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Elements 116 and 118 are Bogus?
prostoalex writes "In this era of corporate misbehavior and overstatement of results who can you trust? Scientific sources, of course. Well, turns out people at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory lied about their discovery of elements 116 and 118. Associated Press has the story, quoting the lab officials charging the researchers with "scientific misconduct"."
Soon there will be Intellectual Property pending on these too :-(
Why does the story submitter say "people" and "the researchers" when the AP story clearly states that the fabrication was done by one person?
I have this sinking feeling prior earnings may have been overstated...
Beta only seems to work for Google. Such a shame.
And in related news... Element 142 nicknamed CowboyNealium has been discovered by a crack team of wallruses in antarctica.
Is it possible for elements to be "missing" actually. Like gaps in the chart? Do there have to be continuous numbers? Or can you count them ... 114, 115, 117, 119???
I am not a really big physics person, but I thought that there would be a way to put the extra proton in there and throw in an electron to make a heavier one...
Also, how did they mess it up in "Thinking" that they had found them, when they really hadn't? Again I am not a subatomic physicist, so this could be a stupid question..
Tibbon
tibbon.com
At least they didn't go shredding atoms.... [rimshot]
Looks as though they at least get the message that belated honesty is better than none at all.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I just hope there was no research studies which "used" these elements... :)
I just ordered a new case for my dual Athlon Linux box made of Ununhexium with Ununoctium details! Man did I get screwed...
From a quick read of the article it doesn't like there's any big trust issue here...
The scientists rechecked there data and retracted there claims... where's the cover up? Isn't that pretty much normal in the scientific community?
(Ok... maybe they should have check their results before announcing anything, but its not like they denied anything or blatantly lied!)
Oh, that's just great! Well it's a good thing Theo made his periodic table modular, for just this case!
This is not new news at all, in fact Berkeley scientists retracted their paper back in 2001. Here is a link: http://enews.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/118- retraction.html.
I was going to patent the ununhexium-ununoctium alloy. I didn't like the name anyway.
Here is the /. story.
Stock in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory plummeted in afternoon trading, while the head researcher vigorously denied rumors that Arthur Andersen had provided proofreading services for the paper in question...
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Within less than a millisecond after its creation, the element 118 nucleus decays by emitting an alpha particle...
Why are these even elements, I mean, how can you even be sure of what you have in a millisecond. I guess they weren't.
My other sig is an import.
Every space in the Periodic Table should have a corresponding element. However, these elements may not occur in nature (eg. Technetium) or may have infinitesimally short half-lives (eg. most atomic numbers > about 100).
Freedom: "I won't!"
Despite much funding from nestle:
Choctonium:
Atomic Number: 118
Atomic Weight: Delicious
will now have to be eliminated from the table.
Havn't ya learned your lesson-
"Trust No One"
reminds me of the cold-fusion scam that happened a few years back too.
Blender And Linux Fan
Oh, no!
Wasn't one of those elements up for being named "Bullonium" or "Baloneyum"?
Didn't also figure prominently in the list of ingredients required to initiate cold fusion?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
So what you're really saying is that they HAVE discovered Unobtanium and Younoseeum!
No, that was probably the first post for HIM as he stated, asshat.
the most elementary checks and data archiving were not done
while they have to trust their employees to some degree, they should have at least verified that > 1 person had seen valid results before announcing success. it sounds like they didn't even ask him for much documentation. i'd say the lab is at fault too, not just the untruthful individual.
Microsoft has claimed the patent and IP on the element Carbon. This in effect stomps out two things.
It makes it so that Microsoft owns everyone, BUT they are only going to charge 1/1000c per year to use each carbon atom. This means that each person only owes a million or so a year. This also helps them control the judges, as they can now technically "own" them too.
A smaller note: now they can sue apple for using the name "carbon" for their OS products.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
What ever happened to the notion of skepticism in science? I mean, if a science team claims something new, novel or unexpected, the scientific community turns it's attention to disproving that claim -- picking it apart, looking for mistakes and/or weaknesses. You mean to tell me that noone else has ever tried to find elements 116 or 118? I am truly shocked!
You know, now that I think about it element 119, CmdrTacoium, sounds a little funny, too.
I create element 120 in my kitchen sink. Look for my research to be published next month. I plan to call it slashdotium.
Very silly to pin the blame on one individual in the research group. Don't these guys read? Don't they know disgruntled physicists, especially when they're disgraced atomic/nuclear scientists, always come back as super-villains to wreak their vengeance on their enemies and an unsuspecting world?
How long before their suspect builds himself an atomic-powered titanium alloy suit with miniature particle accelerator blasters?
