A significant physics journal is retracting a two-year-old scientific paper that described the transformations of a chemical compound because it was squeezed between two items of diamond.
Such an esoteric discovering — and retraction — wouldn’t usually garner a lot consideration.
However one of many leaders of this analysis is Ranga P. Dias, a professor within the physics and mechanical engineering departments on the College of Rochester in New York who made a a lot larger scientific splash earlier this yr, touting the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor.
On the identical time, accusations of analysis misconduct have swirled round Dr. Dias, and his superconductor findings stay largely unconfirmed.
The retracted paper doesn’t contain superconductivity however moderately describes how a comparatively mundane materials, manganese sulfide, shifts its habits from an insulator to a metallic after which again to an insulator beneath growing strain.
A criticism that one of many graphs within the paper seemed fishy led the journal, Bodily Assessment Letters, to recruit exterior specialists to take a more in-depth look.
The inquiry arrived at disquieting conclusions.
“The findings again up the allegations of information fabrication/falsification convincingly,” the journal’s editors wrote in an e mail to the authors of the paper on July 10.
The Instances obtained copies of the e-mail and three stories written by the skin reviewers. These haven’t been printed however have circulated amongst scientists within the subject. The Campus Instances newspaper on the College of Rochester and the journal Nature reported earlier on the upcoming retraction.
The reviewers had been all unconvinced by the reasons proffered by the authors. Moreover, further knowledge requested by the journal to again up the paper’s claims clearly didn’t match what had been printed.
Whereas Dr. Dias continues to defend the work, to some scientists, there’s now clear proof of misconduct.
“There’s no believable deniability left,” stated N. Peter Armitage, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins College in Baltimore who’s among the many scientists who’ve seen the stories. “They submitted falsified knowledge. There’s no ambiguity there in any respect.”
Over the previous few years, Dr. Dias and his colleagues have printed a collection of spectacular findings in high scientific journals.
The most recent declare got here in March. They described, within the journal Nature, the invention of a superconductor — a cloth that conveys electrical energy with out dropping power to electrical resistance — that labored at temperatures as much as 70 levels Fahrenheit (though it additionally required a crushing strain of 145,000 kilos per sq. inch). Most superconductors should be chilled to ultracold temperatures, which limits their sensible use.
Many scientists had been skeptical, nevertheless, as a result of an earlier superconductor paper by Dr. Dias and his colleagues, additionally printed in Nature, had already been retracted. Critics have additionally found that Dr. Dias’s doctoral thesis, accomplished in 2013 at Washington State College, incorporates swaths of plagiarism that had been copied from different scientists’ work.
A number of of the authors of the 2 Nature papers additionally seem on the Bodily Assessment Letters paper on manganese sulfide. These embrace Dr. Dias; Ashkan Salamat, a professor of physics on the College of Nevada, Las Vegas; and Keith V. Lawler, a analysis professor at UNLV.
In an announcement offered by his publicist, Dr. Dias stated, “We specific our disappointment concerning the choice made by PRL’s editors and have duly submitted our responses to deal with their inquiries regarding the knowledge high quality within the authentic paper.”
No scientific misconduct occurred and the work contained no fabrication or manipulation of information, Dr. Dias stated within the assertion.
Dr. Salamat and Dr. Lawler didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Dr. Dias’s publicist stated the authors had been nonetheless in dialogue amongst themselves, and with the journal’s editors, concerning the subsequent steps.
Media representatives for the College of Rochester and the College of Nevada, Las Vegas, stated the colleges had been conscious of discussions of the proposed retraction, and in the event that they obtained discover that the paper was retracted due to misconduct, they might observe their insurance policies for dealing with such allegations.
The Bodily Assessment Letters inquiry targeted on one determine within the paper that purported to point out electrical resistance in manganese sulfide. Nonetheless, very related curves additionally appeared in Dr. Dias’s thesis for a completely completely different materials, germanium selenide.
The scientists, labeled Reviewers Alpha, Beta, Delta and Gamma, weren’t recognized. (Alpha and Beta collaborated on a joint report.) When requested for the unique experimental knowledge used to generate the graph, Dr. Salamat offered a spreadsheet of numbers that additional raised suspicions.
