Bad Science and Room Temperature Superconductors - Sixty Symbols

[@gazmodo1192]

ALWAYS look forward to getting the views from the Channel regulars (Professor Moriarty, Professor Merrifield, and Professor Copeland) whenever something interesting happens in the greater Scientific community. A true and heartfelt thanks to you and your team, Brady, for bringing us these wonderful videos!

[@doctorpex6862]

From proper scientists.

[@loge10]

With whom I'd love to go to a pub with and have a pint (or two)...

[@LeaAddams]

@@benson5967 You obviously understood their comment as a 1st-person statement, so what's the problem? Correct language is defined by usage, not what you think it ought be. Want to encourage you to rethink.

[@88Cardey]

@@benson5967 😂 All that for an I, you seem fine inferring the intended meaning from the context... I'm surprised you didn't go for the capitalised ALWAYS as well to be honest.

[@colbix613]

@@benson5967 Never encountered a context in which the "You Understood" imperative sentence would be interpreted from the "looking forward to" verb pattern. A fluent speaker of the English language already understands it is a declarative sentence... must not be very fluent. Honestly feel utterly cringed-out and embarrassed on your behalf, and you should delete your comment.

[@Dan-vt9vk]

"Have you ever published something that's been (proven) wrong later?" "Yep. Thank you, oh what a great question!" Classy, modest and inspiring!

[@touching_grass]

I agree, that moment stood out to me as well.

[@jamesgl]

@jojijoestar4762 it’s an observation about others. If you’re in a community where people do that often, you’re lucky people around you do that so often

[@pedroscoponi4905]

@jojijoestar4762 Unfortunately, yeah specially when the subject matter is your profession or area of expertise, people can get very defensive very quickly

[@5h4d0w5l1f3]

​@jojijoestar4762Lol haven't been online for long have you?

[@pearz420]

That's not modesty. It's just factual. Moriarty is not known for being modest.

[@Dr.Fluffles]

The third author on that paper had been fired months ago from the team working on it, and threw this one together off of what he remembered and still had access to as a non-scientist because he heard they had submitted for peer-review, causing them to scramble and release a second, more real, but still sloppy paper, as admitted by the US-based author who joined later. Basically, Kwon was after a payday without regard for the actual research, which they weren't ready to publish, hence the obnoxious grandiosity.

[@VincentGroenewold]

If that's the case, that makes all the difference. He basically now discredited the other authors. I was really after the context on this one, the why would anyone go through the trouble and money, to do this work even.

[@nicksamek12]

Would you mind posting where you've found this info?

[@Dr.Fluffles]

@@nicksamek12 I saw the story on a number of Twitter threads as the news broke, and see articles confirming the lack of permission, but am having trouble verifying what else was directly said as the initial New Scientist article for that is pay-walled, and a number of initial sources are in Korean.

[@diraziz396]

@@Dr.Fluffles Please Dig it up. Thanks

[@dacramac3487]

@@nicksamek12 It can be seen in the Sabine Hossenfelder video (LK99 -- A new room temperature superconductor?) mentioned by Professor Moriarty.

[@xBris]

Love this video. It's very important to emphasise how actual science works. I remember when I wanted to publish my first paper: My supervisor made me do literally weeks of extra experiments to try to prove me wrong - any argument that any reviewer could possibly think of was tested _before_ we even submitted the paper. Well, we still had to do extra experiments after the first round of peer review and were only accepted after those additional experiments. But that's how science should work: You should be your own worst critic.

[@sherlockpotter4653]

did you end up publishing it?

[@RuthvenMurgatroyd]

@@sherlockpotter4653 He edited his comment so maybe you didn't see this but "Well, we still had to do extra experiments after the first round of peer review and were only accepted after those additional experiments." I'm guessing that means yes.

[@Johnson59484]

Just biased and hysteric. I hope he doesn’t work in the science field

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

xBris Well said. You are great at science because you followed the advice of your great supervisor: to try as hard as possible to prove yourself wrong. I have either submitted or come close to submitting papers for peer reviewed math journals, then withdrawn them, because of errors, usually errors in conclusions - not necessarily calculational errors - because the most PAINFUL thing is seeing your paper with your name on it with an error in it SET IN STONE. One of my published peer reviewed math papers has a (thankfully non-fatal insignificant) notational error in one math formula. The last paper I published was in an online peer reviewed journal Mathematics in Computer Science in April 2012. On 2022 December 23 I made a discovery that is worthy of publication, but still, nine months later, I cannot bring myself to put all together to publish, because I know it needs & the readers deserve an extra step of simplification: a particular infinite class of matrices I have to invert.

[@Thermalions]

The media's willingness to pick up any non-peer reviewed paper to get clicks is depressing. They argue they're just reporting about the paper and do say buried somewhere in their article it hasn't been peer reviewed, but few readers go very far past the headline - and they know it. The everyday person in the street likely doesn't understand the process - especially when published in these media reports no longer has the same meaning as published in the past.

