Mach Effect progress

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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93143
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Post by 93143 »

chrismb wrote:
pheolix wrote:Is anyone doing a DIY replication?
GIThruster wrote:there was a replication attempt about 10 years ago, but that person did not contact Jim for guidance
If one has not been blessed by being invested with the gifts of knowledge of the high priests of ME, then it would seem that one stands little chance to be able to accomplish such a task. One must commit, faithfully, to the task and then one shall see exactly what one wants to see.

Stand ye at the alter and give up yourself unto humbleness to the Illuminated Ones, for only the faithful shall see.
Suppose someone tried to replicate the Wright brothers' work, but didn't "contact them for guidance" and thus used the wrong lift tables and failed to provide for control in all three axes. And suppose that after this someone's attempt failed, he concluded that the wing shape he used was incorrect and that the control provisions were inadequate.

By your logic, the obvious conclusion to be drawn from such a case would be that the Wright brothers were charlatans. After all, the hallmark of real science is independent reproducibility, right?

...

Standard disclaimer: I am not claiming that Woodward is right. I am objecting to your reasoning to the contrary.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

93143 wrote:After all, the hallmark of real science is independent reproducibility, right?
Correct.

Who do you say tried the Wrights' patented 3-axis control, and failed because they didn't contact the Wrights aforehand?

93143
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Post by 93143 »

This is a completely hypothetical example, which you seem to be unable to resist trying to twist to fit your own slant.

The point is that (assuming Woodward is correct) it is not straightforward to generate a measurable Mach effect in the lab, and someone who fails to educate himself on the pitfalls can easily run afoul of one and end up with a failed attempt at replication.
Last edited by 93143 on Tue Dec 25, 2012 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

Facts, and real-world examples of real engineering and science, with solid, independently repeatable results....

... this has always been a bit of a mystery to most of this forum's element of faith-based congregation.

93143
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Post by 93143 »

You know perfectly well that there were numerous attempts at building a flying machine before the Wright brothers came up with the key to actually making one work. All of them failed for reasons that had not been obvious to the experimenters.

Mach effect is not known to be real. But if it is, it has been shown to be fairly elusive, requiring careful attention to a variety of parameters in order to nail it down. An attempt at replication that disregards these difficulties is likely to fail regardless of the reality of the theorized underlying mechanism.

In the case being discussed, it seems the difficulty was fairly simple - the effect was (if present) smaller than could be resolved by the measurement technique employed.

There has indeed been trouble with experimental results being much smaller than predictions, but the recent less-approximate derivation seems to get the order of magnitude right. The attempt at replication being discussed did not have the benefit of this derivation.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

93143 wrote:someone who fails to educate himself on the pitfalls can easily run afoul of one and end up with a failed attempt at replication.
Last edited by 93143 on Tue Dec 25, 2012 9:55 pm; edited 1 time in total
Surely, someone who remains independent and does not perform the same methods of measurements but does it in a different, valid, way is an asset to the science, not a detriment?

For example, one might note in Woodward's setup how the accelerometer wires are exposed and not in screened sleeves. Those accelerometers give out very small signals and a charge-amp is needed to discriminate accelerometer signals. It would seem wise to take a different approach to ensure there are not inductive interference effects.

Surely you must agree that there is no reason to have to contact Woodward to achieve optimum (any?) results. The comment above, under chrismb's name, was directed at the GIT suggestion that the failure of an independent researcher was because they had failed to make prior contact with Woodward. This has to be false.

An independent researcher's chances may be improved by making such prior contact, but surely you have to agree that this also increases the risk of repeating the same systematic errors as before, than if the principles claimed are subjected to alternative, truly independently experimentation?

It is worth seeing the Horizon programme where they attempted to reproduce Taleyarkhan's 'sonoluminescence bubble fusion' and, of course, Taleyarkhan said after they failed that they didn't do this-or-that in quite the correct way. This is a classic warning sign to be on the lookout for 'pathological science' at play.

The same can be said of many 'cold fusion' experiments, that the claim is always that it 'wasn't done in quite the right way'. That's not science. It is up to the claimant of the new science to publish clear, precise, direct and specific conditions under which the same measurements they have obtained can be repeated, and they have not performed the science diligently if they have provided insufficient information to repeat an experiment to obtain the same findings.

Either Woodward's publications are 'scientific' in that they are a complete account of the work and describe an experiment that can be repeated independently. Or they are not 'scientific' in the conventionally accepted meaning of the word.

93143 wrote:You know perfectly well that there were numerous attempts at building a flying machine before the Wright brothers came up with the key to actually making one work. All of them failed for reasons that had not been obvious to the experimenters.
That is a wholly different point to claiming a need to have contacted prior researchers to gain success. Quite a different point. What's the name of this logical fallacy? The 'complex question', or some such thing...