D'mmit! Was that the Berkeley Lab?
I bought my "Lead to Gold" recipe from there!
I knew it was too good to be true...
Yet another "Get Rich Quick" scheme fades into a "Fade into Poverty" failure...
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
"The heavy element research fraud is a stinging embarrassment for the lab."
How about a public dipping of their genitals in 5M HCl thrice daily for one week.
Now *thats* stinging embarrassment.
Maybe someone can educate me. Why should I care that another element existed for an instant? It's been a long time since my last chemistry class so maybe I've forgotten some things. It just doesn't seem like very useful research.
Krabappel:"Who can tell me the atomic weight of bolognium?"
Martin: "Delicious?"
Krabappel: "Correct. I would also accept snacktacular."
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
So they said they'd found something, but the confirming experiments didn't come through. They've retracted their claim. That's pretty much how it works. Seems like you can still trust science, precisely because of stories like this. Right?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
When i was in highschool, doing physics, my teacher once said something that interested me. He sid that tho atoms got unstable the larger they became, there was a magic atom ~120 or something that theoretically was stable, hung around for as long as atoms br Has this proved so? Was my teacher talking out of his ass?
So when should I expect to see the girls of Lawrence Berkley issue of Playboy?
You were not first, but you smell like poop.
Turds smell like poop. Good for you.
Erm... Maybe I'm daft, but I can't tell if you're kidding here. The strength of science is that it does not require faith. It actually becomes more reliable when faced with scrutiny.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Maybe they announced their 'discovery' because they thought they were close to really producing the element, but did not want to let some other country (probably Russia or England) discovering it first and thus getting naming rights. There have historically been fights about who discovered what element first because everyone wants to get a chance to name an element in the periodic table.
> What Science needs most of all right now is credibility.
How on EARTH does science need credibility? Shit, even the missionaries wouldn't have been able to cross the water and do their (stupid/arrogant) thing without science. Anyone even reading this story is using something that relies on more than 1000 years of disiplined, reproducable science in order to function.
People can be irrational. End of story. It's not about building a stronger case for any particular ideology, its about dispelling and eradicating irrationality, IMHO.
"Old man yells at systemd"
damn, it was nice to know my block of spam was pure spiced ham instead of a compound (of entrails and hooves)...ah well
why run from Vincenzo?
The story on Element 118 (ununoctium) has already made an appearance at Slashdot. I'm pretty sure the invalidation of 116 is new, though.
:]
Remember, ununoctium decomposes into un-ununoctium in the presence of international scrutiny.
So... what you're suggesting is making science look like it has no problems. We are just to accept whatever comes out of the scientific community, no matter how foolish it might seem. Is it just me... or is this "Faith" in science?
Oh, and this is the single stupidest thing I've ever heard. "Hide the truth from people so that they don't come and take away our computers!"
Moron.
ScienceWire has learned that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (DOE:LBNL) is under investigation from the Nobel Physics Committee regarding possible fraud with respect to the existence of Elements 116 and 118.
Lab director, Beef Shank, is "shocked, shocked, I tell you" that fabrication of research went on under his watch. "We have since fired Arthur Anderson from our peer review committee, and have commenced an aggressive investigation in concert with the Nobel Committee, and intend to release our findings when the facts come to light. No further comment."
The individual singled out by Shank, but not identified by him [what the fuck? sometimes satire writes itself -- Editor], was identified by several newspapers as fired physicist and author Victor Nabokov.
Nabokov was suspended by the lab in November, later fired, and has a grievance pending regarding his dismissal for writing books about a quest for an island of stability in a sea of daughter radioisotopes with short half-lives.
Shank lauded his own department for ferreting out the fraud. "There is nothing more important for a laboratory than scientific integrity," Shank told lab employees. "Only with such integrity will the Congress, which funds our work, provide us with more grant money. On the bright side, at least we can conclusively say that we've found at least two candidates for the element Unobtainium."
LBNL stock found no such stability, closing down almost 70% today, to $1.14 (US protons), or $1.84 (Euro neutrons), on heavy volume.
From the AP article..
"The individual singled out by Shank, but not identified by him, was identified by several newspapers as fired physicist Victor Ninov.
"Ninov was suspended by the lab in November, later fired and has a grievance pending regarding his dismissal..."
Arthur Anderson would love to talk to him! Apparently the Wall St. Journal found a videotape advertisement feating Dick Cheney touting Ninov's nuclear accounting practices.
Do as George W. says, but not as he does! That's the American Way(tm)!
