The Scientific method? It has its failings, how can we make it better?

Since the video, they did research on the pump at Queens university Toronto and perhaps there is more going on in California. (Results were better than they expected) http://www.appropedia.org/Pulser_pump should have the latest info. It took over 2 decades for that to happen. Why so long? One reason is that your attitude is widely shared by others. You have bought into the idea that the system works great. Another is that there is almost no funding for appropriate tech research. Thats a political problem which you are contributing too. Political appointees decide where the money goes. Scientists are just paid rats and highly directed rats in a rat race. (No funding for appropriate tech= no scientists researching appropriate tech) Its all about the money with most people. My prime minister in Canada is currently de funding climate research because he does not like the results. (Canada, biggest country in the world, perfectly positioned for arctic research too, decommissioning weather stations!) No funds, no research, no data. (So he buys a few more years for the owners of the tar sands). Also, from my experience in science college, the great stars were the people with big memories who went on all nighters with coffee before the exams. So is an open mind as important as a big memory to become a scientist? Apparently not in the race to get to be one! And this is real important. Because, if you only have access to what you can recall, you will not be capable of digesting the pulser pump, or the dual reflector on equatorial mount concept, or solar design t-square, or clam shaped solar cookers or the mechanical mathematician. (Thats my entire contribution and probably incomprehensible to most of the big memory people). It is not rocket science but if you switch off before you even look at it, it is pretty much impossible to engage your brain. Another great problem is leaders and followers. There are so many "monkey see, monkey do" people out there who attach themselves to someone that society has decided is a LEADER. So if he says something they treat it like the word of God. I have met some of those "leader" people. Very few of them are open minded and many have bought into their personality cult and do not hear the plebes. (Research has been done on that social problem by the way. They actually (unknown to themselves) tune out what the underlings say!) It does not even reach the higher part of the brain. (I have done this myself and it is a humbling experience when you look back and you realize what you have done). I cannot remember stuff to save my life. The only time my paper was ever handed around is when I forgot that there was an exam. So I had to make the whole thing up on the spot in a 2 hour exam. Pretty hard to do. So just maybe I had a deeper understanding than the super memory people who did superbly in later careers. Also, I would urge you to read this page from appropedia http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Status They are recognizing that roadblocks exist and they are trying to remove some of them. Do not get mad at me. I was just delivering the message. The message is that there are a whole lot of unofficial road blocks that prevent scientific research. Some are in our own heads.

I do not think it is quite that simple. My x girlfriend was not religious or rich but she always contributed to the foodbank when she bought groceries. And it was quite a lot. Collectively the scientific community and their funders are doing a terrible job of contributing. It cost less than $100 to verify scientifically that the pulser pump worked but it took about 150,000 views of videos of them clearly working before anyone in that community lifted a finger. Thats outragous. And the EXCUSES that people gave for their refusal to lift a finger were so shallow too. Any of those environmentally friendly pop stars or actors could do a complete exhaustive review of the pump over a large range of conditions, film it and make 50 or 60 grand for themselves and be heroes. Like I said, it is not rocket science. Forget theory of 2 phase flow. Just test the damn thing with different heads of water, different power water speeds, and different pumping heights, etc and make the results public. Its that easy! And then I can forget the stupid pump once and for all. Hurah!

Why did you not try to peer review what I did?  That is what science is all about.
Experiments.  You repeat my experiments,  and then say that it is stupid.
I did them and you did not.
You simply do not have the right to be offended.   Problems in the real world have multiple solutions.
And the people who need problems solved have different price points and different skills to apply to those solutions

Remember when people invented rube goldberg spinning wheels and and weaving devices? People (like you) thrashed the new devices. Just like you. Lemony and Kiteman were drawn in because of their idealogy, you because of your friendship and your defence of old thought. This is more proof that there is more to peer review and the scientific method than meets the eye. There is a heck of a lot of inertia, isn't there? Why are people unable to say, "yes, I would like to know more about the naeve wheelbarrow". If a leading scientist or large charity organization said they were interested in the naeve wheelbarrow, would people be offering their help? This video IS proving something. How can we adjust the scientific method to allow for this human failing?

"Rube-goldberg reinventions of the wheel" . Why thank you very much. I am doing charity research for very very very poor people. They cannot afford to buy your wheels. Eventually, (if they ever get told about them), they can make my devices. You are complicit in their poverty.

Why do scientists not spend their days perusing the web looking for projects? And surely students do look on the web for projects? So why not direct them to stuff that has not been properly checked out? My narration does not need to be focused. If you or anybody else feels strongly on the subject, you are free to post a video response on youtube or elsewhere. If you look on the instructabes website, you may see that your statements run counter to the instructabes ideology. I am already recognized for innovation. I wish to have systematic blockades to innovation and uptake of innovation removed. First I have to prove that the blockades exist. I think I have come a long way towards that. And it seems some of those blockades are idiological. Brian

Scientists at universitys spend most of their time on administration and teaching.  They also write "proposals" to funding committees and the funding comittees reject most of the proposals. 
And many scientists do not have ANY idea why some proposals get rejected and others accepted!   You can check Nottingham university's "test tube" http://www.test-tube.org.uk/scientists.htm It includes interviews with the scientists after winning and after losing  in that lottery.
So funding committees? does that sound like a good way of financing and directing science?   It certainly could be used to control the direction that research goes in. I am pretty sure the control is political.
Brian

