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Comment by avereveard | Hacker News Reader

0 write your proof then, rise to unending fame.

If contemporary scientists cared about proving negatives, let alone assigning prestige to the task, then there wouldn’t be a replication crisis.

...the replication crisis is not in science

When was the last time a Nobel was awarded for proving a negative? Who becomes rich and famous for being a killjoy?

The entire premise of your retort was wrong. You should have challenged them to take their certainty to the prediction markets.

This is a common misunderstanding. The main mechanism for self-correction in science isn't about replicating or refuting findings. It's about which science survives to become the basis of other science. If a finding does not bear out, it simply will not become the basis for subsequent science. It's similar to natural selection.

The so-called "replication crisis" is overblown.

If LK-99 fails to be a useful material, it's interesting life will be over very shortly. If it is useful (and even if it's not the promised room-temperature superconductor, but useful in some other aspect), it will continue on in science, in technology - everywhere it might be useful for further investigation.

Invoking the replication crisis was a rhetorical flourish. The point is that OP’s attempt at a rejoinder about proof in the negative leading to fame is silly because the entire field does not seem to be very much interested in proving negatives.

>it's interesting life will be over very shortly.

the authors managed to squeeze 24 years of grant funding out of it

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