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This is obviously a quickly produced paper to get the finding out but.... I find there to be so much missing and so many things poorly worded or posed about the
by mk_stjames 3y ago
This is obviously a quickly produced paper to get the finding out but.... I find there to be so much missing and so many things poorly worded or posed about their process that would have taken zero time to expound upon, it's infuriating.
"All the reactions are carried out under 10^-2 Pa"
OK, I know they mean 10^-2 of vacuum. But why not say that? "10^-2 Pa" isn't enough. Was this a full vacuum oven? Done in sealed quartz vials? Was there a purge, like argon, or just air?
If you look at the oven temperature profiles, you can see the ramp up time (0-2hr, 0-2hr, and 0-4hrs respectively), and the hold time, but the ramp down time isn't specified! There is no cooling rate, it just shows... a line drop off, with no end time. No label. This can be very critical. Were these just pulled straight out and air quenched? And were they kept under vacuum until at room temp or not?
Like, adding extra experimental setup details would take no time whatsoever to include in a paper and yet these researchers just don't do it. It's either pure fucking laziness or some sorta holier-than-thou gatekeeping that comes from theoreticians, or a combination, and it is the reason that replication is so hard in science right now. I would hope that no journal would accept this shit.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dmix 3y agoWhat personal benefit does this gain someone to publish it so quickly? Is it just social media attention?
- jacquesm 3y agoThere are no prizes for being second in science.
- smallnix 3y agoExcept, most likely, in exactly this story with the second paper from the original Korean authors (if things can be proven to be true).
- podiki 3y agoThere's a long standing joke (but also true) that many things are named after the last person to find them. See, for instance, Stigler's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy (for the concept an example itself)
- rvba 3y agoThe list is interesting too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler%27...
- xpe 3y ago>> What personal benefit does this gain someone to publish it so quickly? Is it just social media attention? > There are no prizes for being second in science. The reply (second quote above) fits in context, but there is more to it. 1. Publishing early at the expense of quality has a way of catching up to one's reputation. (Hopefully.) 2. History has many examples of scientists who were "too early" or not "in the right place at the right time" to get recognition. 3. A result may get little attention in one field but a lot in another. One example that comes to mind are string-matching algorithms. Sometimes they seem a dime-a-dozen in CS. But the "right" ones have transformed DNA sequencing.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoThere is intense pressure to publish as many papers as possible at Chinese universities. This has led to a big problem of faked or just bad research papers coming out of China, so people are generally skeptical of them
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y agoThis is a quite biased view. As a non-Chinese scientist, I can attest that there is intense pressure to publish as many papers as possible pretty much everywhere, and this leads to a problem of bad research across the world. China may be among the worst offenders in this respect, but the particular thing the OP is asking about doesn't strike me as a Chinese-specific thing at all. I see non-Chinese scientists rushing half-baked results to arXiv all the time.
- light_hue_1 3y agoIt's not biased, it's a fact. I see it all the time as PC/AC/reviwer/etc. There is deluge of terrible papers from China that are just a mess, below any imaginable standard. Ones that labs in the EU/US/Russia/Japan/etc. don't put out. Yes, everyone has to publish, and there are bad papers out there, but the volume and low quality from China is unmatched.
- davrosthedalek 3y agoCitations. The early papers will be cited more often. And citations are kind of a currency in science.
- zhynn 3y agoSome background on the drama (and the rush to publish): https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/15egs7i/avg_russian_twitter_anon_replicates_lk99_room/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/15egs7i/avg_ru... and https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685294623449874432 https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685294623449874432 The papers were totally rushed.
- fouc 3y ago8teAPi admitted they were essentially writing fiction generated from some of the known facts
- salty_biscuits 3y agoIt's just a preprint. I appreciate the fast update of progress on a new development. Just don't give it the same weight as a peer reviewed piece.
- Bombinator 3y agoFrom what I understand it was discovered in 1999, hence LK99. Doesn't seem very quick to me in that case.
- eggy 3y agoI agree, it could use more of the easy details, however, I don't have much issue with 10^-2 Pa, since standard atmospheric pressure is 101,325 Pa, so 0.1 Pa (10^-2 Pa, or 1.45x10^-6 psi) is definitely understood as a vacuum, but you're correct, why not just add "vacuum" for thoroughness. I know mercury gauges use to have a 0 to 30 scale sometimes (not 0 to -30), and that was confusing!
- wittenbunk 3y ago10^-2 is 0.01
- wruza 3y agoClassical off by one when you wrap through zero (not sure if this one has a specific name).
- chiph 3y agoOr they are holding the details of their process close to their chest, in anticipation of a lucrative spin-off.
- hanniabu 3y agoA breakthrough of this kind should be illegal to patent
- shaftoe 3y agoWhy do you think so?
- mikhailfranco 3y agoThe formula and atomic structure should not be patentable (like gene sequence), but a novel and non-obvious industrial process to fabricate such material could be patented. There may be many different such patents.
- ngc6677 3y agoYour point is fair. It feels it also underlies the importance of "continuous teaching and learning", global (or assigned) peer reviewing. At moments in time where discoveries like this one happen, one could hope that beyond "open publishing" like Arxiv, comes a true "science in the open", with room for cooperation. Looking forward evolving further our current system.
- arif22 3y ago[flagged]
- osigurdson 3y agoWhy isn't 10^-2 Pa enough? Clearly they mean absolute pressure. What would 10^-2 of vacuum mean?