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LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

nature.com

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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#551

Post by laserbeam »

hunson_abadeer wrote: post #378
thinkingkong wrote: post #2

It’s disappointing news but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. To me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences, uses, the order of magnitude improvements we’d see in certain costs or areas. Pumps, MRIs, power grids, chips, etc. Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics.

This is precisely what put me off in these discussions. Not the idea that we might have found a room-temperature superconductor - that part was exciting. It's the part where people confidently talked about its applications without realizing that they probably wouldn't revolutionize CPU performance (Josephson junctions don't seem to work well as non-cryogenic temperatures for reasons unrelated to superconductivity), p…

Also... The material was always a ceramic, and you can't do much with other ceramic superconductors either.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#552

Post by laserbeam »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #546

I 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…

I disagree. The paper should never have been published. Science should not happen in the news with people making wild claims about non peer reviewed papers. More so about papers that were getting lots of negative public peer review in real time.

The only reason this story has a happy ending is the authors included manufacturing instructions. But everything else about the paper is not a good model of how to publish (wild claims that you will revolutionise the world, the title, the bad graphs, the 2nd paper that was published with different authors...).

The fact that papers get retracted is nothing new. Science as a field is already generally good at retractions. Science is generally bad at incentivising reproduction... But this case was extreme and not a good model. It should not require sensationalist news and dozens of labs to reproduce a paper that was failing peer review.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#553

Post by calibas »

nullc wrote: post #180
calibas wrote: post #29

> By contrast, superconductors that levitate over magnets can be spun and even held upside-down. “None of those behaviors look like what we see in the LK-99 videos,” van Gennep says. Aren't they confusing Type-I and Type-II superconductors?

hm? "superconductors that levitate over magnets" == type-II, type-II can be spun and held upside-down.

Yes, and I though the claim was that LK-99 was a type-I superconductor.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#555

Post by godelski »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #436
godelski wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. I was really elated to see how people were so interested and getting to see what peer review in science actually looks like. How in the real world it is done outside of journals and conferences, which people frequently give the misnomer "peer review." I hope people will walk away from this experience with a better u…

> Because the truth is that our academic incentive structure has generally fallen out of alignment with the actual goals of science. Did it though? Nobody published this, which is good, right? And then Max Planck Institute gave the most conclusive answer, and they're the most prestigious replicator-to-be mentioned, so that also sounds good right?. And now, Mr. L and Mr. K will not receive funding for this material, b…

> Did it though?

Yes. Science is about more than producing novel ideas. A lot more.

> Nobody published this, which is good, right?

People did publish it, and many responses. They published on Arxiv. I think you are misunderstanding what papers are. Papers are simply a communication method between domain experts. The purpose of journals is to improve distribution and to provide a signal to help experts sift through the (possibly) large number of work. But you need question if they are accomplishing the goals. Do they provide more access than arxiv? Certainly no, arxiv is about as accessible as it comes. Do they provide better distribution than other modes? (colleagues, google scholar, semantic scholar, Twitter, etc) This is debatable and likely depends on your domain. Do they provide a useful signal to other experts? Also arguable and depends on your field. I'd say that the more papers/yr in your field, the weaker the signal. THEN you need to ask if these benefits outweigh the costs. That's both monetary costs from governments, corporations, and universities as well as the time costs to format the papers for the specified venue, deal with the back and forth with reviewers, and being a reviewer yourself. After you have considered the costs and benefits you can answer if these venues are good for science.

> Max Planck Institute gave the most conclusive answer,

Via "preprint"

> And now, Mr. L and Mr. K will not receive funding for this material, because it decisively failed to publish, which is also good?

Indeterminate. Science is noisy. You're wandering around in the dark. All we know is that they failed. But >90% of research results in failure. What is a better question is if their work advanced scientific knowledge. Which it looks like it did.

> I don't know. It sounds like the academic incentive structure worked really well here.

I'm what you think the academic goals are, which we need to know before you can determine if the incentives are aligned. For some added ethos, I'll reference Peter Higgs[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#556

Post by thewanderer1983 »

hackerlight wrote: post #457
93po wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try challenging climate science, even in a valid way, and see how popular it is on reddit or HN or twitter. Even my above comment now has a negative score which sort of proves my point. note: i don't deny climate science but like any science there are ways to challenge it

Again, this sounds an awful lot like the creationist rhetoric a few decades ago. > "Try challenging evolutionary biology, even in a valid way, and see how popular it is". All crackpots think they're under siege and that their ideas are unfairly dismissed. Their ideas are "valid" (because they say so), so why are those ideas being dismissed without due consideration? You hear the same rhetoric from anti-vaxxers, creat…

> "Try challenging evolutionary biology, even in a valid way, and see how popular it is".

Here are two biologists that might not agree with your statement. https://www.youtube.com/@DarkHorsePod/

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#557

Post by nickelpro »

laserbeam wrote: post #552
fnordpiglet wrote: post #546

I 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…

I disagree. The paper should never have been published. Science should not happen in the news with people making wild claims about non peer reviewed papers. More so about papers that were getting lots of negative public peer review in real time. The only reason this story has a happy ending is the authors included manufacturing instructions. But everything else about the paper is not a good model of how to publish (w…

> The paper should never have been published.

The paper wasn't published, despite the phrasing in the nature article. arXiv is effectively a moderated blog

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#558

Post by fnordpiglet »

laserbeam wrote: post #552
fnordpiglet wrote: post #546

I 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…

I disagree. The paper should never have been published. Science should not happen in the news with people making wild claims about non peer reviewed papers. More so about papers that were getting lots of negative public peer review in real time. The only reason this story has a happy ending is the authors included manufacturing instructions. But everything else about the paper is not a good model of how to publish (w…

I think we disagree about what science is. Science isn’t something that is a optimal condition process. It’s a process resilient to human nature. Everything you hold up as a failure is in my mind a victory for science.

The failures of science are the papers that are outright fraud and as such are cunningly crafted to deceive and it actually works, and we believe falsehoods to this day - which I think we agree on being the failure of science.

This however was not. Yes the paper shouldn’t have been published. But it was. Etc. As humans are wont to do. Science didn’t happen in the news - excitement happened in the news. Human failures and bias reigned. Yet Science happened in the lab. That is victory.

Yet, the fact there are failures in no way impugns the victories.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#559

Post by carabiner »

duringmath wrote: post #472
carabiner wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLNL and Fermi did peer reviewed research on LK-99? Links?

They published followup papers on fusion ignition and strange muon behavior respectively.

Oh ok. Mainstream media reported on fusion ignition #2 while (rightfully) ignoring LK-99. I think the takeaway here is just how bad techbros are at evaluating hard science.
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