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

chrismb wrote: Surely you must agree that there is no reason to have to contact Woodward to achieve optimum (any?) results. The comment above, under chrismb's name, was directed at the GIT suggestion that the failure of an independent researcher was because they had failed to make prior contact with Woodward. This has to be false.
I didn't suggest anything of the kind. The experimenter who tried and failed with the UFG told me ten years after the fact that he should have contacted Woodward and did not, that his balance had mN precision when it needed 3 orders magnitude better (the ARC Lite has 5 orders magnitude better) and that he never checked to see that the ceramic he used had adequate electrostriction. This last is a serious problem, because all the force rectification happens with the electrostrictive action in the ceramic. Dave would have been spared lots of work to no end had he had that conversation with Woodward.

This is in the literature. It's not hard to find. And once the book is out, anyone who wants will be able to do their own replication. It will however still be valuable to speak with those in the know about what one is doing.

chris' whining is the natural result of a sub-socialized sub-human who rationalizes his continual retreat from society. I'm sure it's only self serving that he's talking down science as a group activity. But in fact, though people differ in their definitions for scientific method, most will agree that it is indeed a group activity. Read your Crease and Mann, The Second Creation and they make an excellent case that science is no longer one guy off on his own doing experiments. Rather, science is done with many people in concert. If one intends to do a UFG replication, contacting Woodward only makes good sense. That's why he posts to 80 people weekly--he's working in a group. Those in the group know the way Jim removed the possibility he had some sort of spurious signal from the accelerometer wires is he removed them and had identical results without them. If you pay attention you find in the group, what good science is all about.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

GIThruster wrote:I didn't suggest anything of the kind.
Yes, you did suggest it. You did not state it unequivocally, but you did suggest it:
GIThruster wrote:there was a replication attempt about 10 years ago, but that person did not contact Jim for guidance
You have created a strong logical link between the replication being merely an attempt, and having not contact Jim for guidance. If you had meant otherwise, you would have said 'there was a replication [unconditional] that did not succeed in reproducing Jim's results'.
GIThruster wrote:chris' whining is the natural result of a sub-socialized sub-human who rationalizes his continual retreat from society.
err... GIT is the only one whining in this thread about the critiques being proffered. A counter-argument to a point is not a 'whine', whereas moaning about personalities clearly is.

So all that can be said is 'don't be so hard on yourself'!

chrismb has already retreated from society and, as far as is known, he would prefer society to stop bothering him.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

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Last edited by chrismb on Wed Dec 26, 2012 2:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

chrismb has already retreated from society and, as far as is known, he would prefer society to stop bothering him. Such things that bother him include having sight of society undergoing a self-destruction of logic and reason in which robust science is becoming diluted by a more-mystical, democratically decided-upon reality that can only end in the demise of the world as it is currently configured through the acceptance of pathological science. There should be no place for shamen to whom honours need be bestowed before gaining wisdom. To note, this is as prevalent in 'orthodox' academic circles as it is in more 'far-flung' ideas. The only place where solid, valuable, science seems to be being done at the moment is in the engineering research of private profit-making ventures, where money is King. Getting real, working product out of the door is the real driver to knowledge, not projects that take decades of high-cash injections of tax-payers money that result in, at best, vague and ethereal results that no-one else can reproduce, even if they had the money available to attempt to reproduce them.

And don't go blaming the engineers for not undertaking projects destined for a longer time-frame than a company's '5 year plan'. That's down to the accountants. The professional engineers of the world are the main progressors of science now, not the scientists. The latter appear to be on a wholly different quest to re-unite science with religion. What counts is what the much-maligned (viz. underpaid) professional engineers do, despite how society mistreats and misunderstands them.

djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

chrismb wrote:chrismb has already retreated from society and, as far as is known, he would prefer society to stop bothering him.
1) speaking of yourself in the third person passive is weird;

2) both you and GIT are debating in a juvenile fashion, using ad hominems and the manners of 12 year olds. If you want to play the game that way, you should both hire a 19 year old fem, and have the two ladies wrestle each other in a vat of chocolate jello - the winner settling your differences. It will be more satisfying than poor debating technique. If a debating adversary is not a valued intellectual playmate, you're doing it wrong.
chrismb wrote:Such things that bother him include having sight of society undergoing a self-destruction of logic and reason in which robust science is becoming diluted by a more-mystical, democratically decided-upon reality that can only end in the demise of the world as it is currently configured through the acceptance of pathological science. There should be no place for shamen to whom honours need be bestowed before gaining wisdom. To note, this is as prevalent in 'orthodox' academic circles as it is in more 'far-flung' ideas. The only place where solid, valuable, science seems to be being done at the moment is in the engineering research of private profit-making ventures, where money is King. Getting real, working product out of the door is the real driver to knowledge, not projects that take decades of high-cash injections of tax-payers money that result in, at best, vague and ethereal results that no-one else can reproduce, even if they had the money available to attempt to reproduce them.