Can you see your reaction? I did not produce a single perpetual motion machine, did I? So your comment about not directing them to worthwhile stuff is a bit suspect. Directing does not mean researching everything. Just the stuff that fell through the cracks. And are scientists so badly trained that they cannot tell the difference? (don't mention cold fusion) For years, until Mat in Cornwall made his pulser pump model, I was accused of a hoax. And Mat's model is not going to stop people. Ambjörn Naeve did his work from 1976 onwards. You and I do not know anything about its parameters, do we? Nor does anybody else in the wider community. And in the scientific community? Nobody has a clue! Why not? Because good or bad, nobody BOTHERED to find out. And without verification, he just gets knocked off as some crackpot with poor english from sweden. And if you bothered to check, where the focal point of a parabolic dish is, is hugely important and it is problematical for tracking. Check out scheffler solar kitchens for the reason. (if you wish) Where is your curiosity? Can you not with your scientific training tell the difference between perpetual motion and for real stuff? If you only get your science education from peer reviewed journals, you sure miss a lot because they are pretty narrowly focused. I am not saying throw out the peer review system, I am saying modify it. It SHOULD take into account the internet. And with regard to what I have done, results and demos have been posted. Just nobody has bothered check them out. Do they have merit? You tell me. And if you tell me they do not, perhaps you can give reasons? Do you see the corner you have blocked yourself into? It is absurd to think that I can match what a focused group of students could do in a couple of hours comparing 4 or 5 different new solar cooker designs. It is absurd to think that I can check out all the different parameters of a pulser pump. And it is absurd to think that if I did, anybody would believe me.

Edison employed people to do his research, and invent his inventions, didn't he? Invention factories. And when I was employed in research, I had to sign a non disclosure agreement and basically sign away my rights to any thought or invention that I came up based on what I researched. What a crock. I am unencumbered by that nonsense now. But what of scientists who are in research? How many of them can speak freely? Lots of them are tied up by Edison type legalese. How do you like that? Do these types of non disclosure agreements stifle invention? Do patents stifle invention? Of course they do. That is precisely what they are designed to do.

It IS suspect. For starters, big pharma listens very actively to fokelore when they are hunting down new drugs. Where is the science in fokelore? They do not depend just on their own little brains for the next big thing. And I put all the details I had about the pulser pump on the web. And it was on educational cd that was sold to US schools 3 or 4 years ago. "all about pumps". And the video has been on an engineers without borders website for 2 or 3 years. That gets vetted, presumably by engineers but still amazingly, no extra figures or tests have surfaced. I give away something that I am sure will be valuable to many poor people, why exactly is kiteman attacking me? I am being attacked because nobody has verified what I have done. That does not seem fair.

Well, lemonie, people are interested in my stuff. And much of it is aimed at people that have no money. Have you ever sold anything to a poor beggar? The holy free market forgot to give the beggar any cash. But the begger still has needs. Anger and contempt comes first and perhaps then acceptance that there is a problem? Do not shoot the messenger. And stop posting links to perpetual motion scams. You are trying to label me by association and I do not like it one bit.

What does that have to do with peer review? Do YOU think the solar wheelbarrow concept from Ambjörn Naeve has merit? Do you think it works? It does not have to be Naeve doing the experiment. It can be anyone. It does not have to be me doing a pulser pump experiment. It can be anyone. In fact others are much better qualified to do it than me. Naeve's device has gone over 30 years and we still know nothing of its capabilities! And you are lecturing me about marketing! Thats some peer review process we have going on! How come nobody has taken it on themselves to check this device out and peer review it in that amount of time?

No answer to my question, do YOU think Naeve's device has merit? Laying it all on me (as posters here do) is NOT the scientific method. and now it is the 15th of september. Sorry folks, thats evasion. Its not supposed to be about personality, it is supposed to be about rational questioning thought. What do you THINK? Do you think people should know more about Naeve's device or not?

I checked your link. He says one of his deep dish designs is compound parabolic for longer unattended cooking. Best of luck to him. If he is selling the things perhaps he has specifics and comparisons between deep dish compound parabolic and deep dish parabolic? and if he has them, I think they should be available to his customers as marketing before they buy. Note that I wrote out an instructable about how to design a compound parabolic template for yourself.

Kiteman, why not have this little bit of the internet (insturctables) peer reviewed? Or some other bit of the internet? You are right, I could go back to Ireland, and restart the experiments on the little stream, and submit them to some obscure journal and they might publish them in a couple of years. Or they might not. People are not open to new ideas. Just look at the replies here! 10 years ago I made pulser pump demo models for 2 ecocenters that were open to the public. In each case some workers were enthuastic but the bosses refused to put the models on public view. One of my reasons for posting the Ambjörn Naeve device is that I would love to try making one but I have no time. I recently had an 18 day workweek. I am self employed, economic doom is coming and I have to do the work now while it is still there. We had a beautiful summer but I worked almost every day of it. By the end of september, my solar experimenting chances are over and I am still heavily booked.

Kiteman, poor people in poor countrys cannot buy parabolic dishes so they need something cheaper to produce. In fact they will be strained to buy a few rolls of kitchen foil. When I made the pulser pump 20 years ago, I went the patenting and funding route. It is a costly joke. And an impediment to future work if a patent is granted. It might work in a utopian world where each of us is independently wealthy. In the real world it is a failure.

Kiteman, are those tracking satalite dishes? Because if they are not, your example has very little merit. Now about peer review. ANYBODY can prepare a proper write up and submit it to a journal. Correct? Given that the pulser pump is in the public domain and Ambjörn Naeve's device is probably there too, how come in 50 years (combining the time that both devices have been public knowelege) so little is known of either of them? Do YOU think either device has merit? If science is working right, should it take over 50 years to get round to looking at these things? I made a lot of information about the pulser pump available and Naeve did likewise with his device. It is disengenuous in the extreme to claim that we did anything wrong. Naeve was a mathematics professor, he was IN the system and he still couldn't get acceptance! All i am saying is that the peer review process is faulty. It needs to be addressed and corrected.