ALWAYS look forward to getting the views from the Channel regulars (Professor Moriarty, Professor Merrifield, and Professor Copeland) whenever something interesting happens in the greater Scientific community. A true and heartfelt thanks to you and your team, Brady, for bringing us these wonderful videos!

"Have you ever published something that's been (proven) wrong later?" "Yep. Thank you, oh what a great question!" Classy, modest and inspiring!

Love this video. It's very important to emphasise how actual science works. I remember when I wanted to publish my first paper: My supervisor made me do literally weeks of extra experiments to try to prove me wrong - any argument that any reviewer could possibly think of was tested _before_ we even submitted the paper. Well, we still had to do extra experiments after the first round of peer review and were only accepted after those additional experiments. But that's how science should work: You should be your own worst critic.

The third author on that paper had been fired months ago from the team working on it, and threw this one together off of what he remembered and still had access to as a non-scientist because he heard they had submitted for peer-review, causing them to scramble and release a second, more real, but still sloppy paper, as admitted by the US-based author who joined later. Basically, Kwon was after a payday without regard for the actual research, which they weren't ready to publish, hence the obnoxious grandiosity.

The media's willingness to pick up any non-peer reviewed paper to get clicks is depressing. They argue they're just reporting about the paper and do say buried somewhere in their article it hasn't been peer reviewed, but few readers go very far past the headline - and they know it. The everyday person in the street likely doesn't understand the process - especially when published in these media reports no longer has the same meaning as published in the past.

It's no wonder the LK-99 claim went viral b/c it's interesting either way: We're getting either room temp superconductors, or a "fun" science scandal (e.g. "The man who tried to fake an element" is a great watch). Plus the recipe was easy enough for amateur chemists to attempt, so a lot more people could get involved

Brady, please for the love of actual science, bring prof Moriarty on a LOT more! Know the guy is busy but he truly is the best and most valuable asset to this channel!

It is Integer based superconducting. Those folks haven’t progressed to fractions or real numbers yet. In the context of integers and rounding down, their material is a perfect conductor.

"This is not the way to do science." should have been the headline for every story about this.

“What’s the point of the archive if people can’t put their preliminary results on there?” Every scientist i’ve worked with has had a remarkable eye for detail and presentation. It comes with the field. Preliminary or not, I cannot imagine any of my group leads publicly putting their name to a paper that, e.g. didn’t even have proper section headings (as in this case). It’s the science equivalent of “bad code smell”.

Ahhh Moriarty. I remember his nano module. By far the best professor in the department. Its not even close. The guy actually has a deep passion for BOTH physics and education. If you can go to nottigham do it! Great uni

The LIGO team took a few months to verify their own gravitational waves detection

Professor Moriarty's final statement 16:08 needs to be turned into a short and played by all scientific KZfaqrs. Thanks again for another excellent Sixty Symbols video.

Gotta love Moriarty. He doesn't mince words.

Professor Moriarty, the all-time coolest name for a professor 😎

To the last point in the video: They could have had the best of both worlds: Leave the original papers up, clearly marked with "Retracted" and provide a link for the reasons for the retraction.

The question to ask when you hear about room-temperature superconductors is, "what room?"

I loved the Professor trying to be polite during the entire thing :D As others have said, the problem itself is not so much the paper and the rebuttals, it's the social media and journalism not reporting things properly. They are always on the search for the new shiny thing and never bother explaining what is going on.

I intentionally avoided clicking on each and every link I saw about this until it was more thoroughly looked into, precisely because I wanted to avoid giving that signal boost/click reward to claptrap.

As soon as someone says "I'm a genius who will change all of science and uplift mankind and win all the prizes" you know it's bunk...

Anton Petrov lives in Korea and did make a trip the building where the group was registered. It was an empty closed basement. The name of the group/company was related to the nft/blockchain boom.

Thankfully, at least as far as I saw, much of the coverage was of the nature: 'New discovery... but it isnt the first time someones made the claim' or 'New discovery... but heavy scepticism is warranted.' etc. I dont think its been the most damaging of stories, and Ive definitely seen worse, like with the warp engine stuff, that got pretty crazy. Still its fascinating as to why exactly this particular claim blew up like it did.

