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Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I feel bad for the original authors, who were correctly holding out for stronger evidence but were forced into publishing early by the actions of a third party going behind their backs.

I hope they don't experience undue blowback because of this.

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Yet we're all the better for it happening. Even for the original researchers - maybe it would've taken them another 10 years to get to a similar conclusion. Now, they can take the next step and not waste more time.

Seems like this followed the same rule of internet answers: Ask a question and you'll get crickets. Answer a question wrong and you'll get tonnes of people telling you the right answer.

Yeah, the power of Randlow's law cannot be understated.

Eurgh I actually Googled that, well played.

yes, Steven's law has such utility

Do I read it correctly that doubling the amount of current through your fingers feels like 10x’ing it? If so… shocking.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevens's_power_law

omg I love this

This was great science. Hypothesis, test, and attempted confirmation. Too bad it's not superconducting, but the process worked the way it is supposed to.

I suspect the third party is the one that will mostly suffer the career consequences.

For sure! The original researchers showed remarkable restraint considering what they were potentially sitting on. Kudos to them!

I think the story might be more complicated than that, I remember reading that the "third party" was the one paying the bills for the experiment so pushing it out early and even publicly failing would've been preferable to getting it dragged out infinitely for an unlikely hope of it being successful.

This funder-rushed science exactly what created Doc Ock and the Green Goblin.

Now I'm even more disappointed in the outcome!

They both had some pretty ground breaking technology to be fair

Is this the origin of "semi-magnetic-man"?

I wonder why it was so difficult for the original authors to get a pure sample, it's not like it took 10 years to create these larger crystsal.

I'm not aware of it, anything to read about the said third party?

This gives them an out actually

The question is whether or not the original authors were pawns or part of the scam.

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