11 ms·

Well I'm kinda glad I missed this whole news cycle IMO this phenomenon seems to be kind of an artifact of modern media -- I feel like in the old days, peers w

by chubot 3y ago

Well I'm kinda glad I missed this whole news cycle IMO this phenomenon seems to be kind of an artifact of modern media -- I feel like in the old days, peers would have settled it among themselves, and we would have never heard about it The same thing happens in tech -- there is a lot of stuff that people talk about, that ends up being worth ignoring ... I always bring up that whole news cycle in 2017 about a potential war with North Korea. How many people spent time and energy on that, and how do they feel about that now? Media is adversarial

RationPhantoms 3y ago
You're arguing for less transparency here? I think one of the side benefits to witnessing the LK-99 discussion is people from all walks (sure, Twitter/X isn't the end all/be-all of global communication) discussing/following/listening to actual science happen. Do you know how much of that is worth to the world with knock-on effects? Maybe there were future material scientists sitting in the room with their parents listening to the discussion? I feel like that's equally as important as peer review/replication.
- HaZeust 3y ago
  You cannot please these people, simply put. These folks STILL want the ESSENCE of a shared respect and excitement from the common man for scientific progression - and these folks are the same people, mind you, that speak loudly on the ignorance of the cluster groups within the "anti-science" big tent. But when these same folks see a glimpse of collective curiosity for science and methodologies among a lot of people, they long for the days of opacity and "mature handling of scientific consensus". Which, ironically, was the path in which almost ALL scientific progressions that spawned anti-science sentiments had taken. You can't win.
  - haswell 3y ago
    I think a different way to frame this is that an Internet discussion will involve people with opinions across the spectrum. I don’t think this is about pleasing “these people”, but about recognizing which attitudes are useful and which are not. Encountering some mix of all of the above is a product of the diversity of people involved in the conversation, and not necessarily “these people” wanting it both ways.
    - HaZeust 3y ago
      My framing is fine, in my biased opinion. Saying, "You can't please these people about this" is essentially the same as saying "Their attitude about this is not useful" - though one might be more polite. Maybe I went amiss, maybe I need perspective, but I don't see why a consideration for a re-frame is necessary if one still gets their point across; albeit maybe with more "passion" than necessary.
      - haswell 3y ago
        > These folks STILL want the ESSENCE of a shared respect and excitement...But when these same folks see a glimpse of collective curiosity...they long for the days of opacity and "mature handling of scientific consensus". You are claiming that it's the same group of people holding incongruous viewpoints. My point was that this is likely an illusion caused by the communication medium, i.e. "these people" represent a myriad of individual viewpoints, which may not align because I think "A" and you think "B". Not because I think "A" and "B". To frame it in this way doesn't allow for a useful exploration of the issue. It casts aside an entire group instead of examining the roots of the problematic behavior. It also creates a straw man - the person who believes both things incongruously, when this person doesn't seem likely to exist, or at least seems likely that this is a rare stance. > Saying, "You can't please these people about this" is essentially the same as saying "Their attitude about this is not useful" These are saying very different things. One discards the entire person on the basis of a view you disagree with. This is a road to nowhere. The other allows an examination of the actual behavior, which is arguably far more important if there's a case to be made that someone should change their behavior. "Oh, you're one of those people" gets you nowhere. "The problem with this line of thinking/attitude is that it limits the potential for public excitement and involvement with the process..." gives you and the person who disagree something to work with. This isn't about being polite. This is about choosing whether the point is to explore the nature of the problem, or to complain about a group of people.
  - dTal 3y ago
