Monday, June 22, 2009

Steorn Jury Declares...

18 of the 22 Jury members have set up a Ning website with a single declaration:

The unanimous verdict of the Jury is that Steorn's attempts to demonstrate the claim have not shown the production of energy. The jury is therefore ceasing work.
I have confirmed with two of the Jury members that this is the real deal. I always believed there was a Jury, it is unfortunate that it took so long for them to make a public announcement.

Thanks to Angus Og over at Free Energy Trackers for discovering and posting the verdict.

UPDATE: Steorn has posted information about the Jury as well here. The Steorn forum discussion can be found here.

63 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty short verdict for two years worth of work. Are they just being polite?

Anonymous said...

Seems more like anger than politeness.

When Dr Mike talked about them being delusional I genuinely believed that you couldn't get more than 2 or 3 delusional people together before 1 would come to their senses.

Steorn managed in some ways in becoming a business orientated cult. Maybe lesser employees didn't know about the delusion but at least 5 to 6 of the main peolple them held it together. Surely the financial gain wasn't worth the future stigma attached to the families of those involved. Shame on them.

Anonymous said...

Hey, this isn't over yet you know. Sean said that they have ironed out the engineering problems that kept them from giving the jury what it wanted. He said they are focussed on launching toward the end of this year.

I am looking forward to seeing that big Ferris wheel again and watching the camera cut to a spinning Orbo, and I am confident it will happen before this year is out.

OK, maybe not 100 percent confident, but confident.

Anonymous said...

After spending $85K on an ad plus the incidental expenses for a jury that worked on this for two years, considering the importance Steorn placed on this approach in the first place, they couldn't hold the jury for a few months more? Especially considering what a salesman Sean has been all along.

Steorn has been one anti-climax after the other: the failed Kinetica demo, the BS about African pumps, the SPDC, the never started SPDCII, the other secretive clubs, the 300 engineers, the world talking point tours, the non existent second demo, the list is endless.

And you are optimistic???

Anonymous said...

Really nothing to post, just had to because the word verification was.....

mistorbo

LOL

OH and Aber0der got banned by that &%$# Crank.

drmike said...

Note the date on the original announcement:
# Posted by Ian MacDonald on January 20, 2009 at 7:47pm

(see http://stjury.ning.com/forum/topics/jury-announcement)

I think the contracts everyone signed are fully expired, that's all. Definitely a
"So long and thanks for all the fish"!

Anonymous said...

Dr. Mike, Mr. MacDonald corrected the date to actually be June 21, 2009.

This fact contradicts Sean's press release statement that the jury concluded at the "end of 2008." It also casts suspicion on Sean's statement that "during 2009 the company had resolved the key technical problems related to the implementation of Orbo..."

If they were resolved and the jury was still deliberating until a few days ago it apparently was not sufficient to convince the jury that they had achieved over unity.

It seems that the jury and Sean are not in synch with each other and one of them is not telling the truth.

The terseness of the jury statement and their admonition of not providing any more information in this regard sounds slightly hostile towards Steorn.

If the past history with the various incarnations of the developer's club is any indication of how they treated the jury then it is quite obvious the jury got very frustrated after two years.

It also seems the jury published their verdict and caught Sean off guard as he had to put up a press release after the fact instead of either ahead of time or concurrently which would be more appropriate for situations like this.

I don't think the jury and Steorn communicated very well which is very telling about Steorn's veracity, openness and willingness to work with outside groups notwithstanding the enforcement of NDAs.

On this basis I cannot see how commercialization can take place at any successful level if this is the level of support third parties can expect from this company.

Anonymous said...

Hi drmike,

Looks like you nailed it with your assessment of Sean as delusional. Ever consider a gig in psychology? :)

I don't know if you would have anything to add either way, but has the NDA you signed with Steorn expired yet?

The fact that Steorn had to rush a release out AFTER the jury made their statement public suggests that the Steorn was trying to hide or delay the results and that the jury would have none of it.

One weird thing is this message from Hugh Deasy on ning;

"The science is not so bad - just delayed a bit. If you publish a sarcastic piece on this you may be in for rude awakening end 2009."

Is he getting defensive about the science conducted by the jury?

Oh yeah. 007 is nowhere to be seen on Steorn after his endless BS about all the sceptics and "Validation Day". It came 007 and you should man up and admit you were wrong. And your "Was the jury threatened?" Pull your head out of Seans rear.

Anonymous said...

Would Steorn be training the 300 if they didn't have something to show them? Would they be giving talks if they didn't have something to talk about?

