3 ms·
There's a good discussion of this at Quanta[1]: > Yet Hamlin and other researchers insist that the group’s past requires that today’s historic claims be met wi
by nl 4y ago
There's a good discussion of this at Quanta[1]:
> Yet Hamlin and other researchers insist that the group’s past requires that today’s historic claims be met with historic levels of scrutiny.
[snip]
> Most recently, in 2020 Dias and his co-authors published a study of a carbonaceous sulfur hydride (CSH) that hit its critical transition at around 14 degrees Celsius (57.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and 267 gigapascals. Almost immediately, a handful of experts spotted unusual patterns in the data used to verify the material’s response to magnetic fields. When Dias and his frequent collaborator, Ashkan Salamat, a physicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas released their raw data a year later in the form of a 149-page document, they detailed an unusual and complicated method for eliminating background magnetic interference — one they said was necessary for them to detect the tiny magnetic field rejected by the small sample. This method was inconsistent with how they’d described the procedure in the original paper, which led Nature to issue a retraction last September.
[snip]
> Dias defends his work vigorously. In the months since the retraction, Dias has conducted additional experiments on the CSH material at Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories. In these, he invited independent scientists to observe the material’s superconducting transition. He recently submitted a new manuscript to Nature that repeats the claim of high-temperature superconductivity in CSH with rigor he insists will dispel past allegations.
[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/room-temperature-superconductor-discovery-meets-with-resistance-20230308/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/room-temperature-superconduct...
- munchler 4y agoThis part also made me wonder: > “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.” How do the instructions work if the processes are proprietary? It seems self-contradictory.
- lallysingh 4y agoThey're saying that they can reproduce the process, but don't want anyone else to.
- aperrien 4y agoThen they should readily produce samples, so others can verify their claims.
- XorNot 4y agoYep - this reeks. When the conclusion of their "necessary IP constraints" is "no one else will be able to verify the material exists or try and make it by the same process" then this turns into junk science. It's some guy just saying "trust me bro" except he's already been caught out committing academic misconduct. The history of scientific fraud is full of mysteriously uniquely special researchers who were only able to get their results in their own labs, with their own equipment, when they alone were using it. No end of "free energy" charlatans do the same thing.
- lallysingh 4y agoAgreed, I think this is probably more BS.
- nl 4y ago> How do the instructions work if the processes are proprietary? It seems self-contradictory. This is pretty normal in materials science. You can produce a super amazing product you keep the recipe as secret as possible.
- mojomark 4y agoEven with work completed at National Laboratories? I can see protecting the information due to national security concerns, but rice-bowling knowledge for financial gain (to an individual or otherwise) seems contradictory to the point of funding basic research with tax payer dollars.
- neuronexmachina 4y agoOof: > In a 2021 talk organized by the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science and later posted to YouTube, Dias said “We recently raised $20 million just to, you know, focus on the science part of this. And these are the investors that we used for this kind of technology.” At that moment (43:25 in the video) a list of names appears on the screen. Under the category labeled “Investors (Series A),” the names include Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify. Following the publication of this article, a representative for Dias told Quanta that those were “aspirational statements,” that the company had not raised the money, and that the names listed were prospective investors.