After claims of high-temp superconductivity were retracted, Ranga Dias lost his university job.
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Scientist behind superconductivity claims ousted
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^^ THIS ^^
It's literally dangerous to tell the truth these days unless it fits within President Felon and Muskrat's echo chamber of conspiracy theories and lies. Sad. And libraries continue to have books ripped from their shelves because the books might offend their precious eyes. For a political party that seems to be all about free speech and rights, they sure don't have a problem being hypocritical when it comes to stuff they don't agree with. But... I digress.
#SAVESCIENCE
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I studied the steam tunnels at the U of O (GO DUCKS!). I got extra credit for the excursion by doing it high as fuck on mushrooms.
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I’m not sure it’s sad except for anyone but his students. This is a typical delusional academic justifying their fraud.
This guy has had red flag all over him for years from my point of view . I saw a couple people like this during my PhD , and the signs are remarkably similar in terms of behavior.
There are bad scientists out there and then there are also bad people pretending to science as well , that’s really all there is to it. Science isn’t some pure holy land where all the people are honorable , and we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking as much.
Ironically what a lot of the trumpers and RFKs react to is the holier than thou attitude many scientists or academic institutions have .. if people would just eat some humble pie every now and then and admit they’re not infallible, it might help improve the average person’s understanding of science . Presenting scientific “facts” as unarguable truths is deeply problematic because they’re often not , strictly speaking, facts. You have to teach people to understand the nuance and the method rather than hammering them on the head .
Yes , it’s frustrating that people are stupid and believe demonstrably untrue things , but going around demanding stuff like “believe in science” turns it into an article of faith rather than a learning experience . Once it becomes a war of blind faith rather than a discussion you lose a lot of people. I believe in science , but I also believe that we have to educate people .. forcing it down their throats won’t go well.
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In fairness, though, "accept/reject" decisions are always editorial (that's what the editors of a journal do!). Some papers have split reviews; in which case the editorial decision is difficult. It'd be good to see the editorial rationale, with the comments from the various level editors synthesizing the reviewers' comments, which should justify why they proceed despite reviewer reservations.
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Oh I don't hate either. I just want my coffee served to me by a disgraced scientist.
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In superconductivity 'magic' things do really happen at very high pressure. The highest critical temperature high pressure superconductor is over 100K higher than atmospheric pressure super conductors.
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Honestly I think that Nature is a sh*tshow. I have no idea how it has kept its reputation as a high impact journal.
In my area (astronomy / astrophysics) I've seen it publish numerous papers over the years, even from people in my own department, that have been at best 3 sigma and at worst just pushing the boundaries. But still Nature has this draw that no-one seems to be able to get past.
It's sad.
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No.. it keeps a bit more of the fraud from slipping through. Remember the vast majority of researchers are diligent and scientifically honest, and most don't need the stick to maintain that. It will prevent a few that consider it, but no amount of stick will block the "I'm too smart to get caught" mindset.
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For the reasons you gave perhaps it is better to say, confident in the scientific method?
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I think it's probably a question of social norms and fraud more than anything else. Incompetent scientists seldom get to publish in peer-reviewed journals.
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Ouch. Just read through that. Unlike his experiments, the evidence of his malfeasance is solid. I haven't read such a daming report since the incident with researchers fabricating data at RIKEN.
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Silly rabbit. Instead of seriously damaging his academic career, what he should have done is created a series of youtube/tiktok videos, turn that into a few hundred million in vc funding then created a crypto fusioncoin and/or a line of "fusion" supplements to become a billionaire and finally parlayed all of that into presidential run/ Trump cabinet position.
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That's what I don't get about scientific or engineering fraud. The whole field is based on checking your work, and you don't even get rich unless you can turn it into a successful product. If that's your goal, why not medicine, psychology or something even easier to scam?
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It's difficult to educate someone out of a position they didn't educate themselves into. Most people who are "skeptics" regarding widely acknowledged scientific facts like climate change, the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, and the lack of a connection between vaccines and autism, didn't adopt their beliefs because of reasoned argument.
People used to be embarrassed to publicly espouse such beliefs. That was an important line of defense against the conspiracy-mongers. We need to make that kind of aggressive ignorance shameful again, though I admit I don't know how.
