A superconductor claim blew up online. Science has punctured it | Hacker News Reader

A superconductor claim blew up online. Science has punctured it

washingtonpost.com

29 pointsagonz25328 comments

I think it’s unfortunate how the headline frames it like the original claim is somehow separate from the observe-hypothesize-experiment-explain loop of science. It’s also bit overconfident IMO - we totally still don’t have a handle on what’s actually going on, even if the evidence for room temperature superconductivity isn’t looking great. There’s still new preprints coming out every day

It's the layman's definition of science. As of [current date] humans know everything, and anything not fitting the current world view is wrong. Often perpetuated by people who are not scientists.

Always fun to see how sone entirely apolitical scientific ‘event’ gets processed by the mainstream news publication machine into some inaccurate sensationalist BS.

Proof that science works Just Fine using simple tools like arxiv and social media. Journals are dead. Their invention was scientifically bankrupt, their existence has bred the very human biases and social conflicts that science was supposed to eliminate, and their raison d'être is rendered moot by technology. Good riddance. Long live the scientific method.

Hardly, it only worked in this case because of how high profile it was. You cannot use the "submit to arxiv, wait for 100 labs to verify" model for anything less exciting than room temperature superconductors.

And honestly, if they’d waited until their work was up to the quality bar for a journal submission, a lot of resources would not have been wasted attempting to replicate it.

And people absolutely proved that their ability to read scientific claims in isolation and make an educated guess how much weight to give them is really bad.

Would this paper be published in a reputable journal? I think they would ask for better graphs at the very least, maybe more detail of the process of creating the material. It doesn't seem like the arxiv prerint did any good here. I don't think science = being in a journal but this event doesn't show evidence for the death of journals.

>Their invention was scientifically bankrupt

Did you just replace "morals" with "science" here? What do you mean by this?

Or do you mean that their "invention" was without reason? Even if journals are not needed today, "arxiv and social media" did not yet exist.

I think the ... hoo-ha ... online is going to have at least one positive effect - a greater interest in and funding of basic research.

The Western world could double its science budget tomorrow and not notice the line item cost, and should probably double it's education budget while we are there (which we would notice but that's kind of the point).

We don't know where the next break through will come from, but well educated well funded researchers is the one thing we do know we need.

The `votes per dollar` return on science spending is too low, unfortunately :(

Very poorly presented piece of journalism. No one should and could expect a rigorous scientific examination on a poorly written paper that unfortunately had to be rushed out onto arxiv because Kwon who got fired from the research center leaked their findings prematurely without any consent from the contributors (I heard that he will be facing disciplinary action from Korea university). I still feel like we need to wait for a peer-reviewed paper that they are working on to get published at APL material.

Who is Science?

They

Whoever the “mainstream” headline columnists approve as the voice allowed in a given day. It changes everyday.

The new religion. You are not allowed to question the wisdom handed down from on high by Science.

Anthony Fauci: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/anthony-fauci-i-am-th...

He's prolly got Electrolytes, too.

I mean he is in the top ~100 most cited researchers of all time, across all fields, and he's still alive. Guy isn't a great public speaker but his name is on quite a few foundational papers in his field.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0dDO3SAAAAAJ

This is Science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99#Replication_attempts

I'm not sure the headline understands that scientists can be wrong their entire careers but still be excellent scientists, doing excellent and even influential science.

"A black body claim for short wavelengths blew up academia. Science punctured it so resolutely that the claim is now called an ultraviolet catastrophe!".

Science is adhering to skepticism until the evidence is undeniable. Science is reproducible. Science is thorough and deliberate and falsifiable.

Everything else is alchemy and superstition and most definitely NOT science.

No, “science” has done no such thing.

A bunch of theoretical-science types have been putting out PR as fast as possible, and trying to claim that it’s over.

The whole thing looks very corrupt.

I'm amazed how invested some people are in this.

I'm sorry, but skepticism isn't "corrupt". 99 times out of 100, it's right. No one is being suppressed here. Anyone with even a hint of a positive result goes viral on twitter instantly. But the results just aren't there. And yeah, the crufty theoreticians are haw-haw-hawing a little (cold fusion -style, I guess) at the people who jumped on the possibility without really thinking through the implications.

But the theoreticians were right about cold fusion too. Look, if LK-99 is real then you don't need a theoreticians blessing. The problem is that *it's not real*, at least not yet, and you're demanding the theoreticians hold their opinions because it upsets you that they think you're wrong.

I’ve seen enough blatant gaslighting about this on Twitter (and here) to just ignore you.

Disagreement is not "blatant gaslighting", and ignoring people who disagree with you only harms your understanding of the world.

It's just so upsetting to me the extent to which the HN community has charged down this meme-driven, anti-rationalist path. Everything that doesn't feel right is suddenly the word of an enemy to commenters here. And we used to be so sure of our fact-based world views!

How on earth did this make it to the front page given everything else that's happened related to this on the front page every. damn. day?

I see a parallel with the faster than light neutrino anomaly in Italy from some years ago.

Headlines are bad for your well-being and development, and reporters are meatheads of communication. Are you open-minded and comfortable living close to the edge of the unknown? That’s science! Science good!

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