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Comment by jspann | Hacker News Reader

The disappointing part of this is the large parts of the population who will look at this and other recent cases (see: Francesca Gino) and think that "academia is broken" or "scientists can't be trusted". That narrative will even be amplified by many YouTubers and periodicals who were quick with those headlines. However, as soon as this work came out, multiple scientists voiced concerns, several even filed complaints with the journal. Those in the field even took steps to reproduce the work found in the paper. The fact that this error was caught and several were skeptical enough to comment is how the system should work. Arguing over results that are too good to be true, taking steps to try to reproduce it independently, and publicly taking it down is why science can be trusted. Research isn't going to be perfect every time but peer review and reproduction should weed out the less than credible.

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Academia is broken, and for deeper reasons than the occasional implausible result. Indeed it's the papers that don't make waves that are dangerous. As well as the papers that don't get written.

they could have argued quietly

if there were challenges in getting people to care enough about reproducibility then we should address that

because the tabloid fanfare rightly deserves all the criticism it got and all the blemish to “science” if thats what people’s takeaway was

>"academia is broken"

Academia is broken, in many ways even.

>"scientists can't be trusted"

You shouldn't trust scientists anyway, at least not without due dilligence. Science is built on skepticism.

I am not comfortable with that point of view. Growing up people used to always say "question authority" and that seems like the responsible thing to teach. But on the other hand, does it really make sense for everyone to do their own diligence in every matter?

The thing that has caused me to question this the most is crypto-currency scams. I don't mean generally, just the things we would all agree are clearly scams and kind of obviously so. They so often tell you: "do your own research". I think its a version of the poorly written Nigerian scam letter. The idea is a person with the right skill or knowledge will see its a scam right away and not bother them. People who are careless enough, dumb enough desperate enough will still be suckered and there are plenty of them. So the obvious scammers is completely comfortable saying "do your own research" and know that he filters out everyone but the suckers.

I wonder if sometimes most of us are better off just trusting the people who are experts most of the time? Skepticism is good but you can't really form your own exper opinion on every question you will face.

> "question authority"

Whenever I was told this growing up, I would respond with "Why?".

It was not always appreciated.

Because authority is easy to abuse. There's the answer.

You missed the humor of my post, I think.

I didn't, I'm just sad that the adults couldn't give you the right answer at the time.

> you can't really form your own exper[t] opinion on every question you will face.

noone can be an expert in all fields, but you can seek multiple opinions from multiple experts, and generally the consensus is likely to be correct. Esp. if those experts are far apart, and unlikely to be colluding or associated.

The trick is how to do it efficiently, and not to fall into confirmation bias (aka, seeking only experts that agree with your preconceived notions).

even just the task of finding multiple experts qualified to hold an opinion on a topic can be overwhelming. for a lot of things (like, for example, superconductivity) i'm not even qualified to determine if somebody should count as an expert or not.

this is the reason why things like scientific journals exist. it's embarrasing that Nature had to retract this paper, but on balance they're still doing a way better job of judging this subject matter than i would.

Nobody is going to personally find multiple experts to weigh in on every subject. What an absurd thing to suggest.

I can ask a dozen master astrologers what the future holds and I still won’t know very much.

"But on the other hand, does it really make sense for everyone to do their own diligence in every matter?"

It probably depends on what is at stake. I don't particularly care about superconductors, but I do care about my knees, and when one doctor several years ago wanted to operate me, I sought a second opinion elsewhere. Sure enough, the other clinic told me that this can be treated conservatively.

I canceled the operation and, 6 years later, I have zero problems, zero pain and can walk just fine, even up/downstairs. I am not sure what the operation would do; knees are sensitive joints and don't like to be cut open.

> large parts of the population...

They're not paying attention to this.

> The disappointing part of this is the large parts of the population who will look at this and other recent cases (see: Francesca Gino) and think that "academia is broken" or "scientists can't be trusted".

No, sorry. Just no. Stop. "Scientists" were clear, loud, and nearly unanimous in their calls for caution about these results. People on this very site were in these threads saying "we should wait a few weeks, guys" and getting downvoted into gray oblivion for their trouble by a horde of kids hopped up on "proof" they saw via (and I'm not kidding about this) a multimeter screen on TikTok.

You can't fix that with science. Science did everything right here. We had a tantalizing result reported, investigated, and disposed.

Note that the article is not about LK-99, but rather about another supposed room temperature superconductor.

> No, sorry. Just no. Stop.

I agree with your assessment, of course, but I don’t think it invalidates the comment you are responding to. Large parts of the population could plausibly think those things, despite how clear and unambiguous “scientists” were about the results.

> ""we should wait a few weeks, guys" and getting downvoted into gray oblivion for their trouble by a horde of kids"

Their trouble of being no-fun wet blankets? What trouble was that, exactly?

> "Science did everything right here. We had a tantalizing result reported, investigated, and disposed."

And the only thing you wish went differently is that you squashed more people's enthusiasm??

Saying "These are huge claims with insufficient evidence, let's wait for clarity" is hardly "being no-fun wet blankets". It's understanding how science works.

"And the only thing you wish went differently is that you squashed more people's enthusiasm??"

It's not about "enthusiasm". It's about scientific illiteracy. You can be excited all you want. "I saw a multimeter on TikTok, therefore it's true" and then shouting down folks with actual understanding for being cautious isn't enthusiasm, though. It's Dunning Kruger in action.

The incident in TFA has nothing to do with the LK-99 hype.

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