Cough analysis

So for today's Tempest in a Teapot, we have: Hillary Clinton's health.

A couple of days ago, Clinton collapsed at a 9/11 ceremony, and her doctor ascribed it to a combination of dehydration and pneumonia.  The internet has been buzzing lately regarding the "coughing fits" she's had at speeches, ascribing it to everything from pleurisy to lung cancer.  Because, of course, (1) it couldn't be that keeping a schedule that would kill most of us outright might have some health impacts, and (2) it's clear that she's the only prominent politician who has ever fallen ill.  The incident where President George H. W. Bush puked on Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa was just, um, a fluke.

Or something.

So naturally, over at the r/conspiracy subreddit 19 of the 25 top stories are about Hillary Clinton's health.  Several claimed that she actually died of a stroke (or, in other versions, was hospitalized), and that subsequent appearances were actually a "body double."  More than one site has said that the Democratic National Convention is "scrambling to replace her" and is "in total panic mode."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But no one is as far off the deep end as the YouTube user who goes by the handle "Styxhexenhammer666," which would be the odds-on favorite for winning first place in a "Most Self-Consciously Metal Pseudonym" contest.  "Styxhexenhammer" goes on at length about Clinton's health issues in a video entitled "The Cleveland Cough: Hillary Clinton has begun to Degrade in Health due to Our Magick" and which you all must watch.  Because it's just that wonderful.

What we find out from "Styxhexenhammer" is that he and "tens of thousands of others" have been putting spells of magick on Hillary Clinton.  (The "k" means that it's real, unlike the fake "magic" that people like David Copperfield do.)  And we find out that what "Styxhexenhammer" does is use music for his spells -- some of them are originals, but he can turn covers into magickal spells, too.  Like when he sings The Electric Light Orchestra's song "Evil Woman," it turns into a Spiritual Weapon of Great Force, not just a rehash of a cheesy 70s song that wasn't even that good when it was first released.

But apparently from all of the songs and other magick being launched Clinton's way, her health is in a serious tailspin.  I guess it's understandable, really.  After all, if someone sings "Copacabana" in my vicinity, I become physically ill.  It's hard to see what connection that has to the lyrics, however, unless you count the "punches flew and chairs smashed in two" part, just thinking about which could explain why I have a headache right now.

What strikes me about Styxhexenhammer's video, however, is how well-spoken and articulate he sounds, juxtaposed against what he's actually saying, which is seriously loony.  He goes into how you can shield yourself from such psychic attack, but very few know how to do so; and that a political campaign, being made of dozens or hundreds of power-hungry people, is even more vulnerable than "your typical sheep-like individual."

"It gives me great pleasure," he tells us, "that there are very many people who will never cast their vote for Hillary Clinton because of the actions of people like me."

Is it just me, or does this represent a nice blend of confirmation bias and megalomania?  "I've been singing hostile songs in Hillary Clinton's general direction, and now she's got a bad cough.  Yes -- that was me doing all of that."

Anyhow, the point of all of this is that people get sick.  Even presidential candidates get sick, sometimes.  This does not mean that they are dying (nor even that their aides think that they're dying), that they're so ill that they need a body double, nor most certainly that the whole thing is due to evil spells cast by someone who fancies himself a magickian (what would be the "practitioner of" form of this word?  If you pronounce "magickian" with a hard "k," which it certainly looks like you should, it sounds kind of silly).

So that's our dive in the deep end for today.  I'm hoping that no one takes this as incentive to sing at me.  Because it could be worse than "Copacabana."  It could be "The Piña Colada Song."  Or "Seasons in the Sun."  Or, heaven forfend, "Muskrat Love."

I don't even want to think about what the magickal outcome of those would be.

Thou shalt not watch training videos

In the ongoing effort by a particular cadre of über-Christians to emphasize one or two tenets of their faith and pretty much ignore the rest of it, we have the case of a worker for the Social Security Administration who has said he would rather be fired than watch a seventeen-minute video on respecting diversity (particularly with respect to LGBT individuals) in the workplace.

