4 ms·

This is the same group that already had their publication retracted by Nature the last time they made such a claim. Maybe Nature's reviewers got better and this

This is the same group that already had their publication retracted by Nature the last time they made such a claim. Maybe Nature's reviewers got better and this time it is legit, but I wouldn't count on that. So there's nothing to see here until this gets independently replicated. They totally deserve all the scrutiny and resistance they seem to be getting.

m-watson 4y ago
This write up of it [0] tries to address that a little but I agree that all the scrutiny is deserved and should continue. "The previous paper has been resubmitted to Nature with new data that validates the earlier work, Dias says. The new data was collected outside the lab, at the Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories in front of an audience of scientists who saw the superconducting transition live. A similar approach has been taken with the new paper. " [0] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-viable-superconducting-material-temperature-pressure.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-viable-superconducting-materia...
- sigmoid10 4y ago
  Oh, I want to believe. But I will do so only when those other groups publish their own results.
- scythe 4y ago
  The good news is that 1 GPa (10 kbar) is a lot easier to achieve than hundreds of GPa, which means that replication will be much easier. The previous "room temperature" claim involved around 2 Mbar or 200 GPa. For comparison, the detonation pressure of a high explosive is around 50 GPa. So, hopefully, this time, we won't have to wait as long.
  - mannerheim 4y ago
    Only if one can get ahold of the material. > However, outside access may fall short of the community’s hopes. Dias and Salamat have founded a startup, Unearthly Materials, which, Dias said, has already raised over $20 million in funding from investors including the CEOs of Spotify and OpenAI. They’ve also recently applied for a patent on the lutetium hydride material, which would deter them from mailing out samples. “We have clear, detailed instructions on how to make our samples,” Dias said. “We are not going to distribute this material, considering the proprietary nature of our processes and the intellectual property rights that exist.” He suggested that “certain methodologies and processes” are also off the table.
    - kloch 4y ago
      This is exactly the kind of thing the patent system was intended to prevent. You have to share enough details of your secret sauce so others can replicate it, even if you intend to not license it or charge outrageous licensing fees. That way the knowledge is out there today, can be expanded on by other researchers/inventors, and at a specific date in the future anyone can use it. It also helps reduce fraudulent claims of new discoveries.
  - _a_a_a_ 4y ago
    I don't understand, and if you could illuminate it would be very helpful, how are such pressures achieved and maintained even for the shortest time without destroying the apparatus that holds it?
    - jjk166 4y ago
      These are generally done with diamond anvils which concentrate force on an extremely small area.
      - _a_a_a_ 4y ago
        I understand that but it sort of dodges the issue that such enormous pressures must exceed the strength of any material, however small that pressure is contained in.
        jjk166 4y ago
        The compressive strength of typical diamond is about 470 GPa, so no this is very well within the strength of the material. The current record for highest compression achieved in a lab is 770 GPa using a special form of diamond.
        _a_a_a_ 4y ago
        Note to silent downvoters, this is what an answer looks like. (Thanks jjk166)
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - scythe 4y ago
      Wikipedia provides a nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell Contra the diagram, I don't believe the diamonds in a real anvil are faceted.
slackdog 4y ago
Nature has a well known bias for papers with sensational titles.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dekhn 4y ago
  I think this is working as intended. We often joke that if something is publishing in Nature it's almost certainly wrong. But realistically, at any time in any field there are only a small number of people who are truly pushing the state of the art (I'm referring to discovery science, not reference science- IE, a focus on adding 1% additional knowledge to our already copious understandings. Any I think tthose people shouldn't have to follow the normal rules about scientific publishing: I want them to push the limits as much as possible. That means occasionally publishing something that contains a mistake (not a falsification), and then being willing to have it retracted (without consequence to future publication). These sorts of fields tend to self-correct because somethign that's wrong isn't reproducible, and all these scientists are working to reproduce each other's results (note: both the people who thing Dias faked his results were going to take the new protocol home and attempt to repro it in their hands ASAP). In a sense, it's being willing to accept a higher false positive/false negative rate so you don't filter out some true positives.
feoren 4y ago
> a handful of experts spotted unusual patterns in the data > a year later ... they detailed an unusual and complicated method [for processing the data] regarding which a team claims: > [We] proved basically mathematically that the raw data are not measured in the laboratory; they are fabricated So multiple different peers have pointed out multiple different times that this team is publishing "exactly the results you'd want to see to confirm superconductivity", and then a year later publishing fake-looking raw data or overly-complex "data processing" that magically gives them the exact result they needed to get published. These guys don't even seem particularly good at their fraud: "We just made the most important discovery in the history of superconductivity!" [Immediately]: Okay but what about all this bullshit here? "Oh that? (nervous laughter) ha ha, well, see, the thing about that is ... [a year later] ... there, see, here's the raw data; we were just processing the data in a way we never mentioned before. We didn't tell you about it because, um, well, um, we ... forgot?" [Immediately]: Okay but this raw data is obviously fake "Oh, well, um, psych! We were just kidding about that result! Ha ha ha, take-backsies. Um yeah, we take it back." [A year later] "Hey we did the result again! This time it's for real serious realsies. We have the result here. We did the result thing again. It's the exact same result but better this time. Guys?" Why is anyone taking them seriously? Lying in a professional context is basically never OK. If someone is shown to be lying, they should never work in that field again, nor any field that bestows upon them any sort of trust. Lying is a big deal; it should absolutely be career-killing. It's not something people just do once and then get over. A few weeks ago people on Hacker News were talking about how to help their children cheat at school, like it's just a normal thing. It absolutely blows my mind that this would be seen as OK.
- lisper 4y ago
  > A few weeks ago people on Hacker News were talking about how to help their children cheat at school, like it's just a normal thing. Link?
  - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
    Yeah - like does it work? Is it costly ? do I need to sneak an iphone in ? What if the kids rat on me ! ;-) (sarcasm, of course).
perihelions 4y ago
Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32993556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32993556 ("Retraction of Room-temperature superconductivity in a carbonaceous sulfur hydride (nature.com)", 46 comments)
donnowhy 4y ago
> until this gets independently replicated. hmm, very interesting. I don't think it works like that anymore. The next step has got to be commercial availability. else investors to would loose money or worse, some Chinese company could "steal" the future profits from this valuable novel technology painstakingly developed by the publishing group.
- sigmoid10 4y ago
  Even if it turns out to be true, this result is still very far from commercial applications. It would be a fantastic thread to continue for academic research groups at universities, but pretty much noone else will care about it.
kloch 4y ago
> Reactions by 10 independent experts contacted by Quanta ranged from unbridled excitement to outright dismissal, with many of the experts expressing some version of cautious optimism. This is exactly how an arbitrary group of scientists should react to extraordinary claims like this. Not 100% dismissal because of the history or provenance of the researchers, not 100% acceptance without independent replication.