All the reviewers famous that after they plotted Dr. Salamat’s knowledge on a chart, they didn’t see kinks seen within the printed graph. “The alleged ‘uncooked’ knowledge seems to be a smoothed and in any other case doctored model of the info proven” within the journal article, Reviewers Alpha and Beta wrote.
Of their e mail, the journal editors wrote, “We view this lack of correspondence and what seems to be a deliberate try to hinder the investigation as one other moral breach.”
The journal informed the authors that they might volunteer to retract the paper themselves. The journal added that it could retract the paper if the authors didn’t.
Till now, each the College of Nevada, Las Vegas and the College of Rochester have lauded the potential breakthroughs {that a} room-temperature superconductor might result in.
“I hope this forces the establishments concerned — the College of Rochester, the College of Nevada, Las Vegas — to confront what’s going right here,” Dr. Armitage stated.
After James J. Hamlin, a professor of physics on the College of Florida, reported the similarities between the graphs, one of many paper’s authors, Simon A.J. Kimber, stated he instantly acknowledged issues with the resistance knowledge.
“I known as for a retraction lower than 24 hours later and was uninvolved in makes an attempt to forestall it,” Dr. Kimber stated in an e mail.
The opposite authors — Dr. Salamat and Dr. Dias, specifically — continued to defend the paper, saying that beneath strain, each manganese sulfide and germanium selenide act like metals, and thus it could not be stunning that each supplies would conduct electrical energy equally.
The reviewers weren’t satisfied, pointing to smaller kinks within the curves that gave the impression to be measurement glitches or noise.
“If you need an analogy,” stated one of many reviewers, who requested to stay nameless as a result of the reviewers haven’t been publicly recognized, “you possibly can say, Oh, one blond actress appears to be like like some other blond actress. However these blips are extra just like the mole on the cheek of Marilyn Monroe.”
To search out one other blond actress with an equivalent mole on the identical location on the identical cheek would defy disbelief. That’s how intently the manganese sulfide curve matches the germanium selenide one, this reviewer stated.
The conclusion within the report of Reviewer Gamma wryly famous that this match, if true, would herald a significant discovery — “a novel universality in nature” that completely different supplies beneath completely different circumstances behave the identical.
Reviewer Gamma added, “It’s also conceivable that these findings counsel a departure from commonplace practices in experimental condensed matter analysis and require nearer investigation.”
Because the Bodily Assessment Letters paper faces retraction, the superconducting declare from March stays in scientific limbo.
“The group that made this phenomenal declare is a bunch that now’s demonstrably engaged in slipshod and even fraudulent knowledge dealing with,” stated the reviewer who spoke on the situation of anonymity. “It simply places a large beware signal on these outcomes.”
The cloud of suspicion and uncertainty hovering over Dr. Dias overshadows earlier breakthroughs by different scientists, the reviewer stated. Starting in 2014, a analysis group led by Mikhail Eremets of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany confirmed that hydrogen-containing compounds are superconductors at surprisingly heat temperatures when squeezed beneath ultrahigh pressures.
“There actually does seem like there’s high-pressure, near-room-temperature superconductivity,” the reviewer stated. “It is a phenomenal discovery and is broadly accepted in the neighborhood.”
Dr. Dias just isn’t the one researcher looking for a room-temperature superconductor. A paper posted by researchers in South Korea a number of days in the past claims that modifying the mineral apatite produces a superconductor that works at unusual temperatures and pressures.
The manganese sulfide episode echoes a scientific scandal twenty years in the past at Bell Labs in New Jersey. A physicist there, J. Hendrik Schön, printed groundbreaking analysis that turned out to be fabricated.
“My preliminary response is that that is similar to the Schön case when it comes to what seems as knowledge duplication,” stated Lydia L. Sohn, a professor of mechanical engineering on the College of California, Berkeley, who was one of many scientists who discovered almost equivalent graphs in a number of of Dr. Schön’s papers.
Dr. Sohn stated the proof up to now was not sufficient to succeed in a assured conclusion of scientific misconduct within the manganese sulfide work. She famous {that a} panel assembled to analyze the Bell Labs scandal supplied Dr. Schön the chance to confirm his experiments.
“The PRL authors needs to be given this chance as effectively,” Dr. Sohn stated. If the phenomenon is actual, she stated, “then the info will repeat.”