    Not-that-unpopular opinion: Some form of soft gatekeeping is required to keep a healthy signal/noise ratio, in a lot of contexts. The issue is, what sort of gatekeeping, and how aligned is it with the desired effect? Even simply crudely throwing up all sorts of arbitrary obstacles (e.g. various forms of academic hazing) is sufficient to at least keep out people who aren't willing to put in some sort of effort. The problem is that has a lot of collateral damage - it also loses perfectly fine people whose only flaw is a low tolerance for institutionally imposed arbitrary obstacles. A perfect gatekeeping mechanism would exclude everyone who can't contribute while presenting minimal obstacles to those who can. I don't want to speculate here what that might look like, but it's not contradictory to want everyone to have access to science while simultaneously wanting ignorant loudmouths to be gently suppressed. If I may mutilate a beloved Pixar film, "anyone can science". But not everyone can be a scientist. Everyone should just be given a chance.
Eji1700 3y ago
We had similar nonsense with r the EM Drive and cold fusion so this isn’t that new. Either way the best video I’ve seen on this whole thing, Abe why it’s endlessly frustrating, is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-AgmoZ5mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-AgmoZ5mo
- goku12 3y ago
  It's easy call those claims nonsense in retrospect. However, many important discoveries were made from equally fantastic observations. We would have missed a lot if we brushed them aside cynically. The only way to know for sure is to test the claim scientifically. As the LK99 saga has shown, even incredible claims must be discussed and tested in public. This is one episode where the media hype did work - though the result was disappointing. Well! That's the price you pay for progress.
  - Eji1700 3y ago
    > It's easy call those claims nonsense in retrospect. People were calling out the over hyping, the bad science, and the bad graph from day 1. The original scientists DIDN'T want to publish. Almost all important discoveries have been made from PROPER science. If you have surprising results, you verify them. You verify your test results. You verify your methodology. You repeat the experiment. How many important discoveries aren't found because they can't get funding/attention because "doing it right" is somehow seen as wrong now.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  I really like the video but I disagree with his prescription for peer review to increase trust in science. People don’t distrust scientists because there isn’t enough peer review or because of pre-prints failing to replicate, they distrust scientific institutions because scientific institutions often communicate their current best theory as the truth and pretend that they can ‘prove’ things true by way of ‘scientific consensus.’ Going against the consensus can ruin or limit your career. Lots of examples: climate scientists making claims of ice free arctic by 2020, dietary science flip flopping on diet advice (fat and butter is bad, carbs are bad), covid vaccines being a silver bullet, ivermectin not being effective [1]. Add in problems in social ‘sciences’ like the Sokal affair, psychology replication crisis, mainstream economists failing to predict the GFC, definitions of foundational terms like “woman” changing, and you have a recipe for the general public not trusting academia or ‘scientific’ institutions in general. Science and academia in general is being polluted by politics and it is incentivising academics to exaggerate the accuracy of their knowledge. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2790173 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... I added the reference here because Ivermectin was a horrible case of politicising science: mainstream institutions called it an animal medicine with full knowledge it was safe for humans. And now there is a potential mechanism for its effect, it looks like it may have been effective after all. During the pandemic I heard many scientists laugh at people for considering it, all because an authority they trusted told them it was silly.
brutusborn 3y ago
I wonder if this is a net positive, since media hype would increase likelihood of future funding or investment, so the hype generates accelerated progress. It could also be the opposite: shiny result causes over investment in an area of tech which isn’t productive.
mempko 3y ago
It's better to miss news cycles, but at least this one was about exciting science instead of dreadful politics.
- penjelly 3y ago
  this particular news cycle was the final straw for me using twitter. Its not worth 1-3day new cycle is 99% of claims are bs
mcphage 3y ago
> MO this phenomenon seems to be kind of an artifact of modern media -- I feel like in the old days, peers would have settled it among themselves, and we would have never heard about it That’s what happened here—peers settled it among themselves. > there is a lot of stuff that people talk about, that ends up being worth ignoring Of course. The thing is, you never know whether it’s worth ignoring or not unless some people pay attention to it. > How many people spent time and energy on that, and how do they feel about that now? Pretty good that we didn’t go to war with North Korea? > Media is adversarial In some cases it’s adversarial, and in some cases it’s complicit. In that case specifically, sabre rattling was part of Trump’s negotiation tactics, and media playing up the possibility of war was his intention.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