David Hall, of Tolono, Illinois, has worked for the SSA for fourteen years.  This year, supervisors have required all employees to watch a training video on LGBT inclusion as part of a drive to decrease workplace harassment and increase tolerance and respect.  Hall, however, has refused, and claims he's being discriminated against because he's a Christian.  "I think this is an issue they are prepared to go to the mat with," Hall said, "but I’m not going to give up my faith or compromise my beliefs just to go along and get along.  I don’t believe God wants me to do that."

A few things about this particular case stand out.  First, Hall is claiming discrimination, even though the SSA is requiring everyone to watch the video.  If Hall, as a devout Christian, had been singled out to watch the video, he might have a case to claim he was being targeted.  In this case, however, it's hard to see how he's being discriminated against, given that the definition of discrimination is "the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

A more important point arises when you consider why the video is being mandated.  Remember that the video is not saying (1) being gay is moral; (2) Christian ethical codes are wrong; or (3) you should all run out and have gay sex right now.  What it's saying is that we should treat people with kindness, tolerance, and respect whether or not we are like them or agree with them.  Sorta like what you read in the following quotes:

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. -- Ephesians 4:32 

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. -- 1 John 4:20-21 

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. -- Matthew 6:14-15 

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. -- Luke 6:35-36

And, most strikingly:

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.  We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. -- 1 Thessalonians 5:11-13

Oh, and the whole "judge not, lest ye be judged" thing.  That, too.

In fact, have you noticed that the bible has a lot more passages about being kind to others than it does about condemning homosexuals?  Funny thing, that.

Because that's the most annoying part of this whole emphasis on LGBT individuals being sinners; it requires you to pretend that a substantial fraction of the bible doesn't exist.  Besides the fact that there is a great deal more emphasis  in the bible on treating people compassionately than there is on the sinfulness of homosexuality, there are a whole slew of other things besides being gay that are considered sins (in fact, some are worse than sins, they're "abominations") and that Christians today pretty much ignore.  Eating shellfish, working (even collecting firewood) on the Sabbath, wearing clothing made of two different kinds of thread sewn together, men trimming their beards, having tattoos, and women speaking in church are a few that come to mind without even trying hard.  Oh, and the fact that no one born of a "forbidden marriage" -- and their descendants, to the tenth generation -- is to be allowed in church (Deuteronomy 23:2).

And then there's "biblical marriage."  Such as the provision requiring young women who were raped to marry their rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), a verse that allows men who conquer other nations to keep any virgins as concubines (Numbers 31:17-18), a rule that when a man dies, his wife must marry his brother (Genesis 38:8-10), prohibitions against marrying outside of your tribe (Deuteronomy 7:3) , and so many instances of deity-blessed polygamy that I won't even try to name them.

So don't even start with any bullshit about the biblical definition of marriage being "one man and one woman."

The bottom line is that here we have this guy who has been given divine revelation that he's not supposed to watch a diversity in the workplace video because to do so would make him naughty in god's sight, while he apparently doesn't give a damn about most of the things in the bible that god supposedly does prohibit.  It's more and more looking like he's using the bible as justification for a lawsuit and his own bigoted inclinations rather than because there's been any real infringement on his right to practice his religion.

The most frustrating thing for me about all of this is that this is the same subset of Christians who accuse us atheists of having wishy-washy morality.  Just yesterday, I saw a comment on Facebook (apropos of the ongoing foolishness about having "In God We Trust" on police vehicles) that said, "Don't give in!  Atheists only whine about their rights being trampled because they don't have the moral backbone to know what is right."  Myself, I'm much more comfortable with someone whose moral code comes from careful consideration than one whose sense of right and wrong was determined by cherry-picking verses they like from their favorite religious text -- and ignoring the rest of it into non-existence.

Accidentally correct

One of the most wonderful moments in Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy occurs when Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent fire up the Infinite Improbability Drive, which allows a spaceship to pass through all points in space simultaneously.  Unfortunately, it has as a side effect altering the likelihood of every event in the vicinity of the ship.  As their ship is being zipped along, Arthur comes in with an alarmed look on his face.

"'Ford!' he said, 'there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.'"

It's a standard way to explain the likelihood of extremely unlikely occurrences over long periods of time -- that something that exists at a very low probability (like monkeys randomly pounding keys on a typewriter and writing out the script to Hamlet) will eventually happen if you wait long enough.  It's like the random motion ("Brownian motion") of molecules, due to their thermal energy.  It's possible that all of them will, by chance, move in the same direction at the same time, and your cup of coffee will jump up off the table.  But as my long-ago thermodynamics professor said, "It is, however, extremely unlikely."

