Really, you have no clue. "Looking reactionless" and being reactionless are two entirely different things. And pressure from radiation is a well-known and established physical principle and not reactionless at all.

If they had anything real, they would not demonstrate a drive, they would create a minimalistic, clear and reliable lab-setup that demonstrates the effect beyond all doubt and that could be recreated by other teams. Instead, they insist on a relatively complex set-up that cannot easily be recreated but can easily be manipulated. This is the hallmark of scientific fraud: Make grand claims and demonstrate them in a way that looks good but could be entirely due to measurement errors, hidden energy sources and effects, etc. and that cannot be validated by other teams.

Furthermore, if it violates established physics, it needs more than simple scientific proof (i.e. an experiment that other groups can repeat), it needs extraordinary proof. It does not even have simple scientific proof.

For some nice other fraud in this venue, look up the Rossi E-cat or centuries of perpetual motion machines.

Likely this paper was abysmal trash and the reviewer never anticipates his sarcastic remarks could have this effect.

The authors may have proudly declared to be both female and hence may have tried to curry favor.

As a reviewer, I think it is very likely this paper was utterly biased and did not meet sane scientific standards. While it is unprofessional for a reviewer to snap and put in sarcastic remarks like these, they will almost never be the result of sexism, but the result of the pure stupidity of the "research" presented. Also notice that a paper is never rejected based on just one review except in utterly crappy venues.

Personally, I have written reviews that suggested the authors read an undergrad book on the subject or that an undergrad semester thesis may not be the right base for publishing at a good conference. Yes, many, many submitted papers are really that bad.

You know it is a fact-based statement. We cannot have that when gender inequality is discussed! It may turn out that all the severe problems being decried are not actually true (like the gender pay-gap)!

What this will do, obviously, is that papers with all female authorship will now be held to a lower standard, and consequentially will be of worse quality.

He didn't say that they, must be of a higher quality. He said that it's a possibility that shouldn't be ignored. You can't just assume it's not true.

Personally, I think the problem is that we try to use science to evaluate things it's ill-suited to do. "How gender differences affect the experiences that PhD students have when moving into post-doctoral work" is not a subject that's best examined using the scientific method. If one wants to come to a real understanding of this issue I would suggest asking a bunch of PhDs, both male and female, to write essays about it from a purely subjective point of view, and put those essays into a collection. It would certainly be much more enlightening than survey data and whatever various statistics were compiled in an effort to make a scientific study out of the whole thing.

I love science. It's great method for discovering truth. But I hate it when people try to apply science to social issues.

I own a 2001 Honda Insight hybrid modified to be a PHEV and plugged in nightly to charge on geothermal power.... and a Ford Ranger ;) The "why" is obvious, because I have regular needs to carry big heavy things, now that I own land in the countryside. Back when I had no such need... I didn't own any such vehicle.

I guess it's hard for him to imagine that a woman would have a need to carry large and/or heavy items?

And the crazy thing is, they did consult with male colleagues before publishing. The reviewer just assumed that because two women submitted a paper with a conclusion that he disagreed with, that it's specifically because they're women "making ideologically biased assumptions" who refuse to talk to men.

Oh hey, since we've got (assumedly) a lot of physics nerds on this thread, and because my mind hasn't suddenly stopped being curious about random topics even though I grew old: here's one of my more recent things that left me with unanswered questions:

One of the commonly cited tritium-generating reactions is 7Li+n(>2.466 MeV) -> 4He + 3H. But is 7Li not also capable of transmutation to 8Li via slow neutron capture? If so would that not yield a 16.004 MeV beta to 8Be, and then immediately into 2 alphas with an additional energy of 0.092 MeV? If so, is there not potential for a future nuclear reactor? Spallation currently yields neutrons for about 25MeV each. If one could cut that in half or less - which I don't see any laws of physics in the way, just improvements in accelerator efficiencies and the spallation process - could this not yield a net positive, using direct deceleration/capture of the beta to generate power without having to suffer Carnot losses? And if so, would that not be a very desireable reactor - nonproliferative, abundant fuel, harmless waste, high ratio of fuel to energy conversion, direct spacecraft thrust possibilities, etc? Or am I totally off base here?

Haha, my concept as a child was to have a buoyant container on wheels in a tube full of water that would rise up, roll down a ramp on the other side, and re-enter the tube through an airlock on the bottom.

Wish my dad had taken the time to tell me why it wouldn't work rather than just saying "perpetual motion is impossible".

Or, rather than all of physics being wrong, maybe they have an erroneous measurement setup.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't investigate anomalous measurements. But at this stage you shouldn't be writing fluff pieces with page after page of how much your new technology will change spaceflight. You should be publishing a paper with a name like "Measurement of anomalous thrust in a microwave apparatus operated in a hard vacuum" and trying to avoid the media insomuch as possible - and when you need to talk with them, trying to explain "we don't know what's going on... we have some theories but they're controversial... we need to do more testing." etc.