m-watson 4y ago

This write up of it [0] tries to address that a little but I agree that all the scrutiny is deserved and should continue. "The previous paper has been resubmitted to Nature with new data that validates the earlier work, Dias says. The new data was collected outside the lab, at the Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories in front of an audience of scientists who saw the superconducting transition live. A similar approach has been taken with the new paper. " [0] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-viable-superconducting-material-temperature-pressure.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-viable-superconducting-materia...

sigmoid10 4y ago
Oh, I want to believe. But I will do so only when those other groups publish their own results.
scythe 4y ago
The good news is that 1 GPa (10 kbar) is a lot easier to achieve than hundreds of GPa, which means that replication will be much easier. The previous "room temperature" claim involved around 2 Mbar or 200 GPa. For comparison, the detonation pressure of a high explosive is around 50 GPa. So, hopefully, this time, we won't have to wait as long.
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Only if one can get ahold of the material. > However, outside access may fall short of the community’s hopes. Dias and Salamat have founded a startup, Unearthly Materials, which, Dias said, has already raised over $20 million in funding from investors including the CEOs of Spotify and OpenAI. They’ve also recently applied for a patent on the lutetium hydride material, which would deter them from mailing out samples. “We have clear, detailed instructions on how to make our samples,” Dias said. “We are not going to distribute this material, considering the proprietary nature of our processes and the intellectual property rights that exist.” He suggested that “certain methodologies and processes” are also off the table.
  - kloch 4y ago
    This is exactly the kind of thing the patent system was intended to prevent. You have to share enough details of your secret sauce so others can replicate it, even if you intend to not license it or charge outrageous licensing fees. That way the knowledge is out there today, can be expanded on by other researchers/inventors, and at a specific date in the future anyone can use it. It also helps reduce fraudulent claims of new discoveries.
- _a_a_a_ 4y ago
  I don't understand, and if you could illuminate it would be very helpful, how are such pressures achieved and maintained even for the shortest time without destroying the apparatus that holds it?
  - jjk166 4y ago
    These are generally done with diamond anvils which concentrate force on an extremely small area.
    - _a_a_a_ 4y ago
      I understand that but it sort of dodges the issue that such enormous pressures must exceed the strength of any material, however small that pressure is contained in.
      - jjk166 4y ago
        The compressive strength of typical diamond is about 470 GPa, so no this is very well within the strength of the material. The current record for highest compression achieved in a lab is 770 GPa using a special form of diamond.
        _a_a_a_ 4y ago
        Note to silent downvoters, this is what an answer looks like. (Thanks jjk166)
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - scythe 4y ago
    Wikipedia provides a nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell Contra the diagram, I don't believe the diamonds in a real anvil are faceted.

