Totally disagree. If anything, this whole episode (debacle?) reinforced the fact that science works and the process played out exactly how the scientific process should work:
1. First, the paper was originally posted on arxiv, meaning it was a pre-print and didn't go through any peer review. So the vast majority of comments I saw on it was "Wow, this would be really cool, if it turns out to be true."
2. Immediately many labs around the world started trying to replicate the results. And very quickly there were some negative results that came back.
3. The thing that I think is so cool is not only did negative results come back, but from TFA people now have a very good understanding of why the initial analysis was incorrect. That's great science.
One may argue that this was really a failure in media communication vs. the actual underlying science, but if anything it teaches appropriate skepticism, especially when a report is initially published, without peer review, without yet being replicated, that ends with the sentence "We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind."
> One may argue that this was really a failure in media communication vs. the actual underlying science
the scientific process and scientists here are innocent, media not so much in my eyes.
That said, I really loved that Sixty Symbols video for a couple reasons:
1. First, Moriarty was pretty much exactly spot on in his skepticism: the reduction in resistivity is not the behavior you'd expect to see in a superconductor (turned out to be due to copper sulfide impurities), and that the floating in a magnet behavior is not that surprising and could be due to diamagnetism.
2. I wasn't previously that familiar with diamagnetism beyond a vague "I remember hearing about that", so this whole thing led me known the wikipedia rabbit hole to find out about diamagnetism which was really interesting to me.
3. Professor Moriarty explains "this is not how you do science" (bad science by over-hyped press release is at least as old as cold fusion) and gives very good advice on how you should do good science in an age of Arxiv.
The media is often wrong about many things. Sometimes due to ignorance. Others negligence. And occasionally its malicious. If anyone figures out how to fix that without destroying freedom of the press they should get a nobel.
https://www.google.com/search?q=lk-99&sca_esv=557962971&biw=...
He clearly doesn't think it's worth his time to understand anything about LK-99, its history, or its popularity. It seems like most anybody that watched the fireworks show is more informed than he is. So what's the video about?
The same way he says "this isn't how science is done", you could say also say what he's doing isn't how peer review or journalism is done. What's not being addressed is that this kind of arrogance and appeal to authority is EXACTLY what flat-earthers and the lot are rebelling against, and the solution is not to put up more walls.
There are now potentially 10s or 100s of thousands of people who have seen how the sausage gets made, what kind of pitfalls there are, how measurements can lead to false conclusions, and mistakes can be made; and they're absolutely fascinated by it and want to learn how to do things better.
"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."
This doesn't mean that every individual needs to be an expert in every field. You only have to know so much about a given field and the processes within it to develop a degree of confidence in your perspective on who you can trust, and extend that trust to the people they trust.
Mistrust in science is borne of ignorance, but not in the way that you think.
As someone who remembers the original cold fusion debacle well, this felt exactly the same to me: announce a result with a ton of unnecessary hype and fanfare (I mean, the closing sentence in the paper was just absurd in my opinion) without first trying to (a) at least call up some experts in superconductivity to get their opinion, or at least (b) write a paper with less of a "new era for humanity" tone. This smelled 100% of these researchers chasing glory without a modicum of introspection. I thought the most important part of the video is where the professor said that scientists are taught that when they get weird results, their first instinct should absolutely be to question it: what could have gone wrong? how could my experimental setup have been flawed? These researchers showed none of that appropriate skepticism.
The video is published merely 1 day ago, when the consensus that "LK-99 isn't it" had already been formed, and these points have been long discussed by other scientists and random people on Internet long time ago.
There is nothing newsworthy about these points; they're even borderline hindsight.
As a PhD physics scientist with a familiarity with this area, I’m glad this got the attention it did and showed science working “as it should”.
Consensus was that this would lead to more people interested in the field and what actually does work.
There’s heaps of sloppy science out there. There are massive structural issues in how science is done.
There’s obviously not enough money or prestige in condensed matter physics if Phil thinks this is a bad hoax and it’s bad for Science.
Within the space of a month this was resolved. It wasn’t even published. Go to pharma, medicine, vet, ag and you will see hoaxes that last years. Reviewers who don’t have any relevant knowledge. Journals which won’t retract until you threaten to sue them. Universities that will take no disciplinary action against hoaxers at all. LK-99 was almost debunked in a single media cycle.
The people who have taken this to reduce the credibility of science rather than these fallible humans who succumbed to their impulse for fame didn’t give science any credibility in the first place.
EDIT: shout out to our favourite website retraction watch. Anything you read there remember, that’s science working and some Scientist somewhere who likes being right has vanquished their enemy in the academy. https://retractionwatch.com/
As for the "audacity of HN" - this site is a very bizarre mixture of a relatively small number of working scientists, a lot of people without much scientific background who are very interested in science, and get-rich-quick startup types who are sniffing around for the next breakthrough they can turn into money. That mix leads to weird dynamics when it comes to how scientific activities get discussed.
What is the medias representation of the future now? A burning shithole, no future. It's depressing and not true. I enjoyed the few days of excitement, I want us to go back to having an optimistic outlook on the future of humanity.
Humans are the greatest adaptors to a given environment, even if the climate catastrophising ends up being true, we will survive.
How to be really optimistic?
Get away from the news, social media. Spend more time on hobbbies, family and friends. Do something for your community.
These things will make you happier
Shaming laypeople and the media for not being scientifically literate enough to navigate quickly-releasing literature on quantum mechanics isn’t good for science either. It stifles curiosity, and this kind of take is what hinders people from taking an interest in science in the first place. What’s important is that as new information comes in, those same laypeople are willing to take in that new information, which is exactly what happened.
Science isn’t perfect and in this case, the process worked exactly as designed.
There was some drama between the authors, the science was sloppy and the writing inappropriate, but AFAIK, no faked data, no secrecy, they gave away their recipe in a way that allowed for reproduction attempts, and a few weeks later, we have a convincing explanation. Stupidity, not malice.