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Ununoctium Discovery a Mistake
Lars Mooseantlers writes: "The New York Times reports, "Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California yesterday retracted a 1999 claim that they had created a new, superheavy element." Hmmm... first the Higgs Boson doesn't exist, now Element 118 turns out to be a myth too. Or is it all just part of some wider, cosmic conspiracy? ;)" Mmmmm, ununoctium. Well, I guess this story's out of date, and so is this paper.
Would that make it Un-Ununoctium? =)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Last time I checked, science distinguishes itself from any other field of human endeavor by its ability for self-correction. Science is littered with the corpses of discarded theories. How are we to understand the world around us if scientists don't make mistakes?
The public needs to understand that most scientific research is going to end up a failure, but the rewards for success make it worthwhile. And it's hard to predict when or where the next breakthrough will come. We get a skewed view of scientific progress because we only see the breakthroughs (e.g. Galileo's telescope, Maxwell's equations, Darwin's natural selection, Crick & Watson's DNA).
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Am I the only person who has a problem with the concept of artificial elements?
I think defining an element as something that "cannot be reduced to simpler substances by normal chemical means," is awfully convenient and runs contrary to a more simple definition: "A fundamental, essential, or irreducible constituent of a composite entity."
I think that cramming more protons into a nucleus and calling it a new "element" (yes I know this is over-simplified) is a bit of a logical stretch. No wonder people who were not brought up speaking English have such a problem learning it when we have contradictory definitions for the same word based on context.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Disclaimer: I am a church-going Christian, and have been for many years.
The key difference between religion and science is right here, from the article: "As scientists, we have a responsibility when a mistake like that is made to fess up."
I visited the Institute for Creation Research a few years ago. These fools try to make the claim that belief in evolution is as much a matter of faith as belief in God -- and one counter to the Bible.
But this is patently false. The difference is, when scientists learn something new, they -usually- (but there are exceptions) give up on the old theories and make new ones.
Compare with religion: Once something becomes part of religious doctrine, it can take CENTURIES before someone convinces people that it was a mistake. And the folks at the ICR are like this: You cannot convince them, even with scriptures that plainly contradict their beliefs, that they're wrong. The human doctrine has become their God.
The relevant point I'm trying to make here is this: Don't poke fun at the scientists for making a mistake; give them credit for admitting it. It's what they ought to be doing. It's how science advances, and how we learn. This is, in the end, a very good thing.
The creation of new heavy elements through heavy element fusion in particle accelerators is real. It is how: seaborgium: 1974, bohrium: 1981, meitnerium: 1982, hassium: 1984, ununnilium: 1994(and others I believe), were all created. The researchers in this case thought they were reaching a so called sea of stability(and had good reason to believe this) where nuclear stability would slightly increase with mass again enough to allow the production of atoms with neasureably long half lives before falling off with increased nuclear mass again.
Why would they have come out retracting thier previous claim 3 years after the fact at a time when no one was questioning thier results if they had falsified data? They went over thier data again and realized something was wrong, they retracted an honest but mistaken claim, this is how science works at it's best. When an astronomer a few years ago at the yearly American Astrophysical meeting found out (WHILE HE WAS AT THE ACTUAL MEETING NO LESS) that he had made a mistake in his calculations and the stars he had been studying were not orbited by any extrasolar planets, he got up in front of the entire congregation of scientists at the meeting and confessed he had made a mistake. He recieved a standing ovation. That is exactly what should happen here.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
I shouldn't have bought all those Ununoctium and Higgs boson futures! First pets.com, now this! I guess I'll just invest in record companies and Microsoft.
Scientists have announced that Schrodinger's cat is dead. Oh wait, he's fine. No, he's not; he's dead. Er, now he's alive again...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This may not be the best time to reveal the new element I've discovered, unobtainium. It has no mass, infinite strength, and a firewire port.
It's great to see physicists with integrity rather the embarasment to the field perpetrated by Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in March 1989 when they claimed to have devised a process to produce cold fusion.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
If I were going to make a claim of this magnitude I would make sure that there is repeatability of the results before I opened my mouth about it.
Firstly, this discovery isn't anything that will result in fundamental shifts in scientific knowledge, nor is it anything that will affect the daily lives of individuals (in the same way as, say, nuclear fission). So I'm not sure why you would consider this a discovery of great magnitude, aside from the fact that an average person could probably understand the nature of the discovery. Furthermore, repeatability is the work of other researchers, so in this case the system worked as intended.
I believe that this research is much needed and I detest the fact that this type of bogus science really hurts the rest of the legitimate scientific community by making funds that much harder to come by.
Again, I disagree. The research in question was neither "bogus", nor did it hurt the reputation of the rest of the scientific community. There was some evidence from an experiment that could have been a legitimate discovery, and it was published as such, then withdrawn when the evidence was reviewed. In fact, as many posters have pointed out, the forthrightness of the scientists in pointing out their own mistakes can only help their reputations. The research funding agencies understand how science works, and won't likely turn off the money taps because of one failed experiment.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
As a graduate student in physics at Berkeley, I take great offence at some of the comments here. What bothers me is that some people make comments as if they knew what they are talking about. Nothing annoys physicists more then idiots who make half-baked comments without even knowing what they are talking about. The fact that these particles live for a fraction of a second does not mean that the proof of their existence is flimsy. They are detected by looking for a series of reactions (decays) that occur once the particle has been created. It is not easy but at least physicists are honest enough to make their errors public. It is a shame the general public is too stupid to understand this or the work that is carried out.