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Comment by badman2001 | Hacker News Reader

badman2001

Recent W&M Condensed Matter Physics Grad. Worked closely with HT Kim, not on this project. He is a trustworthy guy, knows his stuff. I think he is right when he calls the paper very sloppy, I am confused why there is no phase diagram and the sample purity seems suspect. These are things I think would have been addressed in peer review and would give me more confidence overall. Probably not fraud, but doesn't mean it's superconductivity.

Not optimistic about replication in the next week too, Solid State Synthesis seems "easy" but in my experience can be problematic. Not an expert in that part though

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Glad to see a realistic take on HN. Endlessly frustrating to see people be like "this will be replicated in days". Yeah, sure, let every other lab just drop what they're doing, order all the reagents on express, do a thorough characterization making sure they understand the impurities and crystal phase, then perform good airtight measurements in a couple days. Crystal growth always has complications many times outside of your control - the most minor of things can cause ridiculous problems.

Especially when they admit to having phase impurities, and it's not really clear how they've gone from bulk sample to measurement sample (are they really measuring just the superconductor or the impurity phase?). Needs addressing, especially when the Cu2S phase impurity seems to have a phase transition of it's own at or around 370K (suspiciously close to where some of their Tc measurements are).

Feels like you’re strawmanning the idea here. It’s not “every lab” it’s “at least one lab”.

Jeez I sure hope at least one lab can spare the time to bother reproducing a room temperature semiconductor claim.

One lab is definitely not adequate.

Replication attempts don't give you an unambiguous signal, many things can go wrong.

If one lab hasn't succeeded in replicating the paper, does that mean the paper is wrong, or just that a necessary step wasn't documented clearly or followed correctly?

More labs trying to replicate give you more independent signals.

Depends on the finding.

Getting a false negative from a lab is plausible.

Getting a false positive seems very unlikely.

Cold fusion got several false positives very quickly.

And if this is a diamagnetic that seems to do some of the right behavior, a false positive is quite possible here as well.

Hopefully all corrected in time.

Although the experimental protocol had not been published, physicists in several countries attempted, and failed, to replicate the excess heat phenomenon. The first paper submitted to Nature reproducing excess heat, although it passed peer review, was rejected because most similar experiments were negative and there were no theories that could explain a positive result;[notes 2][42] this paper was later accepted for publication by the journal Fusion Technology. Nathan Lewis, professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, led one of the most ambitious validation efforts, trying many variations on the experiment without success,[43] while CERN physicist Douglas R. O. Morrison said that "essentially all" attempts in Western Europe had failed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

But if one lab *does* succeed, it means there probably is something of substance.

Cold fusion also replicated across multiple labs, before they all retracted shortly after.

My memory is fuzzy, but my recollection is that Pons & Fleischmann's non-discovery involved unclear "waste heat" measurements, and a setup that wasn't well described, making it difficult for other researchers to duplicate. That would seem to contrast with Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon's work, where everything suggests they've provided a readily replicable description of the material and process, and the evidence (magnetic levitation) is going to be pretty obvious.

If one lab fails they may have fucked up. If one lab succeeds then it’s very noteworthy.

This is a fairly straight forward claim. It’s not like “most science” with dubiously small effect sizes that may not replicate.

when an "adversarial" lab (as in, competing with the original lab) tries to replicate and succeeds, you can be pretty damn sure it's legit.

I mean being thorough will obviously take a long time, but if a decent number of research groups decide to drop what they're doing and attempt a replication I don't think it would take that long for one of them to at least partially succeed if the claim is true. That doesn't mean they're publishing a sister paper, but it might mean we see some tweets saying "my group synthesized LK-99 and we have reason to believe it may be a rtp superconductor"

>Glad to see a realistic take on HN.

From an account created 1 hour ago, claiming to have worked with the author. Take with a huge grain of salt.

I would only expect these kinds of posts from a throwaway account created very recently with a single post.

Anyone with a long HN history is more likely trying to karma farm and chase clout by spinning up some bullshit. Trying to establish themselves as an authority on a trending topic.

But because a throwaway account has no past or future, it is the purest form of communication.

It is entirely believable that a person with substantial trace on HN and ties in the field would rather create a throwaway than post such remark under his main account.

Then they would not out their identity by claiming to have worked with the author. That piece of information alone whittles their identity down to maybe 100 people. Out of 100 adjacent academics how many post on HN, with this style, and this specific level of knowledge in that specific subfield? They may as well have just made the account their irl name. Anonymity is not a realistic goal. Assuming a realistic poster means it's reasonable to suspect their earnestness.

You are frustrated and this makes you act in a deliberately obtuse manner.

There is a world of difference between "anyone who has worked with the guy" and "has worked with the guy + has hundreds of comments on HN identifying career track over the last few years". The former grants each suspect plausible deniability, while the latter pinpoints the true author.

> Anonymity is not a realistic goal.

It obviously is for a throwaway account. Time to reread the classic

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/about/anonymity-and-the-inter...

I don't feel frustrated. I am just applying game theory to explain potential motivations from an untrustworthy source.

i agree re. skepticism but all I'm saying about HT Kim is that he's a real scientist with real bona fides, which I think you could find by asking anyone in my specific subfield of condensed matter physics

i should also have mentioned that I do not personally know the extent of his knowledge about superconductivity, to my understanding he was an expert on the synthesis of phase change materials, particularly the metal insulator transition. in the 2nd paper he is cited for proposing the superconductivity mechanism based on mechanisms seen in the metal-insulator-transition, which I have not seen before as an SC mechanism

Yes, this is the internet.

To me the biggest mystery is why they didn't make multiple samples and send them to a few places that could verify their claims immediately. I understand that the papers were published before they really wanted to but they've also apparently have had samples for awhile it sounds like?

So assuming it's not BS (and I doubt that it is) it would lead me to believe that making the material is difficult to get right? The video they've produced uses a sample that isn't particularly elegant, to be sure.

I guess it's all conjecture at this point and healthy skepticism is warranted. A press conference would be nice.

Skepticism is warranted, but apparently there's infighting in the group (only 3 people can be recipients of a Nobel Prize) and one jumped the gun to get his name out there. And also apparently fear of research espionage from the PRC (not as far-fetched as it sounds).

Interesting.. would you have a source for those rumors?

It's just speculation because the third author on the first paper isn't an author on the second, better paper, and he's the one who published it.

Man, fucking scientists dude, they need to get their heads on straight

If you're one of the 7 people who invented room temperature superconductivity, it's not going to matter who has the Nobel Prize. You can take a part time 7 figure consulting gig and be as famous as you want to boot

Most famous discovers of famous phenomena do not get 7 figure consulting gigs. Did any discoverers of high Tc superconductors, quantum hall, topological insulators, blue LEDs, graphene get rich? Not as far as I know.

He probably won't even get 6 figure consulting gig.

Comment below the image: https://twitter.com/8teapi/status/1684571913908293633

i do not understand this either regarding the samples, usually(in my limited experience) synthesis groups have collaborators that specialize in transport or other types of measurements which I think would have added a bit of credibility, probably could have gotten a measurement of Tc, and just generally added a lot to the paper

That could very well have been their plan, they just got beat to the punch by the paper leak. Shrug. Probably won’t get the full story til next summer when Netflix inevitably does a C tier docu-drama series about it.

In the New Scientist interview HT Kim seemed to imply that he wouldn't help other researchers until his paper gets published. If the synthesis ends up being tricky this could take a while.

Link to the New Scientist article is: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2384782-room-temperatur...

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