Videos from Sixty Symbols are never fancy at the visual editing, but the content is always gold. Thank you for this

The problem is modern journalism. The problem is that the average journalism is of such low quality, and so fascinatingly dishonest, that it will say and do anything to make quick ad revenue, and advance some political end. Honesty and integrity in journalism is basically not there in 90% of thr stuff. That's how you get non-peer-reviewed articles on the arxiv spreading as the "future of humanity" from the "trusted sources" and science loses credibility.

Regarding the retraction after the calibration mistake, that's how science works!! Mistakes like that get through to publication; we're all human. We all make mistakes. Science is the bravery to confront your mistakes and accept what you said as wrong. Retracting a paper, I think, gives credibility back to the researcher in saying "I made a mistake. This paper is wrong. Sorry." and everyone tries to make it better. I say embrace your failures as learning opportunities and take them as reminders to double-check things as you go.

About undergrad doing the measurements: if I remember my history of physics correctly, the low temperature superconductivity was discovered by an undergrad doing the boring measurement of resistivity in mercury (which was chosen because it can be made very pure), and Kamerlingh Onnes did think at first that it was measurement error...

I think the only reason this blew-up the way it did was two-fold. 1) There was drama from the group, wherein a member went rogue and published the suspect results lending some credence to this being the real-deal if there was competition between the potential authors to get credit and 2) the synthesis as given in the paper was extremely simple, so anybody with a furnace and mortar and pestle could do it. That is really far away from most papers and cutting edge discoveries, where replication is nearly impossible without specialist equipment and knowledge. It rode the edge between being both provocative and doable, so you could get a lot of amateurs and people from outside the field to start putting in their two cents. Also, there was a Korean language peer-reviewed paper on LK-99 that came out months before the arXiv manuscript. It had far better data and presentation, and it was weird to see how different it was from arXiv manuscript, I don't think any of the figures were reused. That isn't to say the Korean language paper was tremendously better, it still did some strange things, and I wouldn't call it Nature quality, not by a long shot, but it did show better evidence for superconductivity. It is also really weird that no English speaking scientists seem to have seen that paper, even though, unless you know Korean, all you can read is the figures. I think most people knew this was a long shot. It was fun for the two weeks the online hype lasted. Still, the story, as far as I'm aware, isn't completely over. One of the authors said that their official, much better paper is in review with three different groups, as well as samples of LK-99 synthesized by the original lab. Even if they are completely wrong, the authors are very confident they're very right.

I have been looking to improve the thermoelectic properties of a Full-Heusler alloy. First samples looked promising. Turns out, it was just random, since my alloy was metastable and any further samples showed different behavior. One got to be careful with science and measurements!

I personally love archives (in my field, BioRxiv). The peer review process can take months, sometimes upwards of a year for bigger papers. In a fast-evolving field, that's a long time to have useful data sitting around. It's nice to be able to share knowledge right away, even though you do have to be wary of it.

I can't stress enough just how much I loved this video. Thank you for not holding back.

Brady and Co, thank you so much for this and your other science and mathematics channels. I have so many questions about these fields that I would LOVE to pester the professors with, and this channel is a wonderful proxy - you get to ask those questions! It's great and we are better for it. Thank you!

"If the link between theory and experiment is broken - science is broken" - couldn't have put it simpler. thank You dr. Moriarty

In this instance, AFAICG this is much more a problem with science-journalism than it's with the authors of the paper themselves. They wrote a paper and put it on the arxiv. Okay, fair enough, it has a grandiose conclusion. But it's that the science journalists then just take it and run with it that creates a problem.

I love you guys, I keep up with every new episode, I missed the professors

I must say, even though those videos in great part are excellent because of the professors and other guests, it would never be this good if it were not for Brady's genius questions! Thank You Brady! ❤

Thank you for this Prof. I can tell you just from my own life and experience with my family, that situations like this do change the way every day people view science for the worse.

