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Controversial Physicist Faces Mounting Accusations of Scientific Misconduct (www.scientificamerican.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/news@kbin.social
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Allegations of data fabrication have sparked the retraction of multiple papers from Ranga Dias, a researcher who claimed discovery of a room-temperature superconductor

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[–] 10 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Scientists have enough attacks on their morale these days, good to see an actual charlatan come under pressure for it. Makes you wonder how many charlatans make claims less bold than a room temp superconductor and just get away with it.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    What I'm wondering is if he thought no one would try to replicate his work. That's literally what scientists do. It's why fraudulent work is always eventually uncovered, even if it takes a while. Peer review is a slow - but inexorable - process.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago

    If this is the case it would be an… interesting thought process. You can’t sit there and claim you’ve discovered something absolutely ground breaking and game changing in the field and then think that no one is going to try and replicate that.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    See: Replication crisis

    It's a huge problem with modern science: effectively, only positive results move your career forward. Negative results get you nowhere, and critically, replicating other people's work doesn't either. So scientists have every incentive to stretch or bend the interpretation of their data.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    Yep.

    The only big complication with doing stuff that way is that if you get enough attention, abruptly people start looking at your stuff a lot harder.

    And then you get shredded, and lose all credibility for the rest of your career.

    Claiming to have discovered something absolutely ground breaking, that everyone in the field would want to replicate almost immediately, is exactly the kind of thing that would sink someone doing this.

    But then again, people are idiots sometimes.

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