Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ununoctium Wrapup

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-like-using-ununoctium-in-headlines dept.

rkowen writes "Finding superheavy element 118 would have been a giant step in the quest for the conjectured island of nuclear stability. But now the claimed discovery is thought to have been part of a pattern of deception by one physicist that goes back to 1994." We've done several previous stories: the discovery, hints of trouble, possible fraud. Between this and the Schon case one might think the physics community was full of frauds.

4 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. The proof that physic isn't full of fraud... by aepervius · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is that sooner or later as prooved there somebody will want to check your result. And if they fail they will try to find explanation. And when they fail to find explanation, they will call for verification and review and finally when all else fail, cast doubt on the theory/experiement. Ask for a redo.

    So fraud are rarer and rarer. Comapre the number of fraud in science, with (haha) economical fraud, political fraud (corruption), religious fraud (sect, breaking your own vow like abusing children and so forth).

    CAll this a flamebait, but in comparison to many of the other mentionend system, science has a remarkable low rate of fraud.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
  2. On All things considered last week as well by Dr.Seuss · · Score: 4, Informative

    Obligatory link to NPR stream of same.

  3. Re:Physics has always been ethically compromised by candover · · Score: 2, Informative

    The case has been rather overstated. David Goodstein, a current professor of physics at Caltech, wrote an article on this subject (warning: PDF). The relevant portion starts on page 3 - in summary, the data points that were discarded were being used to verify a separate formula for Stokes' law. A more recent analysis of all the points, published and not, doesn't show a bias regarding the charge value.

    Unrelated but perhaps relevant, Goodstein also has an article titled Conduct and Misconduct in Science online.

  4. Heavy pressure at national labs. by tiohero · · Score: 2, Informative
    This guy was pushing his luck... But I can understand what might have driven him to do it.

    I used to work at one of the national labs on the civilian research side. Funding sources are scarce and cutbacks are common. Funding for particle research is particularly difficult to obtain. Almost everyone at the national labs wishes that the cold war was still going on. Right now the strategy of the labs is to prove that they still have a purpose. There's a lot at stake: "laboratory reputation", "project manager repuation", "theorist reputation", and most of all $$$ to get successful results.

    Once a project ends, you don't automatically get to work on another one. You usually don't have the luxury of lots of time to refine your experiment either. People DO fear for their jobs.

    At the lab, I did observe some instances of "padding" experimental results although I am experienced enough to know that it goes on in most experimental research endeavors (public and private).

    The motto at the national labs is "Publish or Perish". In practice, What percent of journal articles describe unsucessful experiments? Not many.

    Often in particle physics you are merely validating what is strongly expected from theory so he probably felt he had a good chance to "get away with it" without having to invent physical constants. He went too far though. Honesty does matter in the end.