Nature reports a detailed report on the inside story of the huge scandal surrounding the paper on 'room temperature superconductivity' that shocked the world
Superconductivity scandal: the inside story of deception in a rising star's physics lab
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00716-2
Diaz, a physicist at the University of Rochester in the United States, published a paper in October 2020 claiming that he had discovered room temperature superconductivity in an environment of 15 degrees Celsius. Diaz's research team claims to have achieved room-temperature superconductivity with a compound called carbonaceous sulfur hydride (CSH), which is a synthesis of hydrogen, carbon, and sulfur, and their paper has been published in a world-renowned academic journal. It was published in Nature and attracted a lot of attention.
However, it was pointed out that the paper published by Diaz et al. did not include raw data on magnetic susceptibility , which is important in proving the superconducting state, and was not reproducible. As a result, Nature retracted the paper in September 2022.
How did the dream paper on 'room temperature superconductivity' become blank? - GIGAZINE
Later, in March 2023, Diaz et al. published a paper claiming to have discovered room temperature superconductivity, which was again published in Nature. In this paper, the compound that achieved room-temperature superconductivity was not CSH, but a substance called ``nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride'' consisting of hydrogen, nitrogen, and lutetium .
The second paper was met with skepticism from the beginning, as it was published by a research team led by Diaz, whose paper on room-temperature superconductivity had previously been retracted. Then, in November 2023, the paper was retracted again at the request of the paper's co-authors and after concerns were raised about the reliability of the data.
Nature retracts a paper on room temperature superconductivity, the second retraction in 1 year and 2 months since a previous paper by the same author was retracted - GIGAZINE
Nature's newsroom sought more information about the sequence of events, interviewing several former graduate students in Diaz's lab, e-mail history, and how Nature's journal team published the paper. We investigated documents related to acceptance and withdrawal. Please note that Nature's newsroom is editorially independent from the academic journal team.
Diaz took the post at the University of Rochester in 2017 after working as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University under physics professor Isaac Silvera . Mr. Silvera said of Mr. Diaz, ``He is not only a very talented scientist, but an honest human being.'' Diaz, who had been researching room-temperature superconductivity since moving to the University of Rochester, was inspired by the fact that a German research team achieved high-temperature superconductivity at minus 70 degrees with hydrogen sulfide in 2015. He thought, ``Why not add carbon to hydrogen sulfide (hydrogen and sulfur)?''
A former graduate student who was interviewed by the Nature newsroom on condition of anonymity testified that he synthesized a sample of CSH under Diaz's instructions, but did not measure the electrical resistance or magnetic susceptibility, which indicates superconductivity. Despite this, on July 21, 2020, Mr. Diaz suddenly sent the manuscript of a paper claiming to have ``discovered room temperature superconductivity in CSH'' to his former graduate students. According to the date of the email confirmed by the Nature newsroom, Mr. Diaz sent the manuscript at 17:13 on July 21, and sent the paper to Nature at 20:26 on the same day. In other words, although the former graduate students were co-authors, they were not made aware of the manuscript's existence until just before it was submitted, and they did not have enough time to review it.
Former graduate students also asked Diaz, surprised that the paper included data they didn't know, but Diaz said he had measured electrical resistance and magnetic susceptibility data before coming to the University of Rochester. I answered. Although the former graduate students felt uncomfortable with the explanation, they said they had no idea that cheating had taken place because they were just inexperienced students and trusted their supervisor, Mr. Diaz. About. In addition, at the time the Nature newsroom conducted the interview, former graduate students did not trust Mr. Diaz and believe that the data was not measured.
In a report by three reviewers commissioned by Nature's journal team to review the paper, two of the three expressed concern about the lack of information about CSH's chemical structure. However, five superconductivity experts who reviewed these reports said it was not unreasonable for Nature to accept the paper for publication, given the positive feedback from one reviewer. thing.
However, shortly after Mr. Diaz published his paper, Jorge Hirsch, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, San Diego, requested that raw magnetic susceptibility data not included in the paper be released. More than a year later, Diaz finally released the raw data, but Hirsch and his colleagues analyzed it and found that the data points were so regularly separated that the data may have been manipulated. pointed out in January 2022.
Due to concerns about these data, the Nature journal team asked four additional reviewers to review the paper. Although two of the four found no evidence of wrongdoing, two, including James Hamlin, an associate professor of physics at the University of Florida, concluded that the raw data had been tampered with. Diaz and co-author Ashkan Salamat of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, countered that they did not manipulate the data, but did not address questions about the magnetic susceptibility data found by Hamlin and colleagues. did.
In response to a series of complaints, the Nature journal team began the paper retraction process and sent an email to all co-authors on August 11, 2022. At this time, the former graduate students interviewed by the Nature newsroom were completely excluded from the post-publication peer review process by Diaz, and the reviewers pointed out that the data in the paper had been fabricated in the first place. I didn't even know that.