asdfman123 3y ago
In tech's case it's oftne just people manipulating the markets. X is the next big thing, X will revolutionize the world, invest everything in X. The people driving the hype cycle sell at the peak, make a quick buck, and move on to the next thing. Unfortunately, I think it's a key factor in driving the shitification of everything.
- babypuncher 3y ago
  "AI" is going through this process at record pace. So far every money-making application I've seen for it has just made existing products worse by reducing the number of humans involved in production. Shittier artwork, shittier blog posts, even shittier recipes. At least with social media we had a few good years where everything was awesome and it felt like our lives were being enriched, not cheapened.
  - asdfman123 3y ago
    Some of the tech being pumped has a few useful applications, some of it has no useful applications.
rgoulter 3y ago
> IMO this phenomenon seems to be kind of an artifact of modern media To my understanding, these researchers had been working on this for decades and were confident what they had was good. Once the information was leaked, the scientific community was roused, and came to consensus within days. I think the contrast in those two timescales is noteworthy.
eesmith 3y ago
When are these old days? I remember cold fusion from the late 1980s. There's polywater from the 1960s. N-rays in the 1900s (the first decade) made it to "spiritualists" and "crackpots and extremists" outside of academia, https://archive.org/details/flashofcathodera0000dahl/page/246/mode/2up?q=nancy https://archive.org/details/flashofcathodera0000dahl/page/24... . Giovanni Schiaparelli 1877 observation of "canali" on Mars captivated the public.
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  The Martian canals are interesting misinformation phenomena. A phenomenon that we’ve seen repeated among the woo crowd. Schiaprelli points his telescope at Mars, and sees some faint squiggles. He suspects they’re something dried river beds, and calls them “channels”, like a river channel. Being Italian, he uses the Italian word, “canali”. This word, being the same word used for “canal” in English, gets translated as “canal”. However in English, “canal” refers exclusively to an artificial construction, where as “channel” doesn’t have that distinction. This framing now primes, people when looking at blurry faint marks on Mars. Someone tries to map the “canals” and either through an act of simplification/illustration, or psychological priming, connects dark regions (river deltas?) to each other via straight lines — perhaps the shape most evocative of artificiality. And so it snowballs. I don’t think the canal theory ever gained much traction. (It’s a wild idea!) Telescopes just weren’t good enough to consistently observe the channels, let alone see them well enough for a definitive answer. We had to wait for Mariner 4 for that.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    > I don’t think the canal theory ever gained much traction. I'm not sure what you mean by traction. I wanted to show examples of scientific disagreement which made it to the popular press, to argue that it's been happening for a long time. Using one of the sources mentioned at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals lists several I found this 1902 textbook which suggests it did have traction among astronomers for at least a couple of years, though not general acceptance. Quoting https://archive.org/details/manualofastronom00younrich/page/364/mode/2up?q=Schiaparelli https://archive.org/details/manualofastronom00younrich/page/... : ] These new markings are faint and very difficult to see, and for several years there was a strong suspicion that he was misled by some illusion, — in respect to their "gemination," at least, — which is still ascribed, by some very high authorities, to astigmatism in the eye of the observer or bad focusing of his telescope. Still, the weight of evidence at present favors the reality of the phenomena which Schiaparelli describes. Many observers, both in Europe and the United States, have confirmed his results, and they are now generally accepted, although some of the best, armed with very powerful telescopes, still fail to see the canals as anything but the merest shading I say "couple of years" because there are several editions of that textbook! In 1904 at https://archive.org/details/atextbookgenera05youngoog/page/362/mode/2up?q=canals https://archive.org/details/atextbookgenera05youngoog/page/3... : ] [Schiaparelli's] observations have since been confirmed and added to by various eminent astronomers in Europe and America, especially by Perrotin at Nice and Lowell in Arizona. But others, equally eminent and apparently under equally favorable conditions, fail to see the reported features. While in 1888 at https://archive.org/details/textbookofgenera00youn/page/346/mode/2up?q=Schiaparelli https://archive.org/details/textbookofgenera00youn/page/346/... ] "If there is not some fallacy in the observation, the problem as to the nature of these canals, and the cause of their gemination, it is a very important and perplexing one. It is hoped that at the next favorable opposition in 1892 it may find its solution."