[@archibaldhernandez5553]

To be fair, all I kept seeing is people disparaging media outlets for being cautious in their reporting

[@mattcroft]

To be fair, peer review doesn't mean very much in a number of fields.

[@anthonybernstein1626]

That’s mostly the low-quality media outlets though. The reputable ones (WSJ, FT, etc) didn’t really report it at all until it was clear that it’s a dud, and then they presented it as such.

[@patrickderp1044]

@@mattcroft especially since the replication crisis was identified peer review almost makes the problem worse

[@frikkied2638]

Yeah sorry peer review doesn’t mean much to me, even as an academic with a paper currently in the process of review.

[@nathansmith3608]

It's no wonder the LK-99 claim went viral b/c it's interesting either way: We're getting either room temp superconductors, or a "fun" science scandal (e.g. "The man who tried to fake an element" is a great watch). Plus the recipe was easy enough for amateur chemists to attempt, so a lot more people could get involved

[@Johnson59484]

The greater, the simpler

[@brandonthesteele]

The works of BobbyBroccoli have occurred to me as well.

[@Artyomi]

This reminds me of BobbyBrocolli’s Jan Hendrik Schön scandal videos which were about a similar thing, where there were claims of exotic semiconductors with potential high temperature superconductivity - however the difference is that Jan was able to publish over a 100 papers into mainstream journals for multiple years before anybody realized he was making everything up and nobody could replicate his results.

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

No it's neither it's just a case of sloppy and bad science that never got published. So nothing interesting at al, in this case the scientific system worked as it should. Remember Arxive is for prepublished papers.

[@ongobongo8333]

People replicated it and proved that it's a super conductor too

[@nazgullinux6601]

Brady, please for the love of actual science, bring prof Moriarty on a LOT more! Know the guy is busy but he truly is the best and most valuable asset to this channel!

[@nUmBskulLL]

Ahhh Moriarty. I remember his nano module. By far the best professor in the department. Its not even close. The guy actually has a deep passion for BOTH physics and education. If you can go to nottigham do it! Great uni

[@TAP7a]

Nottingham was one of my choices back when I was applying for physics courses in the early 2010s, ended up going to Manchester with a year at UC Berkeley!

[@joelwexler]

Yes, like a modern Feynman.

[@RDSotnas]

@@TAP7a Hey I’ve just finished my first year at Manchester and was hoping to do Berkley in third year but I don’t know what to expect. How did you find it? Was it a lot more expensive that being in Manchester? And what were the courses like in comparison? Any information would be great thanks

[@kasroa]

But does he actually teach lectures like he explains stuff in these videos? Because if I was taught in the way he delivers sixty symbols interviews it would drive me insane. Might be the editing too, but I find it totally chaotic.

[@nUmBskulLL]

@@kasroa his lectures are nothing like KZbin videos if that's what you mean

[@pfoxroberts]

“What’s the point of the archive if people can’t put their preliminary results on there?” Every scientist i’ve worked with has had a remarkable eye for detail and presentation. It comes with the field. Preliminary or not, I cannot imagine any of my group leads publicly putting their name to a paper that, e.g. didn’t even have proper section headings (as in this case). It’s the science equivalent of “bad code smell”.

[@ShankarSivarajan]

It's not LaTeXed, for a start. That's a pretty big warning sign.

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

It's the equivalent of getting a phishing email and noticing the email address is some random string of letters. It's super easy to notice but only if you know to look.

[@ArawnOfAnnwn]

@@ShankarSivarajan Apparently they published in a hurry cos a team member they kicked out tried to submit his own paper before theirs. So kinda a scramble for credit.

[@ashkebora7262]

Not sure I'd want to scramble to release bunk results, personally.

[@patrik5123]

Gotta love Moriarty. He doesn't mince words.

[@Virtueman1]

The problem is modern journalism. The problem is that the average journalism is of such low quality, and so fascinatingly dishonest, that it will say and do anything to make quick ad revenue, and advance some political end. Honesty and integrity in journalism is basically not there in 90% of thr stuff. That's how you get non-peer-reviewed articles on the arxiv spreading as the "future of humanity" from the "trusted sources" and science loses credibility.

[@Relatablename]

I was so angry at the way every single outlet pushed this story. It's a preprint paper! Why are you all preaching the results like it's gospel?! The involved journalists either have no training in research skills, they're blatantly corrupt or both at the same time.

[@guest_informant]

100%. This is not a scientific topic. Similarly the Titan sub was not about engineering, it was about regulation.

[@ABaumstumpf]

"The problem is modern journalism." aka no journalism.

[@Ezullof]

You're right, but it's also the people. As the professor in the video said, you can evaluate the merits of this study with a low level in science or physics. There's plenty of people on social media who claim that this is a fascinating discovery or whatever, and who would absolutely have the necessary background to see what's wrong with the paper. But they don't make the effort. They only read a title and a conclusion. They don't do the basic wikipediaing to see how superconductors work, just for reference. They wish for a ground breaking discovery so much that they forget everything and participate in the enthusiasm.

