Allegations of data fabrication have sparked the retraction of multiple papers from Ranga Dias, a researcher who claimed discovery of a room-temperature superconductor
Allegations of data fabrication have sparked the retraction of multiple papers from Ranga Dias, a researcher who claimed discovery of a room-temperature superconductor
Scientists have enough attacks on their morale these days, good to see an actual charlatan come under pressure for it. Makes you wonder how many charlatans make claims less bold than a room temp superconductor and just get away with it.
What I’m wondering is if he thought no one would try to replicate his work. That’s literally what scientists do. It’s why fraudulent work is always eventually uncovered, even if it takes a while. Peer review is a slow - but inexorable - process.
If this is the case it would be an… interesting thought process. You can’t sit there and claim you’ve discovered something absolutely ground breaking and game changing in the field and then think that no one is going to try and replicate that.
I mean, a lot of bad results have stood for decades.
But a room-temp semiconductor? That’s a bit different.
See: Replication crisis
It’s a huge problem with modern science: effectively, only positive results move your career forward. Negative results get you nowhere, and critically, replicating other people’s work doesn’t either. So scientists have every incentive to stretch or bend the interpretation of their data.
Yep.
The only big complication with doing stuff that way is that if you get enough attention, abruptly people start looking at your stuff a lot harder.
And then you get shredded, and lose all credibility for the rest of your career.
Claiming to have discovered something absolutely ground breaking, that everyone in the field would want to replicate almost immediately, is exactly the kind of thing that would sink someone doing this.
But then again, people are idiots sometimes.