I do think people miss one small aspect of this story. How long has it been since we've had a device built that we've no understanding of the principles of it's operation? I think that's an amazing fluke and (if the effect is genuine) something worth celebrating (just because it's so rare).
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060325232140.h...
> Thin superconducting films are predicted to be highly reflective mirrors for gravitational waves at microwave frequencies. The quantum mechanical non-localizability of the negatively charged Cooper pairs, which is protected from the localizing effect of decoherence by an energy gap, causes the pairs to undergo non-picturable, non-geodesic motion in the presence of a gravitational wave.
The issue is that distorting gravity has far more consequential effects due to generally relativity than just moving something. You are actually distorting time too.
That explains the significance of the floating hole-puncher confetti in the movie Primer.
"To date, the mechanism of action of paracetamol is not completely understood."
and:
"It is the most commonly used medication for pain and fever in both the United States and Europe."
"Not completely understood" is not the same as "we have no idea why it works", but still I find it telling for such a popular product.
edit: link
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9700789...
In this case, all the em-drive test only give a very weak force that is very difficult to measure and may be caused by other causes (probably thermal because the device gets hot or something equivalent to an electromagnet because it use a current).
For example: for 30 years we had research blasting cholesterol and saturated fats as evil, because predecessors had that result, some arguments were completely circular (saturated fats are bad because they raise blood cholesterol, and blood cholesterol is bad because a bad thing raises it... with no research trying to find how much any of the two really affect health).
Another example is thyroid diagnosis, after discovery of TSH test, medics started to use it exclusively, and accuse patients with normal results but with severe and advanced symptoms of having psychological issues, also many thyroid doctors never bother in ever asking for other relevant tests, like t3 and antibodies, and the TSH tests frequently use outright dated target ranges, with medics skeptical of new research because the old way is mostly working in their experience (since by their definition, people with symptoms but normal values aren't sick, thus their treatment is 100% effective, since it helps all sick people, and the "non-sick" are delusional and thus it is failure of other medical fields that they are sick)
Other example is any medic that saw patients improve under certain treatment, and then start to always use that treatment in a cargo cult manner, without paying attention to any research that proves that it is misguided, like all those kids forced to take ADHD medicine in their early life.
November 2016 Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents Cristin E. Kearns, DDS, MBA1,2; Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH1,3,4; Stanton A. Glantz, PhD JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(11):1680-1685. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394
The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD.
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article...
(PS - I've known a Shaman or two, and they were quite sensible people, for the most part, except when they started mixing in miscellaneous white people's trashy magic.)