[@bryandraughn9830]

I'm surprised that people still expect integrity from journalism. That boat sailed a long time ago.

[@LouisWongPhysics]

Videos from Sixty Symbols are never fancy at the visual editing, but the content is always gold. Thank you for this

[@matthewb3113]

Professor Moriarty's final statement 16:08 needs to be turned into a short and played by all scientific KZbinrs. Thanks again for another excellent Sixty Symbols video.

[@1Higgs0Boson1]

Absolutely disagree and I'm disgusted at the suggestion of retracting measurements of what is likely noise. It's data either way and at the very least can confirm if measurements are accurate, and possibly reveal underlying physics. Just don't make a clickbait title, but release your data! What has this world come to??? It should be ILLEGAL to falsify experiments by omission.

[@zqzj]

"it's absolutely essential to have this feedback loop between experiment and theory, and if that's broken, science is broken".

[@allanjmcpherson]

@@1Higgs0Boson1 I didn't take it that he was saying the data should be retracted. My understanding was that he meant papers attempting to explain what turned out to be noise with new theory should be retracted because it's new theory with no foundation.

[@thequantumworld6960]

@@1Higgs0Boson1 Let me posit a situation... Our group here at Nottingham goes to a synchrotron and measures data that we over-excitedly interpret as, oh, let's say evidence for a superconductor with a critical temperature of 120 C. We develop a theory that explains the results and rush out a paper. It generates quite some interest and lots of yummy citations. A year later, when we get another award of beamtime at the synchrotron, we repeat the measurements and find that we cannot reproduce the signal. Worse, we realise that the original spectrum was nothing more than a statistical blip because we didn't measure for long enough. I would strongly argue that we should retract that paper and the associated theory. The experimental data was noise. Do you disagree? If so, would you then argue that an undergraduate student who forgets to switch on a detector and misinterprets noise for signal should be awarded just as high a grade for their project as another student who carefully, systematically, and intelligently performs the experiment, improving sensitivity to the best of their ability and getting the cleanest measurements they can? Philip (speaking in video)

[@lucasbernard5304]

"This is not the way to do science." should have been the headline for every story about this.

[@pandaman9690]

please please please forgive me

[@pearz420]

Do you think media is run by scientists or something?

[@Johnson59484]

It sounds jealous. You need to see the point rather than trying to belittle it

[@ashkebora7262]

Jealous? Bad science is bad science. Grow up.

[@Johnson59484]

@@ashkebora7262 real bad scientists are the ones who are afraid of admitting the truth or can’t see the point while calling it bad

[@BristlyBright]

I must say, even though those videos in great part are excellent because of the professors and other guests, it would never be this good if it were not for Brady's genius questions! Thank You Brady! ❤

[@ptonpc]

I loved the Professor trying to be polite during the entire thing :D As others have said, the problem itself is not so much the paper and the rebuttals, it's the social media and journalism not reporting things properly. They are always on the search for the new shiny thing and never bother explaining what is going on.

[@xtieburn]

Thankfully, at least as far as I saw, much of the coverage was of the nature: 'New discovery... but it isnt the first time someones made the claim' or 'New discovery... but heavy scepticism is warranted.' etc. I dont think its been the most damaging of stories, and Ive definitely seen worse, like with the warp engine stuff, that got pretty crazy. Still its fascinating as to why exactly this particular claim blew up like it did.

[@At0mix]

I think it's because of the grandiose statements of "a new era for humanity" or whatever it was, people love that. Which is exactly why that sort of thing is looked down upon in science.

[@andybrice2711]

Yeah, all the coverage I saw was along the lines of: _"This could be revolutionary. But it could also be nonsense."_

[@TheYgds]

I think the only reason this blew-up the way it did was two-fold. 1) There was drama from the group, wherein a member went rogue and published the suspect results lending some credence to this being the real-deal if there was competition between the potential authors to get credit and 2) the synthesis as given in the paper was extremely simple, so anybody with a furnace and mortar and pestle could do it. That is really far away from most papers and cutting edge discoveries, where replication is nearly impossible without specialist equipment and knowledge. It rode the edge between being both provocative and doable, so you could get a lot of amateurs and people from outside the field to start putting in their two cents. Also, there was a Korean language peer-reviewed paper on LK-99 that came out months before the arXiv manuscript. It had far better data and presentation, and it was weird to see how different it was from arXiv manuscript, I don't think any of the figures were reused. That isn't to say the Korean language paper was tremendously better, it still did some strange things, and I wouldn't call it Nature quality, not by a long shot, but it did show better evidence for superconductivity. It is also really weird that no English speaking scientists seem to have seen that paper, even though, unless you know Korean, all you can read is the figures. I think most people knew this was a long shot. It was fun for the two weeks the online hype lasted. Still, the story, as far as I'm aware, isn't completely over. One of the authors said that their official, much better paper is in review with three different groups, as well as samples of LK-99 synthesized by the original lab. Even if they are completely wrong, the authors are very confident they're very right.

