I’m going to admit it: I caused the failure in the Orbo experiment the other day.
I just didn’t think the world was ready for a perpetual motion machine.
Seriously now, I think the shenanigans surrounding Steorn & Co. can serve as a constructive exercise in mental gymnastics.
I mean, the guy at least built and tried to showcase his device whereas various proponents of things like “Intelligent Design” have yet to publicly do the same.
In fact, as the Templeton Foundation has noted, the nascent movement has yet to present any scientifically testable model for peer-review.
So for all the negative press Orbo gets, consistently speaking, the same media outlets should also lambaste the lack of empirical data for “alternative theories” that have added nothing to the corpus of science.
And this standard goes for any other dogma and sacred cow that does not pass the repeatability litmus test enshrined in the scientific method, including string theory, which according to Lee Smolin and Peter Woit is Not Even Wrong.
But then again, Stringists and Steorn are at least trying to try to verify their rhetoric experimentally…