Mach Effect progress

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

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djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

GIThruster wrote:dipstick not worth answering
Context? If you are referring to me, my questions were honest, and you're being an ass.
Vae Victis

93143
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Post by 93143 »

Looks like GIThruster has edited his post.

djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

GIThruster wrote:Sorry I mistook this above as less than serious at first.
It happens.

I find assuming good intention until proven otherwise is the better course.
GIThruster wrote:I'm happy to forward anyone's email address to Jim to be added to his list. Just send me a private note with your email and a couple sentences stating your interest and background. I've done this many times before.
Already done. Prof. Woodward added me early this morning.
GIThruster wrote:The thing that stinks like day old fish is the dishonest claims that the test results are in accord with predictions made by Sonny's model, when in fact the model came years after the tests. There were therefore never any "predictions" but rather "postdictions".
More than fair. Dr. White's claims are... exceptional. OTOH fitting models to the data has been the en vogue standard of GUT-ambitious physics since at least the Standard Model, so "postdiction" is hardly unprecedented; it is in fact nearly SOP. It is merely FAR less impressive than substantiated prediction. But I honestly have NO idea what the substance of the Eagleworks drama you referred to upthread is.
GIThruster wrote:I don't know if Eagleworks is on the verge of great things. As I have no confidence in ZPF and QVF models and theories, I find it unlikely Sonny will get a positive result. I do think it's possible his interferometer might be able to detect a warp field, but I think it's extremely unlikely he can generate one using his QVF model. I think though, that he could detect a warp signature if he were to try and generate one with an M-E device and Paul March knows enough M-E physics he could design such an experiment pretty easily.
I speculated on the possibility of benevolent cross-polination between the Woodward & White approaches some weeks ago - creation of negative mass and manipulation of negative mass are natural cousins. Assuming the gross foundations of both hold up and/or can be adjusted with minimal consequence. But the Mahood claims led me to believe that the Woodward work was a blind alley. His arguments were cogent, tho quite probably flawed.

Is there an archive of Professor Woodward's distributions for the last 5-10 years?
Vae Victis

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

I don't know in what circles fitting models to the data has become SOP, but those of us who have actually studied philosophy of science know that forming predictions always needs to come before the thing they predict. The act of prediction in science is an extremely powerful one and one can't make predictions backward in time. I have myself explained this to Sonny on several occasions because he has matched his model to the data on several different occasions--including when his model was broken for simpleton math errors I corrected for him, when he was matching his model to the data coming from the ARC-Lite while it had a broken bearing, and when Jim was getting data that was likewise crazy because he had a short through the test item. Sonny has been matching his model to Jim's data for as long as I've known him, and I've been calling him on this behavior for more than 5 years now.

Paul March has always insisted what you appear to be suggesting, that the QVF model and M-E theory might be different sides of the same coin. For example, since QVF is a particle based explanation, and M-E is a field based explanation, Paul has argued that perhaps they're simply approaching the same phenomena from different vantage points? This cannot be true for several different kinds of reasons. The simplest is to note that they give completely divergent explanations for the cause of inertia. Jim's theory and Sonny's model form an exhaustive disjunction. It may be that neither is correct, but they cannot both be correct. Sonny avails himself to Jim's data when he can because Jim is the only one generating real data in the lab.

Tom Mayhood hasn't been involved in the work for more than 5 years. He was describing how as he did his experiment back a decade ago, the thrust signature diminished, but he was never able to calibrate the equipment he designed nor determine what sorts of forces he was looking at. There are a host of reasons none of that method nor protocol survives to this day, because the experiment was not particularly well conceived. I'm sure Tom would tell you this himself. However, all his arguments with the Oak Ridge Boys about their bungled analysis are true, and Tom's work was far better than theirs.

Jim has published pretty much all with STAIF, SPECIF and STAIF II this last decade. Because these conferences have an agreement with AIP, the papers cannot be freely distributed on the web. AIP wants to be paid for them. What you can do though is ask Jim for copies of his recent works and he's allowed to share his own work with whoever he likes.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

GIThruster wrote:I don't know in what circles fitting models to the data has become SOP, but those of us who have actually studied philosophy of science know that forming predictions always needs to come before the thing they predict.
I've studied the philosophy of science, and what you're citing is the standard scientific method, yes.

More than a few times however, the empirical evidence has come before the explanations - the Strong Force, Universal Expansion/ Dark Energy, and especially the great kludge called the Standard Model.

