3 ms·

The FTL neutrino paper was not a fraud, but a genuine error. The publicity was practically, “This can’t be right, but here’s what we saw.”

marcosdumay 3y ago
It's my impression, and it seems to be the consensus here that it is very unlikely that this is a mistake. This is either very real or completely fabricated. You don't have a piece of ceramic keeping its distance to a magnet by some unexpected phenomenon or measurement error. And given the easiness in reproducing the study, there doesn't seem to be any point in fabricating it.
- XorNot 3y ago
  The main worry is whether we're dealing with wholly rational actors. People convince themselves they're seeing an effect, and then seemingly completely erratic things to try and prove it on the conviction that with just a bit more effort they'll get it for real. Like you'd question why someone would photoshop results[1] in a paper, because surely they'd have to realize they're fabricating data, but they go ahead and do it anyway. The videos are convincing but are they of what they really purport to show? I agree - what would be the point of fabricating it. But weirder things have happened in the breadth of human experience. [1] https://thenextweb.com/news/who-scientists-used-photoshop-to-doctor-images-in-cancer-research https://thenextweb.com/news/who-scientists-used-photoshop-to...
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    This is very much the truth. The scariest founders during due diligence are the ones that are totally convincing, true believers and yet utterly wrong. They've even convinced themselves, but that failed to convince mother nature. It can be super hard to detect this.
  - Jweb_Guru 3y ago
    I will say this, I haven't found the "it's not real" responses very compelling either. I've also found that people who actually work in the field seem less skeptical than knowledgeable people adjacent to the field. If it's not fraud, it's at least something new. Here are the reasons I've seen provided by adjacent folks: Nonscientific objections: * it was published in a low h-index journal (not a scientific objection) * poor formatting, misspelled title (not a scientific objection) * patented and has a company (not a scientific objection) * seems too simple, it has to be more complex than that, how could we have missed that? (not a scientific objection, also rather ahistorical) I consider all of these pretty irrelevant given that the authors are not no-names and the actual paper makes clear claims, does exactly what everyone says you should be able to do if you have a real superconductor (show a video of it floating!) and makes replication easy. If it's straight up fraud it will be easy to discover. There were also many pseudoscientific objections raised by field-adjacent people that I found uncompelling, responses from people actually in the field in parentheses: * The first video looks like normal copper, the second like other diamagnetic materials or is otherwise unconvincing (not evidence against it being superconducting, at least one materials science lab had several members look at it and thought it looked legit). * They are trying to hide the magnet structure somehow (the video shows it in clear view). * The wafer isn't fully levitating or the way it falls is suspicious (not really unexpected given that the superconductive part is supposed to be present in only a few percent of the material). Scientific objections I find more compelling made by people more familiar with the field, but more bourne of natural skepticism than disqualifying, with there being a lot of subtlety: * both effects shown can be achieved in known ways by non-superconducting materials (but at the same time? would at least be a major material science advance in that case as it would apparently require diamagnetism ~ 150x as strong as graphite. Author who mentioned this said it would be "materials science magic" and I'm not sure why you'd rather believe in this than superconductivity given that neither have ever been seen before and it's consistent with sueprconductivty. Unless it's straight up fraud). * Mesner effect graph don't go exactly to zero / happen exactly where you'd expect, maybe reflects a measurement error? (apparently, given the small % of the material that's supposed to be superconducting and material distribution, this isn't really evidence either way. not like we have other room temperature superconductors to compare it to). * no max temperature where superconductivity vanishes measured, so is it really superconducting? (standard measurement devices only go up to what they reported, scientists seem very mixed about whether it would be easy to DIY measurement at higher temperatures for such a small current) * not a similar mechanism to known good past "high-temperature" superconductors, and proposed explanation doesn't really make sense given slight deviations in pressure compared to what is in this substance (other scientists seem to disagree and think there could be something there, but it would also not be the first time something novel was discovered and worked for reasons totally different than those the scientists initially imagined) Overall I find the quality of the objections really weak which increases (to me) the chances that there is something novel here, even if it's not superconductivity. That or it's obvious fraud and we'll know in like three days.

marcosdumay 3y ago

It's my impression, and it seems to be the consensus here that it is very unlikely that this is a mistake. This is either very real or completely fabricated. You don't have a piece of ceramic keeping its distance to a magnet by some unexpected phenomenon or measurement error. And given the easiness in reproducing the study, there doesn't seem to be any point in fabricating it.