This all comes up because something that was incredibly unlikely just happened a couple of days ago.  Fasten your seatbelts and hold down your coffee cups:

Ken Ham said something that was scientifically correct.

Okay, he said it for the wrong reason, but he still was right, which kind of blew me away.  He was being asked about racism, and not only did he give the right general response ("racism bad") he said, "The answer to racism is believing the true history of humans in Genesis (as confirmed by science): we're all one race — not different races.  When politicians and media talk about 'races' of humans, they are actually fueling racism there's only one race, the human race...  There are no truly black or white people — all are basically brown (pigment melanin) — but differing shades because of genetic variability."

Which, if you leave out the "true history in Genesis as confirmed by science" part, is actually pretty much correct.  The things we lump together as "race" -- physical features such as skin color, eye color, hair color and texture, and so on -- are actually not very good indicators of degree of relatedness between different human ethnic groups.  Geneticist Richard Lewontin writes:

It is clear that our perception of relatively large differences between human races and subgroups, as compared to the variation within these groups, is indeed a biased perception and that, based on randomly chosen genetic differences, human races and populations are remarkably similar to each other, with the largest part by far of human variation being accounted for by the differences between individuals... 

Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance... no justification can be offered for its continuance.

Now, to be sure, race and ethnicity have a great deal of cultural significance.  But its biological significance is nil.  As my college genetics professor, Dr. Lemmon, put it, "There is more human genetic variability in one hundred-square-mile area of Tanzania than there is between a typical Englishman and a typical Japanese man."

Which makes sense, of course, given that East Africa is where the human race evolved.  It's unsurprising that we still see tremendous diversity there.  Add that to the suggestion (well supported by evidence) that Homo sapiens went through a major genetic bottleneck about 74,000 years ago -- some researchers believe that the survivors may have numbered less than 2,000 individuals -- and a lot of the diversity (and lack thereof) has a fairly natural explanation.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It also makes claims about racial superiority/inferiority seem kind of idiotic, doesn't it?

So Ham is right, although for entirely wrong reasons.  He's correct that traits such as skin color are very variable; but the idea that the genetic variability just kinda happened is ridiculous.  There's a big difference in selective pressure on the genes that control melanin production if you live in (for example) Kenya as compared to living in northern Finland.  In Kenya, the main driver is protecting the skin from harsh sunlight, and thus higher melanin production; in Finland, it's UV-mediated vitamin D synthesis, and thus lower melanin production.

In other words, natural selection and evolution.

Anyhow, I found it remarkably like Adams's infinite monkeys when I read Ham's statement, given that most of the rest of what he believes has no scientific basis whatsoever, even on the level of general gist.  But, to look at it a different way: as my dad used to say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

A win for the scientists

Some days, we all need some good news, and I got mine when I heard over on Patheos that the CEO of a public school district has ordered their science faculty to stop using creationist materials for teaching biology and geology.

Of course, the fact that they were doing this in the first place is kind of appalling.  According to Zack Kopplin, who has been crusading since he was a teenager for teaching actual science in science classes:

A curriculum map… recommends teachers in this public school district show a creationist video, Cambrian Fossils and the Creation of Species, as part of 10th-grade science education.  The video claims that the Cambrian Explosion “totally invalidates the theory of evolution.”  The Cambrian Explosion was a time period, nearly 550 million years ago, where, over the next tens of millions of years, the number of species on Earth experienced a (relatively) rapid expansion by evolutionary standards.  Christian creationists regularly point to this explosion of life as evidence for creation by God and against evolution.

Which is using one of the strongest pieces of evidence from the fossil record for evolution as evidence against evolution.  It's as if you used the fact that there are different constellations in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere as evidence that the Earth was flat.

Oh, wait, there are people who do that.  Never mind.

