2y ago

LK99 - The case for scepticism

nitter.net /Andercot/status/1688598313497694208

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/2999441

I’m not plugged into all the hype around lk99, but this person seems to be a nice balance of hype, technical background and eagerness to not be wrong about things.
They seem to make a good and simple case for why the superconductor possibility is slipping away (as far as mostly internet hype based replication attempts go)

Technology @beehaw.org

maegul (he/they) @lemmy.ml

2y ago

LK99 - The case for scepticism

nitter.net /Andercot/status/1688598313497694208

24 comments

The case for skepticism is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And so far, there's none. What we do see is evidence for perhaps a semiconductor rather than a superconductor. All the "verification" has been in simulations and models, not actual real world replication or production of a meaningful amount of superconductive material.
- Oh sure. But for lay people it seemed that some of the magnetic behaviours were suggestive. That they can all be explained by something much more mundane means that all we have is simulations that didn’t even rule out it being a mundane material.
  
  I'm a lay person, and I've been beating the skepticism drum on this since day 1. If someone had actually discovered a room temperature, ambient pressure superconductor, their notes would be meticulous and precise, they would have replicated their results multiple times before publishing anything at all, and they'd already be lining up untold scores of investors. In other words, anybody that discovers how to do this is going to be debilitatingly rich forever. And they're going to treat it as such.
  Instead, what we got was much more akin to the press coverage of this year's latest perpetual motion machine. What I don't know is whether the people that originally announced LK-99 knew it wasn't what they claimed, or they were confused but hopeful. In other words, were they hucksters looking for attention, or innocently ignorant and hoping someone could clarify.
There's skepticism, and then there's the knee-jerk "it's a fraud! It's impossible! Nothing ever happens!" reaction. I'm all for skepticism, and as we found out today there's even some actual fraud going on (one of the "levitating speck" videos turned out to be a deliberate fake by an attention-seeker). But it becomes really wearying dealing with people who have already made up their minds and seem downright angry about the possibility that there's something to be found here.
- It sort of spoils your point when you have to accept that the very thing you're saying you got upset about people predicting actually happened. These kinds of situations are ripe for fraudsters coming along and tacking on for attention, money, or both.
  
  One of the videos turned out to be a fraud. That does not invalidate any of the others. It's like how lots of people immediately assumed LK-99 was a fraud because Ranga Dias' high-pressure room-temperature superconductor was in the process of being retracted due to apparent data manipulation - they're completely unconnected things.
  If 99 labs fail to reproduce LK-99's superconductivity, release fraudulent videos and data, and so forth, but one lab is able to perfectly reproduce it and show that it works, that lab wins and LK-99 really is a superconductor. Scientific reality is not subject to democracy.
You can start your case for skepticism from a simple examination of the synthesis process.
I think Newton had a more credible one for aurum.
Just stfu and let them examine, if this is bullshit then they will figure it out, and with extreme prejudice. In that case I wouldn't want to be a North Korean physical chemist.
In the unlikely event that we've somehow witnessed a genuine divine miracle beyond the ken of Gabriel, we can deal with that later.
- So if the skeptics and realists are supposed to "stfu" while others attempt to validate the findings, what should the bloggers, tweeters, skeeters, Lemmy users, and weird uncles on facebook do?
  
  Wildly speculate whilst foaming at the mouth?
  
  Where did you get that?
  Everybody is supposed to stfu.
  If you have empirical data or substsntive theoretical points, feel free to speak up.
  What we have now is massive armies of "skeptics" and "dreamers" screaming and drowning out actual science, welcome to being the problem.
  The synthesis is stupid, but this is almost trivial to prove/disprove, they'll be conclusive in less than a month, science can rarely be that definitive that quickly, but that's also science working exactly how it should be.
  You sitting here screaming "SKEPTICISM!!!" is moronic unless you're waving a crucible with experimental intent.
  If there is 1 massive, epic and fundamental failure with the world today it's that people who have nothing meaningful to contribute don't sit down and stfu while useful people do real work.

24 comments