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In March, a team of scientists published a paper announcing the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor, causing an uproar in the scientific community and the media. Now, almost all team members have signed a letter to the magazine Nature requesting the removal of the article, placing the research leader under strong suspicion of fraud.
The controversial article addresses a compound called lutetium hydride, which becomes a superconductor with the addition of some nitrogen atoms and high pressure. “The compound was synthesized under high pressure and high temperature conditions and then — after full recovery — its material and superconducting properties were examined,” the authors explain.
Although the paper clarifies that “further experiments and simulations are needed to determine the exact stoichiometry of hydrogen and nitrogen… to better understand the superconducting state of the material,” the authors were explicit in calling their results “evidence,” suggesting a very high level of confidence. big on data.
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After publication in the magazine, it wasn’t long before other scientists around the world pointed out problems with the results, leading to investigations into possible fraud. With that, most of the authors (who, at the time, were postgraduate students), signed a letter to Tobias Rödel, senior editor of the magazine Nature.
In the letter, the group asks for a retraction because the article presented distorted measurements of electrical resistance and thermal capacity, essential properties for determining whether a material is a superconductor or not. The group even expressed their concerns to Dr. Ranga P. Dias, who “largely rejected them”.
The video below demonstrates a change in color of the material after subjecting it to pressure. This color change would have indicated a change in the material’s electrical properties as it became a superconductor, Dias said at the time of the paper’s publication.
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According to the The New York Times, at least six of the article’s co-authors received, by email, a threat from Dr. Dias. He reportedly said he would sue for defamation if they didn’t stop sending the letter to the editors of Nature.
This is the third accusation against Dr. Dias, a physicist at the University of Rochester, who has already had two other articles on the discovery of superconductors removed from scientific journals. Furthermore, there were accusations of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis and of fabricating data in previous articles.
Dr. Dias and Ashkan Salamat, co-author of the paper, founded a company called Unearthly Materials to capitalize on their research. The company recently raised $16.5 million from investors. In response to The New York Times, Dias said that he has never engaged in fabrication, manipulation or misrepresentation of data in any of his research.
The LK-99 superconductor
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Scientists have long tried to produce the first ambient pressure superconductor, a material that would revolutionize industry. Among its miraculous properties, electric current could be conducted without losing energy in the form of heat.
In July, another team of scientists claimed to have discovered a superconductor called LK-99. The scientific community was cautious about the authors’ claims, and the results they obtained became the target of investigations.
Source: The New York Times
2023-10-03 20:12:14
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