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Originally Posted by Alex
Right. But just because some things are incorrectly described as impossible, doesn't mean that everything is therefore possible. The expansion and exploration of science is designed to address that, not suppress it.
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Exactly. And just because someone makes a claim of results that violate one or more accepted physical laws, does not make the laws invalid. A key aspect of the scientific method is that until you can repeatedly and predictably demonstrate results that invalidate an accepted law, the law holds.
Remember cold fusion? That's a great example of something that would have required a rethink of some fundamental physics. Seemed very promising, until the results could not be duplicated. Does that make the concept wrong? Not necessarily. But at this time, there is no evidence that it's valid.
Inventors have been trying to violate the laws of thermodynamics since they were first stated in 1850, likely because the prize is so tempting... free energy! Many have claimed victory. No one has actually proven successful yet.... and the operative word is PROVEN.
The scientific method of observation, hypothesis to explain the observation, experiment to test the hypothesis, painstaking replication of results to confirm the findings, and formulation of theories that successfully predict the experimentally obtained results has worked for centuries. It is very good at providing proof of valid theories.
Lack of proof does not automatically invalidate a theory, but it does mean that said theory will not be accepted until its predictions hold up to
independent experimental verification.
Often, proof takes a long time. Hell, just THIS YEAR we finally got confirmation of one of the predictions made by general relativity, a century after the prediction was made.
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-einste...elativity.html
So: Rigorously follow the scientific method, because the method works. Test the claims. Find independent, documented, peer-reviewed confirmation that includes data (not wild claims or anecdotes--see above).