slackdog 4y ago

Nature has a well known bias for papers with sensational titles.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dekhn 4y ago
I think this is working as intended. We often joke that if something is publishing in Nature it's almost certainly wrong. But realistically, at any time in any field there are only a small number of people who are truly pushing the state of the art (I'm referring to discovery science, not reference science- IE, a focus on adding 1% additional knowledge to our already copious understandings. Any I think tthose people shouldn't have to follow the normal rules about scientific publishing: I want them to push the limits as much as possible. That means occasionally publishing something that contains a mistake (not a falsification), and then being willing to have it retracted (without consequence to future publication). These sorts of fields tend to self-correct because somethign that's wrong isn't reproducible, and all these scientists are working to reproduce each other's results (note: both the people who thing Dias faked his results were going to take the new protocol home and attempt to repro it in their hands ASAP). In a sense, it's being willing to accept a higher false positive/false negative rate so you don't filter out some true positives.

feoren 4y ago

> a handful of experts spotted unusual patterns in the data > a year later ... they detailed an unusual and complicated method [for processing the data] regarding which a team claims: > [We] proved basically mathematically that the raw data are not measured in the laboratory; they are fabricated So multiple different peers have pointed out multiple different times that this team is publishing "exactly the results you'd want to see to confirm superconductivity", and then a year later publishing fake-looking raw data or overly-complex "data processing" that magically gives them the exact result they needed to get published. These guys don't even seem particularly good at their fraud: "We just made the most important discovery in the history of superconductivity!" [Immediately]: Okay but what about all this bullshit here? "Oh that? (nervous laughter) ha ha, well, see, the thing about that is ... [a year later] ... there, see, here's the raw data; we were just processing the data in a way we never mentioned before. We didn't tell you about it because, um, well, um, we ... forgot?" [Immediately]: Okay but this raw data is obviously fake "Oh, well, um, psych! We were just kidding about that result! Ha ha ha, take-backsies. Um yeah, we take it back." [A year later] "Hey we did the result again! This time it's for real serious realsies. We have the result here. We did the result thing again. It's the exact same result but better this time. Guys?" Why is anyone taking them seriously? Lying in a professional context is basically never OK. If someone is shown to be lying, they should never work in that field again, nor any field that bestows upon them any sort of trust. Lying is a big deal; it should absolutely be career-killing. It's not something people just do once and then get over. A few weeks ago people on Hacker News were talking about how to help their children cheat at school, like it's just a normal thing. It absolutely blows my mind that this would be seen as OK.

lisper 4y ago
> A few weeks ago people on Hacker News were talking about how to help their children cheat at school, like it's just a normal thing. Link?
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Yeah - like does it work? Is it costly ? do I need to sneak an iphone in ? What if the kids rat on me ! ;-) (sarcasm, of course).

perihelions 4y ago

Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32993556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32993556 ("Retraction of Room-temperature superconductivity in a carbonaceous sulfur hydride (nature.com)", 46 comments)

donnowhy 4y ago

> until this gets independently replicated. hmm, very interesting. I don't think it works like that anymore. The next step has got to be commercial availability. else investors to would loose money or worse, some Chinese company could "steal" the future profits from this valuable novel technology painstakingly developed by the publishing group.

sigmoid10 4y ago
Even if it turns out to be true, this result is still very far from commercial applications. It would be a fantastic thread to continue for academic research groups at universities, but pretty much noone else will care about it.

kloch 4y ago

> Reactions by 10 independent experts contacted by Quanta ranged from unbridled excitement to outright dismissal, with many of the experts expressing some version of cautious optimism. This is exactly how an arbitrary group of scientists should react to extraordinary claims like this. Not 100% dismissal because of the history or provenance of the researchers, not 100% acceptance without independent replication.