Anyhow, Krish Mohip, the new CEO of Youngstown (Ohio) City Schools, has put a stop to this nonsense.  He has mandated that Youngstown, just like every other public school district in Ohio, has to use curricula consistent with the Ohio State Science Standards, which mention the words "evolution" and "evolutionary" almost fifty times, and (surprise!) never mention "creation," "creationism," or "intelligent design" at all.  Mohip doesn't pull any punches.  In his memo, he says that "beginning this 2016-2017 school year any reference to intelligent design, creationism, or any like concepts are eliminated from the science curriculum."

Which is exactly as it should be.  Materials from the Discovery Institute, such as the video Darwin's Dilemma, have no place in the public school.  They are religious indoctrination, pure and simple, claiming that there is a controversy where no controversy -- among the scientists, at least -- exists.

However, I'm sure that this will just open up more fun lawsuits from aggrieved hyper-Christians who think that the bible needs to be the basis of science classes throughout the nation.  They're not nearly defeated yet, considering the borderline white supremacist history texts being adopted statewide in Texas, which make it look like the Founding Fathers copied the Constitution straight from the bible, and the Native Americans and African slaves were just thrilled to pieces to be taught about the American Way by the white settlers.

So it's not that I think the war is over, but at least this particular battle is won, thanks to a forward-thinking CEO who actually cares whether the students in his district come away understanding how science works.  And at the moment, I'll take all the good news I can get.

The political teeter-totter

During election seasons, you often find out far more than you wanted about your friends' political leanings, pet issues, biases, and blind spots.  We all have them, of course; but the natural tendency is to feel like everyone else is falling for fallacious thinking, whereas we are (in Kathryn Schulz's words) "looking out at the world through a completely crystal-clear window, seeing everything as it actually is."

The problem is, it's amazingly difficult to root out errors in thinking.  People are prone to the backfire effect -- being presented with facts supporting an opposing point of view often make people double down and believe what they already did more strongly.  But it goes deeper than that. A paper written by Tali Sharot, Cass Sunstein, Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez and Stephanie Lazzaro was released this week in the Social Science Research Network, and showed that not only does presentation with the facts often cause people to veer back into their previous thinking, it increases polarization in general.

The research team used three hundred test subjects, first giving them questionnaires designed to determine their attitude about anthropogenic climate change.  From their answers, they divided the subjects into three groups -- strong believers, moderate believers, and weak believers.  Each group was asked what their estimate was of the increase in global average temperature by the years 2100.   Unsurprisingly, the strong believers had the highest estimate (6.3 degrees on average), the weak believers the lowest (3.6 degrees) and the moderate believers were in the middle (5.9 degrees).

When it got interesting was when the researchers presented half of each group with data that was good news for the planet (global warming isn't going to be as bad as predicted) and the other half with bad news (global warming is going to be far worse than predicted).  Afterwards, they were reassessed about their opinions, and asked to revise their estimate for the change.  The strong believers presented with bad news revised their estimates upwards; those presented with good news revised their estimates downward, but only a little (0.9 degrees on average).  The weak believers were highly responsive to the good news -- lowering their estimate by a degree on average -- but didn't respond to the bad news at all!

What this shows is rather frightening.  Presented with facts, both the believers and the doubters will change -- but always in such a way as to increase the overall polarization of the group.  This sort of backfire effect will result in a society where the degree of separation between two opposing factions will inevitably increase.

Sobering stuff.  But not as much as a different study, which shows how easily our political beliefs can be changed...

... without our realizing it.

According to a study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, all scientists had to do was stimulate one part of the brain -- the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex -- and it caused test subjects' views to tilt to the right.

The paper, entitled "Alteration of Belief by Non-invasive Brain Stimulation," describes research by Caroline Chawke and Ryota Kanai, of the University of Sussex - Brighton's School of Psychology.  They begin with the sentence, "People generally have imperfect introspective access to the mechanisms underlying their political beliefs, yet can confidently communicate the reasoning that goes into their decision making process" -- which sums up in only a few words how little real faith we should have in the stuff our brain comes up with.

Previous research had suggested that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was involved in political decision-making (via its role in resolving cognitive conflict).  Specifically, it was observed that DLPFC activity was higher when people were challenged on their preconceived opinions with regard to political views.  So what Chawke and Kanai did was to stimulate that area of the brain while showing participants a campaign video from either the Labour (liberal) or Conservative party.  The expectation was that when the DLPFC was activated, it would push cognitive conflict resolution by moving both left- and right-leaning individuals toward more centrist beliefs.

