From r/futurology.
Continuing the saga. Sorry if this sounds discriminatory (because it is), but I'm hesitant to trust science coming out of China. All results of this EM/Cannae drive research done in America are presented in press releases. RED FLAG. That is not how science is usually presented. I want to see empirical test results presented quantitatively in a journal. Shit, just throw something up on arxiv.org, it doesn't have to be Nature magazine or whatever. Until the researchers accomplish that, I'm done (...but secretly I find this incredibly exciting and I will be following updates like a coke addict doing lines). Flag, that post is easily the best thing I've ever seen on /r/futurology, it's usually speculative garbage. Good find. Edit: there are some compelling sources listed in a comment of the /r/ futurology thread. This does look promising! Again, I do intend to look through everything in great detail when I have more time, because this will require a lot of thinking.
Regarding speculation, do you see any value in anybodies speculation? I think modern sci-fi has hit a wall, and there's an argument that some aspect of future science is motivated by science fiction. Don't we have a need for at least some people to be thinking of new and different things? For inspiration?
The answer to every question you've posed is a resounding "yes". Honestly, we are not throwing enough resources at this particular endeavor. The ratio of potential benefit vs. "risk" (that they're wrong) is monstrous. The funding put towards this and the lessons learned will then serve as a starting point for building a system capable of more easily verifying or disproving similar claims in the future. I'm a huge skeptic of the Cannae and EM drives, yes. I have been trained time and time again to be skeptical of such bold claims. Consider the case of faster than light neutrinos, where the involved scientists handled everything much more professionally. They sat on their testing, chewed on it until they felt they'd exhausted every possible explanation, compiled their thoughts and data into a paper, and then released everything for review in published articles. Essentially they said "Hey, even we don't believe this, please help us explain and most likely falsify our results". Turned out to be a loose cable. What the EM/Cannae drive folks have done is say "WE THINK WE MAY POSSIBLY HAVE SOMETHING, TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW!". Science should be methodical and precise, and as such progresses at a pace far slower than we'd all like to see. Some people (I'm looking at you, /r/futurology) seem oblivious to this idea. When it comes to sci-fi, I encourage you to dream as big as the human mind permits. When it comes to actual science, show me the math. No math = skepticism. Really sell me that you've got a solid experimental setup, etc.