Superconductor Scientist Engaged in Research Misconduct, Probe Finds (wsj.com) 22
A physicist who shot to fame with claims of the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor engaged in research misconduct, a committee tapped to examine his work has concluded after a monthslong investigation. From a report: Ranga Dias, a physicist at the University of Rochester in New York, has had at least four papers he co-wrote, including three involving superconductivity, retracted in the past 18 months by the journals that published them. A committee of outside experts tapped by the university "identified data-reliability concerns in those papers," a Rochester spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal. "The committee concluded, in accordance with university policy and federal regulations, that Dias engaged in research misconduct," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The work in the papers was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a private organization that funds scientific research. The Moore foundation discontinued its grant late last year, the organization said. Of the $1.6 million award, about $285,000 was spent. The university refunded the rest. The investigation follows three preliminary reviews by the university of one of the studies, published in Nature in 2020 and retracted in 2022 after criticism from other scientists. Those inquiries didn't find enough evidence to prompt a full investigation. Complaints sent to the university in spring 2023 about additional studies prompted a more thorough review. That investigation was completed by March this year, resulting in the misconduct finding. The journal Nature reported earlier this month that this investigation was complete.
The work in the papers was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a private organization that funds scientific research. The Moore foundation discontinued its grant late last year, the organization said. Of the $1.6 million award, about $285,000 was spent. The university refunded the rest. The investigation follows three preliminary reviews by the university of one of the studies, published in Nature in 2020 and retracted in 2022 after criticism from other scientists. Those inquiries didn't find enough evidence to prompt a full investigation. Complaints sent to the university in spring 2023 about additional studies prompted a more thorough review. That investigation was completed by March this year, resulting in the misconduct finding. The journal Nature reported earlier this month that this investigation was complete.
Not the LK-99 group (Score:5, Informative)
Not so much peer review as glance review. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Not so much peer review as glance review. (Score:5, Informative)
Well. First reviewers are not paid. That limits the effort they can invest. Second, reproducing experiments is difficult, a lot of effort and you cannot really publish on it. And third, nobody expects blatant lies like these, because eventually somebody will try to build on the results and find they were fake. Also, the sanctions for publication fraud are very inadequate. At the very least this should come with a removal of the PhD of the researcher and a substantial fine and there should ab an independent body that takes and then investigates complaints.
The whole system is deeply broken. For example, my own PhD was delayed about a year because somebody published fake results as his own PhD core contribution. These devaluated my own results. A year later, the other authors (his professors) published what amounted to a retraction and I was able to continue. I did spot the problems with the original paper in about 10 minutes, but convincing my own advisor proved impossible. Obviously, I never got an apology and the fraudster got to keep his PhD with no investigation. And that is with my own advisor being one of the better ones.
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I am posting just to commiserate with you. Your comments are right on target. I review papers in my own fields (medical), and it is a lot of work to do it well (but I enjoy it!). As you seem to imply in your first paragraph, the fault is not necessarily with the reviewers, although I have seen ample instances of sloppy cursory reviews that miss all kinds of errors and technicalities even if the great majority are not fraudulent.
"The whole system is deeply broken". I would agree with the particulars you
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Thanks!
What is broken now is not the scientific system but society as a whole. The scientific system has just not kept up to date with, or has been run over by a society of broken morals and perverse incentives.
I think I agree very much with this.
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There are a handful of labs in the world that can reach the pressures they used. Nature and Science aren't among them.
Anyway, papers aren't supposed to be true. They're supposed to be interesting, and the reviewers clearly felt these were interesting. When they were published and others read them, the problems were discovered. That's why it's important to publish things.
It's true, outright fraud really should be punished more, but it's also hard to tell whether that happened here. "data-reliability concerns
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Anyway, papers aren't supposed to be true."
They are supposed to be honest not fraudulent.
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Yes, but it's hard to catch fraud immediately. There's a balance between reviewing papers and not imposing too much friction on scientific communication.
Fraud does get caught eventually, same as honest errors, sooner if you're publishing about important things, later if it's something nobody cares about.
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As I've said here before, outside of biology, Nature publishes splashy papers without adequate review. It's only a worthwhile journal for biology, sez me.
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HR announced (Score:1)
they have bad super-conduct.
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I don't get it (Score:3)
I mean, I can see people getting away with manipulating data in relatively obscure research, but doing so in something that's really high profile - there's just no way that you're not going to get found out. You say you've created a high-temperature superconductor, everyone and their dog is going to be looking at your work. Did he think he actually could get away with it forever?
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Delusions can also affect people with high intelligence.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
I've posted about him specifically before .. but the reason is simple. When he was at Harvard, he and his professor (Isaac Silvera) made a claim that they had created "metallic hydrogen" and subsequently lost the sample in a lab accident and were unable to recreate it. Doesn't matter though .. they still got published in the journal Science. So of course that may have made him realize that you can make any wild claim and get published. But maybe there's no investors looking to invest in metallic hydrogen production, so he must have thought superconductivity is the way to go. And so he makes a wild claim about achieving room temperature superconductivity under high pressures .. and sure enough Nature published his work. Shortly afterwards Nature had to retract it when nobody else could reproduce it and there were inconsistencies. Rather than learn their lesson .. a year or two later they AGAIN accept a publication from him. Oh and he has a company Unearthly Materials .. not sure if he got investors though.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
I should also point out that when you have a publication in hand -- especially for a new material, you can dupe investors for a decade or more just by saying you're having trouble creating the original conditions or that you can't mass produce efficiently etc. If anyone questions you, you just say "hey, this is real I have a publication!"
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James Hansen has joined the chat.
If you take the time to look into the manipulation of data and the "correction" of data without showing how/why you corrected OR keeping the original data you might find this isn't new to research.
An amazing combination of (Score:2)
This like someone playing russian roulette with their career, and pulling the trigger once every week for the rest of their professional life. And th
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I have to conclude that we're dealing with some flavor of mental illness.
Indeed. Megalomania.
Re:An amazing combination of (Score:5, Insightful)
Well as someone in the science industry I can tell you, there's a pressure to publish especially in academia. In Ranga Dias case, he got away with a pretty big whopper back in 2017 when he got published in Science for having made metallic hydrogen (but misplaced/lost the sample). Then in 2020 another disproved discovery on superconductors. Even that didn't deter him, and stupid journals kept accepting his publications with zero scrutiny or skepticism. The other driver is the fact that once you have a publication you can get investment money which you might believe you can use to actually make the thing you claimed in your publication. Even if you can't --- it doesn't matter, you can milk it for years by claiming that you had problems creating the original conditions or mass producing it. As in, you might believe that your theory is sound but made a mistake in the lab/production process. You're basically hoping that you or someone else might figure it out at some point. So for example, if you believe that copper can be alloyed to make a superconductor .. you claim to do so first. If you or someone else does eventually make a copper superconductor, you can claim that it was what you made previously but hadn't exactly characterized it or some BS like that. It's like the saying "fake it till you make it" .. some people actually think they can do that.