A Critical Review of Over-Unity Claims (Bailey & Grotz, IECEC 1993)

Patrick G. Bailey and Toby Grotz reviewed 26 inventors of claimed over-unity devices for the 28th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference (IECEC), in Atlanta on 8 to 13 August 1993, and chose eleven "for immediate interest and support". Stanley Meyer is one of the eleven. The paper was printed in the conference proceedings, pages 2.905 to 2.910, and again in New Energy News, vol. 1 no. 6, October 1993. The text is online at Higher Intellect.

Meyer kept a copy. He bound the reprint, "Reprinted with Permission" from the proceedings, at the front of his 1995 International Independent Test-Evaluation Report, where it is pages 6 to 13 of the binder: the paper as Meyer bound it. Between its title page and its text, page 7 of the binder is an extract from Ken MacNeill's "Insights into the Proprietary Syndrome", on patent secrecy orders, which is not part of the paper.

It matters to the archive for a second reason: it is the "28th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference (IECEC), August 1993" that Meyer quotes as an endorsement in his 1997 symposium paper:

"This is an accurate representation of the physical phenomena." "It is verified by the testimony of multiple witnesses and repeated demonstration."

What the paper says about Meyer

Table 1 lists him among the 26, as "Meyer, Stanley — Water Fuel Cell Demonstrations", with the 1993 International Symposium on New Energy as its source. The text:

"Stanley Meyer has obtained over 28 patents in both the US and other countries that document his water fuel cell and hydrogen fracturing process technology. He began this work in 1980 and has spent over $1.6 million. Although he has been approached to sell the technology, he says he has no intention to do so and plans to retain control to make sure his invention is brought to the public for the good of mankind. An informative and recommended videotape of his 1993 ISNE presentation is available through the INE."

Table 2, "A Listing of Promising Devices of Great Interest with Documented Demonstrations", holds the eleven. Meyer's row:

The key: documentation exists (Doc), multiple witnesses' testimony (MWs), repeated demonstrations (RDs), currently being researched (Res), large research effort (Eff). The categories are kinds of device, not grades. The paper defines them in its section on sources of information: "As a result of a 1993 ISNE working group, the working devices were categorized into four distinct areas: (1) Solid-State Space-Energy Generators, (2) Rotating Space-Energy Machines, (3) Fusion Conversion Devices, and (4) Hydrogen Energy." Meyer is the only hydrogen entry among the eleven; Storms's cold fusion is 3, Baumann's and Tewari's machines are 2, and the other seven are 1.

Where Meyer's quotations come from

Neither sentence is in the paper as he gives it. The second is the table's two columns for multiple witnesses and repeated demonstrations, which are marked Y for him, turned into a sentence. The first is the wording of a list in the paper's section on possibly misleading results, which sorts any researcher's results into four:

"(1) Lying for attention; (2) Lying for money (funding, stock options, etc.); (3) Inaccurate measurement or misinterpretation of the data or results; and (4) Accurate representation of the physical phenomena."

Meyer read his category 4 in Table 2 as that fourth category, and it is not. The table's 4 is "Hydrogen Energy", the kind of device, from the paper's own definition quoted above. The four-way list is a separate passage about how anyone's results might be interpreted, and the authors do not place any researcher in it: they write only that they "found absolutely no evidence that any one of the researchers we studied in Table 1 belonged specifically in categories (1) or (2)". So "an accurate representation of the physical phenomena" is not something the paper says of Meyer. What it does say is that his claims were documented, witnessed by several people and demonstrated more than once, and that he belonged on a list of eleven devices worth further study.

The definition is on page 9 of the reprint Meyer bound into his 1995 report, so Meyer had that page in his hands.

The same year in the newsletters

Fusion Facts (May 1993) and New Energy News (June 1993) both abstracted Meyer's own 1993 paper, "Atomic Energy Balance of Water … Using Water as Fuel", Proceedings of the International Symposium on New Energy, Denver, 16 to 18 April 1993 (RMRI), pages 389 to 407, 10 figures, whose abstract opens as WFC 424, the Atomic Energy Balance of Water does. Their editor, Hal Fox, wrote: "As is evident from the author's uses of 'buzz words', his paper is not a scientific presentation. There is little data and the several Meyer patents are not cited. In my opinion, Meyer has developed an over-unity method of extracting hydrogen from water and using the hydrogen to fuel his modified engines… We again wish Meyer success in meeting his frequent six-month objectives." Fusion Facts, May 1993, page 9; New Energy News, June 1993, page 4.