Permit 3y ago
> Well I'm kinda glad I missed this whole news cycle What negative effects would you have suffered if you had not missed this news cycle?
- timeon 3y ago
  Time wasted. I have not missed this cycle. All posts and discussions I have read were pointless at best - toxic at worst.
  - Permit 3y ago
    Perhaps it’s because I am a complete outsider to the field but I found the discussions interesting and learned many new things about materials science and superconductivity that I didn’t know before. I could imagine an expert in this field having the opposite take as they almost certainly already knew the little bits of trivia that I picked up.
    - timeon 3y ago
      I'm also outsider. Glad that you have gained something.
empath-nirvana 3y ago
Room temperature superconductivity, like quantum computing, fusion power, and em drives, and other similar "magic" technologies, have one thing in common, which is that the potential consequences of their existence are positive, substantial, and relatively easy to explain and to comprehend, while the difficulties preventing those technologies from seeing the light of day are complex, difficult, and a "bummer" to hear about.
- jliptzin 3y ago
  Is that true for RTSCs? In the last month of this saga, every time I saw someone comment on some amazing new technology that RTSC would enable, another expert would chime in and explain why that’s not actually possible or feasible for various reasons. The only convincing gain I’ve seen is a ~10% drop in power transmission costs. But obviously this can’t be right because of how excited everyone gets about it.
  - teraflop 3y ago
    If RTSCs turn out to be viable, they would reduce power transmission costs by maybe 10% for our current infrastructure. That's just because we don't build power lines over distances where the losses would be much greater than that, because it doesn't make sense. But they would also enable new infrastructure beyond what is currently feasible, because we could transport power over much longer distances without any increased loss. For example, you could transport solar power from the daylit side of the earth to the night side.
    - jliptzin 3y ago
      Interesting, thanks
- tuatoru 3y ago
  I'm struggling with the claimed consequences. The electricity grid has losses of about 30 percent, so a fully superconducting grid could increase delivered power by about 43 percent, not an order of magnitude more. More compact MRI machines would be nice to have, certainly, but wouldn't materially change mortality. What else is there?
babypuncher 3y ago
The larger media outlets were smart enough to stay away from the hype until there was more data available from replication efforts. Maybe they're learning? Everything I saw about LK-99 before the last week or so was on HN or social media.
awb 3y ago
> I always bring up that whole news cycle in 2017 about a potential war with North Korea. How many people spent time and energy on that, and how do they feel about that now? Media is adversarial And then there are tons of counter examples: "no way Russia will invade Ukraine", "Hitler will stop at Poland", etc. then the opposite happens. How do those people feel? Did they dismiss the stories warning of imminent conflict as adversarial media hysteria? Expecting people to correctly follow a news story or not based on an unknown future outcome is impossible. If you can consistently bat above .500 in predicting the news, there's a lot of money to be made in prediction markets.
tamimio 3y ago
100% agree, that’s the problem with social media and why I hate it.. you have people with 20% knowledge in the subject but with thousands of followers grifting on the topic, while the actual scientists (or subject matter experts) barely have any voice or influence, and results? Public opinion is being shaped by those idiots
timeon 3y ago
News cycle? Maybe if you count Twitter as tabloid. When the hype came people here were asking: 'why western labs and traditional media are so passive?'. Then Nature came with article telling people to calm down. People here called Nature and peer reviews to be in decline.
creeble 3y ago
Oh man, there's goes my https://lk99.com https://lk99.com community website!