[@pandaman9690]

I’m sorry for misspeaking that night. I hadn’t slept in awhile. I need to sleep. I’ve been speaking out of turn and I’m sorry.

[@aarondavis8943]

How do you explain the video of what the scientists involved _must have known_ wasn't superconductivity? Isn't this a scam rather than a mistake?

[@deth3021]

​@aarondavis8943 or just plain incompetence? It's too poorly done to be a scam...

[@TheYgds]

@@mlpfan6821 Dolt? That's a bit harsh. If you're referring to the papers showing those supposed high-pressure room temperature superconductors, I don't see how they really impacted things too much among non-specialists and non-experts. They were swiftly discredited and so couldn't really generate too much buzz, and their supposed superconductivity conditions were not easily replicated by non-specialists. What other social pre-conditions have I failed to account for? Also, could you refrain from levying insults, I'm happy to be corrected, so the insults are unnecessary.

[@TheYgds]

@@mlpfan6821 Oh thou lordly intellect that climbs to the furthest most reaches of the heavens. Whose vast swellings of effervescent counsel confound the wise and astound the sages. I kneel before the enormous heft of your vituperations, and forceful sharpness of your condemnation. Have mercy oh Lord of Lords! Give some shade to this lowly worm. My head is but as a dung hill before thee, and my counsel but the waft of foul stench in the breeze. Whatever shall I do to face such great glory!

[@jacob_90s]

Thank you for this Prof. I can tell you just from my own life and experience with my family, that situations like this do change the way every day people view science for the worse.

[@antman7673]

It is Integer based superconducting. Those folks haven’t progressed to fractions or real numbers yet. In the context of integers and rounding down, their material is a perfect conductor.

[@stefangadshijew1682]

This was pretty hilarious. :D Have a look at their diagrams about how to heat the material up, hold it perfectly at a certain temperature, and cool it down again. If you can't replicate their results, it's obviously because you didn't have a perfect delta T / delta t while heating it up and cooling it down. You might just have said "heat it up to X Kelvin, hold it, cool it down again", but that wouldn't have looked scientific enough. Science becomes way easier if your axis are unburdened by numerical values.

[@vik24oct1991]

by that logic every metal is a superconductor for these guys, should have just written a paper on scrap metal.

[@SloverOfTeuth]

One is approximately equal to zero ...

[@ryangross6886]

Such an important video. I just recently graduated in Aerospace Engineering, and I read research papers frequently for my job. One of the most frustrating things about many of the papers is the authors' obvious motive to publish. Everyone wants to publish, but it should come completely secondary to the goal of advancing science and understanding. In the video, I appreciated the very self-aware comment about misinformation and the vilification of science. For scientists and non-scientists, the cost for publishing garbage is enormous.

[@hyperboogie]

Professor Moriarty, the all-time coolest name for a professor 😎

[@KawdoruTaon]

Just put him in one room with Elisabeth Holmes for the maximum comedic effect.

[@ianstopher9111]

He probably cannot bring himself to say "When you have eliminated all which is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

[@SloverOfTeuth]

​@@ianstopher9111LMAO ...

[@Triantalex]

false.

[@byronwilliams7977]

I can't stress enough just how much I loved this video. Thank you for not holding back.

[@pandaman9690]

I didn’t mean for this to all go viral……. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry

[@EricWBurton]

Brady and Co, thank you so much for this and your other science and mathematics channels. I have so many questions about these fields that I would LOVE to pester the professors with, and this channel is a wonderful proxy - you get to ask those questions! It's great and we are better for it. Thank you!

[@thenorup]

To the last point in the video: They could have had the best of both worlds: Leave the original papers up, clearly marked with "Retracted" and provide a link for the reasons for the retraction.

[@pathologicaldoubt]

Whether it’s the goop lab nonsense or the room temperature superconductor nonsense, Professor Moriarty is the man for the job, and I love every second of it

About undergrad doing the measurements: if I remember my history of physics correctly, the low temperature superconductivity was discovered by an undergrad doing the boring measurement of resistivity in mercury (which was chosen because it can be made very pure), and Kamerlingh Onnes did think at first that it was measurement error...

[@SloverOfTeuth]

I study hydrology, and I once got some results from a sensor which were at odds with all that we knew about that region, and required quite a complex interpretation. It's a quality sensor, and I could actually reproduce the results in exactly the same conditions. My first action was to send the results to the manufacturer's representatives asking if this could be a glitch. There doesn't seem to have been the same level of self-scrutiny here.

