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Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

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Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#161

Post by ryukoposting »

vasco wrote: post #121
lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

If research moves more to arxiv + discussion forums rather than paid journals, sharing research results earlier seems like a good thing, not bad. If they didn't publish early, when they published maybe things would be clearer for other researchers. But by publishing earlier other people have the choice to engage with it or wait for later. Seems like many people decided to not wait, so it seems like it was a good choi…

This is a great philosophy in software, where meaningful contributions can be made by any given person with a laptop. It's not as compelling when the only people who can meaningfully advance the research need to spend millions in grant money and/or allocate time to use expensive equipment that's shared across other research groups.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#162

Post by _0ffh »

joefigura wrote: post #158
_0ffh wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rushing out the second paper was a mistake and not a good look for the group. It would have been enough to force the retraction of Kwon's paper, and even without a retraction it's very unlikely it would have counted for anything with such weak data.

idk if it turns out this material is a room temperature superconductor, the rushed second paper will have been the right thing to do. Science happening in real time is gonna be messy

If it's about the Nobel, no it doesn't make sense. There's been more than one Nobel where the author(s) of an earlier paper were passed over in favour of a later paper because it was insufficient to conclusively prove the claim. One example would be Randy Hulet.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#163

Post by crote »

eric-hu wrote: post #138
Loic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For computer science people, I always use the yield on wafers as analogy to explain how hard it can be to nail an experiment right. Usually they understand directly because this is something they can easily relate to.

For those of us unfamiliar with the numbers, what do typical yields look like on silicon wafers?

It really varies.

Samsung 3nm had a yield rate well below 20% back in early 2022, and that's not unheard of while still in the development phase. To be economically viable the yield rates have to be around 80%, so mature nodes can be expected to be in that ballpark.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#164

Post by michaelt »

lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

> Combined with the slipshod methodology, doesn't this make you feel like it was silly to release the arXiv paper when they did? Well, the LK-99 team agree

As I understand it, the 99 in the name is because they first discovered it in 1999.

Seems to me that if you didn't manage to nail down the process in 24 years, it's probably time to publish and let someone else have a go.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#165

Post by amelius »

p-e-w wrote: post #17

> In addition, when a pressed Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O pellet is located on top of a commercial Nd2Fe14B magnet at room temperature, no repulsion could be felt and no magnetic levitation was observed either. So what about the video[1] that shows magnetic levitation occurring? Since the linked article was unable to reproduce this effect, it seems there are two possibilities: 1. The video is fake (which is really, really hard…

> The video is fake (which is really, really hard to imagine since that would predictably end the authors' careers).

Unfortunately not hard to imagine because of the prediction markets.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#166

Post by londons_explore »

michaelt wrote: post #164
lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

> Combined with the slipshod methodology, doesn't this make you feel like it was silly to release the arXiv paper when they did? Well, the LK-99 team agree As I understand it, the 99 in the name is because they first discovered it in 1999. Seems to me that if you didn't manage to nail down the process in 24 years, it's probably time to publish and let someone else have a go.

And if this technology is on the critical path to solving world hunger/curing cancer or ending wars, then those things have been delayed 24 years, and millions of people are dead, all so these guys could have a shot at a paper in Nature.

Humans really are selfish sometimes.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#167

Post by guerrilla »

michaelt wrote: post #164
lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

> Combined with the slipshod methodology, doesn't this make you feel like it was silly to release the arXiv paper when they did? Well, the LK-99 team agree As I understand it, the 99 in the name is because they first discovered it in 1999. Seems to me that if you didn't manage to nail down the process in 24 years, it's probably time to publish and let someone else have a go.

It sounds like you don't know the history. They were doing other unrelated things in the meantime, not working in this.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#168

Post by MayeulC »

mrandish wrote: post #50
canjobear wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, real science makes for a pretty lousy spectator sport :-). I’ve found this whole thing incredibly entertaining and informative.

I actually agree with you because I've enjoyed it immensely but I suspect you and I share fairly nuanced and informed perspectives. My statement was more directed to those who seem to be expecting some kind of near-term definitive verdict or box score, more like a sporting event.

This is more like a high stakes multi round baking competition :)

I never thought of replication experiment as an alternative to televized sports, but this does it for me (caveat: I never really was into following sports competitions).

Imagine if national sports were replication attempts :P I suspect this whole story is at least going to inspire a few material science/chemistry/EE careers in South Korea!

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#169

Post by rozab »

mellosouls wrote: post #151
joefigura wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment intrigued me, so I pulled together some information. The first paper submitted is titled "The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor." It lists three authors: Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon. Its timestamp is Saturday, July 22, 2023 at 07:51:19 UTC. [1] The second paper submitted is titled "Superconductor Pb10−xCux(PO4)6O showing levitation at room temperature and atmospheric…

Yeah, this in-fighting thing has been proposed before as credibility-supporting. Here's an earlier tweet with some background on the palaver, account worth following on it all: https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1684385895565365248

This is going to make such a great movie

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#170

Post by michaelt »

mschuster91 wrote: post #135
djtango wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also don't have a culture of replication. Basically all of the post docs I worked with in the lab lamented how hard it can be to replicate reported syntheses in chemistry wet labs. Everything from humidity and altitude to undocumented "magic tricks" (eg baking something in an oven under vaccuum for a week to get.rid.of.all.the.water.) I heard anecdotes that experiments were sometimes literally only reproducible in…

The problem IMHO is funding related. Often enough the original lab's grant is barely enough to account for the research and a shoddily put together paper, the rest is filled with a crapload of un(der)paid/"voluntold" labour. It's rare for researchers to get the budget to replicate someone else's work - this case might be one of the few exceptions given that everyone and their dog want to be the first one to show the…

Even in well funded fields, nobody wants to give away easy follow-on publications to other labs.

Oh, you want to document things well enough that people can build on your work and give you citations eventually. But if you've just demonstrated a groundbreaking technique for Foo and the obvious next step is to test it on Bar, you've got an opportunity to get your lab two papers instead of one, and all you have to do is less documentation?

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