by chubot 3y ago

RationPhantoms 3y ago

You're arguing for less transparency here? I think one of the side benefits to witnessing the LK-99 discussion is people from all walks (sure, Twitter/X isn't the end all/be-all of global communication) discussing/following/listening to actual science happen. Do you know how much of that is worth to the world with knock-on effects? Maybe there were future material scientists sitting in the room with their parents listening to the discussion? I feel like that's equally as important as peer review/replication.

HaZeust 3y ago
You cannot please these people, simply put. These folks STILL want the ESSENCE of a shared respect and excitement from the common man for scientific progression - and these folks are the same people, mind you, that speak loudly on the ignorance of the cluster groups within the "anti-science" big tent. But when these same folks see a glimpse of collective curiosity for science and methodologies among a lot of people, they long for the days of opacity and "mature handling of scientific consensus". Which, ironically, was the path in which almost ALL scientific progressions that spawned anti-science sentiments had taken. You can't win.
- haswell 3y ago
  I think a different way to frame this is that an Internet discussion will involve people with opinions across the spectrum. I don’t think this is about pleasing “these people”, but about recognizing which attitudes are useful and which are not. Encountering some mix of all of the above is a product of the diversity of people involved in the conversation, and not necessarily “these people” wanting it both ways.
  - HaZeust 3y ago
    My framing is fine, in my biased opinion. Saying, "You can't please these people about this" is essentially the same as saying "Their attitude about this is not useful" - though one might be more polite. Maybe I went amiss, maybe I need perspective, but I don't see why a consideration for a re-frame is necessary if one still gets their point across; albeit maybe with more "passion" than necessary.
    - haswell 3y ago
      > These folks STILL want the ESSENCE of a shared respect and excitement...But when these same folks see a glimpse of collective curiosity...they long for the days of opacity and "mature handling of scientific consensus". You are claiming that it's the same group of people holding incongruous viewpoints. My point was that this is likely an illusion caused by the communication medium, i.e. "these people" represent a myriad of individual viewpoints, which may not align because I think "A" and you think "B". Not because I think "A" and "B". To frame it in this way doesn't allow for a useful exploration of the issue. It casts aside an entire group instead of examining the roots of the problematic behavior. It also creates a straw man - the person who believes both things incongruously, when this person doesn't seem likely to exist, or at least seems likely that this is a rare stance. > Saying, "You can't please these people about this" is essentially the same as saying "Their attitude about this is not useful" These are saying very different things. One discards the entire person on the basis of a view you disagree with. This is a road to nowhere. The other allows an examination of the actual behavior, which is arguably far more important if there's a case to be made that someone should change their behavior. "Oh, you're one of those people" gets you nowhere. "The problem with this line of thinking/attitude is that it limits the potential for public excitement and involvement with the process..." gives you and the person who disagree something to work with. This isn't about being polite. This is about choosing whether the point is to explore the nature of the problem, or to complain about a group of people.
- dTal 3y ago
  Not-that-unpopular opinion: Some form of soft gatekeeping is required to keep a healthy signal/noise ratio, in a lot of contexts. The issue is, what sort of gatekeeping, and how aligned is it with the desired effect? Even simply crudely throwing up all sorts of arbitrary obstacles (e.g. various forms of academic hazing) is sufficient to at least keep out people who aren't willing to put in some sort of effort. The problem is that has a lot of collateral damage - it also loses perfectly fine people whose only flaw is a low tolerance for institutionally imposed arbitrary obstacles. A perfect gatekeeping mechanism would exclude everyone who can't contribute while presenting minimal obstacles to those who can. I don't want to speculate here what that might look like, but it's not contradictory to want everyone to have access to science while simultaneously wanting ignorant loudmouths to be gently suppressed. If I may mutilate a beloved Pixar film, "anyone can science". But not everyone can be a scientist. Everyone should just be given a chance.

Eji1700 3y ago

We had similar nonsense with r the EM Drive and cold fusion so this isn’t that new. Either way the best video I’ve seen on this whole thing, Abe why it’s endlessly frustrating, is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-AgmoZ5mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-AgmoZ5mo

goku12 3y ago
It's easy call those claims nonsense in retrospect. However, many important discoveries were made from equally fantastic observations. We would have missed a lot if we brushed them aside cynically. The only way to know for sure is to test the claim scientifically. As the LK99 saga has shown, even incredible claims must be discussed and tested in public. This is one episode where the media hype did work - though the result was disappointing. Well! That's the price you pay for progress.
- Eji1700 3y ago
  > It's easy call those claims nonsense in retrospect. People were calling out the over hyping, the bad science, and the bad graph from day 1. The original scientists DIDN'T want to publish. Almost all important discoveries have been made from PROPER science. If you have surprising results, you verify them. You verify your test results. You verify your methodology. You repeat the experiment. How many important discoveries aren't found because they can't get funding/attention because "doing it right" is somehow seen as wrong now.
brutusborn 3y ago
I really like the video but I disagree with his prescription for peer review to increase trust in science. People don’t distrust scientists because there isn’t enough peer review or because of pre-prints failing to replicate, they distrust scientific institutions because scientific institutions often communicate their current best theory as the truth and pretend that they can ‘prove’ things true by way of ‘scientific consensus.’ Going against the consensus can ruin or limit your career. Lots of examples: climate scientists making claims of ice free arctic by 2020, dietary science flip flopping on diet advice (fat and butter is bad, carbs are bad), covid vaccines being a silver bullet, ivermectin not being effective [1]. Add in problems in social ‘sciences’ like the Sokal affair, psychology replication crisis, mainstream economists failing to predict the GFC, definitions of foundational terms like “woman” changing, and you have a recipe for the general public not trusting academia or ‘scientific’ institutions in general. Science and academia in general is being polluted by politics and it is incentivising academics to exaggerate the accuracy of their knowledge. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2790173 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... I added the reference here because Ivermectin was a horrible case of politicising science: mainstream institutions called it an animal medicine with full knowledge it was safe for humans. And now there is a potential mechanism for its effect, it looks like it may have been effective after all. During the pandemic I heard many scientists laugh at people for considering it, all because an authority they trusted told them it was silly.