Well, would they!?

Anonymous said...

What did they show the jury? What did they show the SPDC? What peer reviewed papers have they published? What patents do they hold? What did they show at the Kinetica demonstration? What did they show the Africans who were promised fresh water well pumps? What did they show at the talks they already held in the Middle East?

Nothing. And they have been doing this for six years and living off millions of dollars.

Talk is cheap.

drmike said...

Correction noted on the posting date. But it reminds me of "1984" - how can we really be sure?

I'm betting the NDA has fully expired at this point, it's been 3 years now. Everyone who went to the Kinetica site and saw the upstairs contraptions got to see everything I read about in reports. I think that physical experience counts for more than any paper.

I'm not so hot with psychology, but most times I can keep my foot out of my mouth. I'll have to go check out the Steorn response now, this should be interesting!

Unknown said...

Ha. They DID have a genuine jury. That is a surprise. The verdict less so.

007, Babcat et al- we tried to tell you.

Thicket said...

Hokey Smokes. So there actually was a jury!

The stunning thing for me is that the chair, Ian MacDonald, was my engineering professor at the University of Waterloo in the early 1970s.

It's a small world.

Steorn still serves to occasionally entertain.

Thicket

Anonymous said...

Don't write Steorn off yet. Take a look at
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6587.new#new

It shows the secret of the kinetica toy.

Anonymous said...

It's no secret. Steorn binned it long ago.

Anonymous said...

OH. MY. GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.

Anonymous said...

In the Irish Times article, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0624/1224249416758.html
Sean is refusing the Jurys findings stating
"The jury hasn’t found they support the claims. We would dispute that."

He is basically saying the 22 Jurors were either lying or incompetent scientists.

Anonymous said...

Just for the record, from Steorn news-section on their website :
"Jury Report

Steorn today confirmed that the internet ‘blog’ stjury.ning.com had been posted on behalf of members of the Jury of scientists that Steorn had engaged to conduct an independent review of its Orbo Technology.

In a statement, Steorn CEO, Sean McCarthy said that “he was grateful to the Jury members for the time and effort that they had devoted to the process.”

McCarthy continued on to state that he “fully understood the frustration of the Jury members with respect to the time that the process was taking. Implementing Orbo in a reliable and consistent manner had remained a challenge for the organization, one that we had made no secret of. Due to these difficulties we had focused on providing the Jury with test data relating to the underlying magnetic effect behind Orbo. This work concluded at the end of 2008.”

McCarthy concluded by stating that “during 2009 the company had resolved the key technical problems related to the implementation of Orbo and is now focused on commercial launch towards the end of this year, at which time academic and engineering validation would be released concurrent with public demonstrations”. "


Commercial launch towards the end of this year.....
Launching what ?

Anonymous said...

If they knew they didn't have a working Orbo then why spend $85K on the Economist ad ? Why spend money on the jury when they had nothing to show the jury ?
Why did Steorn perform the Kinectica stunt ?
Nothing of this make any sense, unless Steorn are are a bunch of con artists.

Anonymous said...

"....during 2009 the company had resolved the key technical problems related to the implementation of Orbo..... "

Does this mean that Steorn never had a working Orbo ?
Do they now claim that they have a working model which they can demonstrate at any time and anyplace?

Anonymous said...

The jury is shutting down their site on July 10.

bc said...

business orientated cult

I think that is a pretty good description. I worked for a start up that was pretty similar! The founders and other associates passionately believed in the product (but did not really understand the technology). The engineers quickly realized the product was a dead end, it would never meet cost/functionality requirement. It was a cushy job, endless work on "prototypes", providing you didn't let the ethics get to you.

At least with Steorn it was obvious from the start that there was nothing. The promise of great rewards will always lure the irrational, and Steorn are not the first or last in that.

But surely, the investors have to pull the plug now?

Anonymous said...

Did someone pull the plug?

drmike said...

No, I don't think anyone has to give up. Cults continue forever - once a meme gets started it either dies off because it's truly harmful or goes on in spite of any lack of connection to reality.

The belief in infinite energy will never die. Stars shine for billions of years, and we humans can barely comprehend 1000's of years. What we really need to do is find a way to tap the energy from belief....

:-)

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike

Anonymous said...

>What we really need to do is find a way to tap the energy from belief....

I think Steorn has.

bc said...

Cults continue forever

Here's one from 300 years ago, still going http://www.besslerwheel.com/. Bessler even managed a successful demo, unlike Steorn, but he was unable to commercialize his "technology". Sadly the secret of his "perpetual motion" machine died with him.

