> a year later ... they detailed an unusual and complicated method [for processing the data]
regarding which a team claims:
> [We] proved basically mathematically that the raw data are not measured in the laboratory; they are fabricated
So multiple different peers have pointed out multiple different times that this team is publishing "exactly the results you'd want to see to confirm superconductivity", and then a year later publishing fake-looking raw data or overly-complex "data processing" that magically gives them the exact result they needed to get published. These guys don't even seem particularly good at their fraud:
"We just made the most important discovery in the history of superconductivity!"
[Immediately]: Okay but what about all this bullshit here?
"Oh that? (nervous laughter) ha ha, well, see, the thing about that is ... [a year later] ... there, see, here's the raw data; we were just processing the data in a way we never mentioned before. We didn't tell you about it because, um, well, um, we ... forgot?"
[Immediately]: Okay but this raw data is obviously fake "Oh, well, um, psych! We were just kidding about that result! Ha ha ha, take-backsies. Um yeah, we take it back."
[A year later]
"Hey we did the result again! This time it's for real serious realsies. We have the result here. We did the result thing again. It's the exact same result but better this time. Guys?"
Why is anyone taking them seriously?
Lying in a professional context is basically never OK. If someone is shown to be lying, they should never work in that field again, nor any field that bestows upon them any sort of trust. Lying is a big deal; it should absolutely be career-killing. It's not something people just do once and then get over. A few weeks ago people on Hacker News were talking about how to help their children cheat at school, like it's just a normal thing. It absolutely blows my mind that this would be seen as OK.
Link?
> I was helping my son with his homework. He had to write an essay about why the gender of the protagonist might be female (although this is never mentioned in the short story). Fortunately for him, ChatGPT knew the story and was happy to write an essay with arguments.
It goes on like that. The parent helps their son use ChatGPT to cheat at school, and the responses are all positive, like:
> I am delighted to hear that children are already adopting the new tech
And:
> This gives your son a competitive advantage over the kids who will simply turn up what the AI wrote (and get a 0) or spend too long writing their own essays.
They're celebrating it and talking about how learning to cheat well will give them a "competitive advantage" (zero-sum bullshit) over the kids who cheat badly, and then making a mockery of the children who actually "spend too long" doing the work themselves.
It's insane. It's bizzaro world. It's infuriating. They're teaching their children to grow up to be liars and cheaters. They're knowingly punishing the children who choose not to cheat. They sound like toxic psychopaths, which I got downvoted (obviously) for calling them.
Sorry, but I don't agree. The form of this argument is indistinguishable to me from those who argued back in the 20th century that using calculators to do arithmetic was cheating.
Writing essays is on the same road as doing arithmetic by hand, calligraphy, blacksmithing, and buggy-whip manufacturing. All of these used to be useful skills but technology has displaced them. That's the reality, and no amount of railing at the wind will change that.
;-)
(sarcasm, of course).
If it doesn't repro probably this guy's career is over.
You're right, of course. I would not be jumping to conclusions if I had actual authority over the consideration of their work; I would be much more measured. But here in my armchair, I'm free to express my strong gut feeling that these guys are obvious liars -- but that's just, like, my opinion, man. This is one of those cases where I'd be very happy to be proven wrong.
I'm curious about the methods used to determine that the data was fabricated though. Would someone mathier than me help answer this: Was the fabrication of data determined through a mathmatical analysis of the actual data numbers ala Benford's Law? Or was this determined more through a scientific analysis of the experiment that determined that the numbers weren't possible?
"The previous paper has been resubmitted to Nature with new data that validates the earlier work, Dias says. The new data was collected outside the lab, at the Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories in front of an audience of scientists who saw the superconducting transition live. A similar approach has been taken with the new paper. "
[0] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-viable-superconducting-materia...
> However, outside access may fall short of the community’s hopes. Dias and Salamat have founded a startup, Unearthly Materials, which, Dias said, has already raised over $20 million in funding from investors including the CEOs of Spotify and OpenAI. They’ve also recently applied for a patent on the lutetium hydride material, which would deter them from mailing out samples. “We have clear, detailed instructions on how to make our samples,” Dias said. “We are not going to distribute this material, considering the proprietary nature of our processes and the intellectual property rights that exist.” He suggested that “certain methodologies and processes” are also off the table.
It also helps reduce fraudulent claims of new discoveries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell
Contra the diagram, I don't believe the diamonds in a real anvil are faceted.
(Thanks jjk166)
This is exactly how an arbitrary group of scientists should react to extraordinary claims like this. Not 100% dismissal because of the history or provenance of the researchers, not 100% acceptance without independent replication.
But realistically, at any time in any field there are only a small number of people who are truly pushing the state of the art (I'm referring to discovery science, not reference science- IE, a focus on adding 1% additional knowledge to our already copious understandings. Any I think tthose people shouldn't have to follow the normal rules about scientific publishing: I want them to push the limits as much as possible. That means occasionally publishing something that contains a mistake (not a falsification), and then being willing to have it retracted (without consequence to future publication).
These sorts of fields tend to self-correct because somethign that's wrong isn't reproducible, and all these scientists are working to reproduce each other's results (note: both the people who thing Dias faked his results were going to take the new protocol home and attempt to repro it in their hands ASAP).
In a sense, it's being willing to accept a higher false positive/false negative rate so you don't filter out some true positives.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32993556 ("Retraction of Room-temperature superconductivity in a carbonaceous sulfur hydride (nature.com)", 46 comments)
hmm, very interesting. I don't think it works like that anymore. The next step has got to be commercial availability. else investors to would loose money or worse, some Chinese company could "steal" the future profits from this valuable novel technology painstakingly developed by the publishing group.