Once news of this scandal broke out on Wall Street, the atomic number of Strontium (NASDAQ: SR) plumeted from a healthy 38 to a pitiful, yet brightly burning 12.
I think that this story PROVES the credibility of science.
:)
In June 1999, scientists at Berkeley discovered 2 new elements.
The scientists and other members of the scientific community attempted to reproduce these elements.
They couldn't.
In July 2001, Berkeley's claims were retracted.
So what if it turns out that one scientist or a group of scientists did something wrong? The point here is that they didn't get away with it. The scientific process is WORKING.
IMHO, of course.
Several engineering companies are distraught over learning that discoveries of the super-strong, super-light element known as Unobtanium were falsified as well.Unobtanium was reportedly discovered by the marketing departments of several prominent firms, but the discoveries were never confirmed by actual engineers.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
My array elements 116 and 118 seem to work fine for me
This works fine?
printf("%s\n",string[116]);
printf("%s\n",string[118]);
Maybe I'm missing something here
Way to go /. with its stupid intros....They din't LIE about it, it was unverifiable upon subsiquent tests.
Quoted from the article:
"Science is self-correcting," Berkeley Lab Director Charles Shank said. "If you get the facts wrong, your experiment is not reproducible. In this case, not only did subsequent experiments fail to reproduce the data, but also a much more thorough analysis of the 1999 data failed to confirm the events. There are many lessons here, and the lab will extract all the value it can from this event.""
GG /.
--Should work--
Nasa has announced a lawsuit naming the two elements as accomplices in aiding the rouge Moon Rock's escape from this country. Further news can be found on "http://www.nasa.gov/moonrockgonebad.html". This page may have been removed due to the pending lawsuit.
Preachers arnt the only ones that can be caught with their pants down.
.. somebody finds out, and he's gone, right? Nope. How do you think a university feels about having to answer to the fact that nobody actually _checked_ his PHD with the university he got it from? Pretty badly. So when my mother reported him, the university told her to shut up or find another job.
.. ie, lots of money and reputations).
Case in point: My mother worked for a university (I'll save them face, because I'm sure it happens at every university) where her co-worker had faked his PHD, and was working on bogus research. All results faked. He didn't have a clue what he was doing.
Okay, no problem, you say
A few years later, they found a way of quietly dismissing him on legit grounds. Its all about vested interest - it makes these schools look stupid to admit that they dont have the time/money (nevermind that trust is still important, IMHO) to cross-check every single research project and prof they hire.
It's an unfortunate consequence of life - some people scam, and sometimes the scammed party wants to keep the details silent (having been sexually abused, its the same deal - you feel (wrongly) stupid for being the victim, although with the university, alot more than my pride is involved
Anyhow, dont think this is an isolated case. Take everything with a grain of salt, considering the money and prestige involved in the stakes of science, until its powering your coffee-maker.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Gives my new .sig a whole new meaning...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I can't believe someone would hold such a ridiculous point of view. You would fight ignorance and dishonesty with ignorance and dishonesty. That is the recipe for bringing back the Dark Ages.
However much mileage the forces of darkness might get from parading around the mistakes that scientists find in their own work, it is far worse when THEY discover mistakes that we've been hiding.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Fortunately, science already has systems in place to handle conditions like this. The same mechanism, science's dependency on reputation, which sometimes temporary mislabels new research as a crackpot idea, does an excellent job of protecting the integrity of science as a whole. Since he has been shown guilty by his peers, if Victor Ninov can't find a way to clear his name, he will have a hard time ever publishing work again. And no work he does publish will ever be taken for granted.
Science requires trust to operate, he broke it, and science kicked him out of the game.
As for the title "Elements 116 and 118 are bogus", the elements aren't bogus, this just means they weren't seen that time. It would be extremely surprising if 116 and 118 didn't exist, since very well supported theories show they are there and predict some of their properties.
I ate 9 tacos with lots of hot sauce...the gas eminating from my butt was quite noble. I need help in naming my gaseous discovery.
Let's avoid debate over the question of whether or not Joe Sixpack has "faith" in "Science"; I simply think no-one will have "faith" in an organization involved in a coverup. Announcing the error is all that can be done.
Covering it up is how crap like Enron and Worldcom happen in the first place.
John
It appears that one of the leaders in nanotechnology, Bell laboratories, is under investigation due to allegations of scientific fraud on 3 counts. It appears that research published by Jan Hendrik Schön on the use of organic molecules deposited in thin films to be used in nanotechnology chips and the like appears to reproduce the same graph in three different papers one three different datasets.
