What this really showed is just how pathetic our current situation is. We have a way of life that is unsustainable but instead of changing it we all pray that science will save us. LK99 was basically like the coming of Christ. Really sad to see so many intelligent people so eager to believe.
LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
611–620 of 754 posts
Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#612We do have a "superconductor" but its not the one we wanted. It is the best description for the behavior of online (social) media: no longer exhibits any resistance and the tiniest spark leads to amplification and a system meltdown.
These collective hysterias are a combination of people desperate for technological solutions to (typically) social problems and a system that eagerly exploits that for the benefit of a few.
Of course there are countless mysteries still remaining to be uncovered in materials science, just like there is an infinity of algorithmic advances to be made in processing information.
But the more important invention of all might be to find the checks and balances, feedback loops and regulators that will prevent people from behaving like panicked apes. At best this uncontrolled lemming instinct of ours is a huge waste of time. At worst it undermines society and our welfare.
Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#613I think it’s a fairly interesting story over all, and it feels like exactly how science should happen. We are humans and easily deluded. We fall easily for things we wish to be true. The fascinating story behind LK99 is incredibly human - including the rushing a preprint out to secure a noble prize by one of the researchers who was being excluded. The fascinating part to me was the fact engineers and scientists could…
Wow, so in the end you still think science is going to save us? We're completely ignoring science every single day when we go about our thoroughly unsustainable lives. We only like science when it gives us more (like LK-99). We ignore it otherwise. There is no reason to believe science will give us anything more apart from simply wanting it to be true.
Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#614As a Korean, I had a feeling this might unfold in this way. It's truly disheartening to witness Korean academia repeating a familiar pattern – this rush to make a splash globally, it's like history repeating itself. We remember back in 2009, when Dr. Woo Suk Hwang claimed the first successful human embryo cloning, only for it to unravel as a fraud (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/world/asia/27clone.html). With LK-99, I couldn't help but notice the same signs that triggered my skepticism back then. The tale is familiar – researchers hungry for funding, limited interaction with the global scientific community, and bold declarations of "innovation" that likely could have occurred despite less-than-ideal research conditions. Their bold claims to their break through resonates with the typical korean cinderella narrative - overcoming harsh conditions, through relentless determination to achieve the goal, just like we made such a rapid growth from basically ruins to OECD membership in less than a century. It is a common pattern in research proposals in korea to tout the patriotism of government officials in this manner. I see this incident as a extension of that research culture in korea. I too have enjoyed the hype and hoped it to be true but sadly it turned out to be another false pursuit for attention.
Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not dismissing any particular argument. I'm dismissing the attitude espoused in comments like this: > Try challenging climate science, even in a valid way, and see how popular it is on reddit or HN or twitter. It is an attitude that is a hallmark of cranks of all forms who think they've pierced the veil, but almost inevitably they have fallen for some distorted thinking that they can't see beyond due to the limit…
> It is an attitude that is a hallmark of cranks of all forms who think they've pierced the vale And labeling groups who disagree with them as “heretics”, “crazies”, “cranks”, etc is how the orthodoxy censors — as they’ve done for thousands of years. That the orthodoxy seeks to censors dissent rather than address it, particularly when ignoring their own ridiculous members (eg, Al Gore and Greta Thunberg making absurd…
The problem here is that it is much easier to create bullshit than it is to refute it. At some point you have to stop addressing the points of people who have repeatedly been incorrect, because there are better uses of your time.
Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not over yet, at least not definitively. Nature Magazine like every other source so far is basing its comments on the attempted replications using the leaked paper. It's considered fairly certain at this point that the paper was incomplete/not enough to duplicate the material. The full paper with the original samples were reportedly sent to Korea University of Science and Technology for examination. That lab gro…
Of course there's some sour grapes in Nature's article, as arxiv.org has had the best exposure it's likely to get in years. The more that publish there, the fewer who publish behind firewalls, etc. For starters, Nature's reprints are hellishly expensive.
> arxiv.org has had the best exposure it's likely to get in years. The more that publish there, the fewer who publish behind firewalls
We're talking about condensed matter physics here, arxiv needs zero exposure in this field. It is extremely common to publish on arxiv first and only then begin the process of submitting the same manuscript to be published (and peer reviewed) in a journal.
And while there are still some authors that skip over publishing pre-prints at all, there's no serious arxiv competitor if you do decide to publish pre-prints. It is a de-facto monopoly in this field.
Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#617Sixty Symbols released a video about this yesterday, and in it professor Philip Moriarty is less than impressed with the whole ordeal. I haven't been paying attention, I'm too jaded and skeptical and assumed from the start that there was something wrong and much hype about nothing. Bad Science and Room Temperature Superconductors - Sixty Symbols: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-AgmoZ5mo
everyone in this thread should watch this, instead of "the excitement was good for everyone" they might realize these hoaxes harm scientific integrity. The audacity of HN to state something is good, without listening to scientists give their take on it.
It’s still important to disambiguate the curious optimists from swindlers and fraud scientists. There’s nothing wrong with asking “what if?”.
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.
Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#618As a Korean, I had a feeling this might unfold in this way. It's truly disheartening to witness Korean academia repeating a familiar pattern – this rush to make a splash globally, it's like history repeating itself. We remember back in 2009, when Dr. Woo Suk Hwang claimed the first successful human embryo cloning, only for it to unravel as a fraud (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/world/asia/27clone.html ).…
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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#619We do have a "superconductor" but its not the one we wanted. It is the best description for the behavior of online (social) media: no longer exhibits any resistance and the tiniest spark leads to amplification and a system meltdown. These collective hysterias are a combination of people desperate for technological solutions to (typically) social problems and a system that eagerly exploits that for the benefit of a fe…
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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor
#620Sixty Symbols released a video about this yesterday, and in it professor Philip Moriarty is less than impressed with the whole ordeal. I haven't been paying attention, I'm too jaded and skeptical and assumed from the start that there was something wrong and much hype about nothing. Bad Science and Room Temperature Superconductors - Sixty Symbols: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-AgmoZ5mo
I find it amusing how so many so-called skeptics seem to be unaware of the phenomenon of hindsight bias.
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