It's the same in Korea where the research originated.
A bunch of professors belonging to a hastily formed academic committee are trying to monopolize the public debate, quibbling about errors in the arxiv paper and demanding that Lee & Kim turn over samples of LK-99 because the big-name professors are obviously too busy to make their own. It seems that their first priority is to avoid a repeat of the Hwang scandal than to touch any novel research.
Any time the material exhibits a properties inconsistent with superconductors, the to-go explanation is that it's supposedly extremely difficult to manufacture. Not to mention, the original instructions include stuff like "The sealed tube containing the mixed powder was heated in a
furnace at 925°C for 5-20 hours." which sounds a tad bit imprecise.
Don't you think in those conditions it's at least a little bit reasonable to demand samples?
>Don't you think in those conditions it's at least a little bit reasonable to demand samples?
No. Because ultimately they don't owe anyone anything outside of the standard scientific process. They want to get the peer reviewed article published, and have stated that if people still want samples after that they will provide them.
Half of twitter shitposting about FLOAT THE ROCK and a bunch of curious scientists and engineers attempting to replicate this doesn't fundamentally change this equation. If it's a superconductor now, it'll be a superconductor in 6 months.
None of the media hype or unwashed masses treating this as science entertainment should significantly impact the process they are going through. Assuming they've got an RTAPS, they'll get the Nobel Prize regardless of whether or not they satisfy everyone's curiosity right this moment or a year from now. Assuming they don't have one, well, that'll get found out too.
This is very ambiguous. So, everyone can make samples in their kitchens, but unfortunately, the researchers don’t have enough samples to provide, right? Researchers have their own primary responsibility to prove it, not the public. And this was not a debatable issue before the LK-99 bomb.
They’ve said they will provide samples after peer review. Which seems fair doesn’t it? How can they complete their paper and peer review without the samples? And if the samples get damaged they will be regret ever handing them over. If you were in the same situation you’d make the same decision.
I and everybody else would love them to hand over the samples for external testing, but it’s their samples so they can do whatever they want with it, and the rest of the world just has to pound lanarkite while we wait.
But I heard that in the interview, Dr. Kim said they have various samples that have different magnetization properties. It doesn’t make sense that they have only a few samples, ironically. I’m sorry, but this makes me think that they are trying to move the public some other way.
Judging from the Korean-language interviews making the rounds today, there seems to be some sort of political tension between the researchers and the so-called verification committee. There's disagreement about whether anyone actually demanded samples, or whether it was just a polite request...
I have a hunch that this might have something to do with the late professor Chair (Choi?) who came up with the idea back in the 90s, and whose last wish his disciples claim to be following. Chair was a sort of outcast in the superconductor research scene, and the methodology his disciples have been using are also, um, unorthodox at best. Someone might stand to lose a lot of credibility if the verdict goes one way or another. We know there's been tension even inside the team, as one of the three men named in the first paper was dropped from the second paper. At this stage, I'd be more concerned about these internal tensions and personal grudges than any attempt to manipulate the public at large.
Now I understand what's going on in South Korea. Okay, this is more political than I thought. But the problem is, the researchers even didn't send the sample abroad to prove it. Even though they had many requests for a week. This doesn't make sense, and that kind of background story is not helpful in solving this.
It would not be a normal part of the process for people to be demanding samples just because there was a preprint posted on arxiv. It's a weird situation and they don't owe anyone any of these samples.
They say they want to share samples after they get a peer reviewed paper published. That's not a weird position to be in. If it wasn't for the hype around this, they wouldn't be in this position.
Let the process play out like it normally does, and if none of the replication attempts pan out, they can provide the samples after the peer review. We'll still care about RTAPS even if it takes another year for a sample to be provided.
This case is something different. Because everyone reviewed their Arxiv papers and found that there’s no meaningful figure for the resistivity. And even magnetization data was not matched between two Arxiv papers. Now, here is where we are. After these reviews, they never updated their data to solve this issue, but they decided to let other guys do their experiment instead of them. The easiest way to solve this is to plot the resistivity data again on a logarithmic scale. And this takes less than a minute because they have raw data. This is a very uncommon situation in the scientific community.
A bunch of professors belonging to a hastily formed academic committee are trying to monopolize the public debate, quibbling about errors in the arxiv paper and demanding that Lee & Kim turn over samples of LK-99 because the big-name professors are obviously too busy to make their own. It seems that their first priority is to avoid a repeat of the Hwang scandal than to touch any novel research.