I can't be 100% sure, but here's why I believe he was had. First, this community is one in which he would be rewarded more for outing a hoax than he would get from some internal desire to "have fun at others expense." That kind of thing doesn't go over well here.

There's also a saying, "He who says the most in an argument is in the wrong." electromagnetic spoke a lot to "cover his trail." I believe he was hopeful that the hoax was not a hoax. I was had too, I thought, wow, that's clever, if it's true the world will change. I was hopeful.

It's okay to be wrong.

I suppose you could say I believe he was had as well, because of intuition. Intuition is knowing something without knowing how you know it. I don't believe he would have spent so much time supporting the idea if he thought it was a hoax. He even back-peddled a little bit by saying "What I said was true even if this isn't true."

If he believed it was a hoax, why not say, "This is probably a hoax, but here's the science..."

> First, this community is one in which he would be rewarded more for outing a hoax than he would get from some internal desire to "have fun at others expense." That kind of thing doesn't go over well here.

I think that is exactly what makes it more rather than less likely that he's telling the truth. It's an honest admission that could get him some flak.

After all, why admit to this now if it wasn't the truth.

With a moniker like electromagnetic and a fair amount of accurate knowledge at his disposal he threw off enough 'good stuff' to confuse the hell out of me. I had to go to some trouble to get the "'wtf', this guy seems to know what he's talking about, so how come he defends it?" feeling out of my system.

I actually suspected that he was doing it on purpose but I wasn't brave enough to call him out on it. And I don't feel bad for admitting that, I really think that it was a pretty good prank.

When he said 'it is true, even it if isn't true' that is exactly what it is. The basic principle is sound, this implementation is absolutely not.

FWIW, I've been a member of fieldlines for many years and one of our pet activities there is to debunk bullshit renewable energy schemes.

Another thing that threw me off was that they claimed to be using some kind of solvent, but then when I got to the bit where it worked indoors I realized it must certainly be a hoax, or at least a gross misunderstanding of electro-chemical processes. The 'has to be moist' was a pretty bad sign that something else was going on here, the metals another (hair being a pretty much perfect insulator).

So, after all that the only questions remaining are:

How do they do it ?

No way those fluorescent lamps are staying lit without some additional source of energy spliced in there somehow.

Are they themselves still deluded by their invention ? (hard to imagine, given the above)

Are they aware of the basic flaws and are they keeping up a pretense hoping the media attention will die off (that usually doesn't take very long), or are they in too deep now ?

And congratulations to electromagnetic on a pretty good prank, to quote GWB, fool me once ... ;)