Almost all research are published in scientific journal. News outlets then pick some to report deepening on many factors from breakthrough development to just pure chance. So this is not something strange.

Actually the opposite is the strange. I would be skeptical of any group the report something in media before publishing the results in a journal (or arxiv like this case).

This is not to say anything about this particular paper. I still have to read it eventually.

That’s not how either science or NY Times works. First you write the journal article. Then if it’s peer-reviewed, published and seems otherwise legit, your university writes a more layman-friendly press release. If it’s something huge, they’ll probably even arrange a press conference. But they have to be pretty darn certain that it’s legit because retracting something that’s already in the wild is very embarrassing. Then NY Times may make an article of it.

Science is based on replicability, and you just don’t go straight to mass media before at least other groups have had a chance to replicate your findings. Definitely not when it’s something this big. Or if you do, your institution will likely be incredibly pissed. I’d say that the more careful they are, the more slowly and by the book they proceed with this, the more, not less, likely it is that this is a real deal.

AFAICT this has not yet been published in a scientific journal, and has not passed peer review of any sort. Having said that, there's been at least one story on HN this past week where researchers were chastised for going to the press before properly vetting their results.

First of all arxiv is not even a scientific journal.

Second, you're literally saying you expect to read important things on mainstream press instead of scientific journals.

Mainstream press doesn't have the ability to replicate physics research results you may indeed first get the results in a journal. It can take some time before the research community manages to decide if something replicates or not.

But there doesn't seem to be any indication in the link that this has been published in a peer reviewed journal, or received kinds of community peer review, either.

It's a preprint. Also, NYT doesn't publish scientific papers.

>If this were true, I would’ve expected to see it on the front page of the New York Times

Welcome to the information age my friend! Where you can know things before the gatekeepers do.

Isn't that what Pons and Fleischmann did, calling a press conference? Going through review and publication first seems more prudent.

Ok, looks like I forgot this is HN for a moment there. Must have been excited. Yes, I am familiar with how science works, including the publishing side.

What I was trying to say was more along the lines of, if this is legit, I’m surprised we weren’t first hearing about it in the mainstream media after a leak.

I’m absolutely not in favor of any more Pons & Fleischmann moments.

You have a lot of faith in the New York Times to know what’s important.