Ah, if we’re going to quote that article let’s not cherry pick one side of the argument, the Drive did a good job of presenting the other:
"To help contextualize the science or pseudoscience behind these patents and what it may or may not signify, I spoke with Dr. Mark Gubrud, a University of North Carolina physicist who teaches Peace, War & Defense courses and whose PhD is in ultra-low temperature and nanoscale experimental physics. Like many physicists, Gubrud has for years encountered claims of room-temperature superconductors and so-called spacetime metric engineering:
"In the past, I have attended conferences of ‘free energy’ and ‘cold fusion’ cranks, and encountered very similar claims. The claim to have developed, or know how to develop, a room-temperature superconductor is a perennial; so are claims based on some woolly physics to alter space, inertial mass or the laws of motion. One sees these things at the meetings and in the publications that constitute a crackpot hobby industry which is mostly about the vanity of its participants.
"Pais’s patents flow as an intimidating river of mumbo-jumbo that most trained physicists would recognize as nonsense, although many might simply disengage in confusion, and there are always some who might even be credulous. Of what, however, is hard to say, as it is not really clear what Pais is even claiming, apart from the room-temperature superconductor which, if it were true, would be huge news.
“Pais deploys fairly sophisticated babble to make this sound plausible to those who know what real physics sounds like, but don’t understand much of it. Which is likely to include most patent examiners, journalists, and Pais’s own enablers in the Navy.”
I asked for Gubrud’s opinion on why Dr. James Sheehy would vouch for Pais’ patents, to which he replied that it’s likely someone at NAWCAD has been misled or fooled:
“I don’t know why Sheehy defended Pais’s patents. I am certain it’s not because they really make some kind of sense. I suspect the story is just one professional charlatan who has embedded himself in the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, plus one or a few supervisors he’s managed to fool. It’s possible, of course, that it is a bigger story which involves some actual ‘experiments’ and expenditure of funds, which is now being protected from scrutiny.”