[@TheUncannyF]

"If the link between theory and experiment is broken - science is broken" - couldn't have put it simpler. thank You dr. Moriarty

[@reimiyasaka]

I feel the prof's frustration from way over here in the field of translation. There's so little trust in translators lately, partly because there are some genuinely bad translations, but also because of conspiracy theories and because people don't really understand the limitations and considerations that go into translating between two languages as disparate as Japanese and English. And then the accusations of errors spread so fast and wide that just about everyone in the community, except those who are native Japanese speakers, believe we're wrong. I'm fortunate enough to work in a medium that allows us to make amendments, but man, sometimes people just refuse to admit when they're wrong -- both audiences and translators.

[@mephisto8101]

Yeah, and to top it off, translation is really hard work and not well paid. Despite having studied Japanese, I was not very keen to find work in that field once I got my first glimpses into translation work. And translation of Japanese to other languages is really tricky if you compare it with many other languages.

[@byronwilliams7977]

I feel your pain. I studied Applied Mathematics, Biology and I learned but haven't acquired French. Trying to explain to people that aren't in any of these fields that THIS is not how science is done, we don't run a hype train then fake it until we make it, a la Silicon Valley, we don't over promise and under deliver a la Elon Musk, you do the hard work and often times it takes years of consistent work hammering away. There is a former Military Linguist name Christophe Clugston who really turned me on to applied linguistics, and just how difficult it is to translate or interpret from languages that are rather disparate from one another. Hats off to you man.

[@arcaneminded]

Man the trans community must be really having a tough time right now.

[@A_Simple_Neurose]

I work with English and Japanese and I've seen genuinely bad work constantly along the years. There's less of it with book publications where I guess there's a lot more going into the proofreading process but "lesser" forms of media sometimes receive some pretty unapologetically bad translation work, official or otherwise. To say nothing of the fact that non-specialists sometimes find issue with the smallest of points and proceed to go on and on about something they're barely educated on. Bad faith is present on both sides here, unfortunately.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

@@byronwilliams7977Where did Musk underdeliver? Seriously.

[@2Sor2Fig]

Professor Moriarty makes every day better. I'm so glad he chose to go into acedemia.

[@Titan.....]

I love you guys, I keep up with every new episode, I missed the professors

[@Triantalex]

ok?

[@Titan.....]

@@Triantalex erm yes

[@air9music]

Bonus points for the King's X shirt - amazing, truly underappreciated band.

[@sowercookie]

As soon as someone says "I'm a genius who will change all of science and uplift mankind and win all the prizes" you know it's bunk...

[@vik24oct1991]

you have described elon musk in a line.

[@MrSidney9]

@@vik24oct1991No

[@Triantalex]

false.

[@TeaDrinkingGuy]

Great video - wonderful to see Prof. Moriarty so passionate about proper scientific technique. I can understand why he is so worked up about the public desecration of his field. The scientific method is all about finding the truth, so brazen papers like this that disrespect that goal and it's no wonder that the professionals get frustrated.

[@seanrrr]

I personally love archives (in my field, BioRxiv). The peer review process can take months, sometimes upwards of a year for bigger papers. In a fast-evolving field, that's a long time to have useful data sitting around. It's nice to be able to share knowledge right away, even though you do have to be wary of it.

[@Thetarget1]

It´s also just nice to get around paywalls easily

[@jomialsipi]

@@Thetarget1 I prefer researchgate for that

[@Triantalex]

ok?

[@headdie89]

Thank you Mr Moriarty. I can listen to Mr Moriarty for days.

[@jeffcarey3045]

The question to ask when you hear about room-temperature superconductors is, "what room?"

[@nashtrojan]

I have been waiting for this more reliable source to speak on this. My gut reaction when i saw the news was this is cold fusion all over again.

[@DarkShaman667]

I have been looking to improve the thermoelectic properties of a Full-Heusler alloy. First samples looked promising. Turns out, it was just random, since my alloy was metastable and any further samples showed different behavior. One got to be careful with science and measurements!

[@Letsamplay]

Prof Moriarty is just fantastic to listen to.

[@Williamtolduso]

Incredible video. You explain the frustration we all share with twitter science very well!

[@Triantalex]

false.

[@karmakazi219]

I've seen a lot of headlines and click bait thumbnails referencing this "discovery" but this is the first video I've actually watched about it. Make sure to get your science news from reputable sources.

[@makego]

Well-reasoned, well-explained critique *and* a Kings X t-shirt! "It's Love."

[@AndresCastrocr]

Fantastic video!!!! From the moment I saw the Kings X shirt, I though, this man knows what he's talking about!

[@lambdaprog]

Oh yeah. The average people don't know about bad science and epistemology. Much needed video.

[@vik24oct1991]

that scale of resistivity is something average students are very familiar of, I am surprised nobody highlighted this before creating such a fuss about this. I mean using such a big scale for proving zero resistivity, they really made a fool of many.

[@lenger1234]

Average people used to get enough science in high school to at least question whether something basically made sense.