For what it’s worth, Arxiv is absolutely invaluable to the field of computer science

I feel the prof's frustration from way over here in the field of translation. There's so little trust in translators lately, partly because there are some genuinely bad translations, but also because of conspiracy theories and because people don't really understand the limitations and considerations that go into translating between two languages as disparate as Japanese and English. And then the accusations of errors spread so fast and wide that just about everyone in the community, except those who are native Japanese speakers, believe we're wrong. I'm fortunate enough to work in a medium that allows us to make amendments, but man, sometimes people just refuse to admit when they're wrong -- both audiences and translators.

Thank you for this video. Taking time to have a feedback on those articles is really valuable.

Bonus points for the King's X shirt - amazing, truly underappreciated band.

Ever since the whole cold fusion debacle, I've been cynical of over-hyped "discoveries."

The publishers of this paper decided to follow the Michio Kaku route 💀💀

15:40 Furore at a statistical blip at CERN. Happens so often it's not worth asking which one.

Incredible video. You explain the frustration we all share with twitter science very well!

Such an important video. I just recently graduated in Aerospace Engineering, and I read research papers frequently for my job. One of the most frustrating things about many of the papers is the authors' obvious motive to publish. Everyone wants to publish, but it should come completely secondary to the goal of advancing science and understanding. In the video, I appreciated the very self-aware comment about misinformation and the vilification of science. For scientists and non-scientists, the cost for publishing garbage is enormous.

Frustrating to see Sabine Hossenfelder mentioned when she's recently published content widely considered to be pseudoscience.

Recommended under this video was a short saying “this could be the discovery of the century”. Its still being floated around.

Thank you for a reasonable voice on the scientific process.

Oh yeah. The average people don't know about bad science and epistemology. Much needed video.

Excellent content and, in my inexpert opinion, excellent *editting* as well.

I work in a lab with one of the individuals who was acknowledged in this paper. Our group reached out to measure these samples magnetically and they refused to send them. In the end, this paper is not peer reviewed and shouldn’t warrant such attention until the scientific community independently verifies the results.

Glad i found this. I was pretty excited about them from the short i saw. But this was a very well put together video.

I love it when on Sixty Symbols they..... . Phil me in on the subject. I'll let myself out.

This news story is particularly close to my heart, as I researched novel nickel-oxide based superconductors in my Chemistry masters project at Oxford. The reality is that there is so much rubbish in scientific literature, even in the most highly regarded academic journals. The same is very true in my current academic field of batteries and supercapacitors.

Professor Moriarty makes every day better. I'm so glad he chose to go into acedemia.

Thank you for this very important video. There is more room to discuss the role of arxiv and similar non peer reviewed channels in comparison to to the tradtional peer reviewd magazines.

People will always say “oh scientists are so quick to get behind sketchy research so they can get that sweet grant money” but are oddly silent when scientists dogpile sketchy research that would otherwise lead to massive investment

What the world actually needs to "go viral" is the information (and passion for reality) in this video.

Thanks for working to keep science honest!

I've seen a lot of headlines and click bait thumbnails referencing this "discovery" but this is the first video I've actually watched about it. Make sure to get your science news from reputable sources.

The point of arxiv is not to published preliminary DATA but preliminary PAPERS. Preliminary im the sense that it has not been edited by an editor and might not be in the most presentable version, but the data and even the text cannot be changed afterwatds. Check preprints and the final points of papers and you will only see only minor differences mostly in the presentation, not in the actual data. Publishing preliminary data is insane.

I like arxive, once it gets to journals it’s behind a paywall.

When I first heard about this it piqued my interest... but I was super-skeptical. It reminded me of the hype around cold fusion in 1989 (if I remember correctly)... Thanks for explaining in detail!

토론은 언제나 흥미로워요 저는 한국인 이고 이번 초전도체는 상온 상압 초전도체라 확신하는 한명 입니다 한국에서는 초전도체 상용화 필름 생산 준비 중 입니다 누군가는 우연히 만들어진 것처럼 생각들 하는데요 우연히 만들수 있는 과정이 아닙니다 많은시간 고생하신 연구원분 들을 욕 하지는 말아주세요

Thanks... fascinating... and a bit sad. Pleased with myself for not getting excited ( got rather over keen in the 80's, so bit more wary now.)

Whether it’s the goop lab nonsense or the room temperature superconductor nonsense, Professor Moriarty is the man for the job, and I love every second of it

As an aside, Dr. Moriarty also displays an impeccable taste in music. 🤘🏼

Love these type of videos!