And don't go blaming the engineers for not undertaking projects destined for a longer time-frame than a company's '5 year plan'. That's down to the accountants. The professional engineers of the world are the main progressors of science now, not the scientists. The latter appear to be on a wholly different quest to re-unite science with religion. What counts is what the much-maligned (viz. underpaid) professional engineers do, despite how society mistreats and misunderstands them.
I actually largely agree with you here. Science is going sclerotic. But there are a few outstanding oddball issues science refuses to address or is incapable of addressing - such as the physical basis and electromagnetic linkage of gravity. IMO, those questions will either be answered in the next 40 to 90 years, or will probably not be answered for the better part of a millennium or more. Odds are, only scientific outsiders will have a chance to crack those issues before Western civilization gives up on expanding its knowledge base in the pursuit of Precautionary Principle safety-uber-alles. I don't know if Jim Woodward's ideas are correct, but he is in the proper 'outsider's' position to crack those remaining unknowns. The mainstream of theoretical physics is invested in what look to be systems of Neo-Pythagorean metaphysics - mysticism with a splash of math added. "Explanation" that admits to no testing - i.e. the Aristotelian epicycles reborn. Even if Jim Woodward & Co are wrong, the hypothesis he has been exploring for two+ decades allows relatively easy testing, and he reports complications and refinements in thinking and technique as they happen. That is not pathological science. It may be wrong science, but it is not pathological.
Vae Victis

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

djolds1 wrote:both you and GIT are debating in a juvenile fashion, using ad hominems
Please disclose an 'ad hominem' in a chrismb post.


djolds1 wrote:Even if Jim Woodward & Co are wrong...It may be wrong science, but it is not pathological.
chrismb would surely agree. As pointed out earlier, he was one of the first to mention, acknowledge and give credit to the attempt to make it work, two years before GIT even began posting here.

The 'pathological' part of this is what self-acting proponents of the work are saying, making incredible [as in 'not credible'] claims that can only be making Woodward and March very uncomfortable with their efforts to keep sensible controls on the claims of the work.

Neither Woodward nor March would agree that others can only make unsuccessful attempts at repeating their work unless they were contacted. They would surely hope that others do repeat the work independently, so as to achieve verification.

93143
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Post by 93143 »

chrismb wrote:Neither Woodward nor March would agree that others can only make unsuccessful attempts at repeating their work unless they were contacted.
Did you even read GIThruster's response?

What basically happened is that the guy doing the replication attempt threw together an experiment that couldn't have worked, because he was either insufficiently familiar with the subject or just insufficiently careful, and it was he himself who was bemoaning the fact that he hadn't asked Jim Woodward for pointers.

It was a replication attempt, not a replication, because it failed for reasons unrelated to the veracity of the proposition to be tested.

...

Your criticism is a classic straw man argument - you're not dealing with the situation as described; you're twisting your opponent's words to match an imagined scenario and then attacking that.

GIThruster is not a lawyer and cannot be held accountable for how his words can be interpreted by an unsympathetic opponent. He's already stated that he didn't mean what you say he meant, and I see no reason to doubt this.

...

As an aside, I don't see any ad hominem here. Ad hominem is specifically the contention that one's opponent is wrong, or his argument is invalid, because [insert insult here]. I do not recall either chrismb or GIThruster having done this.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

93143 wrote:Ad hominem is specifically the contention that one's opponent is wrong, or his argument is invalid, because [insert insult here]. I do not recall either chrismb or GIThruster having done this.
:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: ?????????????????????

GIThruster wrote:I should think though, it is obvious chris is arguing for the sake of being a troll.
GIThruster wrote:chris ... Get some therapy
GIThruster wrote:I'm sure it seems that way to anyone with only a 3rd grade level of reading comprehension.
GIThruster wrote:You're obviously in way over your head and don't understand anything about what you complain.
GIThruster wrote:It's your inability to read for comprehension that is your problem. You're not even wrong here, chris; you're just oblivious.
GIThruster wrote:you obviously want to pee on the leg of an elephant. How pathetic.
GIThruster wrote:it is obvious once you understand what he's saying, and you certainly do not.
GIThruster wrote:stupidly wrong statements about M-E theory because you don't understand it in the least. Again, pathetic.
GIThruster wrote:Seriously chris, it's plain you're an emotionally disturbed individual
GIThruster wrote:why not spend that time wisely and get some therapy? You'll be much better off.
GIThruster wrote:Wrong. As per usual, wrong and so wrong one has to work hard not to laugh at you, chris.
&c., &c, &c., &c, &c., &c......

A few examples showing GIT's keen turn of phrase to rely solely on sound technical information for his arguments... NOT!! duh! :roll:

Your comments appear blind to GIT's failings in his capacity of debate. Is it an intentional blindness, or are there other issues at play?

kunkmiester
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Post by kunkmiester »

It's looking like time to lock the thread.
Evil is evil, no matter how small

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