That's not what happened.  The people shown a Labour video showed a movement toward the right -- but so did the people shown a Conservative video.  In other words, you stimulate the DLPFC, and everyone becomes more conservative.

Ready for the scariest part?  Let me give it to you in their own words:

It is also interesting to note that none of the participants in the current study reported any awareness of changes to their political beliefs... conclusively disagreeing with the possibility that political thoughts and values had been altered in any way.  Therefore, during the conscious deliberation of political statements, it appears as though implicit cognitive control processes may have biased subsequent belief formation in the absence of conscious awareness.  Although research has argued that rationalization and reappraisal must require some degree of conscious deliberation, the findings of the current study would provide reason to speculate an unconscious role of the DLPFC in changing political orientation.

The authors suggest the explanation that the DLPFC may have evolved as a structure whose activity is involved in perceptions of security, certainty, and social dominance, all characteristics that are associated with conservative ideology.  But wherever it comes from, the most bizarre part of all of this is how little we seem to be choosing our political leanings based on anything logical -- or even conscious.

So, there you are.  More reason to distrust the whole political process, as if this year you needed another one.  Myself, I think I'm being forced to the opinion that, as Alexis de Tocqueville said in Book II of Democracy in America: "In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own."  Little did he know how accurate that statement was -- not only about Americans, but about everyone.

An argument over mosquitoes

I broke one of my own cardinal rules a couple of days ago, which is: never argue with strangers on the internet.  This activity is the very definition of futility -- I defy you to cite one example of someone being talked out of a previously-held opinion through a war of words on Facebook.

This particular go-round of vitriol was over the role of the Zika virus in the microcephaly cases in Brazil.  The woman who got my ire up claimed that the combination of irresponsible mainstream media and the outright evil of Monsanto et al. had conspired to pull the wool over our eyes; the actual culprit for the birth defects was a mosquito larvicide called pyriproxyfen.  As support, she cited an article in the Tech Times, because apparently that's not mainstream media.

Before giving up and saying "whatever" (which I did in short order), I referred to several peer-reviewed studies that have established a pretty firm causal link between the virus and microcephaly.  The New England Journal of Medicine published a case study in August 2016 of a microcephalic baby who was Zika-positive at birth and in fact continued to shed the virus for 67 days; three separate studies (outlined and cited in an article in Science from May of this year) demonstrated that Zika infection causes microcephaly and other neurological birth defects in rat fetuses; and a thorough analysis of the available evidence (also from NEJM) concluded that the criteria for establishing a causal relationship had been met.  The authors write:

On the basis of this review, we conclude that a causal relationship exists between prenatal Zika virus infection and microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies.  Evidence that was used to support this causal relationship included Zika virus infection at times during prenatal development that were consistent with the defects observed; a specific, rare phenotype involving microcephaly and associated brain anomalies in fetuses or infants with presumed or confirmed congenital Zika virus infection; and data that strongly support biologic plausibility, including the identification of Zika virus in the brain tissue of affected fetuses and infants.  Given the recognition of this causal relationship, we need to intensify our efforts toward the prevention of adverse outcomes caused by congenital Zika virus infection.

Add to this the fact that the connection to pyriproxyfen was thoroughly smashed by David Gorski over in the wonderful blog Respectful Insolence, and I think if you approach the question without bias, there's no other conclusion you can reach.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

On the other hand, if you assume your own conclusion, there's not a whole lot logic can do for you.  The individual I was doing battle with pulled out the argumentum ad Monsantum, claiming that Monsanto was involved (Monsanto being the stand-in here for "Satan"), even though Monsanto doesn't manufacture pyriproxyfen -- a Japanese company called Sumitomo does.  But Sumitomo is "a Japanese strategic partner to Monsanto," so there you are.  Satan by association.

The funny thing is, I don't have a dog in this race.  If the birth defects had been caused by a pesticide, I would have no problem saying so.  While I think that pulling out the word "Monsanto" is kind of a cheap trick, I certainly am not of the opinion that they're squeaky-clean.