I suspect we're having violent agreement. :)
GIThruster wrote:The act of prediction in science is an extremely powerful one and one can't make predictions backward in time. I have myself explained this to Sonny on several occasions because he has matched his model to the data on several different occasions--including when his model was broken for simpleton math errors I corrected for him, when he was matching his model to the data coming from the ARC-Lite while it had a broken bearing, and when Jim was getting data that was likewise crazy because he had a short through the test item.
Agreed - model-fitting is often unwise. Far too much potential to see what you want to, far too much opportunity to "tune" a model rather than exploring where its logic actually leads.
GIThruster wrote:Paul March has always insisted what you appear to be suggesting, that the QVF model and M-E theory might be different sides of the same coin.
I'm aware of the claim, but that isn't what I was saying. I merely think that bits and pieces might prove to be complementary. I'm not seeing an identity between the two approaches.
GIThruster wrote:Jim has published pretty much all with STAIF, SPECIF and STAIF II this last decade. Because these conferences have an agreement with AIP, the papers cannot be freely distributed on the web. AIP wants to be paid for them. What you can do though is ask Jim for copies of his recent works and he's allowed to share his own work with whoever he likes.
Yeah. The AIP paywall is a pain in the a**.
Vae Victis

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Yes, yes and yes. :-)

BTW, I am not opposed to forming a model from the evidence. That only makes good sense. Models need to fit with what we already know.

The problem only comes when someone is fitting their model to the facts as we accept them and call this a "prediction". This is not a prediction. In science, we treat the term as jargon with very specific meaning invested. You cannot ever "predict" a past observation. You can say the model is in accord with observations, but that is nothing like a prediction.

I would not be upset about it if I had not made this correction several times over the years and this re-naming an old experiment Sonny had himself rejected for lack of controls is just not responsible behavior.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

GIThruster wrote:The problem only comes when someone is fitting their model to the facts as we accept them and call this a "prediction". This is not a prediction. In science, we treat the term as jargon with very specific meaning invested. You cannot ever "predict" a past observation. You can say the model is in accord with observations, but that is nothing like a prediction.
Actually you can. It takes sealed data sets, but it happens. Use a subset of data to validate models and then "predict" the results of a set of experiments already performed for which you have no access to the data.

If you wish to restrict your statement to not being able to "predict" one of your OWN past observations, then I woiuld say "true".

Sorry, just feeling a tad contrary this AM. ;)

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Kite, that's all true. Note however that the prediction is the result of a previously formed hypothesis, and the prediction still concerns a future observation of the data, regardless of when the data is collected. The key point is that if you form an hypothesis, you can't use it to make predictions of observations in the past. If you're fitting your model to past observations, those are not called "predictions".

This tomfoolery gets worse the more you look at the details. For example, Paul has made the argument on many occasions that Sonny's model is the better predictor of the data in the case of his experiment. He claims the thrust magnitudes he observed correlate more closely to predictions made by Sonny's QVF model than by Jim's M-E theory. There are several problems with this statement. First off, Jim has never made any thrust magnitude predictions. Paul did some calculations using Andrew's math model, but they're certainly not predictions and they're not Jim's--they're Paul's. Sonny's model only became available to make thrust predictions years afterward, and was fit to the data, so one can't even begin to make statements about it predicting the data it was fit to. Neither of these are predictions as relates to the specific experiment. Hence why the obfuscation concerning the time when the supposed "Q-Thruster" was tested.

Furthermore, as Paul disassembled his experiment prematurely, no one was able to validate his work. There was no factor analysis done. No controls. The only validation we have is that he says his son observed the thrusts with him, but his son has never made any sort of public statement to that effect, so even that meager validation is not really a validation.

The list of problems with Paul's experiments just grows and grows once one looks at the details. For instance, were one going to perform a thruster experiment in order to validate and falsify these two various models (and Jim's qualifies as a full scientific theory; Sonny's model does not) then one of the first things one ought to do is run the thruster in DC. According to Sonny's model, this ought to produce thrust. According to Jim's theory, this should not. There are literally dozens of factor analysis examinations one can do if one is planning to form an hypothesis and make a prediction for each model, that were never done when Paul did his experiment. M-E theory says that thrust ought to scale exponentially with things like frequency and voltage, whereas I believe Sonny's model would predict thrust ought to scale linearly with voltage and not at all with frequency. Pretending that Sonny's model is the better predictor when this sort of factor analysis was never done is negligent and misleading. Add on top that Paul never provided data with things like a dummy load and you have a complete mess no one should be paying much attention to.

Note that even though there are, were and will be in the future, several loose variables that make thrust prediction dicy and perhaps unwise, parametric analysis, where one is taking a thrust reading and then altering a variable such as voltage or frequency, is quite an obtainable goal. This is the sort of analysis Jim does routinely but that we have never seen in Paul's work.

In any event, renaming the thruster and forgetting to mention "oh, BTW, this experiment was done 8 years ago" is just not responsible behavior. There are already posts around the web where people who have read NBF and believed what they read, are posting that Eagleworks has performed thus and such thrust experiments and validated Sonny's model, and this is simply not true. They haven't done any experiments at all. Last I heard, they don't even have their vacuum installed yet.