The article, published by Nature, can be found here
Now, update to last weeks' issue of Nature, and it appears that Bell labs fraud has spread to supercomputers, where another paper (by the same author) using fullerenes and CaO to eliminate electrical resistance is under dispute.
Now I'm no boffin, but when multiple paper's by one person (who is first author on all of them) come under suspision on multiple occassions by people such as noble laureates, things start to look a bit suspicious... could Bell labs rise from this scandal in light of the WorldCom debacle?
---
This story was not selected for slashdot, but could someone mod me up for bringing it to light... I seem to have some bad karma
My Tricorder keeps telling me it's detecting high levels of Bogon emissions....
Credibility? They want credibility? Well, then, how about they stop trying to shove that mythical Global Warming business down our throats? That'd help.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
This sort of thing happens all the time. This isn't news.
Ununnilium is down to 106 from 100 on news of scientific misconduct...
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
That's what they get for letting Anderson audit the number of protons in their atoms.
http://finance.yahoo.com/
..
Bush May Shatter Fund-Raising Record
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- President Bush was on track to demolish his own record for a single fund-raising appearance today, drawing $4 million for Alabama's financially lagging Republican gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Bob Riley. Bush also traveled here to talk about corporate responsibility; Corporations can donate to political candidates in Alabama, a practice that is against federal law.
The Harken Tale: Harken Energy purchased Bushboy's worthless oil company Spectrum7 for $2 million (bailing Bushboy out of big debts) in the late 80s and put Bushboy on their board and paid him a $120,000/year "consulting fee." Harken then lent Bushboy $180,000 so he could buy Harken stock. Bushboy was on their Board and was a member of their 3 man "Audit group" which was privy to the companies financial woes in 1990. After being briefed about Harken's cash flow problems in April, 1990, Bushboy sells his stock in June, 1990, when some mystery investor pays him $848,000 based on a "cold call" made by some stock broker (this is what the Bushboy people really say). In August, 1990 the poor financial condition of Harken becomes known and the stock drops like a rock to 1/4 its value when Bushboy sold it. Bushboy fails to report the sale of the stock by the 10th day of the month following the sale as required by law. He doesn't file the necessary SEC documents until 36 weeks later! The SEC head was appointed by Bushdaddy who is now president. Although the head of the SEC, Mr. Doty, was Bushboy's personal attorney, he doesn't recuse himself from any judgement of Bushboy and although the SEC refuses to exonerate Bushboy's criminal conduct it chooses not to investigate or prosecute (surprise!). The whole Bushboy/Harken deal stinks to high heaven and makes Whitewater seem like the jaywalking that it was in comparison, but Bushboy and the GOPers will block any attempt to investigate and hire a Special Prosecutor as they were so quick to do in Whitewater. Harken will be Whitewashed, as is everything else in Bushboy's sleazy past.
hung over you say? have another won.
...quoting the lab officials charging the researchers with "scientific misconduct".
I'd like to see those "lab officials" explain why the data found in this experiment was right or wrong. And what is scientific misconduct? Science is about creating hypothesis and theories and then trying to prove them right or wrong over decades or centuries of experiments. If only we could get a patent for the next element by outsourcing it through science.com under an NDA.
With the rest of the 2 post a day people closely behind...
-Govtcheez
According to this site, element 112, Ununbium, was also discovered by this guy, V. Ninov, who forged the results of the discovery of 116 and 118.
:)
It begs the question -- is 112 bogus as well? If not, it makes you wonder why he did this, after previously discovering a new element already. One was not enough?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
First I find out Vitamin L is bogus. Now this??
Maybe I read too quickly, but I didn't pick up on the names of the "missing" elements.
Even if they don't exist, they can still have names, can't they? (I know that this wouldn't be scientifically valid, but hey, we're just naming numbers.) Presumably, if they're legitmately discovered, the discoverer gets to name them, but until then, we need placeholders.
I say we name them! How about fraudium and forgium? Worldcomium? Enronium? Coldfusigen? (Of course, we need to draw on more languages than English.)
It says right on the linked page that this is old news. " Editor's note: On July 27, 2001, the results reported below were retracted through a correspondence with Physical Review Letters." July 27 2001....c'mon where's the current news. Slow news day up there in the /. office?
The Only Person Willing to be Me is ME!
the Girl of Lawrence Berkley issue of Playboy?
This page explains why all of the new elements have this strange Unun-something names, and how they are determined.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Microsoft will announce on Sunday the discovery of a new element which is the densest element known to date.
It will become element number 286 and be named Windownium.
Windownium (element 286) also includes elements 47 (silver), 78 (platinum), 79 (gold), and 92 (uranium), as well as a few other elements, SO there will no longer be a need to aquire those elements from 3rd party distributors.