XorNot 3y ago
The main worry is whether we're dealing with wholly rational actors. People convince themselves they're seeing an effect, and then seemingly completely erratic things to try and prove it on the conviction that with just a bit more effort they'll get it for real. Like you'd question why someone would photoshop results[1] in a paper, because surely they'd have to realize they're fabricating data, but they go ahead and do it anyway. The videos are convincing but are they of what they really purport to show? I agree - what would be the point of fabricating it. But weirder things have happened in the breadth of human experience. [1] https://thenextweb.com/news/who-scientists-used-photoshop-to-doctor-images-in-cancer-research https://thenextweb.com/news/who-scientists-used-photoshop-to...
- jacquesm 3y ago
  This is very much the truth. The scariest founders during due diligence are the ones that are totally convincing, true believers and yet utterly wrong. They've even convinced themselves, but that failed to convince mother nature. It can be super hard to detect this.
- Jweb_Guru 3y ago
  I will say this, I haven't found the "it's not real" responses very compelling either. I've also found that people who actually work in the field seem less skeptical than knowledgeable people adjacent to the field. If it's not fraud, it's at least something new. Here are the reasons I've seen provided by adjacent folks: Nonscientific objections: * it was published in a low h-index journal (not a scientific objection) * poor formatting, misspelled title (not a scientific objection) * patented and has a company (not a scientific objection) * seems too simple, it has to be more complex than that, how could we have missed that? (not a scientific objection, also rather ahistorical) I consider all of these pretty irrelevant given that the authors are not no-names and the actual paper makes clear claims, does exactly what everyone says you should be able to do if you have a real superconductor (show a video of it floating!) and makes replication easy. If it's straight up fraud it will be easy to discover. There were also many pseudoscientific objections raised by field-adjacent people that I found uncompelling, responses from people actually in the field in parentheses: * The first video looks like normal copper, the second like other diamagnetic materials or is otherwise unconvincing (not evidence against it being superconducting, at least one materials science lab had several members look at it and thought it looked legit). * They are trying to hide the magnet structure somehow (the video shows it in clear view). * The wafer isn't fully levitating or the way it falls is suspicious (not really unexpected given that the superconductive part is supposed to be present in only a few percent of the material). Scientific objections I find more compelling made by people more familiar with the field, but more bourne of natural skepticism than disqualifying, with there being a lot of subtlety: * both effects shown can be achieved in known ways by non-superconducting materials (but at the same time? would at least be a major material science advance in that case as it would apparently require diamagnetism ~ 150x as strong as graphite. Author who mentioned this said it would be "materials science magic" and I'm not sure why you'd rather believe in this than superconductivity given that neither have ever been seen before and it's consistent with sueprconductivty. Unless it's straight up fraud). * Mesner effect graph don't go exactly to zero / happen exactly where you'd expect, maybe reflects a measurement error? (apparently, given the small % of the material that's supposed to be superconducting and material distribution, this isn't really evidence either way. not like we have other room temperature superconductors to compare it to). * no max temperature where superconductivity vanishes measured, so is it really superconducting? (standard measurement devices only go up to what they reported, scientists seem very mixed about whether it would be easy to DIY measurement at higher temperatures for such a small current) * not a similar mechanism to known good past "high-temperature" superconductors, and proposed explanation doesn't really make sense given slight deviations in pressure compared to what is in this substance (other scientists seem to disagree and think there could be something there, but it would also not be the first time something novel was discovered and worked for reasons totally different than those the scientists initially imagined) Overall I find the quality of the objections really weak which increases (to me) the chances that there is something novel here, even if it's not superconductivity. That or it's obvious fraud and we'll know in like three days.