brutusborn 3y ago

I wonder if this is a net positive, since media hype would increase likelihood of future funding or investment, so the hype generates accelerated progress. It could also be the opposite: shiny result causes over investment in an area of tech which isn’t productive.

mempko 3y ago

It's better to miss news cycles, but at least this one was about exciting science instead of dreadful politics.

penjelly 3y ago
this particular news cycle was the final straw for me using twitter. Its not worth 1-3day new cycle is 99% of claims are bs

mcphage 3y ago

> MO this phenomenon seems to be kind of an artifact of modern media -- I feel like in the old days, peers would have settled it among themselves, and we would have never heard about it That’s what happened here—peers settled it among themselves. > there is a lot of stuff that people talk about, that ends up being worth ignoring Of course. The thing is, you never know whether it’s worth ignoring or not unless some people pay attention to it. > How many people spent time and energy on that, and how do they feel about that now? Pretty good that we didn’t go to war with North Korea? > Media is adversarial In some cases it’s adversarial, and in some cases it’s complicit. In that case specifically, sabre rattling was part of Trump’s negotiation tactics, and media playing up the possibility of war was his intention.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

asdfman123 3y ago

In tech's case it's oftne just people manipulating the markets. X is the next big thing, X will revolutionize the world, invest everything in X. The people driving the hype cycle sell at the peak, make a quick buck, and move on to the next thing. Unfortunately, I think it's a key factor in driving the shitification of everything.

babypuncher 3y ago
"AI" is going through this process at record pace. So far every money-making application I've seen for it has just made existing products worse by reducing the number of humans involved in production. Shittier artwork, shittier blog posts, even shittier recipes. At least with social media we had a few good years where everything was awesome and it felt like our lives were being enriched, not cheapened.
- asdfman123 3y ago
  Some of the tech being pumped has a few useful applications, some of it has no useful applications.

rgoulter 3y ago

> IMO this phenomenon seems to be kind of an artifact of modern media To my understanding, these researchers had been working on this for decades and were confident what they had was good. Once the information was leaked, the scientific community was roused, and came to consensus within days. I think the contrast in those two timescales is noteworthy.

eesmith 3y ago

When are these old days? I remember cold fusion from the late 1980s. There's polywater from the 1960s. N-rays in the 1900s (the first decade) made it to "spiritualists" and "crackpots and extremists" outside of academia, https://archive.org/details/flashofcathodera0000dahl/page/246/mode/2up?q=nancy https://archive.org/details/flashofcathodera0000dahl/page/24... . Giovanni Schiaparelli 1877 observation of "canali" on Mars captivated the public.

jonathankoren 3y ago
The Martian canals are interesting misinformation phenomena. A phenomenon that we’ve seen repeated among the woo crowd. Schiaprelli points his telescope at Mars, and sees some faint squiggles. He suspects they’re something dried river beds, and calls them “channels”, like a river channel. Being Italian, he uses the Italian word, “canali”. This word, being the same word used for “canal” in English, gets translated as “canal”. However in English, “canal” refers exclusively to an artificial construction, where as “channel” doesn’t have that distinction. This framing now primes, people when looking at blurry faint marks on Mars. Someone tries to map the “canals” and either through an act of simplification/illustration, or psychological priming, connects dark regions (river deltas?) to each other via straight lines — perhaps the shape most evocative of artificiality. And so it snowballs. I don’t think the canal theory ever gained much traction. (It’s a wild idea!) Telescopes just weren’t good enough to consistently observe the channels, let alone see them well enough for a definitive answer. We had to wait for Mariner 4 for that.
- eesmith 3y ago
  > I don’t think the canal theory ever gained much traction. I'm not sure what you mean by traction. I wanted to show examples of scientific disagreement which made it to the popular press, to argue that it's been happening for a long time. Using one of the sources mentioned at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals lists several I found this 1902 textbook which suggests it did have traction among astronomers for at least a couple of years, though not general acceptance. Quoting https://archive.org/details/manualofastronom00younrich/page/364/mode/2up?q=Schiaparelli https://archive.org/details/manualofastronom00younrich/page/... : ] These new markings are faint and very difficult to see, and for several years there was a strong suspicion that he was misled by some illusion, — in respect to their "gemination," at least, — which is still ascribed, by some very high authorities, to astigmatism in the eye of the observer or bad focusing of his telescope. Still, the weight of evidence at present favors the reality of the phenomena which Schiaparelli describes. Many observers, both in Europe and the United States, have confirmed his results, and they are now generally accepted, although some of the best, armed with very powerful telescopes, still fail to see the canals as anything but the merest shading I say "couple of years" because there are several editions of that textbook! In 1904 at https://archive.org/details/atextbookgenera05youngoog/page/362/mode/2up?q=canals https://archive.org/details/atextbookgenera05youngoog/page/3... : ] [Schiaparelli's] observations have since been confirmed and added to by various eminent astronomers in Europe and America, especially by Perrotin at Nice and Lowell in Arizona. But others, equally eminent and apparently under equally favorable conditions, fail to see the reported features. While in 1888 at https://archive.org/details/textbookofgenera00youn/page/346/mode/2up?q=Schiaparelli https://archive.org/details/textbookofgenera00youn/page/346/... ] "If there is not some fallacy in the observation, the problem as to the nature of these canals, and the cause of their gemination, it is a very important and perplexing one. It is hoped that at the next favorable opposition in 1892 it may find its solution."