In this particular case, one person lied. Not people, one person, and there was no coverup. Quite the contrary. Despite the fact that some basic check-and-balance procedures were not followed (designed to avoid emberrassment, as there will always be external peer review on this sort of thing as a matter of course), the standard peer review uncovered the fraud when other scientists couldn't duplicate the findings. It is all about checks and balances, whether you are talking about science, politics, engineering, or jurisprudence. Take away your checks and balances and things will go awry
I only wish more people in our society were aware of this basic and very important fact. It is what allows science to function and progress, and it is what allows our democracy to function despite personal corruption. Anytime anyone suggests a "reform" or change, in policy or procedure, that in some way diminishes the checks and balances that are in place *cough* ceeding unprecendented powers to the FBI *cough*, like not doing "the most elemenary checks and data archiving" suspicions should be raised, significantly.
However, in this case peer review and the usual checks and balances did in fact ferret out the fraud and make it known rather quickly. I think this demonstrates that, while individual scientists are certainly capable of misconduct, the scientific method and peer review regime we have works pretty well, and is quite trustworthy.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Isn't the periodic table Chemistry and not Physics?
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Open your eyes! We've been lied to this whole time about element 8 as well!
Who cares about elements and boring stuff like that. The slashdot FAQ is bogus. Want proof?
you can't just rack up big karma scores, and then post nonsense.
Um... yes I can!
Blither blather wiffle waffle kawey kawhey, I'm off to hartlepool to buy some exploding trousers. Wibble.
See?
ASSHAT???
I have gotta remember that one.
If you read even the summary of the slashdot article you mentioned, you'd see that, "It looks like he has left a few spots for new elements, and it is nicely modular, in the event an element is found not to exist."
"And like that
So when will Daschle hold a press conference and claim 'W' was guilty for inventing bogus elements while Governor of Texas?
Meh, overstatement of earnings and other corporate wackiness, fake element discoveries, who cares!? Not me, because I just received a special "exclusive" offer from some people in Nigeria that is going to make me rich!! So you can take all your fake info and go away! ;)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
to have discovered penguinonium has been proven to be bogus also.
turns out heis just yet another phony payper hanging stock markup FraUD. pleaze don't tell komandeer tahoe. IT may kill him.
If it can't be duplicated and it doesn't have a high level of predictive power, it's just plain bad science.
Looks like Elvis, Nudities (from MK2) and Elements 116 will continue partying on Neptune.
116 is binladium and
118 is mullaomaridium.
This guy claimed 116 and 118, but he deducted elements 56 and 72 from the other side of the books, so the balance comes out the same.
This is just much ado over nothing.
I'm posting anonymously because yeah, but here goes.
While I was not at all involved in any of this, I happen to know some of the individuals who were. No names will be named of course, suffice it to say that yes, it was only *one* person who fabricated stuff, and the other researchers are just as (if not more) pissed off at this person as the rest of the world.
That, and this is old news. I'm far too lazy to Google-search an answer, but I believe that this came out at least several months ago. The false discovery of the elements occured something like three or four years back...
But yeah, this is *one* bad scientist, the rest are good people.
Answer: Delicious! (although I would also have accepted "snack-tacular")
Every Substance in Universe Now Available in Ranch! http://www.segfault.org/stories/390a2f80-0733dae0. html
(segfault.org)
Hey, what's going on here, it seems that "Palladium" is already taken as an element name!...
"Dotnetium"? Like "Technetium", except with an MCSE...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I've got a little Karma to burn, so here goes...
This has been bugging me since the whole Enron thing broke out. People were ticked off that someone would go screwing around with their money. They were shocked. Appalled. But why should they have been surprised?
For those of you who were old enough to follow politics back in 1992, think back to the presidential campaign. George Bush (the original) ran against Bill Clinton. Bush ran on a platform that character and integrity mattered, and Clinton ran on, "It's The Economy, Stupid!" (his words, not mine.) For eight years we had a president who repeatedly told us that character didn't matter. All that mattered was how things came out for you. Hence, we had innumerable scandals, out of which he bumbled, bludered, obfuscated, and lied. And the people just ate it up, because he was such a nice man, and looked so sweet on television. They wanted to hear a message of hedonism and narcissism.
Well, now everybody's reaping the consequences. This is what happens when people don't have character. Financial reports are untrustworthy, and now scientific reports are untrustworthy. Welcome to the Clinton legacy.
Bring on the moderators...
The UN declared in 1998 that the next
discovered element will be called Penisbirdium
in honor of the now extinct penis bird.