But I think the preponderance of evidence supports Zika as a cause of the birth defects.  I asked (sort of as a parting shot) if my erstwhile adversary had read any of the peer-reviewed studies, and she didn't respond, which I'm taking either as a "no" or as a way of saying "fuck you."  In any case, once you start thinking this way, peer-reviewed studies aren't going to convince you, because you're just one step from claiming that the authors of the studies are shills for the pesticide company.

You can't win.

Which I hope I've finally learned.  I really shouldn't take the bait, but the combative side of my personality (never very deeply buried) just can't stand to let things lie.

Anyhow, I've said my piece on this topic, and I'm really done.

At least until someone claims that I'm a shill for Monsanto.  Because them's fightin' words.

Robustness, data, and the EmDrive

I get asked rather frequently why I put such trust in the scientific process.  Often, that question is framed even more pointedly; doesn't my belief in the reliability of science amount to religious faith -- something that I believe simply because I believe it?

It's an interesting subject, and it will probably come as no real surprise to my readers to hear that I think the answer to the latter question is "no."  When science is working as it should (and it doesn't always; as a human pursuit, it's subject to human fallibility, like anything else), we amass evidence, craft theories to explain said evidence, rule out ideas that aren't supported -- and in so doing, we get closer and closer to a theory that is self-consistent and explains all of the data we currently have.  Scientists call such a theory "robust."

And once we're there, the idea that something could come along and shatter the whole thing falls into the category of "possible, but extremely unlikely."  People like to cite Einstein and relativity as having destroyed the Newtonian view of the world, but this isn't really so; Newtonian physics works perfectly well at the speeds and masses we usually experience.  It is only at velocities near light speed, or masses with a big enough gravitational pull to warp spacetime significantly more than the Earth (or even the Sun) does, that we see a big enough relativistic effect to measure.  So Einstein was more of a refinement of Newton than an invalidation.

The reason all of this comes up is because of the recent news about the EmDrive, a propellant-less propulsion system that its creators claim uses quantum and relativistic effects to generate thrust from a closed system.  The drive, which uses microwave or radio wave generation inside a shielded shell, allegedly has been measured to produce a "few ounces" of thrust, and a paper describing the physics behind it has allegedly passed peer review and will be published this fall.

The problem is, the vast majority of the physicists -- i.e., the people who actually understand the intricacies of how the thing works, not to mention theories of propulsion, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and the rest -- are, in general, doubtful.  Physicist Sean Carroll, who writes passionately about the cutting-edge nature of modern physics research, and is up front about how much we don't know, was unequivocal:

There is no such thing as a ‘quantum vacuum virtual plasma,’ so that should be a tip-off right there.  There is a quantum vacuum, but it is nothing like a plasma.  In particular, it does not have a rest frame, so there is nothing to push against, so you can’t use it for propulsion.  The whole thing is just nonsense.  They claim to measure an incredibly tiny effect that could very easily be just noise.

Others have called the explanations given by EmDrive creator, engineer Roger Shawyer, as "Star Trek technobabble," or more simply, "bullshit."  (The latter from physicist John Carlos Baez of the University of California - Riverside.)  In order for a true exhaustless drive to work, it would have to overturn nearly everything we know about mechanics (quantum, Newtonian, relativistic, and otherwise).  In other words, it would point to a great big hole in our understanding of physics.

Once again: possible, but extremely unlikely.

Don't get me wrong -- no one would be more thrilled to have a potential interstellar drive system more than me.  If there was a spaceship that could get us to another star system in weeks or months (instead of tens of thousands of years) I would be elbowing people out of the way to get to the head of the line.  But the likelihood that the EmDrive is it seems slim to me, and the chance that what effect they've seen is simple experimental error or (as Carroll says) just noise nearly 100%.

Like any good skeptic, though, I'm perfectly willing to see the thing tested -- and I hope it does work. For one thing, if it did it would mean that there is a lot of physics out there that we don't understand, which is tremendously exciting.  For another, it would mean that we have a completely new way to power spacecraft, which is somewhere beyond tremendously exciting.  If the alleged peer-reviewed paper turns out to hold water, and tests of the thing -- data from which we should get in six months or so --  show that there is something to it, I will happily eat my words, publicly.  Look for a retraction right here in Skeptophilia -- should such an eventuality come to pass.