Perpetuity

Have you noticed that there are a lot of perpetual motion machines, insanely efficient engines or pumps or gearboxes or power generation systems on the internet?

I think most of them survive indefinitely because to seriously test them would often require that they be professionally constructed, instrumented into a high quality test rig, and then tested by independent professionals, all of which are beyond the reach of inventors.  Until that happens, the inventors can continue releasing video's of themselves with mockups, diagrams about how they work, and excited testimonials.  They always approach universities and research institutes and companies looking for investment and validation, and they almost never get it.  Who wants to spend $500,000 to show that something is not a perpetual motion machine?  If the claims are more compatible with thermodynamics, they are still likely to violate other constraints - be impossible to build, or be unmaintainable or just unbalanced.

What is needed is a sort of reverse KickStarter or Pozible, in which sceptics, institutions and companies volunteer small amounts of their resources to collectively clear away the rubbish by testing it properly.  There is no shame in NASA spending $5000 to disprove an outlandish claim if many other institutions joined in.  Perhaps it could be called KickOuter or ImPozible.

(Interestingly, the best candidates would still attract the most funding (except from bully-boy sceptics, I suppose).