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Please no. Remember that room temperature superconductor nonsense that went on for way too long? Let's please collectively try to avoid that..

by chaps 1y ago

physarum_salad 1y ago
That paper was debunked as a result of the open peer review enabled by preprints! Its astonishing how many people miss that and assume that closed peer review even performs that function well in the first place. For the absolute top journals or those with really motivated editors closed peer review is good. However, often it's worse...way worse (i.e. reams of correct seeming and surface level research without proper methods or review of protocols). The only advantage to closed peer review is it saves slight scientific embarrassment. However, this is a natural part of taking risks ofc and risky science is great. P.s. in this case I really don't like the paper or methods. However, open peer review is good for science.
- chaps 1y ago
  To be clear, I'm not saying that peer review is bad!! Quite the opposite.
  - physarum_salad 1y ago
    Yes ofc! I guess the major distinction is closed versus open peer review. Having observed some abuses of the former I am inclined to the latter. Although if editors are good maybe it's not such a big difference. The superconducting stuff was more of a saga rather than a reasonable process of peer review too haha.
- ajmurmann 1y ago
  To your point the paper AFAIK wasn't debunked because someone read it carefully but because people tried to reproduce it. Peer reviews don't reproduce. I think we'd be better off with fewer peer reviews and more time spent actually reproducing results. That's why we had a while crisis named after that
  - jcranmer 1y ago
    > To your point the paper AFAIK wasn't debunked because someone read it carefully but because people tried to reproduce it. Actually, from my recollection, it was debunked pretty quickly by people who read the paper because the paper was hot garbage. I saw someone point out that its graph of resistivity showed higher resistance than copper wire. It was no better than any of the other claimed room-temperature semiconductor papers that came out that year; it merely managed to catch virality on social media and therefore drove people to attempt to reproduce it.
mwigdahl 1y ago
And cold fusion. A friend's father (a chemistry professor) back in the early 90s wasted a bunch of time trying variants on Pons and Fleischmann looking to unlock tabletop fusion.

Please no. Remember that room temperature superconductor nonsense that went on for way too long? Let's please collectively try to avoid that..

by chaps 1y ago

Please no. Remember that room temperature superconductor nonsense that went on for way too long? Let's please collectively try to avoid that..

physarum_salad 1y ago

That paper was debunked as a result of the open peer review enabled by preprints! Its astonishing how many people miss that and assume that closed peer review even performs that function well in the first place. For the absolute top journals or those with really motivated editors closed peer review is good. However, often it's worse...way worse (i.e. reams of correct seeming and surface level research without proper methods or review of protocols). The only advantage to closed peer review is it saves slight scientific embarrassment. However, this is a natural part of taking risks ofc and risky science is great. P.s. in this case I really don't like the paper or methods. However, open peer review is good for science.

chaps 1y ago
To be clear, I'm not saying that peer review is bad!! Quite the opposite.
- physarum_salad 1y ago
  Yes ofc! I guess the major distinction is closed versus open peer review. Having observed some abuses of the former I am inclined to the latter. Although if editors are good maybe it's not such a big difference. The superconducting stuff was more of a saga rather than a reasonable process of peer review too haha.
ajmurmann 1y ago
To your point the paper AFAIK wasn't debunked because someone read it carefully but because people tried to reproduce it. Peer reviews don't reproduce. I think we'd be better off with fewer peer reviews and more time spent actually reproducing results. That's why we had a while crisis named after that
- jcranmer 1y ago
  > To your point the paper AFAIK wasn't debunked because someone read it carefully but because people tried to reproduce it. Actually, from my recollection, it was debunked pretty quickly by people who read the paper because the paper was hot garbage. I saw someone point out that its graph of resistivity showed higher resistance than copper wire. It was no better than any of the other claimed room-temperature semiconductor papers that came out that year; it merely managed to catch virality on social media and therefore drove people to attempt to reproduce it.

mwigdahl 1y ago

And cold fusion. A friend's father (a chemistry professor) back in the early 90s wasted a bunch of time trying variants on Pons and Fleischmann looking to unlock tabletop fusion.