Matt McIrvin on Nostr: nprofile1q…ufa4k Reminds me of that long stream of papers claiming positive results ...

nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqknzsux7p6lzwzdedp3m8c3c92z0swzc0xyy5glvse58txj5e9ztqaufa4k (nprofile…fa4k) Reminds me of that long stream of papers claiming positive results for reactionless space drives like the "EmDrive". If all you were reading were the headlines, you'd get the idea that there was increasingly solid consensus that this was real. If you read the actual papers, the results all contradicted each other and all they had in common was that they were right at the limit of sensitivity of the experiment, and when they improved the controls, they'd get another "positive" result that was marginal for the new controls, which would be touted as a replication.

Meanwhile, the theoretical justifications made no sense, and the discussions would spin off into wild science-fiction speculations about applications. Classic pathological science.