Sure, but all 3 of the projects listed had people very early on point out that back of the envelope calculations don't add up and warned them that their projects are going to fail. Each of those those groups proceeded to ignore or not understand the evidence presented to them and continued to collect money. At that point I consider it a scam. Ignorance is not an excuse.
That being said what we are seeing here is a education problem. The masses of people who (including government officials) who seem to be so gullible and lack basic science skills and critical thinking to understand how some of these technologies might work is astounding. And with the 3 efforts listed above it has slowly come out that the minds behind the idea did not know how it would all work either. A good example of that is fontus. This as dream big art design project. How awesome is that? We can make a 3d model of this cool device! A year later confessing to taking apart dehumidifiers to "understand" how they work as if it was some mistry. As if they could somehow crack this alien technology then they too could build one!
At the rate these too good to be true ideas are coming out one has to stop and think that maybe, just maybe, somebody is gaming the system.
It's easy to find someone who is certain your idea is impossible even if someone's already done it! Even when they're right they haven't accounted for anything that will work, they've just got one way it won't. Edison ended up finding ten thousand ways a lightbulb doesn't work.
There's a substantial difference between someone dismissing your idea, and someone demonstrating how it breaks the laws of physics. Every project will have its naysayers, yes, but when your idea is literally impossible maybe it's time to listen to them.
EM drive was just a recent example of my point - that people touting a little bit of science have been wrong to declare something impossible many times.
NASA and others are still testing those drives so last year might be a bit premature to write the idea off?
The difference is we don't know how the EM drive is working (or are we sure it is working).
The 3 projects in the parents flat out don't work, and we know why they don't work -- or at least know to what extent they will work.
By the logic you have presented then we should be funding projects that wish to compress all 8 bit connotations into 7 bits. I can go make a nice video of how awesome it would be if we could do this. How it would change the world. Literally, if somebody could compress every 8 bit combination into 7 bits it would change the world overnight. Should we fund a product that advertises it could do this with a nice video and a website?
>EM drive was just a recent example of my point - that people touting a little bit of science have been wrong to declare something impossible many times.
There is a big difference between Edison and what is going on with these projects. It's not merely that somebody found a way that it won't work, it's they showed the laws of physics will prevent it from ever being a reality. These projects are not billed as research projects. They are billed as "let's just make it" projects.
Anybody can come up with an product that if made would change the world. The hard part is coming up with a feasible idea that will change the world.
Not a single one of the projects listed in the parent ever produced a viable working prototype. They sold a promise they could not keep. Yet keep taking money.
That being said what we are seeing here is a education problem. The masses of people who (including government officials) who seem to be so gullible and lack basic science skills and critical thinking to understand how some of these technologies might work is astounding. And with the 3 efforts listed above it has slowly come out that the minds behind the idea did not know how it would all work either. A good example of that is fontus. This as dream big art design project. How awesome is that? We can make a 3d model of this cool device! A year later confessing to taking apart dehumidifiers to "understand" how they work as if it was some mistry. As if they could somehow crack this alien technology then they too could build one!
At the rate these too good to be true ideas are coming out one has to stop and think that maybe, just maybe, somebody is gaming the system.