Well-reasoned, well-explained critique *and* a Kings X t-shirt! "It's Love."

Reminds me of the 1989 Fleischmann-Pons Cold Fusion televised reveal. The world is just so eager for these things the media goes idiotically gullible. Even as the cold fusion telecast droned on with all of the authenticity of Geraldo Rivera's 1986 broadcast of Al Capone's vault, most common sense people watched with a high degree of skepticism.

Awesome video! Thanks for making this

Thank you Professor Moriarty for your excellent explanation.

That WTF on Paper will be remember by history as fondly as the WOW signal.😂

I enjoyed following the replication attempts. Do you think if they removed the superconducting claim it would still be an interesting material?

Props to prof. Moriarty for his King's X shirt. It's love that holds it all together. Figure out the physics in that!

Great interview as always.

Been expecting this, thanks for clearing it up!

Prominent scientists and public science communicators need to do this more often. Prominent public “scientists” (looking at you, public health) far too often overstate, mischaracterize, or outright lie about their research and the result is mass skepticism and mistrust of science. Honest communication with the public is the best way to maintain trust, treating people as imbeciles only furthers the divide

Great video. As a physicist I've been very interested in this topic

This is why scientific consensus is such a big thing. The scrutiny that is applied from multiple unbiased people really increase the chances that bad scientific methods and studies get caught. Its not perfect but its the best system we have.

A lie goes around the world before the truth puts it's pants on.

Something that I have repeatedly pointed out in public science discussions is that as a scientist my work is mostly erroneous or outright wrong. That’s what you expect at the frontier of knowledge. It’s also a dangerous source of self-delusion or fraud. However, we have tools for avoiding and detecting these problems.

This video should have been called "bad science at room temperature"

I'm so happy that I waited to hear from the peer review before I cared.

I wish he wouldn't hold back. I want him to say what he really thinks about the subject. 😂

Thanks for adding to the choir on this one. Academia and scientific method take enough ridiculous, unwarranted punches as it is. A paper/claim like this doesn't help anyone at all, in the long run.

An absolute banger of a video. Exactly captures the importance for the sanctity of science. Well said, and well done video!

I mean from that graph it barely looks like a room temp regularconductor

Thank you. I was very suspicious when I fist hear about this. Mainly because of media hype.

*Would love to hear about retracted papers that WERE accurate because they went against the social standards of the day*

The frustrating part for me was running into people purporting to have 'scientific backgrounds' who showed none of the appropriate skepticism, cited Feynman and Popper, and actively attacked when shown these problems with the papers, leaning into the opinion that if the results were 'replicated' then the claims must be right.

Great insight and perspective from an experimentalist!

"when you see something groundbreaking in the lab your first instinct is to go 'it's wrong. Where have I F-ed up'?"Oh man that hits so close to home.

And yeah. The way of describing peer review as "hey guys, where did I screw up?" more than, "hey, look at this amazing thing I definetly invented" seems way more sober and responsible. Less exciting for mass media. But it is more descriptive of how things should be done in science.

Very nice video. good pace and straingt to the point.

Compare this paper with the type of language used in the CERN paper about the Higgs boson. They had very strong evidence, and were still overly cautious in their wording and presented the findings as clear as possible (it was the work of a very large group of scientist). The bigger and more surprising the supposed discovery, the more caution is needed when presenting the findings.

Even if this was real (which it isn't) It changes nothing since LK-99 is a ceramic and ceramics have terrible properties for making wires out of.

This whole thing blew up because of crypto bro accounts hyping it to extreme levels. Not because they were excited about the physics, but because they were hoping for investments and a big payday. Them having blue tickmarks in Elon Musks twitter also meant it got spread their misinformation all over the place. As a condensed matter physicist I found the whole process extremely frustrating.

Reminds me of the furor when the first high temperature superconducting metalloceramics were discovered. The problem with them was current density, none of them had the current density of the old low temp superconductors.

In the startup business of tech company, like flying car, miniature blood sample testing, there are no peer review and basicly people get scammed. I'm glad they didn't try to crowd fund their research.