Posted by Ilie Pandia
(here)
Hi,
There is something that I wanted to write about for some time.
There is a clip that is going on all over the web with a "Free Energy" device that gets started with a lighter (the kind that has an electric spark).
So I am looking at the clip that shows the experiment working and I am think: this is so silly and cannot possibly work for a ton of reason. This is actually stupid!
And then, while I sat with this, I realized that before airplanes were invented, I would have had a similar thought about flight. So I got out of my chair, got all the parts required (two parts!) and went on to perform the experiment.
Half an hour later I learned to things: the spark from the lighter can deliver quite a shock into my hands and the so called Free Energy device does not work as advertised.
Was I stupid for even trying? Perhaps... Should I have known better? I guess I should have. But this was a very easy experiment to do, with readily available parts so instead of just rationalizing that this cannot possible work, I figured it's better to just run it, test it and see what happens!
I have seen these remark used many times:
"no serious scientists is even considering this..."
"this is so silly that's is obviously false and that's all the proof that I need"
"this is not a subject worthy of scientific research as it is evidently false/silly/stupid/crazy/impossible"
So this begs the question then: what topics are worthy enough to be researched with a scientific approach and what topics are silly/impossible that no "serious scientist would touch them". Doesn't this line of thinking in itself limit where science can or can not go?
It seems to me that as soon as some questions are too silly to be asked, then you have fallen into a trap! Then you begin to fear ridicule, damaging your career, damaging your social circle and so on: simply because I have dared consider (or ask) a silly question that "everybody knows is false" or "laws of physics prove it's impossible" and so on.
I say, you have to ask silly/stupid questions and then look for what answers are there, what evidence (or lack there of) don't be trapped by the fear of ridicule. Yes, you will stumble into a lot of stuff that is invalid and does not work. But you will know it to be so because you have tested it yourself, and in the process you have learned how to do such tests, how to look at the result and the evidence and how to weight it all. And also how to face up to pear pressure looking at you like you're some kind of crazy person still believing in the Easter Bunny story.