[yongjik]

The most bizarre is people who view this as a fight between underdog citizens and established big science, ignoring that the most useful commentaries and replication efforts are coming from universities and big science labs.

(And no, a photo on Twitter of some unspecified speck levitating over an unspecified magnet-looking device posted by an unknown individual does not prove anything. If the topic was anything else, HN would've been filled with "Gah stupid non-technical people, when will they understand that you can't believe everything on the internet?")

[jacquesm]

That's a tricky one. Yes, it doesn't prove anything. But if that same person would show you a battery and an electric light and the fact that the one can power the other you'd have no qualms about saying that that video is real and proof of the existence of electricity because you've already accepted that as a fact and any evidence that confirms it can safely be added to the huge pile that already exists.

But let's just for the moment go back 112 years when your average laboratory was less well equipped than today's lab of mid sized university and people were doing groundbreaking research all over the place. Including superconduction. So we are all less likely to believe the 'underdog citizens' because anything they can do the labs can do that much better. But the underdog citizens apparently excel at marketing themselves, rather than that they excel at science and replication is something they are sometimes quite good at (Nile Red for instance is in that category). So as long as they aren't doing original science I think we maybe should lump them into the 'preponderance of evidence' class and if enough of those unknown individuals all report consistent results then it may count for something, more so if you know one of them yourself and are allowed to inspect the results. But for a global audience it shouldn't hold as much weight as a replication by a well known university with a good reputation, especially if they supply samples for others to test. (Because I think with this substance testing it properly is a lot easier (while still challenging) than manufacturing it properly.)

[SubiculumCode]

Sure serious amateurs can do serious science too. However, I have less reason to believe in their results, a priori, because the internet is full of cranks, while University Lab's have proportionally few. So a claim from a lab becomes an extraordinary claim from some rando on twitter, and thus the rando needs to provide extraordinary evidence.

[jacquesm]

That looks like a solid and defensible position to me.

[yongjik]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. You put it much better than I did.

[jacquesm]

I see those youtubers for the most part as well meaning science popularizers, I can't get my kids to read books about the history of science but they'll watch videos about all kinds of interesting stuff all day long if I let them. So they do serve a role and if that's all they contribute then I'm fine with that. But I would come down harshly on anybody that would fake it just for clicks or that would interfere with actual science by spouting unsupported bullshit (this happened a lot during the pandemic).

[yongjik]

I think it's a matter of priors. If a Youtuber shows, say, how to make non-Newtonian fluid from starch, then it's much easier to accept it at face value, because we already know such a thing exists, and what would they gain by faking it.

On the other hand, if another one shows room-temperature superconductor which may or may not actually exist, then (1) we don't know if it's true yet, and (2) it's pretty obvious why someone may want to fake it to get their five minutes of internet fame.

[scaramanga]

That narrative explains perfectly why this engenders such immediate kneejerk emotional reactions. It's a fly-trap for reactionary crackpots, who are rife in technical circles such as ours.

It's as if it were custom designed for people who believe their technical/scientific genius is overlooked, who are crying out for some validation.

By and large, we are technically skilled people who work in a field where we're wage-slaves for stanford educated billionaire MBA types whose "big idea" that the media drools and fawns over is "a juice-maker, but, like, netflix... somehow" - no wonder we feel like engineers and scientists are this put-upon class with a massive victim complex.