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Even if the hype over LK-99 comes to nothing it became evident to me several days ago that this research has likely changed scientific publishing permanently—an

Even if the hype over LK-99 comes to nothing it became evident to me several days ago that this research has likely changed scientific publishing permanently—and I'd almost bet on the fact if the research is confirmed. What made this a such a huge tech event with the world watching on was that the research was on a subject that has captured the imagination of both scientists and the lay public for many decades and that it was posted on arxiv.org website which is open and copyright-free, similarly, we witnessed peer review processes also occurring out in the open and in public for all to see—and essentially in real time! Contrast this with the traditional tech journal process, Nature, Science, IEEE Proceedings, The Lancet, etc. which takes months to publish, and is a closed process not to mention papers being the whim of editors who often reject them (and sometimes very significant ones at that). Irrespective of whatever outcome eventuates, the contrast between traditional, slow and now-very-expensive scientific publishing with that of this speedy, exciting, open and participatory model that's copyright-free will be obvious to everyone. Moreover, this is happening at a time when the traditional for-profit scientific publishing has come under enormous criticism with Elsevier and others milking the university and scientific establishments to breaking point and the rise of Sci-Hub as a countermeasure. Whilst academics have been aware of the problem for quite some time the general public has not. This research and how it played out on arxiv.org in just two weeks won't be forgotten easily. If I were a director of Elsevier and after witnessing what's happened in less than two weeks I'd be damn worried.

jacquesm 3y ago
This puts Nature's position here as on display in TFA (they don't have to publish everything that is sent in) in a different light. There might be an element of sour grapes here, and if the research is validated then it will have a huge impact on them.
- dekhn 3y ago
  This isn't "Nature's position". This is a freelance science writer's position, and they paid him for the article. Nature wouldn't even weigh in with a real editorial opinion at this point.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    It is their name on the masthead. If they don't agree with it they shouldn't publish it. Doing this 'at arms length' allows them to have this under their banner while at the same time being able to say 'that wasn't us'.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      This is standard practice in journalism which is widely used. If you weren't so involved in the field, would you even care?
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        Yes, I care. I've been a subscriber since the 80's, Nature, SA and the Lancet. I don't think any of them should pull a 'Ted-X'.
        dekhn 3y ago
        I went through and reread the whole news article. There's nothing wrong with this article. I really don't see what you have to complain about. It's broadly factual, and roughly consistent with the mainstream opinion at this point: there is no smoking gun evidence of anything, and the noise being generated by social amateurs is making it hard to find the real signal from the small number of groups competent enough to make useful statements about this "discovery".
        jacquesm 3y ago
        Yes, and it serves no purpose other than to get Nature in the position where they can hedge their bets based on rejecting the article earlier and publishing this now just in case it eventually does work out. It's content free from Nature's audience perspective, nobody reading it will think 'hey wow, this is news to me', if they've been at all interested. So it must serve some other purpose because Nature doesn't just publish anything. I was wondering earlier why they would publish it and I think it isn't too farfetched to see this as a deliberate strategy to protect their interests. It's going to be interesting what happens on both sides of the fork: what they will do if after say 3 months there still isn't any very clear replication and when there is. For both of those they have positioned themselves well. What irks me about it is that it's been all of a week and yet Nature is already deprecating it because the replication efforts fall short. It would seem to me to be a little bit early for that, what did they expect? And sure, we can argue over whether it was nature or the writer that is the root cause here but someone with editorial control at Nature must have felt it was good enough to include, even though it is just premature meta commentary, not science news.
whimsicalism 3y ago
Interesting. Personally as a huge advocate of open science, the LK99 stuff has revealed to me flaws in rapid communication of science. The lay public becomes far too overinvolved.
- almostnormal 3y ago
  Most topics are sufficiently boring (or presented in a boring way) that it won't cause any issues. The problem arises, when journalists publish some bad interpretation or oversimplification. That's where the review is needed.
- abnry 3y ago
  What are the flaws? Why is the lay public not allowed to be involved? That sounds like elitist gatekeeping. The truth will come out regardless. Why can't everyone share in the excitement?
- techdragon 3y ago
  I think this might be a bit exceptional as far as public engagement goes. So I wouldn’t necessarily judge public engagement based on this case. “Rocks float” vs “rocks not float” is a very easy success criteria for the average person to judge by, lowering the bar for the average person to feel like they can add something to the conversation… so when we add in the potential revolutionary aspects of a room temperature superconductor we have a recipe for significant engagement… it’s even engaging the gawker reflex and people are picking up on it be LK99 is a weird trending topic and people will check to see if it’s an airplane that crashed or something … In essence it was, by sheer coincidence, bound to go viral… and only because of a number of properties that others won’t have…
- shadowofneptune 3y ago
  Yeah. For everyone watching with excitement, keep in mind that the silicon semiconductor was for years worse in practice than germanium ones, even if it was theoretically better and cheaper. It took advancements in material sourcing, kilns, etc. etc. Give this material 20 years, and we will see how it fared.
pabs3 3y ago
> posted on arxiv.org website which is ... copyright-free Content on arvix is copyrighted by the authors, who then choose one of the available licenses to allow redistribution under (mostly CC ones). https://info.arxiv.org/help/license/index.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/license/index.html