And the First Law of Thermodynamics had not been written then, so technically he did not break any Laws of physics ;)

Anonymous said...

Just for the record:

From :
http://stjury.ning.com/forum/topics/report-close-down-schedule

"The jury will not issue a report. For clarification, the jury examined equipment demonstrations and reports of Steorn until June 2009. As noted in our earlier announcement, Steorn's demonstrations did not show the production of energy and therefore no experimentation was undertaken by the jury.


Users should note that this site will close down on Friday 10 July. "

Anonymous said...

In 1727 Bessler's maid, Anne Rosine Mauersbergerin, testified that his machines had been turned manually from an adjoining room.

Anonymous said...


In 1727 Bessler's maid, Anne Rosine Mauersbergerin, testified that his machines had been turned manually from an adjoining room.

---
The MiB...

Anonymous said...

The Steorn saga is a total embarassment to the people of Ireland and a discredit to the legacy of George Bernard Shaw.

Steorn's weakness is that they claimed it was a real working discovery in 2003 with a small wind generator that lead to the discovery of OU. "According to CEO Sean McCarthy, in 2003 Steorn's engineers were hard at work developing a security camera system to keep watch over ATM machines. They were playing with the idea of using a small wind generator to power the camera system so it wouldn't need to be hooked up to an electric line. Being tinkering types, they were trying out various configurations of the wind generator's magnets in an attempt to improve its efficiency, when the engineer working on this bumped into a problem: the generator appeared to be putting out more energy than it was taking in."

So wtf is the generator?????????????????????????

I mean how many modifications can you make to an off the shelf small wind generator to create such a wonderful configuration that creates OU. Such BS. All the while the national press gives a free ride to Steorn tarring the good name of real scientists and engineers in Ireland by not exposing these frauds for what they are worth.

The investors are complete cowards for allowing Steorn to perpetuate the fraud and should be ashamed of their conduct in allowing Steorn use such an international platform to discredit Ireland's R & D image abroad.

Some government body needs to understand that what Steorn is doing is no different than what Madoff had done before being caught but in this case much harm is being done to Ireland's knowledge economy by these scam artists.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous,

I wouldn't worry too much about Ireland's "R&D image." In any dynamic, free, and open society, lots of legitimate R&D is going to be conducted, along with a little bit of scamming. Wise people recognize this, and will not let it tarnish their overall opinion of Ireland.

Anonymous said...

Indeed, the impact on the R&D image of Ireland is minimal however what has become apparent is that investigative journalism is simply non-existant there. I don't believe that such a scam could be perpetuated for such a long time in the UK without someone digging into it.

Anonymous said...

Top 15 Web Hoaxes of All Time

http://mashable.com/2009/07/15/internet-hoaxes/

Steorn deserves better than 14th.

Sean should really contest the result and demand a higher ranking.

Anonymous said...

Hello!
Here is a link to a sample educational module from the SKDB

http://www.steorn.com/skdb/samplemodule/index.html

Anonymous said...

Are Steorn changing their "technology" ?


http://www.nolanchart.com/article6722.html

"revelations ahead of me are to be confined to methods of "decoupling CEMF from torque for electromagnet interactions" rather than "controlling the response time of magnetic materials".... ????

Anonymous said...

"Top 15 Web Hoaxes of All Time
...
Steorn deserves better than 14th..."

Steorn is just one of a million different energy hoaxes. They are not any better or worse than the others.
Allan Stirling deserves to be on the list. He is promoting hundredes of energy hoaxes and he is also trying to make money on other people's energy hoaxes.

Anonymous said...

This educational stuff from Steorn is rather funny. Why would the 300 engineers/engineering companies need that sort of simple instructions ?

Anonymous said...

Steorn's hall probes :

http://www.steorn.com/steornlab/hall-probe/

What do they mean with the word "permadent" in the lower left corner of the screen ?
Do you connect the probe to your teeth ?

Anonymous said...

People who promote CEMF as
sources of power either do not understand basic physics, or
pitch to people they know don't. The idea of defeating CEMF is
the same as trying to come up with a way to manipulate
a spring so that more energy comes out as the spring relaxes
than was used to compress or stretch it.

Anonymous said...

Steorn/Sean has been writeing on the forum 24 hours ago. He pulled out just before maryougo arrived...

Something for the record :

"
wtec:Are the nodding donkeys ever going to happen?
If so, can Forum members get one at a discount?