Edit: misspelled "efficacy".
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The heart of the matter: "It was an editorial decision by Nature to go ahead with publication despite those reservations."
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I've been reading Retraction Watch for some time now and it used to surprise me when this happened but a fair number of people do it. Sometimes it's the journal itself that engages in questionable behavior.
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Well yeah, except take their stance on climate change the fact that some (a few percent) scientists publish contrary views gets the "teach the contraversy" crap. Like during the early COVID days when science was evolving they'd say "see scientists don't know what they're talking about they keep changing their views" which is the whole point of the scientific process. So if you act like you aren't right then you are indecisive and if you act like you are, you're an arrogant elite... The fact that real life is nuanced and knowledge builds on other knowledge, makes their short attention spans zone out. These are the same folks that when you say "theory" hear "wild assed guess" rather than "falsifiable statement".
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That would be questionable practices, right? The bar for misconduct is higher and implies fraud (or more technically, falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism). The definition of questionable practices is not as well established, but when I trained to become an editor, it included failure to keep lab books and things like that, which leads to mixing up data as you describe. A paper that would be affected by this should (must) be retracted, but without necessarily any sanction or disciplinary action against the person. It's not fraud, just incompetence.
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It's also a gamble for the journal. It is physically impossible to reproduce the results presented during peer review or guarantee that the work is sound, even if a couple of reviewers agree that it is good. Peer review is there to stop egregious cases, ideally, but it cannot spot everything. In the end, what goes into a journal is decided by the editorial board generally (which can include a couple of layers of topic editors in large journals). They can (and do) use any information at their disposal for this, including the experience and field of expertise of each reviewer. That's why occasionally there are papers accepted despite 2 reviewers recommending rejection, or vice versa.
In the same way as some researchers play fast and loose to get a result first, some journal are a bit enthusiastic when presented with something that looks like a nice discovery. The thing is that we need a bit of that, otherwise the risk is that whole fields become overly conservative. What is critical is to keep actual fraud in check, e.g. with punishments harsh enough and probabilities of being found out high enough to make people pause and think before doing this sort of thing.
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This is not the first time Nature has done it nor it's last. I doubt it was even the only time it did it, in the year it was published.
Nature mostly seems to get lucky with most of those papers just being bad/wrong papers rather than out right fraud.
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In related news, Mikhail Eremets, the leader of the Max Planck group that got superconducting H3S and LaH10 at above liquid N2 temperatures passed away last week.
Also, one of his latest papers was apparently mired with problems.
For god's sake, let's do this alright. Phonon-mediated superconductivity is here to stay.
Also, one of his latest papers was apparently mired with problems.
For god's sake, let's do this alright. Phonon-mediated superconductivity is here to stay.
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Not quite the heart of the matter. The main issue is scientific fraud. Dias would have published the papers somewhere even if Nature had turned him down.
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The Sheep Look Up
Ars Praetorian
Union busting.
On-topic: as previously said, this isn't one of those things you can get away with lying about. Everyone in the field is instantly going to try to reproduce this, not least of all because it's a jumping-off point for a whole new avenue of research. If you're rep farming you need something that raises an eyebrow, not mobilizes an entire discipline.
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I think it's just the long tenure and the fact that it's one of the few journals many non-academics/laypeople such as myself have heard of. I've followed several of the retractions and/or bad-editorial-decision "scandals" over recent years when they've caught my attention for some reason, yet I still find myself thinking "ah, so that's probably legit then" whenever I see that an article/study was published in "Nature [Field]" because its reputation still precedes it (as silly as that is). This debacle has definitely lowered the publication's good reputation in my eyes though.
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Yes, but this guy only lied and faked results. Being "woke" is a far greater sin than any mere crime or dishonesty.
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Your first paragraph is quite similar to how most Ponzi schemes start. “I just need a little more capital for my [product, investment scheme, etc.] to finally start working, then I’ll be making enough to pay everyone back”.
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Whether the misconduct is ever regarded as criminal or not, surely institutions can at the very least start revoking their PhD awards so the person involved can no longer call themselves 'Dr.' or represent they have a PhD?
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Tell me you don't understand academic credentials without telling me you don't understand academic credentials.
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