There simply does not exist sufficient cause to take Paul's thrust claims seriously, yet this is precisely what Eagleworks is doing in deliberate contradiction to Sonny's own statements over 8 years. Sonny knows better. This is then a moral issue, and naturally gives rise to the question of how we ought to respond to any future claims coming out of Eagleworks. I hate to say this--I really do--but I am not inclined to believe anything they will say in the future, because of how they're obviously willing to misrepresent themselves. I think no matter what Sonny finds with the warp field interferometer, he is going to claim to have detected a warp field. This is going to redirect enormous funds in the future, all for a model that's never been peer reviewed, has never had any real science behind it, never validated, never replicated, no reason to believe, that those involved know they're misrepresenting themselves, and that those around them at NASA and even chief scientists at NASA know is a fraud.

This could easily waste tens of millions of dollars and centuries of man-hours before the truth comes out.
Last edited by GIThruster on Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

kurt9
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Post by kurt9 »

GIThruster,

I think you are being hard on Paul March. He has admitted that he considers his MLT-2004 experiments to be questionable due to a lack of controls. He knows his results are dodgy. Thats why he's trying to get the Eagleworks to repeat them with proper controls (like in a vacuum chamber, for one). I don't know about Sonny White. Like you, I think the QVF/ZPF approach is bogus. However, I will say one thing in favor of Sonny Harold's approach.

Most proponents of QVF/ZPE use the high energy density that is calculated from the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. White uses the low energy density that comes from astronomical observations. This makes his concept somewhat more credible to me. If he gets a null result (like I expect), we can atleast rule out QVF/ZPF once and for all.

According to a comment from Paul March earlier this year, they are supposed to finish testing White's "Q-Thrusters" by the end of September, then push on with the warp effect experiment. Likewise, Woodward is conducting follow on experiments with the W-M effect through out the rest of this year and in to next year. By this time next year we should know if either of these ideas are valid or not.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Well I hope I'm not being hard on Paul, but despite he admits his results are dodgy, he then goes on to draw these comparisons between models in support of his friend Sonny's work, and he has deliberately misrepresented the issues on multiple occasions. Even if it was Sonny's idea to rename the MLT a "Q-Thruster" and neglect to disclose when those tests were done and under what conditions, Paul is cooperating with a fraud.

BTW, Sonny can't use the e-p pair production numbers generated from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, because if he did he'd be right in the middle of the dispute that such large numbers of particles would cause the universe to collapse from it's own gravity--which we know isn't happening. Sonny wasn't being especially conservative, etc. He was avoiding one of the obvious errors in ZPF theory. It does not predict the proper numbers of E-P pairs.

And note what I'm saying here: we're not going to learn anything from a lab where the people commit to fraud. No matter what Sonny finds, he is going to claim to have detected a warp field.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

kurt9
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Post by kurt9 »

GIThruster,

Do you know Sonny personally or are familiar with his past work? You're making fairly serious acqusations against him and Paul March. I do not know either of these individuals and would not feel comfortable of making such acqusations unless I had long familiarity with their past work.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Well, I'm not comfortable at all. I'm completely uncomfortable about all of this. I have considered Paul a friend for many years. He was my mentor from 2006 to 2008.

Yes, I have read all Sonny's work and debunked some math for him about 6 years ago. We met at STAIF '07 and got along quite well, but even back then Sonny was pushing his model with no real reason to believe it. He was denied the subject for his doctoral thesis and continued right along despite he knows he can't publish such stuff.

I have corrected Dr. White and Paul on all these subjects I'm here posting about, both privately at first, and ever more publicly as they continue to disregard my warnings about what is and is not good science, and what is fraud. And yes, these are very serious charges. I made them in private to Paul many months ago and in a more public way in a large email distribution that includes several NASA folk down at JSC as well as at least one NASA senior scientist. They all know this is going on and they all know it is fraud.

Despite this, seems NASA couldn't shovel the money any faster in hopes of a warp experiment. That's why I'm saying now, don't believe what you hear from Eagleworks because they have already proved they cannot be trusted many times the last 6 years.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

AcesHigh
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Post by AcesHigh »

maybe someone should leave a note to Paul March so he can come here and show his point of view?

AcesHigh
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Post by AcesHigh »

btw, anyone interested in commenting or posting any news at the NASA Spaceflight forum thread? Last post was in April.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index. ... 13020.1635

mrflora
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Post by mrflora »

I'm trying to write a story about Dr. A. W. Doowmij (he's Dutch, you see) and his assistant Mot Dooham. They have discovered an incredible new space drive and they're going to have amazing adventures on alien planets with fantastic creatures, etc., but I cannot get beyond that point. Can anyone help me out?

Regards,
M.R.F.

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