[i-use-nixos-btw]

Anyone who is afraid to be wrong shouldn’t entertain the notion of becoming a scientist.

If it turns out they’re wrong, then they will likely do a follow up paper that explains what their mistakes were. No biggy. It’s just a couple of preprints, after all, and it’s widely believed that it was pushed out without all of the authors’ consent in the first place. It won’t leave them with lasting reputational damage from their peers, though it may place slightly more scrutiny on their outputs at a later point.

They may get ridicule from the people who took their paper at face value without noting the informality of the format, the incomplete studies performed on the sample, the almost-clear methodology etc. But those people aren’t scientists - all of the scientists who have discussed this have assumed from day one that it is likely an error, and perhaps toyed around in case their assumption is wrong.

To have reputational damage, they’d need to refuse to retract their work, refuse to elaborate further, claim they invented room temperature superconductors without sufficient proof, then attack anyone who questions them.

[i-use-nixos-btw]

(To the other comment - yes, this being fraud would be an exception to the above. I am assuming it was done in good faith. If it turns out that it was intentionally designed to be misleading, then that changes things - and would be monumentally stupid of them, because publishing a method to a groundbreaking result on a preprint server is a sure-fire way of getting caught out)

[jacquesm]

If you click on the time stamp of your comment there is an 'edit' link there. (It should also be there in the thread.) It stays available for an hour or so and then it will disappear.