It’s only been a few weeks since the discovery was announced and the scientific process takes much longer than that for verification.
That might be the case for things that started as science and need verification. The paper on LK99 is barely science. It asserts with words that a superconductor has been observed, but none of the data presented in it (such as the resistivity graph) even support the worded assertion. There’s barely a claim to even be refuted.
That was me echoing PastTense’s earlier reply to me back at him. At the time he said that to me, there had already been enough replication attempts done and published to 99.99% refute it.
Derek Lowe (who usually talks about drug development) presents his opinion:
Superconductor (?) Update
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/superconductor-update
Bumping this to let folks know that on Wednesday at 6:30 PM (Italy,so CEST- Central European Standard Time), they are going to livestream a special public & media session of the 16th European Conference on Applied Superconductivity (EUCAS). A panel of scientists with deep backgrounds in superconducting materials research will discuss the recent kerfuffle over the South Korean results. Here’s the link:
Update on some of properties:
Brian
Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist: This is the third high-profile retraction for Ranga Dias. Researchers worry the controversy is damaging the field’s reputation.
This year’s report by Dias and Salamat is the second significant claim of superconductivity to crash and burn in 2023. In July, a separate team at a start-up company in Seoul described4,5 a crystalline purple material dubbed LK-99 — made of copper, lead, phosphorus and oxygen — that they said showed superconductivity at normal pressures and at temperatures up to at least 127 °C (400 kelvin). There was much online excitement and many attempts to reproduce the results, but researchers quickly reached a consensus that the material was not a superconductor at all.
You (well, me actually) really have to wonder about the mindset of somebody who fakes up some research on a revolutionary topic. You’re not going to get away with conning the whole planet into building stuff against your non-working fake model. You can’t sell a patent for a non-reproduceable idea no matter what it is. So what is going on mentally with these folks?
I can certainly imagine somebody honestly goofing up their experiments and/or data gathering and becoming persuaded they’ve made a major breakthrough. And being pretty excited about that. Can you say “winning lottery ticket”? I sure can.
But knowing that the whole world will immediately try to repro your results as soon as your preprint hits the internet, how about you repro them yourself a time, or maybe three, before you make your irretrievable big splash?
yep, kindalike pissing into your pants on a cold winter day, because it feels nice and warm.
Thought I’d add this March 8th Nature News summary of the room temperature superconductor claims of Ranga Dias (Professor at Rochester).
Superconductivity scandal: the inside story of deception in a rising star’s physics lab (nature.com)
Ranga Dias claimed to have discovered the first room-temperature superconductors, but the work was later retracted. An investigation by Nature ’s news team reveals new details about what happened — and how institutions missed red flags.
The article seems pretty fair in its treatment of its own organization (Nature News is separate from the journal Nature, but they work for the same bosses) and how Nature came to publish not one, but two paers from this person.
That was good (and as you said, fair in disclosing Nature’s actions), thanks for sharing it.