https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03398-4
Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist
This is the third high-profile retraction for Ranga Dias. Researchers worry the controversy is damaging the field’s reputation.

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03398-4
Nature retracts controversial superconductivity paper by embattled physicist
This is the third high-profile retraction for Ranga Dias. Researchers worry the controversy is damaging the field’s reputation.

My question is who keeps letting Dias publish, considering he has a not-so-great reputation in academic circles.... That can't be good for his organization, to be sure.

 

My question is who keeps letting Dias publish, considering he has a not-so-great reputation in academic circles.... That can't be good for his organization, to be sure.

It seems to all about money, fame, etc ... the usual suspects of a Grifter when there is cash to be gotten.

 

My question is who keeps letting Dias publish, considering he has a not-so-great reputation in academic circles.... That can't be good for his organization, to be sure.

The better question is what has gone wrong at Nature. It used to be hard to get a paper published there and it was considered quite an honor to have a paper accepted. Apparently that ship has passed.

 

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-myth-room-temperature-superconductivity-lk-.html
Myth of room temperature superconductivity in LK-99 is shattered

 

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-myth-room-temperature-superconductivity-lk-.html
Myth of room temperature superconductivity in LK-99 is shattered

And yet there will be no end to the string of people that, for decades to come, will be talking about how room temperature superconductivity was achieved back in 2023, but was suppressed by the evil energy companies and/or governments.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/20/24106779/lk-99-superconductor-researcher-ranga-dias-misconduct
Physicist who worked on room temperature superconductor accused of ‘research misconduct’

“The University has completed a thorough investigation conducted by a panel of scientists external to the University who have expertise in the field,” University of Rochester spokesperson Sara Miller says in a statement to The Verge. “The committee concluded, in accordance with University policy and federal regulations, that Dias engaged in research misconduct.”
Last year, Dias co-authored a research paper in Nature highlighting a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride. The paper claimed the material could conduct electricity at ambient temperatures without resistance. (If that sounds familiar that’s because you’re thinking of the supposed LK-99 superconductor that went viral on social media last year.) Scientists later found inconsistencies in Dias’ research.

"He produced super-misconductivity"

 

8:20 - Note that with this graph, presume that the first part of the red line is vertical, rather than horizontal. My fault for being terrible at drawing graphs. My thanks to viewer Craig for clarifying.

 

https://cacm.acm.org/news/room-temperature-superconductivity-heats-up/
Room-Temperature Superconductivity Heats Up

“We haven’t reached a point where there is a clear path to room temperature superconductivity because researchers are either overly enthusiastic or deceptive,” said Elie Track, chief technology officer at HYPRES, Inc., an Elmsford, NY, company that develops and commercializes superconductor integrated circuits (ICs) and systems. “People fail to check measurements and others can’t reproduce their results. There is a lot of carelessness and sloppy science surrounding the space because people are so eager to achieve success.”
...
The group says its research pushes beyond Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory (BCS), which serves as a standard textbook description of superconductivity.m It asserts that electron pairs form due to interactions with lattice vibrations (phonons) at very low temperatures. Instead, the group used interactions with the lattice vibrations to incorporate only strain fluctuations and geometrically restricted electrons. This permits superconductivity to occur at temperatures 100 times greater than usual for superconductivity, Diamantini said.

Others remain skeptical, however. Kadin, for example, pointed out that one of the key researchers for the project, Yakov Kopelevich, has been working in the field for two decades and, so far, “The results are not reproducible in other labs…Until someone else independently reproduces these results, I think we can safely ignore them,” he argued.

 

The group says its research pushes beyond Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory (BCS), which serves as a standard textbook description of superconductivity.

This makes me skeptical of anything this group says. BCS was the accepted theory for superconductivity back before high-temperature superconductors were discovered. It was immediately realized that BCS theory was inadequate to explain superconductivity in such conductors. That's been the case for nearly four decades.