So, thanks to this dimwit, we have the re-number all the elements after 118...just freakin' great...that makes me real happy, since I just memorized every element in the PT and its number...now I have to relearn them all over again. ;-)
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I think it's supposed to be a joke people- dealing with the fact that MSFT is claiming ownership in areas that it didn't seem that they owned before (openGL), as well them pushing around Apple recently...
These particular samples of Element 116 and Element 118 have no uses that I can foresee.
The value lies in the confirmation or disruption of theory -- especially in the disruption of theory. Theoretical physicists predict a lot of properties of nature before the experiments are done. Sometimes the experiments produce strange results, which leads to new physics, which leads to new engineering a generation or two down the line.
Every bit of knowledge is like a grain of sand (and each one of those grains is years of people's lives and millions of dollars of someone's money). You never know which grains are the crucial ones that lead to significant new functionality in the sand castle.
and?
Someone better tell Superman to stay away from UC Berkley
how faggy. I logged out, hit the back button and it posted as anon. slashcode sucks ass like the fag who created it.
They must be working for Microsoft! HAH!
We're still #1 in bongo playing on Lower Sproul plaza!!!! Go Oski!!!
According to this location, other research teams have managed to create element 116 directly. Maybe the Berkeley lab lied about 116, but it's been created other places.
I demand a manual recount of my karma!
You'd better re-align the warp core, set the shields for a rotating modulation frequency at 3 million teraCochrans, use evasive maneuver pattern omega and check for tachion particles in the delta band. Also, make sure that something is 99.125% of optimum and reverse the phase on the flux capacitor. Finally, tell the Borg that it's Fat Tuesday and toss her some beads!
Personally, I don't believe in Tungsten. And I'm not entirely sure I can trust Boron.
Excellent, I'm short 10 moles of Ununnilium. I'm planning to cover when it hits 82. At that level it should be stable.
I told you that all these "new electron shell" elements past Lawrencium were just a fad. Here one millisecond, gone the next. Honestly, every principal investigator with half a dozen postdocs and a linear accelerator thought they could do an Initial Periodic Offering.
"You think that's air you're breathing?"
Back in my day we only had water, fire, earth, and air. You didn't just go down to your lab and make more. That was the way it was, and we liked it!
yeah, best buy was selling it for $1.20 per gram... until they realized their mistake
It kind of bugs me that they're constantly talking about "discovering" these "new elements". It's not like it takes a great leap of imagination to think that, "Hey, there's an element with 107 protons... maybe there's one with 108 protons too! *gasp*"
I mean in theory any atom with any integer number of protons CAN exist for some period of time greater than Planck time, I just wish they'd say "created an atom of..." or "synthesized in the lab" rather than "discovered". It just seems kind of misleading. If someone comes up with a truly new way to combine various chemicals to do something, you can say they "discovered" it, because it's not like anyone could have predicted that exact process would exist... but on the periodic table, taking the highest element that has been shown to exist at some point, and then adding one to it, doesn't seem like much of a "discovery".
Maybe I'm just nitpicking...
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
"
Sure sounds like lying to me...
I needed those for my cold fusion project...
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Are they going to be eliminated or renamed Bogusium and Fullashitium?
If it is decaying at the predicted rate it should be gone by now, and you should have been wearing lead trousers.
Lasers Controlled Games!
The new names for these elements will be
"Fibbium" and "Bogusium"
Table-ized A.I.
...at the National Institute for Science and Technology, the president today announced the creation of an investigative committee and appointment of a "spayshall persecutor" to investigate and punish those responsible.
"Misleading the American public on this scale is unforgivable. Lies like this cannot and will not be tolerated by this government. The responsible scientists will be brought to justice and punished accordingly."
"It's a disgrace. I mean, who the hell do they think they are", he asked , "CEO's? Politicians?"
What good are they? It's not like you can actually build something out of them.