As a result, CSH's paper was retracted, but Nature did not explicitly state that the magnetic susceptibility data were fabricated. Because it is extremely difficult to prove misconduct in academic research, academic journals often use ambiguous language when retracting papers. Even after that, Mr. Diaz continued to maintain in public that ``room-temperature superconductivity in CSH is legitimate, and that the retraction of the paper was due to a technical difference of opinion.''
While his paper on CSH came under scrutiny, Diaz continued to research new room-temperature superconductivity in nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride compounds. Diaz instructed his graduate students to investigate a compound of lutetium and hydrogen (LuH) in the summer of 2021, and soon the students reported the measurement result that commercially available LuH had zero electrical resistance at room temperature of 27 degrees Celsius. About. At this point, Diaz concluded that the material was room-temperature superconductor, although there were many measurement errors and no consistency between samples. In addition, after trace amounts of nitrogen were detected during elemental analysis of the sample, Diaz claimed that the compound was a 'nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride compound,' but an analysis conducted after submitting the paper showed that it was LuH. It was also shown that no nitrogen was taken in. 'Mr Langa ignored what I said,' one former graduate student told the Nature newsroom.
Due to concerns raised by the scientific community about the CSH paper, former graduate students who will be co-authors requested that they be involved in the paper writing process, and Diaz agreed. . However, Mr. Diaz suddenly sent the manuscript of the paper via email at 2:09 a.m. on April 25, 2022, and said, 'Please send us your comments by 10:30. We will submit them today.' did. The former students persuaded Mr. Diaz to postpone the submission until the next day and asked various questions, but Mr. Diaz did not deal with it properly.
For example, although the experiment used a commercially available LuH sample, the paper describes how LuH was synthesized, and former students were concerned that this would lead to a misunderstanding that they had synthesized the sample. I did. However, Mr. Diaz did not explicitly mention that they synthesized the sample, so he answered that technically he was not lying. In addition, he seems to have dismissed the fact that the pressure data described in the paper differs from actual measurements, saying, ``Pressure is a joke.''
In the end, Diaz gave the former graduate students an ultimatum: ``Either remove the names of the former graduate students from the paper, or send the manuscript as is,'' and the former graduate students, who were in a weaker position, had no choice but to acquiesce. 'I remember being so scared at the time,' the former graduate student said, 'that if I spoke against him, it could have ruined the rest of my life.'
When the Nature journal team received Diaz's paper in April 2022, they asked four researchers to review it. All reviewers emphasized that if the content described is true, this would be a groundbreaking research result, but that the authors should be cautious about accepting the paper because the content it claims is so different. That's what he said. In addition, some reviewers pointed out that there were questions about the LuH synthesis procedure and data, and after five stages of peer review, including explanations from Diaz and Salamat, the paper was finally published in Nature. I did. However, only one of the reviewers agreed that there was solid evidence for room-temperature superconductivity, two did not support publication, and one wanted further measurements.
Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature, explained why she reviewed Díaz's paper, which had previously been flagged for possible misconduct, saying, ``Our editorial policy is to consider all submissions on their own merits.'' That's what I do,' he commented. In other words, Nature's policy is to decide whether to publish a paper based on its scientific quality, regardless of the author's past background.
LuH's paper was peer-reviewed and published, but many research teams that tried to independently reproduce it failed to find evidence of room-temperature superconductivity, and Hamlin et al. officially published it in Nature in May 2023. We have sent a letter expressing our concerns. Diaz and Salamat responded to the letter later that month, but the co-authors' former graduate students were also excluded from the response process, and only responded to the letter in an email sent by the Nature journal team to the co-authors in July. He said he found out about it.
Having grown distrustful of Diaz, former graduate students re-examined the LuH data they had access to and concluded that the raw magnetic susceptibility data appeared to have been tampered with. The former graduate student said that although the original raw data did not suggest that the compound was room-temperature superconducting, when Diaz 'processed the background noise,' the data appeared to show room-temperature superconductivity. He said. The raw data on electrical resistance also differed from what was collected in the laboratory.
In late August, the former graduate students decided to write a letter to Nature summarizing the data allegations and Diaz's actions and requesting a retraction of the LuH paper. Diaz sensed this move and sent a cease and desist letter, but after consultation with university officials, the former graduate students sent a letter, and two months later, on November 7, LuH's paper was officially retracted. it was done.
In addition, Mr. Diaz has been deprived of his laboratory and student status, and is currently awaiting ``personnel measures'' at the University of Rochester. Mr. Salamat, who co-founded the venture company Unearthly Materials with Mr. Diaz, has left Unearthly Materials and is conducting research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
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