[@ultimatedude5686]

@@lenger1234 When was an high school student knowledgeable about the properties of superconductors and capable of reading the paper and finding these flaws? The idea of a room-temperature superconductor is not nonsensical, these researchers just didn't find one. In most places the amount of accurate science students are taught has increased over time, not decreased.

[@Triantalex]

false.

[@joaoa.7674]

Great video. As a physicist I've been very interested in this topic

[@pandaman9690]

Do i need to apologize to the world

[@thecsslife]

This news story is particularly close to my heart, as I researched novel nickel-oxide based superconductors in my Chemistry masters project at Oxford. The reality is that there is so much rubbish in scientific literature, even in the most highly regarded academic journals. The same is very true in my current academic field of batteries and supercapacitors.

[@Mountainchip]

Thank you for a reasonable voice on the scientific process.

[@mandlebrotmott]

For what it’s worth, Arxiv is absolutely invaluable to the field of computer science

[@Wohlfe]

Arxiv isn't the issue, it's clickbait hungry media that is.

[@isodoublet]

It's invaluable to physics too. For all intents and purposes, people view putting the paper on the arxiv as the actual act of "publication", with the peer reviewed paper increasingly being seen as more of a formality. Truth is, if you're working in a field and need someone else to review a paper before knowing if it makes sense or not, maybe you should work in a different field. Peer review is not remotely as important to science as many popularizers suggest it is.

[@inevespace]

@@isodoublet it depends. In some fields it is formality, in some fields people are arguing with referees for a year to publish. Peer-review at least give you feedback about how to present results. Also it depends on a reviewer a lot. Some people check every equation, some just read general idea.

[@isodoublet]

@@inevespace People will still argue, of course, but they're arguing about getting the rubber stamp. Results are mixed; sometimes a paper will be improved by peer review, sometimes it'll get worse. The main thing is far as the way the author and community sees it, the paper was "published" the day it became available for public consumption.

[@jomialsipi]

@@isodoublet For paper directly in your own field, sure. But you can't be an expert in everything.

[@glenben92]

I absolutely love anything with prof Moriarty in

[@soranuareane]

Regarding the retraction after the calibration mistake, that's how science works!! Mistakes like that get through to publication; we're all human. We all make mistakes. Science is the bravery to confront your mistakes and accept what you said as wrong. Retracting a paper, I think, gives credibility back to the researcher in saying "I made a mistake. This paper is wrong. Sorry." and everyone tries to make it better. I say embrace your failures as learning opportunities and take them as reminders to double-check things as you go.

[@gordonspond]

When I first heard about this it piqued my interest... but I was super-skeptical. It reminded me of the hype around cold fusion in 1989 (if I remember correctly)... Thanks for explaining in detail!

[@claritas6557]

I love it when on Sixty Symbols they..... . Phil me in on the subject. I'll let myself out.

[@wolfisr]

Thank you for this very important video. There is more room to discuss the role of arxiv and similar non peer reviewed channels in comparison to to the tradtional peer reviewd magazines.

[@allmhuran]

What the world actually needs to "go viral" is the information (and passion for reality) in this video.

[@pandaman9690]

I am trying to have passion for reality but when the media is focusing on aliens… I don’t know…

[@SloverOfTeuth]

​@@pandaman9690But but but ...

[@Triantalex]

false.

[@klumpeet]

15:40 Furore at a statistical blip at CERN. Happens so often it's not worth asking which one.

[@rumraket38]

In this instance, AFAICG this is much more a problem with science-journalism than it's with the authors of the paper themselves. They wrote a paper and put it on the arxiv. Okay, fair enough, it has a grandiose conclusion. But it's that the science journalists then just take it and run with it that creates a problem.

[@thequantumworld6960]

It's too easy -- and often very unfair -- to point the finger at science journalists. There is a lot of great science journalism out there. A journalist did not write the final line of that paper: "We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind." Philip (speaking in video)

[@rumraket38]

@@thequantumworld6960 As journalists they should be aware what arxiv is, and that one can't just take the words of the authors as gospel truth. No, this one IS on the journalists. They ran with it because it sounded sensational. Journalists are supposed to be skeptical and get their information from multiple sources and hear multiple different points of view.

[@artswri]

Thanks for working to keep science honest!

[@나그네-r1f]

토론은 언제나 흥미로워요 저는 한국인 이고 이번 초전도체는 상온 상압 초전도체라 확신하는 한명 입니다 한국에서는 초전도체 상용화 필름 생산 준비 중 입니다 누군가는 우연히 만들어진 것처럼 생각들 하는데요 우연히 만들수 있는 과정이 아닙니다 많은시간 고생하신 연구원분 들을 욕 하지는 말아주세요

[@Fuhaifengbadminton]

여기서는 굉장히 부정적인데, 어떻게 생각하시는지

[@kayaa3336]

옳소

[@Kargoneth]

Glad to see you again, Phil.

[@chukkie0001]

Anton Petrov lives in Korea and did make a trip the building where the group was registered. It was an empty closed basement. The name of the group/company was related to the nft/blockchain boom.

