At 04:21 PM 12/15/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
[Jed Rothwell wrote]:
If Steorn is a scam, it is an inept one.
Sez who? They've got investors. Ergo it's good enough for them,
whether or not you think it's inept.
What's more, by the very crude bumbling naivete of their public
demonstrations, they have apparently more than half convinced you,
Jed, that they're honest!
I'd say that they're a pretty slick bunch.
That's my conclusion as well. I've come to the conclusion that the
weakness of the demo is part of their design. They will start taking
the covers off, so to speak, having aroused a host of obvious
objections. They will address these objections one at a time. It's
designed to exhaust skepticism, not for the skeptics, but as the
skeptics are perceived by potential investors. When you have raised a
series of objections to the demo, and then all of them -- except the
fundamental one based on theory -- have been shown to be spurious, an
investor may well conclude that this is a case of knee-jerk rejection
of "new technology."
And to find the real energy source (or to rule out that there is
such) would require being able to take the thing apart and examine
exhaustively every part, and the reassemble it and it still works.
That's why "independent replication" based on specifications is so important.
A step below that is a kit that operates and is sold as a toy. So you
can do the taking apart and thorough examination, if you want.
Supervised demonstrations with limitations on the observers are a
classic setup for fraud. And given the circumstances and the depth of
impact on theory and the way that Steorn is conducting itself, fraud
must be the number one hypothesis, by this time. It wasn't
necessarily the intention from the beginning, particularly if Hoyt is
correct and there is some effect that appears to be over unity or
somehow indicating it.
Jed is incorrect. This could be a very sophisticated scam, from the
point of view of design for psychological impact on investors. I can
see no other explanation for the blatantly weak demonstration. It's
to set up objections that can then be answered. They have arranged
quite a few of these, set them up, without any obvious necessity. The
hours of observation? No process could prevent a hidden energy
source, which could be very well-designed and quite concealed, but it
would be simple to set up a web cam that watches the thing. They
might do that. And it would mean nothing. It's just that not allowing
continuous observation sets up an objection, that they can then
easily address. Same with the battery, same with the translucent
panels, and my guess is that there are more such objections, it was
there intention to set up as many of these as possible, then remove the veils.
An old magician's trick, that distracts from the real
sleight-of-hand. If I were them, trying to raise more capital, I'd
have the power source be very carefully concealed within some
component of the system, something that would be normally wired in.
It could even be external, with power radiated into the device,
picked up by coils. It could be something that I'd not even dream of.
But monitoring all the voltages in the system would probably pick it
up, or narrow down the possibilities, so, my guess, they won't allow that.
And they can justify any nondisclosure as necessary for their
protection. And investors who demand transparency before writing a
check? "Obviously you aren't ready to invest in this. We'll wait for
investors who are willing to take risks in order to gain tremendous
rewards. Go fly a kite." They don't need to attract many!