Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/5ewj86/so_nasas_em...
This is a fascinating study about the politics and social aspect of science -- i.e., how it's actually done.
I'm just a layman, but so far it looks like this is experimental error. I never knew there were so many ways to screw something like this up!
Having said that, this is a win either way. It teaches all of us about rigorous science, it allows far-fetched ideas to be taken somewhat seriously as long as there is some sort of experimental evidence, and it provides a forum for practicing scientists and interested laymen to cross-pollinate. It's a really good thing. (Only probably no warp drive involved)
If you're curious, you can find an easy to understand theory about why breaking the conservation of momentum lets you build a perpetual-motion machine, creating infinite energy.
Then, you can find a paper from the inventor of the EM drive explaining why it won't allow that to happen. His explanation spectacularly violates special relatively in a way we could easily detect.
For instance, there are quite a few hobbyests that are building their own rigs. There's discussion about noise control, radiation leakage, resonance, and so forth.
For the more theory-minded, there's a great discussion about empirical data versus theory, which you allude to. At the end of the day, of course, if you've got data, you've got data. Once the errors are taken out of the system, observation beats theory hands-down.
I know scientists would probably much rather have a conversation around "This is science, dang it, go read a book!" but for us layman schmucks, the really cool part is a conversation around "This is why science is what it is"
(Note: I'm not addressing you directly. I've just noticed a lot of mockery and impatience from some of the scientific community, and that's a shame. Better to use this as a teaching moment in my opinion)
But how do you go about distinguishing signal from noise? That's ultimately the reason data say far less, on their own, than they seem to: because interpretation of data is at least as important as how you collect them, but interpretation brings in all the gooey things people really want to wish away. Or put more bluntly, observation can't "beat" theory, because theory is the way you decide which observations to make, how to carry out those observations, and how to understand the products of the observation. Theory and observation are inseparable; in a sense, all observation is at once theoretical, and all theory is at once observational.
But it seems that not all errors have not been taken out of the system