Permit 3y ago

> Well I'm kinda glad I missed this whole news cycle What negative effects would you have suffered if you had not missed this news cycle?

timeon 3y ago
Time wasted. I have not missed this cycle. All posts and discussions I have read were pointless at best - toxic at worst.
- Permit 3y ago
  Perhaps it’s because I am a complete outsider to the field but I found the discussions interesting and learned many new things about materials science and superconductivity that I didn’t know before. I could imagine an expert in this field having the opposite take as they almost certainly already knew the little bits of trivia that I picked up.
  - timeon 3y ago
    I'm also outsider. Glad that you have gained something.

empath-nirvana 3y ago

Room temperature superconductivity, like quantum computing, fusion power, and em drives, and other similar "magic" technologies, have one thing in common, which is that the potential consequences of their existence are positive, substantial, and relatively easy to explain and to comprehend, while the difficulties preventing those technologies from seeing the light of day are complex, difficult, and a "bummer" to hear about.

jliptzin 3y ago
Is that true for RTSCs? In the last month of this saga, every time I saw someone comment on some amazing new technology that RTSC would enable, another expert would chime in and explain why that’s not actually possible or feasible for various reasons. The only convincing gain I’ve seen is a ~10% drop in power transmission costs. But obviously this can’t be right because of how excited everyone gets about it.
- teraflop 3y ago
  If RTSCs turn out to be viable, they would reduce power transmission costs by maybe 10% for our current infrastructure. That's just because we don't build power lines over distances where the losses would be much greater than that, because it doesn't make sense. But they would also enable new infrastructure beyond what is currently feasible, because we could transport power over much longer distances without any increased loss. For example, you could transport solar power from the daylit side of the earth to the night side.
  - jliptzin 3y ago
    Interesting, thanks
tuatoru 3y ago
I'm struggling with the claimed consequences. The electricity grid has losses of about 30 percent, so a fully superconducting grid could increase delivered power by about 43 percent, not an order of magnitude more. More compact MRI machines would be nice to have, certainly, but wouldn't materially change mortality. What else is there?

babypuncher 3y ago

The larger media outlets were smart enough to stay away from the hype until there was more data available from replication efforts. Maybe they're learning? Everything I saw about LK-99 before the last week or so was on HN or social media.

awb 3y ago

> I always bring up that whole news cycle in 2017 about a potential war with North Korea. How many people spent time and energy on that, and how do they feel about that now? Media is adversarial And then there are tons of counter examples: "no way Russia will invade Ukraine", "Hitler will stop at Poland", etc. then the opposite happens. How do those people feel? Did they dismiss the stories warning of imminent conflict as adversarial media hysteria? Expecting people to correctly follow a news story or not based on an unknown future outcome is impossible. If you can consistently bat above .500 in predicting the news, there's a lot of money to be made in prediction markets.

tamimio 3y ago

100% agree, that’s the problem with social media and why I hate it.. you have people with 20% knowledge in the subject but with thousands of followers grifting on the topic, while the actual scientists (or subject matter experts) barely have any voice or influence, and results? Public opinion is being shaped by those idiots

timeon 3y ago

News cycle? Maybe if you count Twitter as tabloid. When the hype came people here were asking: 'why western labs and traditional media are so passive?'. Then Nature came with article telling people to calm down. People here called Nature and peer reviews to be in decline.

creeble 3y ago

Oh man, there's goes my https://lk99.com https://lk99.com community website!