[@godminnette2]

Wasn't that for a different group than the lk-99 researchers?

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

Empty closed basement, wow. I can't imagine a more fittingly terrible setting for this.

[@PackSciences]

Thank you for this video. Taking time to have a feedback on those articles is really valuable.

[@52flyingbicycles]

People will always say “oh scientists are so quick to get behind sketchy research so they can get that sweet grant money” but are oddly silent when scientists dogpile sketchy research that would otherwise lead to massive investment

[@noiJadisCailleach]

I'm sad and disappointed that we won't get a consumer product based on the finding in at least 20 years. But glad that i won't be disappointed in 20 years. Thanks Phil!

[@davidf2281]

Huh?

[@element4element4]

This whole thing blew up because of crypto bro accounts hyping it to extreme levels. Not because they were excited about the physics, but because they were hoping for investments and a big payday. Them having blue tickmarks in Elon Musks twitter also meant it got spread their misinformation all over the place. As a condensed matter physicist I found the whole process extremely frustrating.

[@Nooneself]

Perfect....having worked in medicine, we suffered from the same "imperfect science," and many cancer patients suffered the consequences. Best wishes

[@radguitar1]

A professor Moriarty video? Yes please

[@IstasPumaNevada]

I intentionally avoided clicking on each and every link I saw about this until it was more thoroughly looked into, precisely because I wanted to avoid giving that signal boost/click reward to claptrap.

[@docostler]

Exactly! I was supremely suspicious _because_ of all the hype. I'm not a scientist but I live life scientifically and take a keen interest in science. The fact that I first learned of this through fevered reporting in the popular sphere immediately triggered my skeptical gene. Although it seems not to apply in this case, science filtered through university PR departments often results in much the same "embarrassment".

[@tcunero]

This is why scientific consensus is such a big thing. The scrutiny that is applied from multiple unbiased people really increase the chances that bad scientific methods and studies get caught. Its not perfect but its the best system we have.

[@JayDee-b5u]

Totally disagree. Consensus is another non sequitur masquerading as knowledge. The truth is the only important thing.

[@tcunero]

Yes, Truth is all that matters... but that is only begging the question, what is the best tool to find truth. That is the point I am making. The best tool to truth is this rigorous testing that is encompassed in scientific consensus. @@JayDee-b5u

[@EyesOfByes]

The LIGO team took a few months to verify their own gravitational waves detection

[@CharlesVanNoland]

I've always admired Moriarty's passion

[@kiosmallwood576]

I enjoyed following the replication attempts. Do you think if they removed the superconducting claim it would still be an interesting material?

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Only if someone can find use for the strong diamagnetic properties.

[@rynabuns]

isn't it only magnetic becuase there were trace contaminants of iron?

[@KSignalEingang]

@@rynabuns that's one explanation that's been floating around, and seems plausible, but I don't think it's been confirmed.

[@drdca8263]

@@rynabuns I thought the idea was because of the diamagnetic properties of (some other contaminating compound of 2 elements, Idr which. I think one was sulfur and the other had 2 letters in atomic symbol?) ?

[@s.z.6118]

Thank you Professor Moriarty for your excellent explanation.

[@BaconHer0]

The publishers of this paper decided to follow the Michio Kaku route 💀💀

[@38bass]

As an aside, Dr. Moriarty also displays an impeccable taste in music. 🤘🏼

[@jackieking1522]

Thanks... fascinating... and a bit sad. Pleased with myself for not getting excited ( got rather over keen in the 80's, so bit more wary now.)

[@b6234]

In the startup business of tech company, like flying car, miniature blood sample testing, there are no peer review and basicly people get scammed. I'm glad they didn't try to crowd fund their research.

[@joshchu]

That WTF on Paper will be remember by history as fondly as the WOW signal.😂

[@ianstopher9111]

I and many others were thinking of WOW

[@jaxbrown2627]

Glad i found this. I was pretty excited about them from the short i saw. But this was a very well put together video.

[@robinafoubister]

Ever since the whole cold fusion debacle, I've been cynical of over-hyped "discoveries."

[@unvergebeneid]

The cold fusion thing never did it for me anyway because cold fusion is such a self-contained punchline as miracle technologies go, I never understood why people weren't laughing politely at the claim and then moving on.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

@@unvergebeneidThe cold fusion debacle is slightly different because some groups recreating the experiment did measure excess neutrons in some cases, although it remains unknown where they came from. There is some process happening, but nobody can explain it yet, and thus no progress can be made. But this superconductor thing looked like bunk the moment I read about that third author who'd been fired etc.

[@ronald3836]

​@@unvergebeneidI may be mistaken, but I think "cold fusion" as a punchline originated in that 1989 Fleischmann and Pons debacle.

[@unvergebeneid]

@@ronald3836 I somehow assumed the OP was talking about that more recent blip of media attention that I remember noticing and just going "are you serious rn?!"

