) a model which proposes a phenomena we cannot yet produce (and may in reality not be able to produce ever) but which (as a model) conforms to all known physical laws, and B) a model which, by its own terms, violates universal natural laws. I can see your confusion here and I am guessing it may stem in part from the fact that Alcubierre drive has a blurb in reactionless drive. That is actually a pretty glaring mistake on the part of some editor or another, and problematic exactly because it has the potential to mislead in exactly the fashion you have been misled here: an alcubierre drive is not actually a reactionless drive, as that technical term is applied in either theoretical or applied physics. While it's true that the apparent motion of a body inside a warp bubble volume would be "reactionless" (as in, not the consequence of thrust caused by exhaust), the term Alcubierre "drive" is an idiomatic usage and a misnomer, in the technically sense; there would be no actual thrust at all, and thus reaction/reactionless is a meaningless distinction to the physics involved. So the EmDrive and the Alcubierre drive are very much apples and oranges when it comes to the specific issues that need to be wrestled with in whether to describe the EmDrive as pseudoscience--and the observation that the Alcubierre drive doesn't face the same amount of condemnation is actually illustrative of the distinction between the two and why the EmDrive is vastly more appropriate for mainstream physicists to define as pseudoscience (regardless of what we ultimately resolve to do with this article here for editorial reason) than the Alcubierre drive; the Alcubierre drive is very much speculative--so much so, that we can't even begin to test it empirically as we can to some degree with the EmDrive--but in theory and based on present understanding, it is at least consistent with all known physical laws. Snow ^{let's rap} 19:17, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

The Alcubierre energy-momentum tensor violates just about every known energy condition, including the ANEC, which is pretty much as big a deal as violation of conservation of momentum in the classical limit. (That said, the ANEC is basically automatically violated as soon as you start putting quantum fields in a curved background [32] or coupling classical fields to curvature [33], so there's some wiggle room, most likely in the kind that requires a working theory of quantum gravity to patch up.) I'm not trying to defend the resonant cavity thruster here, but it seems some of the proposed explanations of the thrust do veer into the same "new physics required" regime as blatantly throwing all energy conditions out the window would. The one thing that truly sets them apart, in my opinion, is that if the cavity thruster effect is real, its output is much larger than you would naively expect from things arising from e.g. quantum gravity (where you would usually need a Planck-scale input to get an observable output -- exactly why QG is so hard to probe). --Link ^(t•c•m) 22:34, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Guy, you're right that this is a similar situation to Cold Fusion, but if you're using Cold Fusion as an example of "pseudoscience" then you've misunderstood the term. ApLundell (talk) 22:29, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't believe that I have. Cold fusion started out as science, but the present-day view view -- against all evidence -- that cold fusion exists is pure pseudoscience. Real scientists don't hang on to disproven theories against all evidence. I can say the same thing about alchemy; it started out as legitimate science but anyone who still believes that there is a philosopher's stone that turns lead into gold is a psuedoscientist. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:13, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

To assert that "because A is pseudoscience, therefore B must be pseudoscience" is Fallacy#Informal fallacy. The scientific method worked with cold fusion, not because it seemingly was impossible, but because it was empirically non-repeatable. The same standard should be applied to the RF resonant cavity thruster. Keep in mind that Einstein criticized quantum mechanics as "spooky action at a distance" & that germ theory had its deniers. Oh, & that bit about alchemy & the philospher's stone; well, that guy who came up with the laws of motion was also a pseudo-scientist (see Isaac Newton#Alchemy). Sometimes one has to be uncomfortable with a bit of cognitive dissonance in entertaining inconsistent beliefs until one can sort things out. Peaceray (talk) 20:32, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

We have already sorted things out. The claimed thrust is empirically non-repeatable. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:05, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

There is a statement that "No prototype has been successfully tested more than once" in the lead, yet I see that a further testing is listed in the Later works & Cannae and other drives. Have second attempts to test each prototype been exhausted? That's not my reading of those sections.

I have changed the lead to say "hypothesized type of propellant-free drive". This is the same as what the cold fusion article opens with. I think it is appropriate & consistent. Labeling even failed science experiments as pseudoscience is over the top.

Peaceray (talk) 23:27, 16 August 2018 (UTC)