5 ms·
Replication of room-temperature superconductor fails to show superconductivity
- jonnycomputer 3y ago>The Chinese team is not rejecting the results obtained by the team at UoR—instead, they suggest it is possible that the nitrogen dopant present in their material was of insufficient quantity to produce the desired effect. They also note that in their sample, the dopant was unevenly distributed. They suggest further testing is needed to verify the results obtained by the group at UoR. Replication can be hard. Failure to replicate shouldn't lead to immediate rejection.
- edgyquant 3y agoIf something can’t be reproduced it definitely should be rejected.
- wongarsu 3y agoYes, but one team failing to reproduce it doesn't mean it can't be reproduced. Once there's two or three teams unable to reproduce it we can be confident to say "the described method doesn't work".
- AstralStorm 3y agoThat usually means the initial team did not describe the experiment sufficiently accurately. (Unless it is fraud.)
- marcosdumay 3y agoOr didn't control it well enough, and the important details are something completely different. Or that they made a mistake.
- misterprime 3y agoI see a juggler handling five balls. I succeed at three balls. I fail at four balls. Have I proven that it's impossible to juggle five balls at once?
- willis936 3y agoI see a juggler handling an unspecified quantity of balls. They will not tell anyone how many balls are being handled. How do I know what they accomplished? How would I replicate it without knowing?
- jjk166 3y agoYou've proven that the juggler's instructions alone are insufficient to juggle five balls. In this case, the juggler presumably has muscle memory you don't, which is equivalent to running an experiment on equipment that behaves differently. Or perhaps the juggler didn't convey the special trick you need for four or more balls.
- tonymillion 3y agoMaybe the juggler was juggling 5 balls, but they made a mistake with serendipitous consequences and then told everyone they juggled 5 balls, when they really don’t know how they were juggling 5 balls. In fact one of them might have been a different sized ball or maybe it was a cube. Worse still, they won’t let you check their original balls to see if they actually are capable of being juggled. Lol ball juggling /s
- kurthr 3y agoIn this case I mostly agree, but more generally there are so many more wrong ways to do something difficult that you could have 100 failed replications and 2 reproductions and it would just mean 2 people did it right.
- clavalle 3y ago'Cannot' being the operative word. 'Did not' does not necessarily mean 'cannot'.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoexactly.
- 11101010001100 3y agoIf we want to go down the pedant route, the original group did not share their samples, therefore a true 'cannot reproduce' claim will remain out reach until they do so.
- CamperBob2 3y agoReplication can be hard. Failure to replicate shouldn't lead to immediate rejection. My understanding, though, is that this researcher has a very problematic track record. It may not be appropriate to give him the benefit of the doubt here.
- chmod600 3y agoMaybe we should just ignore all findings until another team has independently reproduced the result. Even if what the original team concludes is true, a repro failure could indicate that it's under-documented. And if it's under-documented, then has science really moved forward?
- tensor 3y agoOr we could come back to reality and listen to the actual professionals about why the reproduction might not have worked, because of known issues in the reproduction. The only conclusion I can come to is that the comments here are exceptionally low value.
- olliej 3y agoAt the same time extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The refusal to allow anyone to use their samples, or to apparently provide sufficient information to allow someone else to create the material they claim to be a room temperature superconductor, leans to it reasonably being an incorrect claim. Others point to past behavior as indicating this is fraudulent, but I'm just going to assume it's accidental error.
- j_maffe 3y agoSurprising coming from the fraud that published/retracted previous paper.
- ajcp 3y agoSemi-related: I find the seemingly simple (or basic?) issue of cooling to be really interesting. Mainly because so much energy, effort, and cost is spent on cooling, and our tech and manufacturing industries depend so much on it, yet I don't see anyone trying to "disrupt" it. I very well could not be plugged in enough to know if anyone is or isn't though. That being said it seems like one could offer cooling solutions that would cost them very little after initial setup, like providing infrastructure in places that are "naturally" very cool. This would probably be either deep in the oceans (I believe Microsoft piloted deep-submerged servers) or high up in the atmosphere, or even space itself. Just a thought exercise I suppose...
- sebzim4500 3y agoIf you are trying to cool something to <10K, I don't think it matters all that much what temperature you start at. Unless you start at space, which is already that cold (in shadow) but sending and operating stuff in space is hardly a cheap alternative.
- ajcp 3y agoYeah that's was what I suspected. Outside of space-based infrastructure or at massive crush-depths in the ocean the "naturally" cool places wouldn't really make a dent in the required temperatures. I don't wonder then if, when the cost of build goes down and speed of transmission goes up, space based infra for these things will be a big industry.
- jamiek88 3y agoIf anything it’s a lot harder to cool things in space because you are limited to radiating it. The ISS has massive radiators almost as large as the station itself at 1800 square ft of radiator panels.
- ajcp 3y agoThat makes sense. I don't know why I just assumed the vacuum of space would provide a perfect and passive cooling environment, but of course that's not the case.
- apienx 3y agoThe title of the paper is: "Evidence of near-ambient superconductivity in a N-doped lutetium hydride". The Nature editors (and perhaps the authors themselves) covered their backs. They previously had to retract a related paper (from the same group) with much bolder claims. Both sides are putting their credibility on the line. And this is good Science.
- fsh 3y agoThe retracted paper contained obviously faked data. This is not "good science" by any means.