3 ms·

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 ed

by 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.
        dekhn 3y ago
        Nature doesn't need to hedge its position. The article doesn't deprecate LK-99. The article is about the hype surrounding the announcement and its replication results, mainly, but not exclusively by, amateurs in other fields (who seem to have shown that they can make samples that have unconventional properties, but not necessarily superconducting). It's worth reading about a previous social media science debacle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano... where the observations of neutrinos being faster than light was eventually debugged to some simple hardware errors and naive analysis. "After the initial report of apparent superluminal velocities of neutrinos, most physicists in the field were quietly skeptical of the results, but prepared to adopt a wait-and-see approach. Experimental experts were aware of the complexity and difficulty of the measurement, so an extra unrecognized measurement error was still a real possibility, despite the care taken by the OPERA team"
        jacquesm 3y ago
    - bigbillheck 3y ago
      > I don't think any of them should pull a 'Ted-X'. That ship's long since sailed, see all those 'Nature Whatver' journals.
      - kergonath 3y ago
        That is completely different. The mini-Natures are still peer reviewed journals with a strict selection process. These journals are usually reasonably high impact, and I don’t think there is evidence pointing towards them having more or less fraud than other journals on that tier. It’s not an amateur slapping a Nature logo on a preprint, which is basically what TEDx is.
nonethewiser 3y ago
Why did they publish it?
progrus 3y ago
Nature certainly would not platform my position on this one. Why would they choose this other person? Why can I tell you what it says without even reading the headline?

by 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.
      - dekhn 3y ago
        Nature doesn't need to hedge its position. The article doesn't deprecate LK-99. The article is about the hype surrounding the announcement and its replication results, mainly, but not exclusively by, amateurs in other fields (who seem to have shown that they can make samples that have unconventional properties, but not necessarily superconducting). It's worth reading about a previous social media science debacle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano... where the observations of neutrinos being faster than light was eventually debugged to some simple hardware errors and naive analysis. "After the initial report of apparent superluminal velocities of neutrinos, most physicists in the field were quietly skeptical of the results, but prepared to adopt a wait-and-see approach. Experimental experts were aware of the complexity and difficulty of the measurement, so an extra unrecognized measurement error was still a real possibility, despite the care taken by the OPERA team"
        jacquesm 3y ago
  - bigbillheck 3y ago
    > I don't think any of them should pull a 'Ted-X'. That ship's long since sailed, see all those 'Nature Whatver' journals.
    - kergonath 3y ago
      That is completely different. The mini-Natures are still peer reviewed journals with a strict selection process. These journals are usually reasonably high impact, and I don’t think there is evidence pointing towards them having more or less fraud than other journals on that tier. It’s not an amateur slapping a Nature logo on a preprint, which is basically what TEDx is.

nonethewiser 3y ago

Why did they publish it?

progrus 3y ago

Nature certainly would not platform my position on this one. Why would they choose this other person? Why can I tell you what it says without even reading the headline?