Man. This hit a little close to home. I was on the team that helped "discover" those elements. I want to explain a couple of items about elemental discovery and answer some questions I saw repeated many times on this thread. Superheavy elements haven't been dug out of the ground and looked at in about 60 years. They are made either by atomic explosions in salt caves (which the CTBT forbids now), or by beam on target collisions using a cyclotron. Accelerate some particles (we used Kr), slam them into a target (we used Pb) and you get a little bit of fusion, resulting in a new element with 82+36 protons: 118. Robert Smolanczuk predicted this would be a good reaction for "cold fusion" (not the kind you are thinking of), and we could expect to see ~1 to ~10 nuclei if our detector efficiencies were high enough, with about a week of beam. (That's constant beam-- I had three midnight to 8 AM shifts on this run). We used the Berkeley Gas-Filled Separator, which is basically two 30-ton magnets and some time-sensitive avalanche and PIIPS detectors. We were looking for a characteristic decay chain. We can get the material from the target area to the detector in microseconds, sweep it onto a detector surface, "listen" for a decay on the order of 10 MeV alpha, then wait for the the element-116 left afterwards to decay with another characteristic alpha energy in a characteristic time, and so on. During the week, we had no cherry responses. The data was mined and we thought we had three promising chains. I guess now they weren't so promising. Of course, I've been kept up to date on the retraction and so forth, but I just thought the data was reanalyzed and the chains were no good or outside of statistical significance. I had no idea of this possibility until reading it here. Victor's work in Germany for 110, 111, and 112 is unbesmirchable. Those elements have been confirmed (i.e., made in another lab using the same reaction). They aren't named because the German group just hasn't named them. We bothered them for years, and I'm sure they still get requests. I know they wanted to name one for the valley the lab was in: Hassium or Lassium or something. Still hasn't happened. I'm a little embarrassed. I've lost one of my best conversation pieces--and a resume entry for that matter.
Berkeley admitted that gold does not exist either. It was all nothing more than bronzed lead that was sprinkled into rivers and streams to build some hype and interest.
"Boy is your girlfriend gonna be pissed", was heard just outside of a downtown jewerly store.
Table-ized A.I.
Is that the same as Bium?
c-hack.com |
Amen.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
...Arthur Anderson was supposed to audit the research, right?
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
No, ununbium is not bium, it is --bium...
Some would call it bium*(-1)^^2
I think it's time for people to start to realize that fraud is common in science, and the fact is that it can happen in any branch of science, including physics and chemistry. It's time for the scientific community to bring peer review and journal publication back under control of the scientific community at large, and not that of an elitist minority. Scientific rigor and truly independent verification speak for themselves, and openness and collaboration benefit scientific endeavors more than competition and secretism.
Is it really discovering something when you *create* it? It's like elements 110 & 111 were just bumped into in the supermarket parking lot.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
i remember talking about millikan's famous oil drop experiments in freshman physics class. turns out he selectively edited his experimental results, because he had a vision of what the right answer was.
i'm not going to say with a straight face that what millikan did is the same as what this guy did. i'm just noting that these are two points on a behavioral continuum also known as "the slippery slope".
this guy had already discovered one element. he probably truly thought these other two elements were right there and if didn't hurry up and find them, somebody else would, and if he was right, what's the difference? he knew what the data should look like.
the lesson: peer review exists for a reason.
-- p
Your point may be true for the physical sciences. But I think some fair amount of "social science" is pretty close to outright fraud, and the universities which benefit from the promulgation of this fraud are not about to admit to the scams they are pulling.
I'm thinking, in particular, of some of the "research" that comes out of the University of Michigan that "proves" the benefits of "diversity" (as the University defines it) or that "proves" that opponents of "affirmative action" (as practiced by the University) are motivated by racism.
The administrators of Lawrence Berkeley lab have shown that they have integrity. The administrators of the University of Michigan have shown, all too often, that they have none.
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
What it tells us is that no scientific result is credible until it has been independently replicated by others.
What is so depressing about these cases of fraud is that they discourage the replication of interesting but implausible results: if fraud is common, people aren't going to spend time and money on things that may be fraudulent. That is why this kind of thing really hurts science.
In related news, an increasing number of scientists are coming to acknowledge the growing body of science which proves that the conclusions drawn from the field of "evolutionary biology" have been based on fabricated research.
Unless the physics of the strong and electroweak forces changes overnight, all of the yet-undiscovered elements, including these two "newly undiscovered" elements, have a half-life less than a milisecond.
Any isotope with a half-life less than a milisecond is completely useless for all practical purposes. I say we require any physicists who want to continue making these elements to prove that they might have more utility than a distant neutron star first.
I think this story is rather funny since the poll this morning. I had been reading the comments for the poll, and through that, discovered that element 118 had not really been created. There was an interesting discussion about the noble gases and the evasive element 118 (the next supposed noble gas).
mmm...physics...
I always thought your trolls were obvious, but you still manage to get people. Well done.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Scientists have just reported that Element 16 is also bogus.
We now bring you to our correspondent who is on the eckkackkk kuhcc
Nuff Said
Context: I'm from the Australian National University Nuclear Physics department; and this is a topic for discussion this morning :-)
It has been suggested here that Victor Ninov is being made into a scapegoat.
