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spingsprong | 11 years ago

"They're claiming to see a force one thousandth as big as the Chinese - probably because they are doing the experiment one thousand times more accurately. And still, some people are excited about this. "

I think he's slipping from skepticism to cynicism here.

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crusso|11 years ago

Disagree. He's being prudent and rational to hold these experiments to the same standards that we hold other more mundane ones.

Hoax phenomenon and devices always seem to fail in precisely the way that this one has. As you more carefully examine the test setups, suspicious conditions of the experiment persist (like the lack of using a vacuum in the vacuum chamber), and observed phenomenon continue to diminish as the accuracy of the test equipment improves.

And I use the word "fail" knowing full well that they claimed that they had positive results. If they couldn't use best practices in performance of the experiment like evacuating the vacuum chamber and they couldn't even show that their null device that wasn't designed to produce the same effect didn't work, then they have some serious problems.