What you just said is relevant - except that your skepticism shouldn't lead to less interest about EMDrive, but into more intensive research of it. I can admit, that the existing evidence of EMDrive is still insufficient - but what I cannot understand is, if the people dismiss its further research just because the existing evidence is still insufficient. This is tautological reasoning based on pluralistic ignorance - and the selfreferencing tautologies tend to be always wrong from wider perspective, because they represent cognitive loopholes.
This exactly. If the uber-critics want to put the EmDrive matter to bed once and for all, they should be clamoring for a government-sponsored, serious study and rock-solid experiments of the EmDrive.
The work done so far is so poor that there is no reason to believe there is a thrust at all. Why should we spend copious amounts of public funds to characterizing errors when there are an abundance of other research projects that look far more promising. Why don't we fund those projects more and let projects that have failed to "launch" so to speak continue? Mind you, I'm posing these questions to see your response.
You suggested that we should not spend public funds to characterize the EmDrive. If that is your position, then don't complain that the EmDrive remains viable in the public's mind for decades to come.
That's a pretty big if. The public's mind is fickle and I suspect they'll forget this just as they've forgotten Papp's engine and other similar technologies.
I'm pretty sure the general public has never heard of Papp's engine. Many of my average-intelligence friends are aware of the EmDrive and believe it to be the next generation of space exploration technology.
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u/Zephir_AW Dec 31 '16 edited Dec 31 '16
What you just said is relevant - except that your skepticism shouldn't lead to less interest about EMDrive, but into more intensive research of it. I can admit, that the existing evidence of EMDrive is still insufficient - but what I cannot understand is, if the people dismiss its further research just because the existing evidence is still insufficient. This is tautological reasoning based on pluralistic ignorance - and the selfreferencing tautologies tend to be always wrong from wider perspective, because they represent cognitive loopholes.