[@ronald3836]

@@unvergebeneid I see, I may have missed that recent blip. My cold fusion filter at work 😎.

[@goolah13]

I was waiting for this after I read the paper. Love you guys.

[@Vector_Ze]

Reminds me of the 1989 Fleischmann-Pons Cold Fusion televised reveal. The world is just so eager for these things the media goes idiotically gullible. Even as the cold fusion telecast droned on with all of the authenticity of Geraldo Rivera's 1986 broadcast of Al Capone's vault, most common sense people watched with a high degree of skepticism.

[@misteratoz]

I'm so happy that I waited to hear from the peer review before I cared.

[@MisterMcHaos]

Excellent content and, in my inexpert opinion, excellent *editting* as well.

[@pandaman9690]

Okay okay okay

[@kalimero86]

Very nice video. good pace and straingt to the point.

[@waddadawd]

Prominent scientists and public science communicators need to do this more often. Prominent public “scientists” (looking at you, public health) far too often overstate, mischaracterize, or outright lie about their research and the result is mass skepticism and mistrust of science. Honest communication with the public is the best way to maintain trust, treating people as imbeciles only furthers the divide

[@Eikenhorst]

Compare this paper with the type of language used in the CERN paper about the Higgs boson. They had very strong evidence, and were still overly cautious in their wording and presented the findings as clear as possible (it was the work of a very large group of scientist). The bigger and more surprising the supposed discovery, the more caution is needed when presenting the findings.

[@flwrz_1923]

Frustrating to see Sabine Hossenfelder mentioned when she's recently published content widely considered to be pseudoscience.

[@flwrz_1923]

@eigenchris made a great video specifically as to why some of the content she's put out has been harmful.

[@BlueCosmology]

Almost every video Hossenfelder puts out is pseudoscience, they should just be ignored.

[@s.p2483]

A ferromagnetic material would not dangle on a magnet when pushed by a pen but it would fix its position. And in case of diamagnetic, it would be also difficult to understand how it can levitate on a single magnet. As you demonstrated at 11:50, we need 4 magnets to keep a diamagnetic material floating. The sample is not easy to draw any conclusions regardless of the clumpsy paper.

[@edstercw]

I hate to disseminate speculation, but I believe the leading theory is unevenly distributed impurities in the sample fragment. This could also explain why other labs and even the originating lab couldn't reproduce the results.

[@warron24]

I mean someone basically did recreate this behavior using ferromagnetism. And note they never demonstrate diamagnetism by hanging it on a string, and they never turn over the magnet, and they never move the sample too close to the edges of the magnet, where ferromagnetic attraction is the strongest...

[@delawarepilot]

I like arxive, once it gets to journals it’s behind a paywall.

[@ronald3836]

The paywalls should go, indeed.

[@OMGitshimitis]

They should reverse that. Like prepeer reviewed papers aren't useful to the vast majority of people and where they are those people are likely to be part of an organisation that can afford to pay. Peer reviewed papers are much much more likely to be useful for the average person and yet to see most of them we currently have to pay. It's completely backwards.

[@Speedy.V]

Wow. Havent seen a sixty symbols video in a while. Glad youtube has finally decided to show your channel on our feed

[@mikebauer6917]

Something that I have repeatedly pointed out in public science discussions is that as a scientist my work is mostly erroneous or outright wrong. That’s what you expect at the frontier of knowledge. It’s also a dangerous source of self-delusion or fraud. However, we have tools for avoiding and detecting these problems.

[@youtubeb312]

Great summary, thanks for the video.

[@joplimat]

"when you see something groundbreaking in the lab your first instinct is to go 'it's wrong. Where have I F-ed up'?"Oh man that hits so close to home.

[@joeljezequel]

a King's X t-shirt ? that's a man of taste! Really interesting insight into how search works

[@zagreus5773]

The point of arxiv is not to published preliminary DATA but preliminary PAPERS. Preliminary im the sense that it has not been edited by an editor and might not be in the most presentable version, but the data and even the text cannot be changed afterwatds. Check preprints and the final points of papers and you will only see only minor differences mostly in the presentation, not in the actual data. Publishing preliminary data is insane.

[@gnareg]

I work in a lab with one of the individuals who was acknowledged in this paper. Our group reached out to measure these samples magnetically and they refused to send them. In the end, this paper is not peer reviewed and shouldn’t warrant such attention until the scientific community independently verifies the results.

[@hedlund]

Thanks for adding to the choir on this one. Academia and scientific method take enough ridiculous, unwarranted punches as it is. A paper/claim like this doesn't help anyone at all, in the long run.

[@augustvalek]

Thank you, my physics knowledge stopped after highschool (most likely regressed from there), but as a physician the first question I asked was "where was this piblished?" And was rather dismissive once I found out it wasn't published in an indexed journal

[@pandaman9690]

i understand…

[@stonozka]

Thank you. I was very suspicious when I fist hear about this. Mainly because of media hype.