jacquesm 3y ago

This puts Nature's position here as on display in TFA (they don't have to publish everything that is sent in) in a different light. There might be an element of sour grapes here, and if the research is validated then it will have a huge impact on them.

dekhn 3y ago
This isn't "Nature's position". This is a freelance science writer's position, and they paid him for the article. Nature wouldn't even weigh in with a real editorial opinion at this point.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  It is their name on the masthead. If they don't agree with it they shouldn't publish it. Doing this 'at arms length' allows them to have this under their banner while at the same time being able to say 'that wasn't us'.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    This is standard practice in journalism which is widely used. If you weren't so involved in the field, would you even care?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Yes, I care. I've been a subscriber since the 80's, Nature, SA and the Lancet. I don't think any of them should pull a 'Ted-X'.
      - dekhn 3y ago
        I went through and reread the whole news article. There's nothing wrong with this article. I really don't see what you have to complain about. It's broadly factual, and roughly consistent with the mainstream opinion at this point: there is no smoking gun evidence of anything, and the noise being generated by social amateurs is making it hard to find the real signal from the small number of groups competent enough to make useful statements about this "discovery".
        jacquesm 3y ago
        Yes, and it serves no purpose other than to get Nature in the position where they can hedge their bets based on rejecting the article earlier and publishing this now just in case it eventually does work out. It's content free from Nature's audience perspective, nobody reading it will think 'hey wow, this is news to me', if they've been at all interested. So it must serve some other purpose because Nature doesn't just publish anything. I was wondering earlier why they would publish it and I think it isn't too farfetched to see this as a deliberate strategy to protect their interests. It's going to be interesting what happens on both sides of the fork: what they will do if after say 3 months there still isn't any very clear replication and when there is. For both of those they have positioned themselves well. What irks me about it is that it's been all of a week and yet Nature is already deprecating it because the replication efforts fall short. It would seem to me to be a little bit early for that, what did they expect? And sure, we can argue over whether it was nature or the writer that is the root cause here but someone with editorial control at Nature must have felt it was good enough to include, even though it is just premature meta commentary, not science news.

whimsicalism 3y ago

Interesting. Personally as a huge advocate of open science, the LK99 stuff has revealed to me flaws in rapid communication of science. The lay public becomes far too overinvolved.

almostnormal 3y ago
Most topics are sufficiently boring (or presented in a boring way) that it won't cause any issues. The problem arises, when journalists publish some bad interpretation or oversimplification. That's where the review is needed.
abnry 3y ago
What are the flaws? Why is the lay public not allowed to be involved? That sounds like elitist gatekeeping. The truth will come out regardless. Why can't everyone share in the excitement?
techdragon 3y ago
I think this might be a bit exceptional as far as public engagement goes. So I wouldn’t necessarily judge public engagement based on this case. “Rocks float” vs “rocks not float” is a very easy success criteria for the average person to judge by, lowering the bar for the average person to feel like they can add something to the conversation… so when we add in the potential revolutionary aspects of a room temperature superconductor we have a recipe for significant engagement… it’s even engaging the gawker reflex and people are picking up on it be LK99 is a weird trending topic and people will check to see if it’s an airplane that crashed or something … In essence it was, by sheer coincidence, bound to go viral… and only because of a number of properties that others won’t have…
shadowofneptune 3y ago
Yeah. For everyone watching with excitement, keep in mind that the silicon semiconductor was for years worse in practice than germanium ones, even if it was theoretically better and cheaper. It took advancements in material sourcing, kilns, etc. etc. Give this material 20 years, and we will see how it fared.

pabs3 3y ago

> posted on arxiv.org website which is ... copyright-free Content on arvix is copyrighted by the authors, who then choose one of the available licenses to allow redistribution under (mostly CC ones). https://info.arxiv.org/help/license/index.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/license/index.html