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by juujian 1053 days ago
The worst about it is how much of other people's time their wasting. Other folks are trying to verify/disprove their claims. Of course it is some kind of measurement error. Do your due diligence before you claim that you broke physics as we know it. All these people could be spending their time working on something worthwhile...
2 comments
ncallaway 1053 days ago
> Do your due diligence before you claim that you broke physics as we know it

Do room temperature semi conductors break physics as we know it? I didn’t think they contradicted known physics, which is why so many people were researching them.

What known physics do they break?

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juujian 1053 days ago
It doesn't break physics as we theorize it, but physics as we practice it. If someone found a working room temp and pressure, within a few years it would be used in labs around the world. Which is why the superconductor claim is such a big deal.
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ncallaway 1053 days ago
That’s… fair, but strikes me as a quite different claim.

“Breaks physics as we know it” seems very much to imply “perpetual motion machine” sorts of claim, that violate pretty strongly held physical laws.

Anyway, this is more a minor quibble with the specific language, rather than a broader disagreement, but just a heads up that to me (and I’m guessing many others), that specific phrase holds a far broader connotation than it seems you intended.

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greggsy 1053 days ago
Their tests aren’t wasted. Negative validation adds to the corpus.
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juujian 1053 days ago
They're wasted because it becomes this game where one side claims the other side didn't do it right, and the other side claims it's not described in sufficient detail, it takes years to actually disprove something if the other side is persistent. It's not a one and done, it's a huge time sink that drains energy from researchers. You try to replicate something, you fail, that's not a publication, that's just nothing. For a phd student in a lab, that can derail your career plans if you it breaks the timeline of working toward your thesis. It's hugely damaging on an individual level. Not to mention the frustration and cynicism that comes with spending months to work, spending tens of thousands of dollars, on some bullshit that someone made up. Nobody learned or gained anything really from the Schön scandal[^1]. It just sucks all around. Not to mention it ups the pressure on scientists when fakes build a publication record, leading to a vicious cycle where the pressure makes it more likely that folks bend the truth a little bit.

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal

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