Facts that you might be able to confirm or deny:
The Physical Review Letter was submitted when Victor Ninov was away for a few weeks.
He was furious because he didn't think the data was ready yet. (Implication from my colleague; not all the checks had been performed yet; if they had been the original announcement might never have been made. Colleague saw him at a conference not long after the paper submission.)
The paper was published based on the earliest analysis of the data. (I guess you've already half-confirmed this one.)
People here have said that although it's clear some data was faked, it is *not* clear why or when. They see no motive for faking the original data, prior to the first publication. (We're talking about a field where the truth will out, sooner or later; one success should be followed within a year or two by someone else's confirmation. Even if that weren't the case, sooner or later false results get detected and replaced. It takes a lot of time, discussion, work, etc, to determine a) that something is wrong, b) which something is wrong, and c) why, but it happens. (I've recently been involved in exposing the limitations of a particular experimental method.)) It is suggested that the false data may have been inserted after the appearance of the PRL paper, when re-examination of the original data failed to return the 118 decay chains.
And if *that* is the case, then it could all be a terrible mistake. Because I *can* imagine inserting a few events into a copy of the run data, just to make sure that the data mining was working as it should. Indeed, if results were disappearing on me, I probably *would* make such a set of test data. Would I label it t for test, f for fake, a for artificial? Actually, I personally tend to long filenames, but that's because I've learned from experienced programmers and I've seen the confusion that can arise when single letter codes are used.
My point is that although one individual would know a set of data was faked, they might not realise that others in their group were doing datamining on the wrong files. Was data faked to test the analysis procedures? Or to cover someone's tails after the PRL publication came out? I'd suggest 'go over the logbooks' but combining computer analysis and handwritten logbooks requires a certain discipline that is rarely rewarded. Experiments are recorded in exhaustive detail - analysis often is recorded in patches. Why write down new filenames every half hour? And even if you think you've recorded what you've done, why, and where you plan on going next, you can find your own logbooks uninformative. So there's only a moderate chance that they'll reveal the whole story (I expect people have already reviewed them anyway.)
I don't know. Ninov might be the one copping the flak because someone didn't like him. I met him at a conference in Australia about 18 months ago. He listened to my presentation, then asked why I didn't talk about some things and tried to explain to me that there was something wrong with my research. Being a student listening to a bigwig, I tried to get what he was on about. When we started the third round of the conversational loop, I gave up. He did the same thing to my supervisors - they had to tell him "shut up and let us finish explaining" three times before he *did* listen, and then admitted they were right. Being swift to imagine flaws in data or method is a good trait in a scientist. Combining that with being slow to listen probably *would* make you enemies.
Rachel
"In this era of corporate misbehavior and overstatement of results who can you trust? Scientific sources, of course."
Seeing most universities are businesses these days
why should we expect the to behave any differently
to any other business? Money and emphasis on growth is the all important thing that every entity must strive for. Lying and misrepresentation are something that a business does every day in order to attract investors, students, customers and employees. Why not lie about your research prowess too?
In my next incarnation, I hope to come back as a code monkey.
If only I had gotten in on the ground floor of this story, I coulda made some karma with silly jokes of unobtainium and chocolium. *sigh*
.......old news..... they've retracted their claim about 118 a long time ago.... id get the article for you, but im too lazy...
...things get fabricated around here all of the time.
Sound like they were splitting and fusing "BEER" atoms..... sounds likje someone has got the distallation equipment distilling vodka instead of water.
Why are they just referred to elements 118 and 116? Their names are ununoctium and ununhexium (which sounds like someone used an alchohol based naming system).... or are they the element equivalent of Prince?
I guess they will have to rename the "former elements" to ununSanta and ununToothFairy seeing how neither actually exist....
- HeXa
When they called one of the new elements "Upsidasium". What fools!
Thanks for the laugh. :)
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Until they are given an official name, all of the elements are temporarily called by the latin translation of their atomic number. Naming elements can take years, because there is actually quite a bit of controversy around it. First, its existance must be verfied, as well as who was actually the first discoverer (and thus who gets naming rights). Then you have to worry about the name itself. There was a big ordeal a few years ago when somebody wanted to name an element after a scientist who was still living. Then he died during this time, and all was well.
Anyway, that's why you will see the newer elements being called by their numbers for many years. These two elements are Ununhexium and Ununoctium.
My dingo ate your honor student.
'The European Physical Journal A article alleges that there were two instances in which raw data from the earlier experiments did not match the published results. Results "were spuriously created", wrote GSI physicist Sigurd Hofmann, lead author in all three articles. But the discovery of elements 111 and 112 still stands, he wrote.'