Not a donkey anymore - we will put one product into the market ourselves (P-One) - but I will not go into any further details on it.
"


"
Evolvealready:Is there anything you want to say to clear up the
550 bhp device claim from a few years ago? It does not seem to
agree with recent statements about not having success with prototypes until this year.

There is nothing to clear up - and we did not say that we did
not have success with prototypes till this year - what we did
say is that we had problems with robust implementation - the
solution to this problem was the development of our own bearing technology.
"


My comment :
If the Orbo depends on the bearing, how much overunity energy is it able to produce : The difference in friction between a mechincal bearing and an magnetic bearing ? That is not much energy!

Anonymous said...

http://www.steorn.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=61927&page=2

Anonymous said...

Glossary of Revolutionary.........

posts deleted by Crank (with this statement)

"Had a look, and I'd say some of the post crossed that invisible line between 'acceptable scepticism and poking fun' and 'unacceptable rudeness'.

I've hidden the posts that cross the line, and unsunk the thread. But...a reminder that you are entitled to be as sceptical as you want, but there is a line."


Steorn und Drang

A condition in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion are given free expression in response to the confines of rationalism.

cf: Babcat, Crastney, .00007

..............................

Spin Theory

Public relations philosophy espoused by Steorn and involving bosons, hadrons, and morons.

cf: Babcat, Crastney, .00007

..............................

McCarthy's Law: With an NDA you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time.

..............................

McCarthy's second Law some of the people can be fooled without an NDA.

..............................



As usual, rude believers are acceptable but these are "unacceptable rudeness"?

Crank, get a grip.

Anonymous said...

New interview with Sean
http://www.freeenergytimes.com/?p=46

Anonymous said...

http://www.whistleblowerireland.com/

Unknown said...

I got banned again along with everybody else who objected to Al being banned.

Anonymous said...

Sean said he doesn't follow the forum but I think he lies. I think he daily checks the following:

1. Count to a Million (he wants to double check against his list to ensure he hasn't missed a number)

2. Last Poster Wins
(he wants to see how it turns out after all the posters are banned)

Anonymous said...

Hairy, it would be great to have you, Dr. Mike and Alsetalokin together in one place.

Having the forum reduced to the fawning of people like Crastney, Vibrator, 007, Babcat, Thomas, Couldbe, Mrsean2k and the other Steorn arse kissing apologists should turn the place into something as appetizing as boiled kudzu.

Anonymous said...

Mass purge of skeptics on the Steorn forum.

Anonymous said...

Several of the banned Steorn forum users have started to post at the following forum :

http://www.moletrap.co.uk/forum/

Anonymous said...

Please consider adding a link to the banned Steorn users' forum to your links section: http://www.moletrap.co.uk/forum/

Thanks.

Jonathan said...

Those Jury members are gonna look soooo stupid in about a month or so.

Anonymous said...

Why should the jury members look stupid next month ? Steorn didnt show the jury anything. That made Steorn look rather stupid, if you ask me.

Steorn will not show you anything interessting next month. They will only give you a powerpoint slide show. And they will inform us about a new problem and give us a new date for the Orbo, and repeat their old failed promises. That will make Steorn look very smart, I guess.

Anonymous said...

What was this :

http://panacea-bocaf.org/steorn.htm

"If you're a member of the public or a scientific group which can aid in grants for the center or help Steorn please contact Panacea. "

Have Steorn collected any public grants money? Is there a web site where one can check if Steorn have received any irish-grants or EU-grants ?

Anonymous said...

They just their forum... Is this the beginning of the end?

Anonymous said...

The Steorn forum is closed down :

http://www.steorn.com/forum

" Please note that the Steorn public forum has been closed. The forum will return at some point in the future.

Regards,
Sean "

Anonymous said...

I check back about once a month , and now it is gone , ah well ...

Anonymous said...

Check back next month, the web site will be gone as well.

Anonymous said...

Thank God,

I left that Orbo thing early and
didn't waste precious time.
Babcats time didn't seem that precious : )

THE SAINT

Anonymous said...

Change is coming...

http://bit.ly/7gMUkL
http://bit.ly/5CXEhv

Anonymous said...

http://bit.ly/5kXVzu

Anonymous said...

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/adoz3/holiday_fun_steorn_is_back/

Anonymous said...

Not even slightly a cynical attempt to cash in on the Copenhagen Climate Conference then?

Anonymous said...

Steorn now has a Youtube channel (SteornOfficial). They posted a promo there which was later removed.

Someone uploaded a copy here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTAEWpEmt5Y

Is this blog dead? A post about the upcoming events would be nice.