Superconductor Scientist Faces Investigation as a Paper Is Retracted

Why It Matters: Recurring doubts about blockbuster physics claims.

A superconductor is a cloth that effortlessly carries electrical present. If such a substance works at on a regular basis temperatures, it might discover use in energy transmission traces, magnetic resonance imaging machines and nearly any gadget that makes use of electrical energy. Current superconductors must be cooled to temperatures that restrict their usefulness.

In the previous few weeks, euphoria over LK-99, a distinct materials that scientists in South Korea say is a room-temperature superconductor, swept over social media, though a lot of that pleasure has since calmed after different scientists have been unable to verify the superconductivity observations and got here up with believable different explanations.

However, the elemental legal guidelines of physics don’t prohibit the potential of a room-temperature superconductor, and the seek for such supplies will proceed.

Background: Another unverified room-temperature superconductor.

In March in a paper printed within the journal Nature, Dr. Dias and his collaborators stated that they had found a cloth that superconducted at temperatures as much as 70 levels Fahrenheit, though it required squeezing to a stress of 145,000 kilos per sq. inch.

Many different scientists greeted the announcement with skepticism as a result of an earlier Nature paper by Dr. Dias describing a distinct and fewer sensible superconducting materials had already been retracted.

Questions had additionally been raised concerning the now-retracted Physical Review Letters paper. James Hamlin, a professor of physics on the University of Florida, informed the journal’s editors that the curves in one of many paper’s figures describing electrical resistance within the chemical compound manganese sulfide seemed much like ones in Dr. Dias’s doctoral thesis that described the conduct of a distinct materials.

The journal recruited exterior specialists who produced three impartial stories to evaluation the determine and the underlying information. “The findings back up the allegations of data fabrication/falsification convincingly,” the journal’s editors wrote in an e mail to the authors of the paper on July 10.

The newest response from Dr. Dias is “both inadequate and disappointing,” stated one of many reviewers, who requested to stay nameless as a result of the reviewers haven’t been publicly recognized.

During the months of backwards and forwards between the authors of the paper, Dr. Hamlin and the editors of Physical Review Letters, there was no point out of Adobe Illustrator or what Dr. Dias stated was a greater graph that was generated by his lab in December 2019, the reviewer stated.

Both the University of Rochester and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas ought to conduct open, clear investigations into “what appears to be potential malfeasance,” the reviewer stated.

Dr. Salamat and Keith V. Lawler, a analysis professor at UNLV and one other key creator of the manganese sulfide paper, didn’t reply to requests for remark.

What’s Next: An investigation and a response.

The University of Rochester “has a comprehensive investigation underway into the questions raised about the integrity of all data at issue in this and other studies,” a college spokeswoman stated in an e mail.

The college had beforehand performed three preliminary inquiries into Dr. Dias’s analysis and determined the considerations didn’t warrant additional scrutiny. This time, the college determined to begin an investigation, the subsequent step mandated by its coverage on analysis misconduct.

The college doesn’t plan to make public the findings of the investigation, the spokeswoman stated.

On Tuesday, Dr. Hamlin stated he was happy that the journal had taken his considerations critically. He stated there have been two further situations of obvious information duplication in Dr. Dias’s work that he hoped would even be reviewed. One includes one other Nature paper; the opposite is what Dr. Hamlin describes as a duplication of knowledge in Dr. Dias’s thesis.