Nature Retracts Controversial Superconductivity Paper by Embattled Physicist
upstart writes:
Researchers worry the controversy is damaging the field's reputation:
Nature has retracted a controversial paper claiming the discovery of a superconductor - a material that carries electrical currents with zero resistance - capable of operating at room temperature and relatively low pressure.
The text of the retraction notice states that it was requested by eight co-authors. "They have expressed the view as researchers who contributed to the work that the published paper does not accurately reflect the provenance of the investigated materials, the experimental measurements undertaken and the data-processing protocols applied," it says, adding that these co-authors "have concluded that these issues undermine the integrity of the published paper". (The Nature news team is independent from its journals team.)
It is the third high-profile retraction of a paper by the two lead authors, physicists Ranga Dias at the University of Rochester in New York and Ashkan Salamat at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Nature withdrew a separate paper last year and Physical Review Letters retracted one this August. It spells more trouble in particular for Dias, whom some researchers allege plagiarized portions of his PhD thesis. Dias has objected to the first two retractions and not responded regarding the latest. Salamat approved the two this year.
[...] This year's report by Dias and Salamat is the second significant claim of superconductivity to crash and burn in 2023. In July, a separate team at a start-up company in Seoul described a crystalline purple material dubbed LK-99 - made of copper, lead, phosphorus and oxygen - that they said showed superconductivity at normal pressures and at temperatures up to at least 127 C (400 kelvin). There was much online excitement and many attempts to reproduce the results, but researchers quickly reached a consensus that the material was not a superconductor at all.
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